Between Two Mountains - 4. Chapter 4

“So, you think Vincenzo turned him down?” Daniele asked.

Marco nodded. “All I’ve had from him is those two words,” he replied. “But… yeah.”

Daniele looked a little crestfallen. “I feel sad for him. It’s like he can’t catch a break.”

Marco shook his head slightly his friend’s display of unabashed empathy.

Do you have to be so GOOD?

He checked his watch. Ten past two.

“Cosmo should be here by now,” he mused. “We set this up a couple of days ago but, you know… that was before.”

They were back on Marco’s usual bench in the corner of the cathedral square. The sun was high, casting the light grey paving stones and the whitewashed cathedral into a fierce summer glow. The sky was a vivid blue, the baskets of flowers around the square vibrant splashes of colour… but, beneath the umbrella pines, the bench was a sanctuary of shade. The cicadas scraped away in the high canopy of the trees, and the air bore the pleasant aroma of cooking as the locals and visitors at the bars snacked on panini, pasta and pizza slices.

Daniele smiled slightly, his light blue eyes regarding Marco in a typically unguarded way.

“I’ve sort of missed this,” he said. “You know – just the two of us, hanging out.”

“Me too,” Marco said quietly.

“I didn’t mean… anything like that,” Daniele added hastily. “I just meant… you know, as friends.”

“I know,” Marco mumbled.

He sighed inwardly. They hadn’t planned this. Daniele had only come to the square to wait for Giacomo. But, being Daniele, he had seen Marco sitting alone and made a beeline for him straight away. Dressed in another of those summery tie-dye t-shirts which he wore with such cheerful abandon, with his blond hair brushed until it looked super soft, he had sat down next to Marco just like old times, with his bag of beach things by his side. Suddenly, it was as if the last summer had never happened, and Marco had found himself wanting everything he thought he had accepted he would never have.

If only you knew how much this messes with my head, Dani… I guess absence really DOES make the heart grow fonder.

Daniele bit his lip uncertainly. “I feel like, since Giaco and I got together, you’ve been kinda… drifting away. And now, since lockdown, there’s… sort of a wall between us.”

Marco shrugged. “What did you expect, I guess? You and Giaco, you’re on another level now. I can’t compete with that.”

Daniele frowned. “Yeah, well… you don’t have to. I want you to know that I’m still here, okay?” Reaching out, he took one of Marco’s hands with both of his own and pressed it against his chest. “See?” he said with a smile. “You can even touch me and everything.”

Marco stared at their nested hands, rendered momentarily speechless. It was such a long time since he had been touched so gently by anyone. And now, here he was, on the point of sensory overload from one simple gesture: the dry warmth of the other boy’s hands holding his own; the soft cotton of his t-shirt; the faint suggestion of his heart beating within.

Maybe Daniele had a point. Maybe the lockdown had made everyone strangers… taken away something they had always taken for granted. No wonder all the couples in town seemed to be making up for lost time.

When he had recovered his wits a little, Marco braved a glance straight into the other boy’s eyes.

“Just don’t let your boyfriend see us like this,” he ventured. “He might get jealous.”

Daniele smiled. “It’d probably do him good,” he replied, releasing Marco’s hand. “You know how cocky he gets.”

There was a couple of seconds’ silence, then they both broke out into fits of suppressed giggles. Marco decided he did feel a little better.

Their laughs were just subsiding when a pair of hands closed over Daniele’s eyes. Somehow, his assailant had crept up behind them while they weren’t looking.

“Guess who,” grinned the newcomer.

“Giaco,” Daniele replied without a moment’s hesitation.

Giacomo exchanged a quick glance with Marco and pouted slightly. “No, seriously. Guess who?”

“Giaco,” Daniele repeated, grinning himself beneath the other boy’s laced fingers.

“Fine,” Giacomo grumbled. “Now, tell me I’m not ‘cocky’ and I’ll let go.”

“Oh… you heard that, did you?” Daniele snickered. “No… you’re never cocky in the slightest.”

“All right,” Giacomo said, freeing the other boy’s eyes. “I’ll let you off… for now.”

Blinking slightly in the renewed sunlight, Daniele glanced up over his shoulder and smiled. “We’d better go and catch our bus, don’t you think? We don’t want to miss it.”

