Secrets in Sicily by Penny FeenySicily, 1977 Ten-year-old Lily and family arrive for their annual summer holiday in Sicily. Adopted as a toddler, Lily’s childhood has been idyllic. But a chance encounter with a local woman on the beach changes everything… 10 years later… Ever since that fateful summer Lily’s picture-perfect life, and that of her family, has been in turmoil. The secrets of the baking hot shores of Sicily are calling her back, and Lily knows that the answers she has been so desperately seeking can only be found if she returns to her beloved island once more…
Extract:
In Lily’s earliest
memory of the
villa there was
no Harry; even
her mother was shadowy.
She was two, or
maybe three. Her
father had led
her through rooms
that seemed huge
and dark and
cluttered with fascinating
curiosities. The pair
of them had burst out
onto the terrace and
on the table,
she remembered, lay
a bowl of
peaches, flushed and
downy and warm
from the sun.
Her father had
picked her up
and whirled her
around his head
and then he
had lowered her
and stroked her
cheek with his finger, saying
her skin was as soft
and silky as
a peach. In
another summer, baby Harry appeared
and she began
to dote on
him. Six years
later, though he
could be irritating, she
couldn’t
imagine being without
him. He’d been
dozing in the
back of the
hire car on the way
from the
airport and she’d had
to push him
off her shoulder
more than once,
but now he
woke with a
jolt to ask if they
were nearly there.
Lily’s insides were
tight with anticipation.
They were driving
along country roads
and the scenery
enthralled her: silvery groves
of olives, golden
orchards of oranges
and lemons, ranks
of vines troopin g uphill
in formation like
sturdy little armies,
everything shimmering in
a heat haze.
The sky was
so blue and
the air so
hot that the
road ahead of
them was wavy
and out-of-focus. She was
excited, but nervous
too, because there
was always the
chance that things would
have changed. That
they would turn
into the bumpy
drive that led
to Villa Ercole
and it wouldn’t be
there anymore because
it had caught
fire. Or they
wouldn’t be able
to have their
usual rooms because
other people were staying. Or
the sweet chestnut trees
cradling the hammock
would have been
chopped down. Or
the old clanking bicycles
thrown out... Lily wanted everything
to be exactly
the same; she wanted to
be able to
run across the
cool terracotta tiles
and find familiar
touchstones. This was
important to her. Even her
parents were excited
to be at
the start of their holiday,
their mood giddy. ‘Shall we
have a bet,’ Alex
said, ‘on what
colour dress Dolly
will be wearing?’ Lily and
Harry giggled. Dolly,
like many Sicilian
women of her generation, would be wearing
black, even though
she hadn’t been
widowed; black conferred
dignity. ‘While Gerald,’ said
Jess, ‘will be
in white. Off-white,
rather...’‘And
a big straw at,’said Lily.
‘Nicotine white,’ said
Alex. ‘with splashes
of Nero d’Avola.’‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a
type of red
wine.’ ‘Nero
means black in
Italian.’ ‘True,’ said
Alex. ‘But the
Italians describe grapes
as either black
or white, whereas
we’d say red
or green. D’you
think they might
be colour-blind?’ ‘Grapes aren’t red actually,
’ said Harry. ‘They’re purple.’ ‘Oh, what
heaven!’ said Jess. ‘Look at
all those juicy
melons.’ Ahead
of them a
donkey was trundling
a cart laden
with huge glossy
watermelons. With a
wave at the
carter, Alex accelerated
past it. ‘Even better,’ he
said. ‘Look down there!’ And
to their joy
Roccamare came into
view. The fishing
village huddled in a sheltered
cove with a
row of palm
trees along the shoreline and
a forest of
boat masts in
the harbour. Villa
Ercole lay on
a spur of
land above the
beach, screened by
oleander bushes. Years
ago it had
been painted the same
pink as
the oleander but
this had faded
in the sun,
and Gerald in
his nicotine-white trousers and
wine-splashed shirt wasn’t the
sort to bother
with redecoration.
Alex had
to swerve to
avoid the pot-holes
and they could
hear the suitcases
sliding in the
boot. They were
coming for a
month, as usual,
but they didn’t bring
a lot of possessions. Who
needed toys when
you were running
about outside, or
several different outfits
when you spent
all day in
a swimsuit? Besides, Gerald
had sets of backgammon and
chess and packs
of cards and
old scratched gramophone records
for dancing. Jess
and Alex thought
his record collection
antiquated and the
sound quality poor, but
this was good
for Lily and
Harry because no one was worried about wrecking them.
Villa Ercole was
the sort of
place where you could
run completely wild
without getting into
trouble and Dolly
was the best
provider of sweetmeats and pastries that
Lily had ever
come across. Harry
wound down his
window and shouted.
Alex played a
fanfare on the
car horn. Dolly
came rushing out in her
black dress, though
she wore an
incongruous flowered overall
on top of it, which
Lily was pleased
to see because
it meant she’d been
cooking. Jess unwound
herself from the
passenger seat and
spread out her
arms, towering over
Dolly, who was
closer to Lily’s height. Dolly’s real
name was Addolorata,
after Our Lady – not
the Madonna with
the Christ child,
but the grieving
mother whose son
had died on the cross.
Alex had nicknamed her
partly because she
was small and
chunky and full
of treats like
a bag of dolly
mixtures and partly
so that he
could greet her with:
‘Well, hello,
Dolly!’ as he did now.
’
‘
What
’
s that?
’
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