“Better now?” I say.
He nods. “Better now.”
I busy myself covering the half-eaten cake while he heads back through to the party, and after a few calming minutes I slip back in there and find myself collared by Sophia.
“Iris, come meet my rock-star uncle,” she says, limoncello-tipsy.
I nod and paint on a wide smile. “Hello,” I say, sticking my hand out for something to do and immediately wishing I hadn’t.
He studies my hand for a few seconds, surprised, and then shakes it because it would be rude not to. He locks eyes with me and I feel his handshake slow and see his brow furrow.
“Have we met before?” he says, his head on one side.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so,” I say, hoping it’s not a lie. I was a toddler when my mother moved us to London from L.A., and I don’t know if she ever saw Felipe Belotti in the interim years. Not that he’d recognize me personally, of course, but there are echoes of my mother all over my face.
I’m glad Sophia has had enough champagne to not think anything of the slightly odd exchange, and Pascal looms with booze to top up everyone’s glass. I use the distraction to move away, gathering my jacket from the coat stand. I can’t see Gio anywhere, so I take one last glance around and let myself quietly out into the crisp, cold night air on Mulberry Street.
Hey you, have called it a night before Pascal can catch me again with that limoncello, I can already feel it going to my head. Call me later when things have calmed down. Xx
It’s a lame excuse to not say goodbye but the best I can come up with as I walk briskly away from the gelateria, safer with every step I put between me and Felipe Belotti.
25.
“WHAT AM I GOING TO do, Smirnoff?”
The cat was waiting for me on the noodle house step, a grumpy doorman in need of tuna to restore his mood. He’s now well fed and sitting on my windowsill giving his paws the once-over, thoroughly disinterested in my conversation.
“The thing is, I don’t know if Felipe is going to realize why he thinks we might have met before.”
I have my mother’s scrapbook open on my knees, a monochrome shot of a young Felipe back-to-back with my mother onstage, electric guitar slung across his body, microphone in her raised hand. Her head is tipped back on his shoulder, her mouth open mid-song. She’s in a black vest and jeans, he’s in faded jeans and a sweat dampened T-shirt, tattoos running riot down his arms, a joint behind his ear. It looks like an eighties album cover. Her hair is cut in choppy bangs not unlike mine, her profile so similar to my own. She’s probably nineteen or so, frighteningly young now I have Bella to compare against, as close to a child as a woman. She fell pregnant within a year of this photo, and there’s a whole swathe of her life I know barely anything about. I close the album and put my hands on it, my guts churning with anxiety. There’s only one thing I can think of to help my mood right now, my childish fail-safe. It’s turned ten already and my gelato machine takes a while, but even the action of loading the ingredients is soothing.
I jump when my cellphone pings.
Midnight gelato date?
I sigh with relief. Bobby.
You have the ears of a bat.
He sends me back a string of emojis, bats and ice creams and love hearts, and I pull the two pink melamine bowls from the back of the cupboard and line them up in readiness.
* * *
—
“FUUUUUCK,” BOBBY SAYS, his eyes widening as I regale him with the earlier events of the evening.
We’re either end of the sofa with our bowls in our hands, the blanket spread between us, the scrapbook open to the image of Felipe and my mother.
“What’s he like now?”
“Felipe?” I frown. “He has a nomadic look about him, as if all the places he’s visited have grafted layers onto who he is. Faded tattoos, leather bracelets, that sort of thing. He’s skinny, and still quite a lot like he is in these photos, just more…”
“More…？”
I cast around for an appropriate word to describe him. “I don’t know. Walnutty?”
Bobby choke-laughs on his gelato. “Walnutty?”
I screw my nose up. “I mean he looks as if he’s sat in the sun for years without sun cream, weathered and lined, you know? Yet still boyish somehow, which is weird.”
“Lack of responsibility.” Bobby flares his nostrils as he scrapes his spoon around his bowl. Loyalty is engrained in his soul, it’s one of the things I love about him, and it means he’s deeply unimpressed with the idea of a man leaving his brother to raise his child in order to skip off around the world playing guitar.
“God, I’ve missed this stuff.” He gets up and pulls the silver gelato pail from the freezer. “More?”
I nod. It’s definitely a double serving kind of night.
“I don’t know what to do, Bob,” I say. It feels inevitable that Felipe is going to piece together who I am.
“The man’s in his sixties and lived a crazy life, chances are he’ll have forgotten all about you by morning,” Bobby says, handing me my refilled bowl. “I mean, I’m thirty-seven and my memory’s already shot, what chance does he have?”
“You’re thirty-eight.”
“Like hell I am.” He pauses, affronted, spoon midway to his mouth. “Oh God, I am.” He shrugs and points his spoon at me. “Which just illustrates my point. He’s a pickled walnut. Not making assumptions, but am guessing he’s probably had more than his fair share of the old giggle smoke over the years.” He mimes smoking a joint, inhaling and blowing smoke rings.
“You really think so?”
Bobby is still watching his imaginary smoke rings. “Felipe sounds like a rolling stone. He won’t stick around for long. Just avoid him until he hits the road again.”
I stir my melting gelato, casting a long glance at the photo of Felipe and my mother. In different circumstances I’d love to talk to him about her, he’d be a rare glimpse back into that world I know so little of.
“Seriously, Iris, do not let this be another reason to dump that delectable man. He might believe you and not come back next time.”
I can only hope Bobby’s right and that, like the genie in the lamp, Felipe will disappear in a puff of smoke.
26.
“IRIS, THERE’S A GUY OUT front asking for you.”
I whip around from the stove and stare at Shen, panicked. She’s seen Gio, she’d have said if it was him. The Adam Bronson dread that’s becoming all too constant swills over me like foul water.
“What does he look like?” I whisper.
Shen’s mouth twists. “Way too old to be wearing a shark tooth necklace and mirrored sunglasses even though it’s been dark for”—she glances at the clock—“like, six hours?”
It’s half past ten, a whisker away from closing up. I peep through the gap in the door to the restaurant beyond and see Felipe nursing a shot glass, his face turned toward the shadowed street.
“So much for being a rolling stone,” I mutter, stepping back from the door. It’s been twenty-four hours since Bella’s birthday party and, unfortunately, it appears that Felipe’s memory is not the magic roundabout Bobby predicted.