“Because I’m old and the television is full of people explaining how people like me are in danger.”
Daniel glanced at Claire.
“Are you feeling unwell?”
“No, Daniel. I’m lonely.”
The word came out so plainly that no one immediately responded.
Teresa looked down at her hands.
“I miss going to the market. I miss hearing people argue outside my window. I even miss that dreadful man from the second floor who keeps telling me how much money he made selling his restaurant.”
She gave a small, embarrassed laugh.
“I never thought I would miss him.”
Daniel began talking about practical arrangements. He could ask Matteo to visit more often. They could arrange grocery deliveries. Perhaps someone from the neighbourhood could check on her each afternoon.
Teresa listened patiently.
“Those are kind things,” she said when he finished. “But they are not the same as having someone to talk to.”
“I know.”
“No, darling. I don’t think you do.”
Daniel lowered his eyes.
For several seconds, the only sound came from the poor internet connection.
Then Teresa smiled, apparently regretting that she had upset him.
“Enough of this. Oliver, tell me about your schoolwork.”
He explained that he had been studying fractions and that his teacher had assigned a project about Roman architecture.
“Ask your father,” she said. “He was always drawing buildings when he should have been doing his homework.”
Daniel smiled faintly.
“That’s not exactly true.”
“It is completely true. Your father once drew the entire staircase of our old apartment building on the back of his mathematics examination.”
Oliver laughed.
“Did he get in trouble?”
“Of course. But the drawing was very good.”
The conversation continued for another twenty minutes. Afterwards, Oliver went upstairs and opened the folder containing photographs from their last Christmas in Sicily.
In one picture, Teresa stood beside the kitchen stove, turning pieces of aubergine in a frying pan. Oliver was behind her, holding a plate. He remembered asking whether he could have the first piece and receiving the usual answer: not until everybody else had been served.
In another, they were playing cards at the dining table. Teresa had accused him of cheating because he had won three games in a row.
He enlarged the photograph.
Her eyes were fixed on the cards. One hand rested on the table, showing the swollen knuckles that had troubled her for years.
Oliver studied those hands for a long time.
He remembered how she used to peel oranges in one continuous spiral, turning the fruit against the little knife without ever breaking the skin.
He wondered whether she could still do that.
The following Sunday, he asked.
She laughed at the question and demonstrated, holding an orange in front of the camera. The peel broke halfway around because her fingers had grown stiff.
“Look what you’ve done,” she said. “Now you’ve made me nervous.”
He laughed with her.
But afterwards he could not stop thinking about the knife slipping slightly in her hand.
It was not that his grandmother had suddenly become old. She had been old throughout his entire life.
He was only beginning to understand what that meant.
The idea arrived during a geography lesson.
Oliver was supposed to be calculating the distance between London and several European capitals. His teacher had supplied an online map, a scale, and a worksheet with questions about transport.
He finished the first three problems quickly, then enlarged the map until Italy filled most of his laptop screen.
He found Sicily at the bottom, the island separated from the mainland by the narrow Strait of Messina. Palermo sat on the northern coast, where the blue of the Mediterranean reached into the shape of the city.
He clicked on directions.
London to Palermo.
The computer suggested travelling by car, a journey of more than twenty-five hundred kilometres depending on the route. Oliver changed the settings to avoid major roads, then tried bicycle routes. Some sections could not be calculated. The journey crossed several countries and required a ferry.
He stared at the blue line.
At school, distances had always been something measured in neat units. The distance between two cities could be written in a box and checked by a teacher. He had never seriously considered what it meant to travel that distance under his own power.
He opened another page and searched for people who had cycled across Europe.
There were photographs of touring bicycles loaded with panniers, mountains crossed by narrow roads, and strangers camping beside lakes. Some journeys lasted months. Others took years.
One cyclist had crossed several countries with everything he owned strapped to his bicycle.
Oliver looked out of the window.
His own bicycle was locked in the shed, one brake lever bent from a fall the previous autumn.
He continued searching.
By the time his mother called him for lunch, he had filled three pages of a notebook with place names.
At the top he had written:
LONDON TO NONNA.
Underneath, in smaller letters, he had added:
WALK + BIKE.
Claire found the notebook that evening while gathering abandoned schoolbooks from the dining table.
She read it twice before looking at her son.
“What’s this?”
Oliver glanced up from his game.
“A route.”
“To where?”
“Palermo.”
She waited.
He put down the controller.