Giacomo nodded, hitching up his rucksack, which was dangling casually from one shoulder, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Check.”

Daniele gave Marco an apologetic look. “I guess that means we’ve got to go. Sorry, Marco.”

Marco sighed slightly and nodded. “No worries.”

“Let’s have some more hang time soon,” Daniele offered. “Right, Giaco?”

The other boy nodded. “Any time. Ciao, Marco.”

Daniele scooped up his bag and off they went, arms round each other’s shoulders and whispering into each other’s ears.

By half past two, Marco reluctantly concluded that Cosmo wasn’t coming. There had been no answer to his texts or calls. His first reaction was to feel annoyed at being ditched, but then he began to worry a little. Things had obviously gone badly with Vincenzo. Just how badly was the other boy taking it?

Thinking for a moment, he texted Luca.

‘Have you seen Cosmo today?’

Luca didn’t keep him waiting for long.

‘He was back super late again last night. Didn’t even say sorry. Still asleep when I left the house this morning. Lazy ass.’

Marco twisted his mouth thoughtfully. Maybe Cosmo had got held up at work, and hadn’t been able to text him. It was worth a look.

Marco got up from his bench, stretched and set off for Da Rossi. The hottest part of the day had arrived, and Marco stuck to the shade as he wandered down the narrow, tree-lined street that led out from the corner of the square. He’d always been too skinny to perspire to any great degree, but it was over thirty degrees and he wasn’t carrying any water.

It was a relief to step through into the air conditioned gloom of the restaurant. Anna, he saw, still hadn’t returned from her stay at the hospital with her father, and a slightly frazzled-looking Pietro was manning the bar alone, supported by a single member of waiting staff.

“Buongiorno, signore,” Marco ventured. He was just tall enough to rest his arms on the bar; Pietro looked up from the cocktail he had been mixing.

“Oh, ciao, Marco,” he replied. “We don’t often see you in here alone. Are you after a takeaway?”

Marco shook his head. “I was just wondering if Cosmo was here. We had a meet-up planned, but he never came.”

Pietro shook his head. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me where he is. He hasn’t been in work for two days.” He spread his arms helplessly. “No word of explanation, no answer to my calls. Meanwhile, we’re getting very behind in the kitchen and some of our customers are waiting far too long for their meals.”

“I’m sort of worried about him, signore,” Marco confessed. “He’s had a bad time recently, and I’m not sure he’s okay.”

Pietro sighed slightly. “You’re kind to be so concerned about him, Marco. I wonder if he’d do the same for you?”

Marco dropped his gaze and inspected his fingernails. “I think he would.”

Pietro shrugged. “Well, perhaps you’re right. I can’t hold his job forever if he’s not going to turn up, but…” he ran a hand distractedly through his hair, “…let me know if you find him. I guess I’d also like to be sure he’s alright.”

Marco said goodbye and wandered thoughtfully back out into the glare of the afternoon sun with his hands in his pockets.

Where would Cosmo go if he was feeling crappy?

…assuming he’d even managed to get up and leave the house.

Brow knotted in concentration, Marco indexed his mental map of Ravello, trying to think of all the places the older boy might choose to go. In the scheme of things, Cosmo hadn’t been here for very long, and he didn’t seem like the sort of person who would spend a lot of time exploring for the sheer pleasure of it. So, it was likely to be somewhere his day-to-day life had already taken him.

His aunt Assunta’s villa on the hillside below town…? With most of the family in prison, it would be empty, but it didn’t seem likely. The place was pretty secure, and Marco doubted that Cosmo would have been entrusted with a key.

No, the old Neri compound below the cathedral square seemed far more likely. The gates were operated by a keypad, and Cosmo would know the code. A couple of years back, after Marco had fallen out with his friends, he had spent a lot of time hanging around the abandoned house out at Sambuco where he had spent a few misguided days working for the Neri family himself. He could well imagine that Cosmo might do something similar if he wanted to brood alone.

It was worth a try, at least. Marco turned on his heel and made tracks back to the square.

* * *

The gates to the Neri compound were located in the seediest bottom corner of the public car park below the cathedral square.

The public stairway down to the car park ran from the corner of the square closest to Marco’s usual bench beneath the umbrella pines. To help welcome visitors to the town, the stairway was adorned with a pergola made of rustic chestnut poles draped with bougainvillea and wisteria vines. Traditional square lanterns hung here and there to light the way at night.

