Chapter 11
“It feels so strange here without Grandmother’s presence,” I said. When Dani and I had first visited Conti, my mother’s hometown, fifteen years or so earlier, I hadn’t even known that I had a living grandmother, and was surprised—and pleased—when she and Father Rinaldo had turned up at our hotel one evening. The surprise was mutual, given that she was totally unaware of either my existence, or the fact that her daughter was still alive, although hopelessly mad.
“I know what you mean,” Dani said, “and as I said the other day, she was a great old girl.”
“Yeah, she was, wasn’t she? I remember how surprised we were when she told Floria to show us to our room the first time we visited here—we were expecting to be shown to separate rooms.”