EPILOGUE
* NOTE*
SPOILER ALERT! If you want to read Ali’s Wings, I recommend that you read this after because I’d hate to spoil it for you.
Three months later …
We exit the foyer and step out into the bright day. There’s a row of benches along the front of the building, so we sit, folding our feet under ourselves to face each other. It’s quiet out here and we enjoy a few moments of silence, punctuated occasionally by the call of a bird.
“So, it’s really happening,” Ali says, looking at me through narrowed eyes.
“Yep. Really happening,” I confirm.
“Who’d have thought.”
“Not me, that’s for sure.”
I know she’s just as happy about it as I am.
Not so sure about everyone else, but hey, Munich is only a few hours away. They can visit whenever they like.
Impulsively I lean forward to embrace her. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I tell her, feeling my eyes fill as she hugs me back.
“Really?” she asks, leaning away from me and gripping my arms. “Because when you weren’t even here to meet me, I was sure you’d decided to give me the slip.”
I slap her hands away. “Oh, I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
“Probably not,” she replies, straight-faced.
“Must have been hard, having to stay here all alone,” I tell her. “In that awful, tiny apartment.”
She’s holding back a grin. When she’d turned up unexpectedly early a week ago, a month earlier than we’d expected, she’d timed it very nicely to arrive on the day Max and I were leaving for a week long workshop.
Becka had been gracious about letting her stay. “Australian, did you say?” she’d asked me. “Felix and I are thinking to travel there next year. Perhaps she could help us with our itinerary.” When I confirmed that Ali had spent many of her working years as a Flight Attendant, living all over the place, Becka wouldn’t take no for an answer.
I can’t wait to hear about all their consultations. Ali can’t shut up about how Becka says this, and Becka thinks that. I still can’t believe how much she loves Becka von Hertz. Even though, I have to admit, Becka does has a lovely voice. I wonder how it will go if they ever actually get to meet.
Well today, we’ll finally have all the time in the world to catch up. It’s a weekday and the stables are fully staffed. Max is overseeing the house renovations, and Ali and I have the day to ourselves.
We both turn as the front door swings open. Stefan strides to the limousine which is parked across from us. He’s waiting for the caretaker to finish up so that he can deliver Becka’s things to her hotel in preparation for her boutique’s New Management party.
Mission accomplished. Turned out that ‘Sophia’ had been selling garments that were supposed to be on sale at full price, and pocketing the proceeds. She’d also been asking outrageous prices for some garments, offering a discount for cash, and putting the difference in her purse. ‘Sophia’ really did know her stuff. She was astute enough to know which clients she could swindle. But not Becka. No-one swindles Becka von Hertz.
Becka insisted that I keep all those gorgeous clothes. Even the purse. “It’s high time you started wearing something decent,” she told me, not even trying to hide her distaste for what I was wearing at the time.Ali turns back to face me, a gleam in her eye.
“Hey, do you remember when we wrote our lists?”
I grin at her, picturing us lying side by side on my bed, heads resting at either end so we could face each other. Ali had come up with the idea of writing down our ideal lives, and more importantly our perfect man. She’d declared she’d never settle for less. That memory fills me with sadness. She’s always settled for less. Over and over again.
“Yeah,” I tell her, making an effort to keep my smile. My lists hadn’t exactly panned out either. Until now. That thought sends a rush of deep contentment through me that I could never have even dared to imagine all those years ago.
“Do you remember my perfect man?” she prods, eyes gleaming with mischief.
I get the feeling that I’m supposed to know where this is heading and give her a quizzical look from under my brows.
“Well…?”
She seems to believe that I’ll be able to remember every single quality she expected to be fulfilled by the Universe before we reached the incredibly old age of thirty. And I can. Those lists were poured over countless times as we culled ideas and created new ones. Okay, if she wants to play…
“All right. Let me see. Tall. And a great body.”
She nods. Still with that little smirk.
“Blond hair and blue eyes. Hmm… Speaks more than one language. That way he’d be perfect to travel with, and bound to have a sexy accent.”
She laughs, nodding and hugging herself. This is fun.
“Ah, he had to be successful. No, not just successful. He had to have his own business. Successful business.”
She’s nodding enthusiastically.
“And he had to come from somewhere you’d want to move to. Eventually.”