Marco had no need of the lanterns now as he wandered down the stairway in the heat of the afternoon. The fierce sun beat down relentlessly, and he was glad of the dappled shade that the climbers provided. There was nobody else about, and his only company was the ceaseless scraping of the cicadas and the lizards that skittered into cracks in the stone walls as he passed.

He stole along the top edge of the terraced car park, past a row of gleaming vehicles that reflected the heat in waves. At the far side, a stepped footpath descended to the lower levels in the shadow of a high stone wall. Soon, the gates of the secure compound loomed ahead of him, an incongruously modern feature in the dusty, sun-drenched scruffiness of the car park.

He had no intention of simply walking in through the front door, so to speak, and, in any event, he didn’t know the key code. Instead, he meant to get the lie of the land first. Giacomo and Daniele had described their adventures there often enough for Marco to know that he had an alternative.

Just above the compound, a broken down old gate opened on a small patch of waste ground. By turning sideways, Marco was able to squeeze his slight frame through the gap between the gate and the wall without even making too much of a mess of the old blue check shirt he was wearing.

Once he was inside, and well out of sight of anyone who might be watching, he was able to stoop low and run along the back of the retaining wall that separated him from the compound below. At the far end, part of the wall had crumbled away, leaving a gap that would be perfect for him to peer through without being spotted. Closing the distance as quietly as he could, Marco knelt down in the fine, dry dirt to take a look.

The compound occupied a sprawling site at the top of the cliff. Beyond, there was nothing but empty space and the distant, tree-lined slopes of the far side of the valley. At the top of the cliff there was a modest villa of some kind that looked empty. To the left, heading back up towards the town, there was a small storage building. That, Marco supposed, was the spot where Cosmo had been forced to guard his family’s secret stash of weapons from Naples.

He tried to imagine Giacomo and Daniele’s fear when they had found themselves trapped between the gangsters on one side and the armed police on the other. By all accounts, Giacomo had been lucky to escape with his life. The dark-eyed boy still bore the scar on his abdomen where the misplaced police bullet had hit him. He had shown it to Marco once.

Daniele, he thought, must know that scar very well by now. The thought of it brought a low sort of pain to Marco’s own heart.

On a raised terrace between the two buildings was a dusty, derelict garden area of some kind. The planting beds had gone to dry ruin, but a couple of trees clung on. And beneath one of them, a small pine…

Cosmo was there! But he wasn’t alone. Marco hunkered down lower for a safer look. There were not one, but three figures sitting in the shade of the pine tree: Cosmo, a girl and a younger boy.

Cosmo and the girl were sitting in a couple of faded wooden patio chairs. They were both smoking, and from the faint scent that assailed Marco’s nostrils, it wasn’t just tobacco. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Cosmo, I hope you know what you’re doing…

Cosmo’s hair was looking lank and unwashed again. It seemed his brief commitment to his personal hygiene had ended with his hopes with Vincenzo. He was wearing a stained polo shirt that also looked like it hadn’t been changed in a couple of days.

The girl looked slightly older than Cosmo. Although she was seated and it was hard to say for sure, Marco thought she was probably quite tall. She seemed to have made more of an effort over her appearance, but everything about her presentation followed the same theme. Her black hair hung in a leaden sort of way about a narrow face accented with black eyeliner and dark red lipstick. She was wearing black leather boots, a short black skirt, a black low-cut crop top and, incredibly, a thick black cardigan.

Marco shook his head in disbelief, staring up at the fierce blue of the afternoon sky. There was little shade where he was hiding, and even he could feel beads of perspiration starting to form at his hairline.

She must be crazy!

The third figure was a bit of a mystery. He hadn’t been granted a chair, and was having to make do with an upturned bucket. He had found a stick somewhere and was poking wretchedly at the ground with it, making aimless shapes in the fine, dry dirt.

Suddenly, Marco was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t that been him, not so long ago?

By Marco’s best estimate the boy was fourteen; a youngish fourteen, at that. He had a lanky, spidery look about him, and Marco suspected he would look taller than him if they came face to face. The boy was wearing skinny jeans and a slim-fit black shirt that had probably been stylish once, but now looked like it had seen better days. He had dark brown eyes and an untidy mop of black hair that also looked like it could use a wash.

