There Is More Light Than Dark

Chapter Forty Five

Saturday July 30

This morning I woke slowly and when I opened my eyes I found myself looking at the lake beyond the vineyard and, in front of me and it, Valentina's flawless skin. I found myself comparing their beauty and wondering which of the two were more perfect, or more pure. They both make me hold my breath sometimes in order to be still enough to take it all in. Like if I don't move maybe the moment will last longer.

The reflection of the early morning summer sun shimmered off the lake and threatened to dominate but when Val rolled over and her brown eyes smiled at me there was no contest.

We fucked again, more beautiful and slowly than we had ever done, and when we were done she went off to shower. As I lay there I felt Carlotta approach again and she moved past the doorway slowly enough to make sure I had seen her and, so I thought, she had seen us again. She was different to Georgina in so many ways but I knew that somehow under all of that continental reserve that she was not looking at me to make sure I was good enough for her daughter; no, she was looking at me to make sure I would be good enough for her.

By the time Val was back Carlotta was busy in the kitchen chopping and sizzling as she did and I said nothing but hoped Val would sense like I did what was happening.

Through the day I lay there and consider that just a few weeks ago I was sitting in front of a cop who just might have had my measure. I could've played with him some more but I was done and he was done and there is nothing more for him to do back there. We shared something, an interplay and a delicate little dance of intellect, and we both felt it, I knew.

And the little girl next to him would have liked a dance of such a different sort.

You never know, that chance might still come.

I'd love that chance to come.

But I wonder is it this version of me I should be most ashamed of? I think of Val and my mother, I think of Georgina and Carlotta and all of the complexities that they introduced. I think of Avery and how she was so happy and so perfect but in the end she just couldn't handle what we had done.

And here I am with Val and it is all so fresh but maybe already I feel it is all so much the same. It is Italy, the home of my Mumma, and the girl with me could be her, even for the blood that washes through her own veins.

Did it really all come down to a simple series of native urges, each one fulfilled garnering another day or bunch of lonely hours? Maybe once the dust really settles from the fizz and splendour of the initial heady days of jammy lust that is all there is and all there ever was. Is that so difficult to believe; that us, as animals, are simply here to reproduce, eat and sleep?

But somehow even here where I can breathe and feel rather than merely exist in the confines of where I had always been, I still miss it and I can't figure why. I'm angry that I am getting closer to what I am truly here for yet that part of me that persists as little Vincent from Malvern can still be heard. Like it has the part of me that they defined me by back then held separate, both a monument and a threat; a treasure and a ransom.

And yet here I am in all my fidgety, flushed fullness being someone I want to be in a place I never though could exist so perfectly. With her, my own version of Chiara.

And I know Mason will be saying at least no one knows you here.

And in that, I am truly free to do as I please and let those urges bubble their way to the surface of me, and everything around me.