She’s practically bursting now and smiling like she just won the lottery. Again.
“Wait. You’re not telling me… ” but as the words leave my lips I know it can’t be true. I know that she has something exciting going on in her life, but if she’d met a man, I can’t imagine her not telling me every detail. Besides, some points on her list were firmly rooted in fantasy.
“But… that last, most important detail?” I prod. Ali had nursed a huge crush on a long dead movie star. But she’d still insisted in writing down his name.
“Well I know that you can’t have resurrected Steve McQueen, so how on earth is he supposed to sweep you off to your new life together in his white sports car?”
Now she’s practically squirming with delight. She rolls her eyes expressively but I can’t divine the meaning she’s injecting into the look.
“What?” I ask her.
She’s pulling faces at me, rolling her eyes and moving her head in the direction she wants me to look. I check over my shoulder. Still the same view. The whole front of the building is empty of people and cars. Except for Stefan, who’s standing by the door of the limo, arms folded across his broad chest. In spite of his outward calm, he still manages to seem alert and ready to take on any number of bad guys.
I look back at Ali to see her nodding slowly. That smug smile has taken over her whole face.
“No,” I whisper. But she’s nodding faster. “No!” I hiss almost silently. I don’t want Stefan to hear us.
“He’s tall all right,” she tells me. “And Ro, you would not believe the body under that sleek suit.”
“What?! But when… I mean, when?” Then I remember how often he’s been here, coming and going from Bolzano on errands for Becka. She keeps a small apartment in the building just for him. So that’s what Ali’s been up to. Leave her alone for a few days and she manages to get into mischief.
“Oh, you dirty dog!” I accuse her, laughing. She’s sniggering quietly with me. Neither of us wants Stefan to know we’re discussing him.
“Still… ” I begin, mentally scanning down her list, but before I can continue she interrupts my objection.
“You know that’s his car?” she asks, taking my surprised expression as an answer. “Or, should I say, one of his cars.”
I turn as discretely as possible to take another look at the seemingly reserved and taciturn Stefan. I’d imagined that he was a chauffeur on Becka’s staff.
“He actually has a fleet.” Ali is now trying hard to contain herself.
A fleet?
“He’s a self-made man Ro. Started with one car and worked his arse off until he’d paid for it and then immediately took out a loan for another. He told me that Becka gave him his first break. He’s from around here somewhere, originally. Becka told him that if he wanted to bring his business to Munich, she’d employ him as her driver and recommend him to all her friends.”
That Becka! What a dark horse she’d turned out to be.
“And you know what he does in his spare time? While he has to sit sometimes for hours waiting for his clients? He studies languages. He grew up speaking Italian, German and some kind of dialect. Then he decided to learn English and French. Now he’s up to number six. Russian.”
My jaw has dropped. “Nyet!”
“Da,” she confirms, lifting one eyebrow in a sexy little arch.
“That’s amazing. I never would have thought… but there’s still something missing.” I know I’m teasing her, but that’s what we do best. She holds up her hand in protest.
“Wait! I haven’t told you the best bit.”
The best bit? What on earth could be better than having almost every quality on her list?
“That man over there, has told me that he’ll be sweeping me off to Venice airport for my flight. Two days early. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Sweeping her off. In his big white limo. Close enough. Now I’m giggling along with her.
“And don’t you think… ” she’s pulling her old silver heart locket from beneath her shirt. She’s worn it for as long as I’ve known her. She doesn’t need to show me the photo that’s been fixed in there for about the past fifteen years. I know that photo almost as well as she does. But as she directs my gaze, it’s like seeing it for the first time. My God…
“… that he,” glancing at Stefan, “looks a lot like this?”
When she’d first found a magazine image small enough to fit in there, she’d been a little disappointed that it didn’t quite show him like his other shots. But this photo – this photo looks exactly like Stefan. My mouth has fallen open.
“I know!” she squeals along with me. We hug each other, laughing and hiding our faces from the look that Stefan is certainly giving us. We’ve regressed into a pair of teenagers.
Then his full name finally registers. “You know that König means king?” I ask her.
She’s pulling a face at me. “Oh hell!” she laughs. “Steven King. Thank God he doesn’t look like him!”
The sun is beating down as we leave the stables, but it’s not long before we reach the cool protection of the forest canopy, and begin our steady climb into the trails.