Despite the uneasy atmosphere, Marco was suddenly struck by a wildly inappropriate thought, and had to bite his lip to keep from giggling.

He was so impressed by Cosmo’s style that he just had to copy it.

The three of them looked like they had known each other for years. He realised the older boy had never talked that much about his time in Salerno. He thought back to his conversations with Cosmo, but he had no idea who these two might be.

He could well imagine someone like Cosmo finding another troubled soul to hang out with. But why would he also know a fourteen-year-old kid?

Then he had another thought. His eyes tracked from the older girl to the younger boy, and then back again. Both tall and skinny, with similar hair, similar eyes and a shared taste for black clothing; she and Cosmo the dismal duo, he the second class citizen…

The reluctant kid brother who’s come along because he has nothing else to do?

The picture before him suddenly made more sense. Marco nodded to himself, pleased with his deduction.

The girl took a large toke from her joint, held it in for a few seconds, then let it back out with a snicker.

“Zio Maurizio would kill me if he saw me doing this,” she said, in the husky voice of a regular smoker.

Cosmo gave a low, rather bovine chuckle. He looked up at her with eyes that seemed slightly glazed and unfocused. “Really?”

The girl snorted. “As if. I must reek of the stuff, but he hasn’t said a thing. Either he hasn’t a clue, or he’s too scared to confront me. He’s so pathetic.”

“He’s not pathetic,” the younger boy mumbled. “He took us in, didn’t he?”

The girl cupped a hand to her ear as if she were hard of hearing. “Did you hear that, Cosmo?” she drawled. “It sounded for a minute like little Giorgio thought he was entitled to an opinion.”

Cosmo chortled again. It ended up in a coughing fit, the lit joint waving around drunkenly in his flailing hand. “You’re so bad, Betta.”

“She’s called Elisabetta, numbnuts,” Giorgio muttered.

The epithet seemed to have hit a nerve, because Cosmo’s face clouded for a moment. “Shut up, kid. I’ll call her what I like.” He gave his companion a sideways glance. “Right, Betta?”

The older girl shrugged nonchalantly. “You can call me the freaking Madonna if you want, it’s all the same to me.”

This produced fresh gales of laughter from both of them. Giorgio said nothing, merely fixing them with the briefest of glares before returning to his ceaseless persecution of the ground with his stick.

Cosmo scratched his head. The state the older boy was in, Marco thought as he watched from the sidelines, his stomach soured by a heady mix of concern and disdain, it was a wonder Cosmo didn’t set fire to his own hair.

“So, ah…” Cosmo asked. “Why did your parents get arrested, again?”

Elisabetta smirked. “The skunk’s messing with your memory, already? I just told you ten minutes ago.”

Cosmo uttered another one of those stupid low laughs. Marco shook his head despairingly. Suddenly, Luca’s scathing impressions of his older brother seemed depressingly accurate.

“Yeah, I guess it must be,” Cosmo replied. “I mean, who are you again?”

“Why, I’m the Queen of Salerno, of course,” Elisabetta replied, pretending to preen extravagantly. “Kneel down and kiss my feet.”

“At once, your Highness,” Cosmo replied, in a voice loaded with exaggerated deference. He slid out of his chair and got to his knees in the dirt, and for a moment Marco thought he might actually go through with it, but then Elisabetta slapped him away, laughing.

“You just don’t know when to stop, do you?” she asked.

“Like you ever have,” Cosmo retorted, heaving himself back into his chair and almost knocking it flying in the process.

“Ooh, touché,” Elisabetta replied, her eyes flashing with dark mischief. “Anyway, maybe zio Maurizio could tell you exactly what our dear parents are supposed to have done, but personally I don’t give a damn. All that matters is that their little lockdown money-making scheme backfired, and now here I am, living with my timid uncle in Scala and free to look up a very old friend.”

“Here’s to that!” Cosmo exclaimed, pretending to raise an imaginary drink into the air. “Jesus,” he said, suddenly morose. “I wish I had some real booze.”

The older girl chuckled. “Sorry, Cos. I haven’t worked out the best place to pinch it from yet, but give me time.”

“Figures,” Cosmo grumbled.

