rubbing tenderly along my cheek. “Okay then. If you’re sure.”
I inhale deeply and roll over to sit up and prop my back on the headboard. The darkness of the room is comforting…like I can hide myself while forcing the words out.
My jaw is taut when I say, “My mother was raped when she was sixteen years old. And I’m the product of that rape.”
Tilly inhales audibly, her lips parted as she processes that information. She reaches out to touch me. “Sonny, I’m so—”
“Please, don’t give me your pity.” My body tenses as I pull back and grip the blanket on my lap, wishing I had a shirt on right now because I feel naked in more ways than one. “Sympathy makes it all so much worse.”
She lowers her hand and nods slowly. “Can I ask what happened?”
I dig deep in my soul for the courage that I thought would come easily when I found the woman I loved. I thought sharing this part of me would be cleansing and I’d feel seen for the first time in my life. I was wrong. The fact that I love her just makes it ten times harder.
I swallow a knot in my throat. “It was a person who my mum went to school with. It happened at a party, I guess. My family knew his family, but they denied it ever happening. My grandparents tried to go to the police, but it was a he said/she said situation, and there just wasn’t a case. My family lived in a small village outside of Venice, and people talked. Zio Antonio was so angry over what happened, he came back from England and beat up the boy who did it. He was sixteen, so Antonio would have gone to prison for assaulting a minor, but the family didn’t press charges…which only confirms the fact that they knew what their son did, and they didn’t hold him accountable for it.”
Tilly inhales sharply, and I force myself not to make eye contact with her, or I know I won’t be able to finish.
“When they discovered a few weeks later that my mum was pregnant, they decided to leave Italy and start a new life away from all the whispers. Nonno said my mother was so terrified she couldn’t even walk the streets alone in the middle of the day. So they joined my zio in the Cotswolds and hoped that a fresh start in a new country would help her.
“Nonno said they discussed options…abortion, adoption, even giving me to my uncle and aunt. My grandparents are pretty devout Catholics, but my grandfather said he would have supported my mother if she wanted to end the pregnancy. But my mother chose to keep me. She said there was never a doubt in her mind.
“I never knew anything about this when I was a child. My mother just said that my father wasn’t a good man and we were better off without him. When I was really young, I used to look at footballers’ faces on the telly and pray so hard that I belonged to one of them, and any minute now, they were going to come in and save me from my horrible mother.
“The older I got, the more I resented her for not telling me who he was. I thought I had a right to make my own opinion. It felt like she was keeping him from me, and I was angry with her every day for that. Then she married Bart, and I was a sullen teenager, jealous that little Angela got to grow up with two parents playing happy family. I felt like an outcast.
“I went to university in London and hoped that I could start a new life, but I couldn’t seem to focus. I was still always so angry. I started failing all my courses, and was on academic probation. It was then I decided enough was enough…I was going to find my father.
“I came back to Bourton and demanded Nonno tell me his name since my mother wouldn’t. I told him if he didn’t tell me, I was going to quit school. Keep in mind, I was the first in my family to go to university, so when I said these words, they were like a dagger to Nonno’s heart. They had saved every penny they earned at the shop to help pay for my education.
“That’s when he sat me down and told me my father was a monster and a