One Night in Italy by Lucy Diamond

it.
    ‘Colin,’ she said to the most senior writer on the paper one November morning. ‘If you were looking for a person and only had a first name to go on, what would you do about it?’
    ‘Give up,’ he replied, deadpan. Colin, who’d had a long career as an investigative journalist for the BBC up in Edinburgh, as well as a stint as a crime correspondent for the Telegraph , was one for telling it straight.
    ‘Oh. Right. But if you did decide to pursue it, I mean, what would you do to track them down? Where would you start?’
    ‘If all I had to go on was a first name? I wouldn’t bother starting at all. It would be impossible.’ His white, bushy eyebrows twitched with the beginnings of a frown. He could be something of a curmudgeon, Colin, especially if you bothered him before his lunchtime pint.
    ‘Who are you looking for, Anna?’ asked Joe, one of the sports writers, ambling through the office with a coffee just then. ‘Don’t tell me someone’s done the dirty on you.’
    Anna, who had returned dispiritedly to writing copy on the big Christmas light switch-on due next week, looked up and gave a wan smile. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘It’s my dad.’
    She hadn’t meant to be so transparent but there was something about amiable, friendly Joe that always disarmed her. He was all long limbs and cheekbones, and half the girls in the office fancied him with his chiselled face and black hair cut in a cool mod crop. ‘Oh,’ he said, halting and looking awkward. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean to pry.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said. She was aware that several other pairs of ears had pricked up around the office; there was suddenly an intense, alert silence. Every journalist was a nosey parker, it was part of the job description. ‘I’ve never known him – I don’t know anything about him. But I’ve recently discovered he’s called Gino, and he’s Italian. Well, he was, anyway. He might have snuffed it by now, of course.’
    ‘Wow,’ said Joe. He perched on the edge of her desk. ‘That must be weird.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Anna replied. ‘You could say that.’
    ‘So you’re half-Italian? Cool.’
    ‘I know. That’s the good bit. The bad bit is . . . well, not knowing anything else.’
    Colin raised an eyebrow. Even the grumpiest hack couldn’t resist a tantalizing story. ‘If you ask me, there’s only one thing for it.’
    ‘What’s that? And don’t say “give up” again because I don’t think I can.’
    ‘You have to return to the source,’ Colin told her. ‘In other words, ask your mother to tell you the truth.’
    Anna pulled a face. ‘If only it was so easy, Col. Believe me, I’ve tried before.’
    ‘Worth trying again though, surely,’ Colin said mildly. ‘All the best stories take a bit of digging to unearth. Ask the right questions, you never know what you might find out.’
    ‘I suppose, but . . .’ An image of Anna’s mother, tight-lipped, shaking her head crossly, appeared in her mind. It was not going to be an easy conversation. She might even end up losing the one parent she did have if her mum got the hump.
    ‘Good luck,’ Joe said, getting up and wandering away. ‘Or rather, buona fortuna. ’
    ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
    ‘Good luck in Italian, isn’t it?’ Joe replied. He tutted at her in mock-disapproval. ‘Thought you’d know that, with your Italian heritage and all. Keep up, Morley.’
    Anna went back to her work, but Joe’s words had struck a chord. Your Italian heritage. It sounded great. What was more, he was right. She owed it to herself to find out more about her father’s country.
    Abandoning the Christmas lights again, she opened up a search engine and typed ‘Learn Italian’. She might not have got very far with finding her father yet, but she could at least make sure she was ready to speak to him when she did.
    It seemed she had missed the boat with an Italian language course – all the colleges had started new ones in