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The Last Concerto
Sara Alexander
The perfect summer read for fans of Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop and Dinah Jeffries Will Alba find the music of her heart? Sardinia, 1968. When eleven-year-old Alba Fresu witnesses her father and brother kidnapped by bandits, her previously happy and secure family life is shaken to the core. The pair are eventually released, but the experience leaves Alba deeply disturbed, unable to give voice to her inner turmoil. While accompanying her mother to cleaning jobs, Alba visits the villa of an eccentric Signora and touches the keys of a piano for the first time. She is transported to another world, one where she can finally express emotion too powerful for words alone. She takes secret piano lessons and, against her parents’ wishes, accepts a scholarship to the Rome conservatoire. There she immerses herself in the vibrant world of the city, full of heat and passion she’s never experienced before – and embarks on an affair that will change the course of her life forever. But Alba soon reaches a crossroads, and must decide how to reconcile her musical talent with her longing for love and family... Praise for Sara Alexander: ‘Will leave readers riveted until the explosive conclusion’Publishers Weekly ‘This enchanting novel is a delightful read, perfectly suited for a warm beach with a cold beverage. Readers who enjoy Adriana Trigiani’s historical Italian family sagas will adore Alexander’s debut. ’Booklist
SARA ALEXANDER attended Hampstead School, went on to graduate from the University of Bristol, with a BA hons in Theatre, Film & TV. She followed on to complete her postgraduate diploma in acting from Drama Studio London. She has worked extensively in the theatre, film and television industries, including roles in much-loved productions such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Doctor Who, and Franco Zeffirelli’s Sparrow. She is based in London.
Also by Sara Alexander (#ulink_a14a1a14-95cf-5aa4-b265-bf984558aee0)
Under A Sardinian Sky
The Secret Legacy
The Last Concerto
Sara Alexander
ONE PLACE MANY STORIES
Copyright (#ulink_3e7751b2-b115-5b49-957a-5330e1f2ec1e)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Sara Alexander 2019
Sara Alexander asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008273729
Note to Readers (#ulink_00b58f7f-4dc1-58c6-9735-c3f2328746eb)
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008273712
For Mum & Dad, thank you for the piano
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
– MAYA ANGELOU
Contents
Cover (#u791455dd-ea03-5673-b72e-418631816e3f)
About the Author (#ufb9d9e9e-5561-56ee-b927-1a5d4f9f4310)
Booklist (#ulink_2f4b15ec-528d-50f5-96cb-77358320d7d5)
Title Page (#ub225fd78-8d50-5ba5-bde6-86b55c5c0959)
Copyright (#ulink_ea5e0aaa-462c-5af9-a97f-9c85d7abd976)
Note to Reader (#ufa9cd02d-91dc-545f-ad1b-50caf60fbc7f)
Dedication (#u1c55f6d4-d9c8-54ee-8b23-ef0f25732753)
Epigraph (#u2f356c8d-9882-53da-9f25-a158152e2b45)
I MOVIMENTO
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_12650c58-e37b-50d5-a0a2-278ad0bc3cfe)
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_fc64f88d-cd3c-57b3-9c4f-cd1273c1efb8)
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_ecd1c225-055e-56ee-b6ef-17a28bcef594)
1975
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_e8db799c-16c8-57ba-947e-920fa285b134)
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_229c2a17-2fa2-580f-96cc-1d75e364e2f8)
CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_67a78faa-d823-576d-8267-7e0cad4f305e)
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_2c5137fa-671f-5ba6-bbfc-53de391ea029)
CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_7e04047d-4020-5254-a8f5-ef2d83b37d84)
II MOVIMENTO
CHAPTER 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
1978
CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
III MOVIMENTO
ROME 1988 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
A READING GROUP GUIDE (#litres_trial_promo)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
I Movimento (#ulink_3f26885b-1c02-5b94-b1d2-3fa65499da82)
1 (#ulink_0d2ffb00-6f8d-5b56-b3f1-c66e26e2ce46)
Overture (#ulink_0d2ffb00-6f8d-5b56-b3f1-c66e26e2ce46)
a piece of music that is an introduction to a longer piece
When her brother opened his eyes, Alba was convinced she was present at his wake. Her mother, Giovanna, knelt on one side of his bed, forehead resting on her thumbs whilst they crawled over the worn beads of her rosary. In the corner three wailers sobbed their own prayers in warbled unison, invoking Mary, Jesus and any saint who wished to assist. On the other side of the bed, their neighbour Grazietta held a bowl with oil and water. She told the women that the way in which the liquids mixed confirmed that Giovanna’s first-born, Marcellino, was, in fact, yet another victim of the evil eye. There could be no other explanation as to why he had been kidnapped alongside his father, Bruno, who was still held captive, whilst his son was released by the bandits the night before, after three days of white panic for all their family and friends. Grazietta grasped her wand of rosemary twigs and dipped it into the liquid, dousing the sheets like a demented priest. The wailers let out a further cry, which trebled across the sheets. A droplet fell on his forehead from another swing of the rosemary, this time a close miss of Alba’s eye. With his wince, everyone at last noticed that Marcellino was in fact conscious.
Giovanna jumped to her feet and held her child into her bosom. Alba could smell the reassuring scent of sofritto in the folds of her housedress, even from where she stood at the foot of the bed, those tiny cubes of carrots, onion, and celery fried in olive oil before making Sunday’s batch of pasta sauce for the week, cut through with the sweat of her panic beneath.