Elisabetta’s joint had now receded to a tiny little stub. Treading it into the dry dirt, she got to her feet and stretched.

“Tell you what, though,” she said, “all this talk of drinks has made me want to piss. Back in a few.”

Marco ducked a little lower behind his rudimentary cover as she descended from the raised garden and walked towards the small villa. Cosmo’s eyes also tracked her as she approached a half-glazed door, picked up a stray broom handle that had been abandoned beside the path and smashed a hole in the glass. He chortled again as she reached in through the hole, calm as can be, and opened the door before disappearing inside in search of a toilet.

With his sister out of the way for the moment, Giorgio finally stirred. Looking up from his repetitive and increasingly irritable stabbing with the stick, he fixed Cosmo in the eye.

“Well?” he asked. “Have you thought about what I said?”

“Take a hike, kid,” Cosmo retorted. “I already told you, I’m not interested.”

The younger boy dropped his gaze back to the dusty ground, a dull flush of what might have been either anger or humiliation rising on his cheeks.

“I know you like boys,” he retorted. “Elisabetta may not realise, but I do.”

“I prefer men,” Cosmo shot back.

“Oh, yeah?” Giorgio snickered. “I saw you with Massimo, you know.”

That, Marco observed, seemed to cut through Cosmo’s drug-fuelled haze.

“What?” he said sharply. “How do you know about that? Nobody knows about that…” he paused. “Were you freaking following me?”

Giorgio shrugged. “What does it matter? But, you know, if you don’t start being nicer to me… I might accidentally tell Elisabetta what you were getting up to behind her back when you were supposed to be her boyfriend.”

Cosmo surged out of his seat and grabbed the younger boy by his shirt. Startled, Giorgio was dragged to his feet. Suddenly, his posturing attitude was gone, and he looked like nothing more than a frightened child who had badly misjudged his play.

“You do that and I’ll fucking end you,” Cosmo growled. “Now get out of my sight.”

“Yeah…” Giorgio mumbled, taking a shaky step or two back from the older boy. “Sure, whatever.”

Cosmo turned away from him disdainfully and retreated to his chair. The younger boy straightened his black shirt, seeming to gather his wits for a moment, then began to walk away towards the driveway.

Marco, startled by the sudden burst of violence, had risen from his hiding place slightly, and, as Giorgio walked down the path from the garden, his eyes flicked up and he looked right at him.

Marco’s heart rose to his mouth at once. For a split second that seemed to last an eternity, they stared straight at each other, but then Giorgio looked down and carried on walking without breaking his stride. Moments later, Marco heard the electric gates screeching open and the younger boy was gone.

Sagging in relief, Marco turned back to look at Cosmo. The older boy had discarded the remains of his joint and now sat with his head in his hands, running his fingers up through his untidy dark hair. Marco frowned unhappily.

What’s the deal, Cosmo? What are you doing threatening a young kid like that? I’d swear that’s not like you.

But what if he was wrong? What if the real Cosmo was just beginning to show himself?

Marco decided it was time to see for himself. Backtracking to a place where the height difference between the waste ground and the driveway below wasn’t too great, he scrambled over the retaining wall and dropped down onto the concrete.

Cosmo looked up as he approached and stared at him with unfocused eyes.

“Marco?” he said blankly. “What you doin’ here?”

“Looking for you,” Marco countered, regarding the older boy levelly. For once, he didn’t feel embarrassed to look him in the eye. “You missed our meet-up.”

“Oh, right,” Cosmo mumbled. “Sorry.”

“Pietro said you haven’t been in work for two days,” Marco said. “I was actually worried about you, but you seem to be doing just fine.” He glanced around, waiting to see if the older girl was on her way back yet. “Who are these people, Cosmo?”

“They’re my friends,” Cosmo said stubbornly.

Friends who lead you to all the wrong choices…?

Marco extended a hand towards the other boy. “Come away with me,” he entreated him. “I don’t think it’s any good for you here.”

Cosmo frowned at Marco’s hand in confusion. Before he could reply, there was a clatter from the villa door. Both boys turned to look as Elisabetta made her way back towards them, watching Marco with calculating eyes. Marco lowered his hand.

“Hey, Cos,” the older girl said coolly as she returned to her chair. If she even noticed that her brother had gone, she made no mention of it. “Who’s your groupie?”

