Dreaming of Rome

by Dreaming of Rome (retail) (epub)

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. He’s no business of mine any more.’ She caught Kevin’s eye. ‘And I really mean that, Kevin.’

  ‘I really think you do, this time. I’m so glad, sweetheart. Justin and I’ve been worried about you ever since that totally crazy man – even if he was totally gorgeous – went off and left. Haven’t we, Justin?’ As usual, he didn’t wait for his taciturn partner to respond, although Jo caught a little wink from Justin as Kevin continued. ‘But what about you and romance? Surely you must have met a few handsome Roman men, with their togas and their chariots and stuff?’

  For a moment, Jo remembered the grooves in the stone slabs of the Appian Way, carved by the passage of countless chariot wheels. This memory was immediately followed by an image of tall, handsome Corrado and his loveable Labrador. The picture was so vivid it was almost as if they were in the room with her. But of course, her subconscious reminded her, they were a thousand miles away. Kevin, who never missed a thing, immediately picked up on her facial expression.

  ‘Don’t tell me you lost him.’

  ‘Lost who?’

  ‘I can see it now.’ Kevin had always had a theatrical bent. ‘There you are, standing by the Trevi Fountain, staring into the water, when a shadow falls across you and a Roman Adonis lightly touches your hand.’

  ‘Adonis was Greek, Kevin.’

  ‘Whatever… You turn towards him and it’s love at first sight. One look into those deep brown eyes and you’re hooked, forever hooked.’ He took a sip of his tea. ‘But then it all went tits up. How sad.’

  Jo giggled into her mouthful of chocolate brownie and almost choked. It was a while before she could respond. ‘Good try, Kevin. I did indeed go to the Trevi Fountain with a very handsome man, but he’s my future brother-in-law. And he’s got blue eyes.’

  ‘How exotic! A blue-eyed Roman. Tell us all about your future brother-in-law. He sounds wonderful.’

  Gradually Jo let Kevin wheedle more details out of her until she finally revealed Corrado’s reservations as far as human emotions were concerned.

  ‘How awful for you, sweetheart! There you are, totally smitten with him and he turns round and tells you he only wants to jump into bed with you.’

  ‘That’s definitely not what he said. He never so much as mentioned anything about wanting to jump into bed with me. And who says I’m smitten? Besides, who, apart from Jane Austen’s heroines, gets smitten anyway?’

  ‘We all do, darling, we all do.’ To make his point, Kevin leant across and pecked Justin on the cheek. ‘How on earth he can tell you he doesn’t believe in love is beyond me. And with you, of all people…!’

  ‘Well, he did. He’s a scientist and he just doesn’t believe in all that stuff.’ She caught Kevin’s eye. ‘I’m a scientist, too, and I think he may have a point.’

  To her surprise, Kevin burst out laughing. ‘My dear girl, you really are a hoot, you know.’

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Of course love exists. You of all people should know that, seeing as you’re quite clearly in love with your Roman.’

  ‘I’m what?’ Jo was genuinely amazed. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘It’s not me who’s doing the thinking, princess; it’s you. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Just the way you talk about him, the look in those pale blue eyes of yours; I can tell. Anybody could tell. You’re smitten all right.’ Without giving Jo time to protest, he carried on. ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘What can I do? Apart from anything else, he’s there and I’m here. Besides, like I told you, whether I do or don’t, he doesn’t believe in all that stuff.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says him. He told me as much to my face.’

  ‘Just you wait. When’s the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Thursday night at 10.42.’ Catching his eye, she hastened to explain. ‘There was a digital clock in the hotel lobby. I noticed it as I was waiting for the lift, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, right… And what’s the last thing he said to you?’

  ‘His exact words were, “I enjoy being with you. A lot.”’ This wasn’t a particularly amazing feat of memory as she had been turning his words over in her head again and again ever since hearing them.

  ‘What more do you want? He can hardly come right out and declare his undying love, seeing as the two of you have decided it doesn’t exist. I reckon this is as good as it gets.’

  ‘Name me one Shakespeare play with those words in it. Or a sonnet or a poem by one of the great romantic poets. Or even a fricking Valentine’s card! It’s no more than a statement of fact by one friend to another.’ She got to her feet, suddenly conscious that the last time she had been to the toilet had been in Rome. ‘That’s all it is, just like me talking to you. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Justin. The tea was just what I needed and the brownies were delicious. I enjoy being with you. A lot. See? Friend to friend.’

  As she picked up her bag, she remembered the tea towel.

  ‘Here’s a little souvenir for you. I thought of you while I was away. I’m sure you’ll be very interested in Roman men.’

  ‘Not half as interested as you are, princess.’

  * * *

  Jo spent Sunday doing her washing, writing a detailed report of the conference for Ronald – she knew full well he would be expecting one – and doing her best not to think of Corrado. She went out to the supermarket and then came back home and filled the fridge. After that, she phoned her parents and arranged to go and see them next weekend. If the weather was fine, she and her mum would go riding again, but, for now, the sky was still overcast and Jo’s mood remained subdued.

  She went into work on Monday morning with a sense of relief, knowing it would provide plenty to occupy her mind. She wasn’t wrong. Not only had her own work accumulated in her absence, but she found that Melissa had passed a heap of Ronald’s stuff on to her as well. As a result, she was still there at eight o’clock that evening, all alone in the office, ploughing slowly through it. Then, just as she was starting to think about calling it a day, she got a text message and her whole mood changed.