“I want to go see Nonna.”
“We all do.”
“No. I mean actually go.”
“Oliver.”
“I could walk and cycle.”
His mother stared at him.
“To Sicily?”
“With Dad.”
Daniel, who had been reviewing a building plan at the other end of the table, raised his head.
“With me?”
Oliver nodded.
“I’ve worked it out.”
Daniel reached for the notebook. The route was ambitious, badly organised, and based on an eleven-year-old’s imperfect understanding of maps. France appeared to have fewer mountains than it actually did. The distance between two Italian towns had been underestimated by nearly half. The route crossed a motorway near Lyon.
“Your mother is right,” he said. “This isn’t a sensible way to get to Sicily.”
“But people do it.”
“Experienced cyclists do it.”
“We could train.”
“Oliver, it’s not a trip to Brighton.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Oliver pushed his chair back.
“Planes aren’t flying. Nonna’s alone. You keep saying you want to visit her.”
Daniel closed the notebook.
“That doesn’t mean we can cycle across Europe.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s a pandemic. Countries have travel restrictions. Hotels are closed in some places, and we don’t know what the situation will be next week, never mind three months from now.”
“Then we can go when they open.”
“There’s also the small matter of travelling thousands of kilometres.”
“I can ride a bike.”
“You can ride to the park. That’s different.”
Oliver looked at his father with an expression Daniel recognised from his own childhood: stubborn certainty unsupported by sufficient information.
“You’re just saying no because you think I’m little.”
“No. I’m saying no because I understand what you’re proposing.”
“You haven’t even looked at the whole plan.”
“I don’t need to read every page to know it isn’t safe right now.”
Oliver retrieved the notebook.
“Fine.”
He carried it upstairs and shut his bedroom door harder than necessary.
Claire looked at her husband.
“That went well.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes.
“He’s eleven.”
“I noticed.”
“He thinks we can just pedal through five countries.”
“He’s worried about your mother.”
“So am I.”
“I know.”
Daniel looked toward the stairs.
“What am I supposed to do? Tell him that if he loves her enough, the borders will open?”
Claire pulled out the chair opposite him.
“No. But perhaps you could tell him you understand why he wants to go.”
Daniel glanced at the notebook’s empty place on the table.
He had spent weeks making arrangements he could control: grocery deliveries, phone calls, prescription collections, regular check-ins with neighbours. The more thoroughly he organised his mother’s care, the more obvious it became that he was not there.
He had begun calling her twice a day, sometimes finding excuses to extend the conversation. Teresa recognised these efforts for what they were. She answered his questions, then asked about his work, his marriage, Oliver’s education, anything that might persuade him to behave like a son rather than a worried administrator.
On one occasion she had told him, rather sharply, that growing old did not mean becoming incompetent.
Daniel had apologised, then called Matteo to ask whether she had sounded confused.
He knew he was doing too much and could not think of a reasonable alternative.
That night he went upstairs and knocked on Oliver’s door.
“Can I come in?”
No answer.
He opened it.
Oliver was sitting at his desk with the notebook. He had crossed out one route and was drawing another.
“Your mother says you think I’m being unfair.”
“You are.”
Daniel sat on the edge of the bed.
“You know I want to see her.”
“Then why won’t you go?”
“Because wanting something doesn’t make it possible.”
Oliver continued drawing.
“I could do fifty kilometres a day.”
“Some days, perhaps.”
“That’s not even very far.”
“On flat roads, in good weather, with a suitable bike and enough food. What about the mountains?”
“We’d go around them.”
Daniel almost smiled.
“The Alps are rather difficult to go around.”
Oliver looked at the map.
“Then we could go through.”
“That might be even harder.”
“We could take the train for that bit.”
“Now we’re negotiating.”
Oliver gave a reluctant grin.
Daniel examined the notebook.
“Where did you get these distances?”
“From maps.”
“Which maps?”
Oliver showed him.
For the next half hour, they reviewed the route together. Daniel pointed out places where cycling was prohibited and roads where traffic would be too dangerous. He explained why a line that appeared short on a map could involve hundreds of metres of climbing. He showed Oliver how to calculate the distance they could realistically cover without becoming exhausted.
The more they studied the route, the less simple it became.
Oliver listened carefully.
He asked whether they could carry a tent. Daniel explained that camping rules differed from place to place. Oliver suggested staying with people. Daniel asked how they would find those people during a pandemic.
