Afternoons tended to pull her invariably towards the Cala Gavetta harbour. In an odd way, the leftovers of the day after the hustle and bustle of the tourists being ferried back to Palau added an extra touch of melancholy to the morose cut-out silhouettes that the carelessly sowed islets projected against a backdrop of sky in departure mode.

 

In true fairness, she couldn’t be a hundred percent certain it had been in that place, but, for what matters, that detail wasn’t even relevant. She was far too little, anyway, and the juxtaposing of the rocky plates of time often interferes with the precise recollection of facts. Although, all considered, it was actually very charming to picture an idyllic mother-daughter setting, standing hand-in-hand and indulging in a balmy evening breeze by the seafront. Having reached this point, why not add a grandiose sunset suspended over a lustrous mirror of placid water, stick a lush ice-cream or a striped lollipop in the child’s delicate free hand and sprinkle it all with a few grams of icing happiness and a spoonful of cloying bliss? Deep within she nurtures strong doubts it could have been all that sugary. Besides, other than the echo of the words, not much remains of the ancient memory. And when it comes to the words, surely they couldn’t have been intended to mean anything significant. Not exactly the solemn eulogy nor some pearls of wisdom that one would bother to take to heart. Still, she keeps reliving them a handful of arduous decades later: This sea will only bring you good things. It obviously did, mother dear.

 

Under utter hogwash, that’s where she ended up pigeonholing the whole thing. Not that the sea didn’t have a determining impact on the twists and turns that unfolded throughout her existence. It did. For a start, he moored in her life one ill-fated morning in the late winter, early spring of seventy-eight, more than out of the blue – out of an ersatz honeymoon cruise, swaying and wobbling under a perpetual liquor-and-daftness stupor, all the way through from within the depths of a godforsaken Irish hamlet to Cagliari, and from there upwards along the coast, hopping through the booze dudgeons strewn along it. He missed the ship and the bride. A few weeks later, the tide shoved him further north and a ferry at some stage wound up dumping him in La Maddalena. Quickly gone, left twins behind, ginger and freckled. From her side there wasn’t much they could inherit other than the assured lack of good looks and prospects. But she raised them, of course, with the skint resources at hand and any scant bits of love still available. By her own reckoning not a feast, but by far superseding any token of gratitude she ever got in return.

 

The girl was the first to leave, barely an adolescent, for Milan. News, when it came, always through neighbours or strangers, never cared to be of the good sort. On drugs; on the game; not on drugs; back on the game; perhaps still on drugs. Then no news, then breast cancer. After which, just some official correspondence and dull paperwork requiring signatures. He followed suit. He wasn’t as young as his sister when he left because he used his teenager years to excel in getting into all sort of trouble one conceivably could in such a minute place. But the time came for him to expand to other more fertile patches. First Olbia, then Naples, Ferrara, and Marseille. After that, some thirty wasted years of vagrancy and similar pursuits. Lately, his sparse letters sported German stamps. And an extra envelope inside already addressed to spare her the trouble in case she feels like sending some euros in return. Sometimes she does.

 

Not much to thank for, this shore, if one is to dwell on these things, mother dear. But she’s fond of the view and still comes most afternoons.