Free Sottopassaggio by Nick Alexander Page A

has?
    â€œHey!” I shout at the dog. “Come here!”
    I smile at Tom. “This one’s OK though. What’s his name?”
    â€œLad.” Tom nods sardonically. “I
know
… Lad the Labrador; sounds like a character from a bloody
Noddy
cartoon.”
    â€œCould be worse,” I say. “Rupert Everett’s dog is called Rupert.”
    Tom frowns. “Really?”
    â€œYeah. I saw him in St Tropez wandering up and down the beach calling to it.
Rupert
!
Rupert
! Just in case anyone
hadn’t
noticed he was there.”
    Tom bites his lip. “How dreadful. When were you in St Tropez?”
    I tell him I have been living in Nice and that I’m taking time to work out where I want to be.
    Tom laughs. “Oh
there
! Definitely!” he says.
    It’s one of those strange moments when speech precedes thought. Only once I have said it do I realise that for the first time I have re-framed my stay in England, not in terms of the terrible events that brought me here, but in terms of what I intend to do with it, where I intend to go with it. “
And this
,” I think, “
is how we heal
.”
    â€œI go to Italy a lot,” Tom is saying, “or I used to, near Genoa, if you know it.”
    I nod. “It’s only an hour and a half from Nice.”
    Tom nods. “Isn’t Genoa great? Such a
real
city I always think.”
    I blush. “I knew this would embarrass me one day,” I say.
    Tom frowns. “What?”
    I reposition myself on the pebbles, imperceptibly sliding closer to his warm, funny self.
    I shrug. “I only went to Ikea, then I came home.”
    Tom laughs. “Shame on you,” he says, “though I have actually been to that Ikea a few times myself.”
    â€œReally?” I laugh. “How funny. So what takes you to Genoa? Your job?”
    Tom laughs. “Nah, my job takes me to Dortmund sometimes, but that’s about as exotic as it gets. And believe me, Dortmund
is not
very exotic.”
    â€œGermany?”
    Tom nods. “Yeah, dreary industrial town.”
    I nod.
    â€œNo, Antonio lives just behind Genoa,” Tom says.
    I wrinkle my brow and raise a hand to shade my eyes from the sun. “Antonio?” I ask.
    â€œYeah,” says Tom. “Antonio. He’s Italian.”
    I frown at him.
    He nods. “My
partner
?”
    I cough and rearrange myself, moving imperceptibly back to where I started.
    â€œYour partner,” I say.
    â€œYeah,” says Tom nodding. “My boyfriend.”
    A cold shower makes me shiver. Tom reaches for a stick and throws it.
    â€œLad! Go dry yourself somewhere else,” he says.

Déjà Vu
    As I doze on Owen’s couch, my right-brain reasons my left-brain into submission. Logically, it argues, I need a friend, even a friend with an Italian boyfriend, as much as I need a lover. I’m probably not ready for any other kind of relationship anyway, it says.
    And an evil, bad, bad,
bad
part of my mind that I do my best to silence, agrees I should go for a drink with Tom tonight, but for completely different reasons. It’s best to know as much about the enemy as possible, it says. Who knows how solid Tom’s relationship with Antonio really
is
, it snidely points out. To prove its point, it has sieved through my conversation with Tom separating out one particular phrase.
    â€œI go to Genoa a lot,” he said. “Or I used to.”
    â€œ
I used to
.” Now what does
that
mean?
    My headache has gone, but the hangover has left me feeling tired and irritable so it’s hard to motivate myself. Eventually I drag myself from the sofa, splash cold water on my face and head off to the rendezvous.
    It’s a warm overcast evening, and as I approach the Amsterdam, I see Tom sitting in a window seat.
    It has almost the same layout as
Legends
where we first spoke, and it’s only a little further down the seafront. But tonight, at least,