Ali has been riding every day since she got here, polishing her rusty saddle skills and getting to know our team. She’s taken a particular shine to Cookie, so Daniela was happy to give her free rein, so to speak.
We’re at the rear of the group, riding in comfortable silence, when Ali suddenly turns to face me.
“Romy,” she asks me “Don’t you see how absolutely perfect everything in your life has been?”
She gets a look for that one. Things might be wonderful now, but it seems to be the first time in my life. When I look back all I see is pain and problems stacked over each other until I ended up in a heap.
“No, really, I mean it,” she insists. “Think back a little bit. Did you ever throw your eyes to heaven and ask for some help?”
“Well duh!” I respond, thinking about how many times I did just that.
“And then, when everything seemed to have completely fallen apart, help arrived.”
Now I’m looking at her as though she’s really lost it.
“Think about it Ro. Yeah, you fell apart at work, but that was your own fault.”
Now I’m glaring.
“Yes it was,” she insists. “You never say no. You never give yourself the same level of care and respect that you give to everyone else. Even I know how much you need to eat to maintain enough energy to do your work, but you still accepted extra appointments during your lunch break. And how often did you end up accepting clients after hours?” She holds up her hand to pre-empt the objection which was about to leave my lips. “And how many of them still owe you money?”
Now I can’t maintain eye-contact.
“You needed to take care of yourself first then think about your patients. You’re not much good to anyone if you’re barely functioning.”
I want to defend my devotion to my demanding patients but I can hear an echo in Teresa’s voice telling me the same thing. “Romy, can’t you see that you are wholly and solely responsible for every action you take in life?”
But I also know that I’m not that person any more, as Ali will soon see. That Romy is difficult to even remember.
Ali breaks through my thoughts, pointing at me triumphantly as she slows Cookie to ride alongside Maverick.
“And then the girls got together and made you take a break. Which you needed desperately,” she adds, stopping any further objections in my throat. “Can’t you see it? What was next… Oh, yeah, a place to stay.” She spreads her arms wide, taking in the scenery gliding past as our horses make their way along the sun-dappled mountain trail. Breathtaking views are punctuated by the deep green pines which fill the air with their cool, fresh scent.
“You can’t tell me that wasn’t some kind of miracle. What a pad. And free. I mean, come on! Can you not see just how perfectly things manifested for you?”
Okay, as much as this ‘manifesting’ stuff is a little bit annoying, I’m beginning to get her point.
“Then Rayner’s friend,” I add quietly, seeing the pattern now.
“Exactly!” She exclaims. Our horses lift their heads sharply at her loud outburst. She strokes Cookie’s neck soothingly in apology.
“In all of our experiences there’s a gift. Even the bad ones… “she pauses, eyes narrowed a little as she considers her words. “In fact, I think that maybe the bad ones hold the most important gifts.” She looks at me now, eyes wide and determined. “It certainly turned out that way for me.”
That reminds me of the cross-stitch on Teresa’s wall.
“’Be patient and strong. Some day this pain will be useful to you.’”I murmur to myself.
Her smile is suddenly cheeky and just a little smug.
“Ovid!” she exclaims, completely stunning me that she could possibly know it.
“How on earth do you know that?” I demand. It’s not like she was ever known for being studious. And I’m pretty sure we never learnt about him in school.
“That quote came to me somehow a few years ago. I’ve never forgotten it. Don’t laugh, but I even thought to make a cross-stitch of it, for a pillow or something, you know?”
Now my mouth is hanging open. “Get out! I saw it on a cross-stitch. Can you believe it?”
Her mouth has fully opened into the WOW position, her eyes round. “Don’t you just love that?!” she asks me. “The synchronicity!”
I have to admit it. I do.
I also see more clearly, that without having a mother who expected me to take care of myself, I might not have become so capable; so determined to do well. My practice, my independence are testimony to that, and it turns out that my practice was worth a lot more than I thought. A lot. Perhaps that’s part of the gift that is Becka von Hertz?
If I didn’t have friends – true friends – who weren’t afraid to butt their noses into my business, I might have ended up losing all of that, instead of gaining all of this.
If I hadn’t been such an easy target for the Davids of the world, I might have never come here, and I’d honestly go through it all again, knowing that this… this, was waiting at the end.