“Betta, this is Marco,” Cosmo grunted. “Marco, this is Elisabetta. My girlfriend.”

Marco stared at him in disbelief.

Your GIRLFRIEND…?

“Piacere,” he said, every bit as coolly.

Elisabetta snorted. “Yeah, I can tell that you’re really pleased to meet me.”

Marco stretched out his hand again. “Like I said, Cosmo. Let’s go and talk to Pietro. Then we can hang out for a bit.”

Cosmo shook his head. “Nah, I think I’m fine here,” he replied.

“But…” Marco tailed off, biting his lip in frustration.

What do I do now…?

“Code to the gate’s 3042,” Cosmo said. “You can let yourself out.”

Clearly, he had been dismissed. Marco glared at the other boy, conveying as much meaning as he could with a single look. It must have had some effect, because Cosmo finally began to look a little uncomfortable.

“I’ll see you some other time, Marco,” he mumbled.

“You’d better,” Marco retorted.

He turned on his heel and strode towards the gate without looking back. If the older boy didn’t want him around, he wasn’t going to impose his company upon him.

Anyway, I’m used to being left out in the cold. What else is new?

The gate was operated by a small electronic keypad mounted to the retaining wall. Marco punched in the code, waited while the gate screeched quietly open, then stepped back out into the car park.

“Hey,” said a voice from somewhere off to the right.

Marco started, caught by surprise. Giorgio was leaning against the wall next to the broken-down old gate to the waste ground, his hands shoved casually into his pockets. As Marco had predicted, the other boy looked a couple of inches taller than him, even though he was clearly a year or so younger.

“Why were you spying on us?” Giorgio asked, approaching Marco with an affected swagger that wasn’t entirely convincing.

“I was looking for my friend,” Marco retorted. “Your sister seems to have turned him into a total flake.”

“Your friend?” Giorgio repeated. “Why would Cosmo be friends with a kid like you?” He looked Marco up and down, taking in his neat and tidy style. “You look like a proper bookworm.”

Marco shook his head. “Not a bookworm,” he replied steadily. “I’m an artist.”

Giorgio shrugged, but he glanced down at his feet, as if Marco’s refusal to be intimidated had put him off his stride. “Whatever. Same difference.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Is there anything else you’d like to say to me?”

The younger boy rallied. “Yeah,” he declared, hitching himself up once more. “I’ve earned my place here. But you should quit wasting your time. A kid like you will never be one of us.”

Marco snorted. “One of us?” he repeated. “Yeah, right.” He turned away, before pausing for one last parting shot. “Talk to me again when you’re ready to be your real self.”

He walked away, leaving the younger boy watching him impotently from between the parked cars.

* * *

“You found him?” Pietro asked.

Marco nodded. “He was with a couple of friends. I didn’t know them. I think they might have been people he met in Salerno.”

Pietro frowned. “And they’ve followed him here?”

Marco shrugged. “They said something about their parents being arrested.”

Pietro raised an alarmed eyebrow. “Well, that’s not a good sign.”

Marco nodded. “I know.”

“But he was all right?”

“I think so,” Marco replied. “I mean, he was…” he hesitated, wondering how much he should say. “He was smoking… but he seemed happy enough.”

“Well,” Pietro mused. “Smoking isn’t a crime, I suppose, although I wouldn’t want to be the shopkeeper who was caught selling cigarettes to him.”

Biting his lip awkwardly, Marco shook his head. “I guess not.”

Pietro sighed. “Well, I’ll give him one more chance. I guess we’ll have to see how serious he is about keeping this job, won’t we?” He gave Marco a sympathetic look. “Thank you for talking to me. It can’t have been easy for you to tell tales on your friend. I guess we all just want what’s best for him, don’t we?”

“Yeah.”

Pietro nodded. “I’ll let you get back to your day.” He said goodbye and disappeared back into the restaurant.

What day…?

With Cosmo unavailable, Marco had literally no plans. Still, he felt he owed it to the other boy to pass on what Pietro had said. He pulled out his phone to compose a text.

‘You gotta go to work tomorrow, Cosmo. Pietro’s talking about firing you.’

The older boy’s response was short and abrupt.

‘Butt out, kid. Not your business.’