‘Biseddu meu,’ she murmured in Sardinian, rocking Marcellino with such passion that Alba knew it would induce a vague seasickness. This was a woman obsessed with omens. If the sauce boiled too fast, three starlings rather than two screeched their morning tweet, or a feather fell unexpectedly from nowhere, her particular strain of logic would portend horrific visions. She sang prayers to St Anthony at the crossroads in their Sardinian town when they needed something specific, accepting that it would lead, by necessity, to her forfeiting something in return. Alba had faded memories of her mother praying to miss her cycle one month because there was extra work to be done, only to be doubled up in excruciating pain the following month. Saints gave to those who prayed, but at a cost: the original protection racket. It sat at an uncomfortable angle in Alba’s mind, this idea of bargaining with a saint, the very thing she’d been taught was the devil’s speciality. Alba’s prodding at this point met only with the stone-setting stares of her aunts at best, physical harm at worst. She chose her battles with care, and made a silent pact with herself never to be indebted.
If something was lost, the Fresus would seek their neighbours’ cousins’ friends who were well practised in a branch of acceptable magic. In return for fresh eggs, home-made wine, or some other kindness other than money, these soothsayers would murmur secret prayers at midday at a crossroads on the second Tuesday of a month and relay a dutiful list of everything they heard on the street in order to find said lost item. One day, when twenty lire had gone missing from her mother’s kitchen drawer, one such prayer had returned with the word Francesco repeated three times. Alba remembers her mother pinning the unsuspecting labourers working on the house next door with her Sardinian glare, black eyes like darts, thick eyebrows scouring a frown, when she found out they were from out of town and all shared that very same name. After that incident Giovanna stitched her cash into her skirts like her grandmother used to do.
None of these accepted manias were woven into the morning of 27 May, 1968. No red sky in the morning to warn the shepherds, no burned garlic, curdled milk, dough that wouldn’t prove, solitary nightingale calls. It was a joyous late spring day, the kind that teases you with the golden kiss of the Mediterranean summer to come. Giovanna had shrieked at Alba to return in time to accompany her father to the vineyard, her brothers Marcellino and Salvatore needed a rest and besides, it was her turn, but the familiar trill of her mother’s voice fell on deaf ears. Alba had lost track of time, or rather decided never to pay much attention to it to begin with, and when she sauntered home at last, was met with the kind of pummelling from her mother that should have been reserved for the making of bread or churning of butter alone. Marcellino had been sent in her place and because of it, he now sat wrapped up in bed with her family facing a daily terror of a missing father.
Giovanna drew back and clasped Marcellino’s face in hers. ‘Eat, yes? Oh my tesoro, did they hurt you?’ More questions tumbled out, but the noise spun around the room like a gale. Grazietta muttered another snippet of a prayer before crossing herself and leaving, oily water in tow. As news spread to the crowd downstairs that the first-born had, at last, awoken, more women came upstairs and filled the room. Alba was shot a look that she recognized as her cue to bring the tray her mother had prepared. She pressed past the well-wishers and returned with the feast in hand, setting it down on his bed: fresh spianata, Ozieri’s renowned flatbread, enough cheese for a small football team, a handful of black figs, two long slipper-shaped papassini biscuits, and a glass of warm milk with a splash of coffee in it. If he wasn’t dead yet, it seemed the army of mothers were to kill him off with overfeeding.
‘O Dio mio,’ one of the wailers cried. ‘His eyes, Giovanna, the look in this poor child’s eyes!’
They took another breath in preparation for a further fervent chorus when a shout tore through the pause. The door flung open. Grazietta reappeared, face flushed, her circular wire glasses askew on her nose. ‘Benito’s on the television, Giova’, beni – come quickly!’
Giovanna followed Grazietta out, with the tumble of others close behind. Alba followed down the stone steps to their small living room. She’d never been in a room with so many quiet Sardinians. Even in church or at funerals words couldn’t fail to escape, a titbit of gossip, a grievance about the lack of flowers or the ostentatious abundance of them, the age of the priest or lack thereof. Now the dozen or more neighbours crammed into their room made Alba feel like the charred aubergines her mother would squeeze into jars throughout the summer.
On the small square of screen in the corner, above a chest of drawers topped with a lace doily, was her father’s brother Benito. The angle of the camera pointed up towards him; beyond, the familiar outline of the Ozieri valley in silver tones. He seemed relaxed, even though Alba was sure the words he spoke were some of the hardest he’d ever have to say. ‘I speak on behalf of all my family,’ he began. ‘The bandits have picked on the wrong man. Our family is not rich. We don’t have the money they are asking. We will not pay the ransom to release my brother Bruno.’
The lump in Alba’s throat became a stone. A murmur rippled across the room.
Then the scene snapped to men signing a form at the police station. The neighbours took it in turns to shout at the screen as they recognized their husbands, brothers, sons. The clipped voice of the Rai Uno journalist began to describe a town in revolt. The scenes flipped between the main square with men huddled in groups, back to the police station where the men were being described as signing onto a counter-army to uncover the whereabouts of Bruno Fresu. Their firearms were being registered. Shepherds from the surrounding hills had come to town to aid the search efforts, citing the fact that they knew their Sardinian hills better than any bandit. All this was happening for her father. The rescue efforts were coupled with a revolutionary protest about to take place, the journalist said.