And that reminds me…
“Hey, speaking of gifts,” I begin, thinking back on her lavish generosity, “what’s with all the bling you’ve been sending me? I feel like I should pay you back… not that I’m ever giving you back that pearl!” I declare. “I feel wonderful every time I look at it. But still, it’s all too much! Did you win the lottery or something?”
“Yeah, about that… “ she turns away, taking in the spectacular view below. When she’s facing me again, she has a look of someone who’s about to explode with happiness.
“You didn’t! I yelp, mouth open in shock.
“Didn’t… ? What? Oh, no Ro, I didn’t win the lottery,” she laughs, shaking her head. Then, “I did something even better.”
I’m all ears. She must have gone mad. What on earth could be better than winning the lottery?
Her focus turns inwardly as she slowly shakes her head in thought, and finally she tells me “I went through more crap than I believed I could cope with. I have chosen the shittiest men, made the worst choices for flatmates, attracted the most ridiculous accidents and injuries… “ Her words are a complete contrast to the look of joy slowly overtaking her face and I’m beginning to wonder if she should be in control of such a large, fast animal right now.
“Um, Ali… ?”
She holds up her hand to stop me.
“I was at Callum’s wedding. Remember Callum?”
Ali was so in love with him. I don’t know what was wrong with that guy, but he cheated on her. Even though he knew that she was the best thing that ever happened to him. That time everyone was surprised. They’d seemed like the perfect couple, and I have to admit that I’d really liked him the few times we met. Less than a year later he married a nice girl from a good family. Yeah, one of those. It always amazed me that Ali could stay friends with him.
“And I was waiting outside the church and got into a discussion with the guy standing next to me. He said something about how many of Callum’s ex-girlfriends would be weeping today, and I laughed and pulled out my hanky. ‘Still dry so far,’ I told him, and he was mortified. Then he laughed, so of course I liked him immediately.
“We ended up talking for the whole night. I mean, it took all night, because I told him about Claude, who, as you know, was the biggest head-fucker who ever drew breath. He thought I must be making it up, but I assured him that no-one could have such a cruel and twisted imagination.
“Anyway, he pulled out his business card, and told me that whether it was in my imagination or not, if I ever decided to write a book, I should get in touch with him.”
“What – he’s a book publisher?” I ask, not imagining for a moment that Ali would have the focus to write a whole book, but where else could this be heading?
“No, he isn’t a publisher. He’s a lawyer. He works kind of like a movie broker. You know, people whose books are made into films. He said if I ever wrote the book, he’d want to be the one to negotiate the film rights.”
We’re riding in silence. I’m having trouble getting all of this to filter through my grey matter. Was she trying to tell me… ?
The horses begin to prance, and I look up to see that Tina has taken off into a brisk canter, each rider picking up the pace as the distance lengthens before them. Before I can form another question, Ali has joined the chase, whooping in delight.
Well, I’ll get it out of her sooner or later. Right now, with the scenery gliding past, Maverick’s mane flying out behind him and the wind in my hair, there’s no point in even wondering. There’s only now.
This perfect moment.
It bubbles up before I even realise what it is, and when it escapes, it’s as though something that’s been stuck for a long time explodes from my chest.
“Whoohooooo! I yell, lifting my reins, urging Maverick on.
I laugh when I hear the echo in Ali’s voice. “Whoohoooo,” she yells, waving her free hand around. “Go Romy!”
If I laugh any harder I’ll probably fall out of this saddle.
The dawn is fast approaching, and the fresh cool air raises goosebumps along my arms. Max draws me close to his side and brushes a kiss across my temple.
“You know, her name suits her,” he tells me.
I look at him in askance. The long white limo is almost out of sight, Ali’s hand certainly resting on Stefan’s thigh as he expertly negotiates the crazy bends on their way back down the alps.
“Ali,” he confirms.
I’m surprised by his assessment. It’s not really like a man to come up with that kind of observation, but I’m constantly being surprised by my fiancé – in good ways – and hope that will never change.
He looks down at me. Another thing that I’ll never stop enjoying. “Ali, you know,” he insists. His accent changes it slightly in a way that Ali really loves. “Wings. She has wings.”
Oh, ali! Wings.I laugh at the serendipity.
And, he’s right.