Marco stared at his phone screen for a few moments, badly stung. He was just trying to be a good friend, but apparently, the time they’d spent hanging out together hadn’t meant as much to Cosmo as it had to Marco. And as for his so-called ‘girlfriend’ and her brother, he didn’t think he’d ever met two ruder people.

Meanwhile, somewhere not too far away, Giacomo and Daniele were off swimming together, no doubt having the most amazing time.

A frustrated, humiliated sort of heat rose to Marco’s face, and he wiped furiously at a tear that had suddenly threatened to form there.

Cosmo is SO not worth crying over!

Switching threads, he dashed off a quick message to Luca.

‘Your brother’s being a total dick. U and Emilia free to hang out anytime soon?’

Luca’s reply came almost at once.

‘Hallelujah, you’ve finally realised! :D’

And, a moment later:

‘How about tomorrow morning? We’ll come and find you around ten.’

‘Cool,’ Marco replied. He put the phone away, feeling a little better.

But not by much.

* * *

In the summer, mornings were definitely the best time to be out and about. During the day, the sunshine would build up to almost dangerous levels that only the lizards, snakes and cicadas truly seemed to appreciate. The heat would infuse the stones of the town, which would continue to radiate it until well after sundown, at which point the diurnal creatures would settle down for the night and the wily geckos would creep out instead, in search of the flies and moths that were drawn to the streetlights like iron filings to a magnet. But in the morning, under the influence of the gentle sea breeze, the day would usually start cooler and a little hazy.

The following morning was no exception. Marco broke his fast with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a sweet apricot croissant – part of a fresh batch cooked up and handed to Gianni by Daniele’s mother Patrizia. Their innovative joint business venture, a mobile wagon where visitors would come for the delicious cakes or breakfast pastries and stay to contemplate Gianni’s art, had faltered because of lockdown, but the two of them were still in regular touch and hoped to try again when visitor numbers returned to normal. In the meantime, it was back to the day job for both of them, working as waiters at the newly reopened hotel down the road. With Anna’s father in hospital, Patrizia was serving as acting head waiter, much to Daniele’s pride. Apparently, among some of the stalwarts of Ravello’s hospitality industry, this was seen as very progressive.

Gianni wished Marco a good day and hurried off to work, and Angelo – once he’d taken Alfredo outside to do his business – wasn’t far behind, so Marco was on his own by the time Emilia and Luca came round to find him. He didn’t mind; he was used to it, and it gave him some time to look back over his recent drawings. Hunched on the side of his bed, he leafed through them in the light of his battered old desk lamp. They were improving but, since lockdown, he needed some fresh inspiration.

Getting repetitive. That’s the trouble when every day’s the same.

His latest was his fourth or fifth attempt at a drawing of a sparrow sitting in an open window. Try as he might, he could never capture the likeness to his satisfaction. It was one of the few good memories he had from his old life with his birth parents: the bird had visited his bedroom window so many times that he had even given it a name.

Federico, after Fellini the filmmaker, for absolutely no reason at all. When I told Dani that, he couldn’t keep a straight face. It was one of the first times we really laughed together.

There was a distant knock from the front door. Marco discarded the pile of pictures at once and hurried downstairs. He said a quick goodbye to Alfredo and Ennio, then went to greet his friends.

* * *

“Elisabetta and Giorgio?” Luca repeated. “No, I don’t think he’s mentioned them.”

They were sprawled together on the green, perfectly watered and cut lawn of a small, landscaped belvedere next door to Gianni and Angelo’s courtyard. Shielded from the street by a series of great stone arches, the little garden faced east, making it a proper sun trap in the morning. Lined with trees, shrubs and colourful flower borders, the belvedere looked out over a panoramic view down to the coast at Minori and Maiori. The hillside below was a swirl of terraced smallholdings and terracotta rooftops, descending to the distant, sparkling waves on which small white pleasure boats bobbed. A few swifts flew by overhead, uttering their shrill hunting cries.

For some reason, Emilia and Luca were taking it in turns to feed each other grapes. Marco eyed them dubiously.

I may wish I had someone of my own, but… sometimes I just don’t GET it!

“But it sounds like they were a whole big part of his life back in Salerno,” he pressed the other boy. “Don’t you guys talk at all?”

Luca shrugged casually. “Not if I can help it.”

“He called her his girlfriend.”

