soul withered. She and Ferdia skimmed a look off each other. They were clearly thinking the same thing: that Florence was like a stage set; that this man had been paid by the Tuscan Tourist Board.
‘Your man looks –’ Ferdia said.
‘I know.’
‘But. Look at all these statues.’
In the street, raised on marble plinths, stood several sculptures.
Ferdia stood before a male nude in white marble. ‘Is this the statue of David?’
‘A reproduction,’ Nell said, ‘but, yes, that’s him.’
They studied the statue. Nell gave Ferdia a cheeky look. Echoing what he’d said earlier, she said, ‘He looks a bit like you.’
‘Oh, yeah? The nudiness? Ah, it’s the hair, right?’
‘And the giant lump of marble stuck to his foot.’
‘He’s had a bit of manscaping done, by the looks of things.’
‘And,’ Nell was looking at the small genitalia, ‘it must have been cold, the day it was sculpted.’
Then, embarrassed, ‘Come on.’
They started walking, heading away from the centre, with no plan, past seven-storey buildings in every gradation of yellow, from buttercup to straw, tottering over narrow, pedestrianized streets.
SEVENTY-THREE
Johnny and Ed exchanged a look. For God’s sake, don’t laugh. But it was difficult not to. Liam had pushed the pace all morning. Ed had kept up but Johnny loitered far behind, huffing and puffing and hating every second.
Then, about ten kilometres from home, Liam gave a sudden howl and skidded to a halt, claiming to have ‘done something’ to his back. They helped him, wincing and swearing, to the shade of a tree. Johnny flung himself down beside his brother.
‘I might never be able to get up again,’ Liam mumbled.
‘At least you can cure yourself,’ Ed said, distributing bottles of water. ‘With your massage stuff.’
‘No, I fucking can’t! How would I reach? How could this just have happened out of nowhere? I wasn’t doing anything to my back!’
‘It’s just the way of things,’ Ed said. ‘You try to disaster-proof your life. But the thing that causes all the trouble is something you’d never even thought about.’
‘How d’you mean?’ Johnny sounded anxious.
‘Just. I worried about money, about being away for fieldwork, about Vinnie being a bit wild. Any of them could blow up our lives, I thought. But Cara having a seizure because of an eating disorder? Never saw that one coming.’
‘Thought we were talking about my back,’ Liam said. ‘How did this conversation become about you, Ed?’
‘She’s getting help,’ Johnny said. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘You know your friend – is it Andrew?’ Ed asked Johnny. ‘With the alcoholic wife?’
‘Grace? Yeeeess?’ No wonder Johnny sounded wary: this was not a story with a happy ending.
Andrew had been – everyone was agreed on this – ‘very good to Grace’. He was the one who’d rung around on the mornings after, making Grace’s apologies, when she’d made a drunken show of herself the night before. To alleviate her need to drink so heavily, he’d taken her on holiday, got extra childminding help and tried to remove all stress from her life.
After years of her trying and failing to get things under control, Andrew had left her.
Then she stopped drinking.
Andrew stayed gone. She stayed sober.
‘Moral of the story, he was enabling her,’ Ed said. ‘My second-worst fear is that Cara doesn’t stick to this. If she starts again, I don’t think I can stay with her.’
‘But she’s not well!’ Johnny was horror-struck. ‘You can’t abandon a person who isn’t well!’
‘If I stayed, she’d think there were no consequences. She’d probably keep doing it.’
‘What’s your first-worst fear?’ Liam asked.
‘That she dies.’
‘Yep,’ Liam said. ‘Could happen.’
‘But probably won’t,’ Johnny said quickly. ‘Things often get worse before they get better. But think positive. That’s what you do.’
People were always telling Ed that he was a positive person, but, right now, hope was in short supply.
Early afternoon, the villa was quiet. Johnny, Ed and Liam were on their crackpot cycle, Nell and Ferdia in Florence, Saoirse and Robyn at a day spa, and Cara, Vinnie and Tom had gone to the big supermarket in ‘the real town’, nine kilometres away.
‘Mum?’ Jessie was on her way to the pool when she was summoned by Dilly, who was in a head-to-head conference with TJ and Bridey. ‘Are Violet and Lenore still our cousins?’
‘Of course, honey.’
‘Could we FaceTime them? Now?’
Jessie didn’t see why not. Admittedly, it had hurt that the two girls hadn’t come to Italy but she and Paige had always got on. In the early days of the separation, Jessie had wanted to maintain their friendship, but Liam had asked her not to. (‘I feel