Emilia stared at him. “Say what?”

Luca, meanwhile, fell back onto the grass, where he lay with his hands over his eyes, laughing into the sky.

“Oh, Dio,” he panted. “That’s just too good!”

Marco shook his head. “From the way Giorgio was talking, it sounds like she doesn’t even know he prefers boys. I’d feel bad for her… if she wasn’t so horrible.”

“So,” Luca summarised, checking the facts off on his fingers as he went. “The emotionally screwed-up, closet gay kid from the notorious crime family in Naples is sent to live with a couple of evangelical old homophobes in Salerno. He ends up hating them almost as much as he hates his birth family, and teams up with a girl who also hates everything. Not content to waste his life away smoking weed with his beard, he goes off for secret fumbles with a younger boy, only to be caught in the act by his beard’s kid brother, who’s now trying to blackmail him.” He mopped at his eyes, wiping the tears of mirth away. “Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.”

Marco shuffled over to the other boy and knelt over him, looking down into those vivid green eyes, so much like Cosmo’s. He exchanged a glance with Emilia, and saw a look of concern in her eyes that very much mirrored how he felt.

“He’s your brother and he’s going off the rails,” he said. “That must mean something to you?”

Luca looked back up at him with a trace of defiance.

“He hasn’t been my brother for nine years, and he wasn’t much use before then.”

“Dani said that when they brought you face to face for the first time, you hugged him.”

Luca scowled slightly. “Yeah, well… I didn’t know what a disappointment he was still going to be, did I? I thought, after Giacomo got shot for him, that he might… you know… learn something.”

Marco gave him a stubborn glare. “It takes time for people to change.”

“What gives, Marco?” Luca protested. “Why are you defending him? Yesterday you were happy to call him a ‘total dick.’”

Marco sagged a little. “I dunno,” he replied, sitting back down on the grass. “Habit, I guess. He pretty much was a dick.”

“You’re just not being too quick to judge him,” Emilia assured him. She cast her boyfriend a faintly withering look. “I think that’s admirable.”

“Admirable?” Luca repeated incredulously. “Why are you getting fancy with me, ‘milia? Gimme another grape.”

“Yeah,” Emilia drawled ironically, “that’s likely.”

Wordlessly, Marco plucked a single grape from the punnet and popped it into the other boy’s mouth. Caught by surprise, Luca jerked violently and almost choked on it.

“Jesus, Marco!” he exclaimed, sitting up and dropping the fruit out into his hand for a moment. “Give me some warning next time, okay?”

Now it was Emilia’s turn to fall back laughing. “Had that coming!” she managed.

As quickly as ever, Luca rallied.

“Does this mean you like me too, Marco?” he asked, fluttering his long black eyelashes coquettishly. “Does Emilia have some competition?”

Marco pondered the jibe for a moment, wondering how best to hit back. Maybe there was a chance to have some fun here and make a point.

“Well, sure,” he said, drawing closer; nearby, Emilia watched with interest. “You’re smart and funny, you’re fit, and you have cheekbones to die for. A guy could lose himself in those green eyes for hours. You’ve got perfect skin, and red lips just like a painting… it’s like you were made for kissing.” He moved so close they were almost nose-to-nose; Luca inched back slightly, smiling uneasily, the first traces of fear beginning to register in his eyes.

“You’re every gay boy’s dream,” Marco whispered, and for a moment he pretended he was about to go further… then he pulled back and sat back down on the grass nonchalantly as if nothing had happened. “But I don’t fancy you, any more than I fancy Cosmo. Like it or not, the two of you are cut from the same cloth.”

“Wow, Marco,” Luca breathed respectfully. “That was pretty hot.”

Nearby, Emilia was wiping at her eyes, which seemed to be streaming with tears. For one alarming second, Marco thought she was crying, but then he realised she was shaking with suppressed mirth. He flushed a little, suddenly bashful, unsure whether she was laughing with, or at him.

“Marco,” she managed after a while, “you should cut loose more often! That was totally awesome.” She sighed wistfully, glancing out towards the street. “I wish the others could have seen you. Giacomo would have loved it.”

“Thanks,” Marco mumbled with an embarrassed smile.

It was nice to be admired for once, and he was glad to have made them laugh… but he wasn’t sure his point had hit home.