  Hi Jo. Apologies again for not coming on Friday night. It was complicated. I hope you had a good trip home and that you have happy memories of Rome. Daisy keeps getting up and sniffing about. I think she’s looking for you. We both miss you. C

  We both miss you. These four words sent a thrill throughout Jo’s whole body. On an impulse, she pulled out her phone and swiped through her photos until she came to the ten seconds of video of the black and white butterfly in his garden. She played it as the butterfly flew off and then his face appeared on the screen, looking puzzled.

  ‘It flew off backwards… I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

  The clip ended and she was left with his face filling the screen but, annoyingly, with the Play arrow bang in the middle, obscuring all but his ears, hair and chin. She tried again, but ended up playing it over and over again more times that she would have been prepared to admit, before realising all she had to do was to pause the video. This image of his face helped a bit, but she would have preferred his normal expression, rather than the befuddled look brought about by the backwards-flying butterfly. Finally, she dropped the phone back into her bag, turned her computer off for the night and headed home.

  Outside it had turned warmer and she was pleased to see that the pavements had all dried up. Maybe the weather was on the turn at last. She barely registered the trip on the underground, travelling on autopilot, lost in her thoughts. It was only as she walked out of the station at the other end that she realised she was starving. She hadn’t stopped for lunch and her body was definitely telling her it was time for food. As soon as she got back home, she pulled a pizza out of the fridge and slipped it into the microwave. She knew it wouldn’t be a patch on the ones she had eaten in Rome, but it would do the job. On an impulse, she opened a bottle of red wine and poured herself a glass.


  So Corrado was missing her… Or at least, her subconscious hastened to point out, he said he was missing her. That wasn’t necessarily the same thing. Maybe he was only being polite. Nevertheless, Jo thought to herself as she sipped the wine, he had taken the time to contact her, so that meant he had been thinking about her. Surely that was a good sign. As the pizza heated up, she wrote a reply.

  Hi Corrado. Great to hear from you. Do please give Daisy a big cuddle from me. Pity about Friday night. This means I still owe you a pizza. I had a wonderful time in Rome and a lot of it was thanks to you. I miss you too. Jo.

  She debated for a moment whether to insert a little ‘x’ before her name, but decided against it. A little ‘x’ implied love and he had made his position on that subject totally clear. She gave a little sigh and pressed Send.

  Chapter 13

  By the time the weekend arrived, Jo was glad to get out of London. The sun had finally appeared now that August was upon them and the city had warmed up all too quickly. Her flat, the trains, the buses, the offices themselves were like saunas and she felt sure she had sweated off the few pounds she might have put on in Italy by the time Saturday came.

  Corrado’s message had cheered her greatly – even if it was cheer tempered by regret – and her workload ensured that, during the daytime at least, she had little time for introspection or melancholy. On Wednesday, she was summoned to the hospital to speak to Ronald. She found him grumpier than usual and she had to struggle hard to prevent herself from crowning him with the bag of grapes she had brought as he lay there complaining. She did her best to remember that he had been stuck here on his back for several weeks now and he must be getting very bored, as well as uncomfortable. He took her conference report without comment and read it in silence. Finally, just as she was seriously considering going out to get a cup of coffee, he raised his head.

  ‘So, it sounds as though my paper went down well enough, even though I wasn’t the one giving it.’

  ‘It went down very well, Ronald. And a number of delegates referred to it at the final plenary session. I think Professor Dietrich and her team are going to incorporate most, if not all, of it in their proposals to the UN committee on Climate Change next month.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Jo relaxed a bit. ‘What are you working on now?’

  ‘I’m just working my way through the stuff that’s accumulated while you’ve been off and I’ve been in Rome.’ It had already occurred to her that even from a horizontal position he still could have dealt with a good deal of it, rather than leaving it to her, but it hadn’t come as a surprise that he preferred to take it easy, knowing she would handle it when she came back.

  ‘Any new ideas come to you in Rome? Did anything you heard from the other speakers excite you?’

  By now, Jo knew him well enough to be cagey. In fact, a couple of things she had heard had really appealed to her, but she remembered Ricky’s nickname for Ronald of the ‘Pirate’ and decided to keep her cards close to her chest for now. She gave him a vague reply and endured another half hour of interrogation before being dismissed.

  One of the things that had genuinely excited her in Rome had been a dramatic new proposal for disposing of plastic waste, transforming the bulk of it into fuel. As more and more plastic detritus was beginning to be removed from the oceans, the next big problem would be how to get rid of it, and she had been formulating a couple of ideas of her own that she thought might be worth pursuing. When she got back to the office, she dug out Ricky’s visiting card and sent him an email outlining a few suggestions. She felt sure that he, unlike her boss, wouldn’t just steal her ideas.

  It was good to go out to Oxford on Saturday. Her parents were delighted to see her and they spent most of the weekend talking. She told them about the conference and then listened to the latest developments for Angie’s forthcoming wedding. In the course of the week, her mum and Angie had been having serious telephone discussions, and Jo found that the first decisions had now been taken. The vicar had been contacted and it had been decided that the wedding would take place here in the village in early April next year. As she heard the news, Jo felt a sudden shiver of disappointment. This meant she had another nine months to wait before seeing Corrado again.

  Of course, she could always go over before then to spend a bit of time with Angie so as to see him again, but what was the point? Victoria had referred to her relationship – or lack of it – with Corrado as being like an open wound. Why risk enflaming it by deliberately going back and seeing him again? He would still be appealing, but he would still be an unattainable, forbidden fruit. He knew that and she knew that. No, the best thing to do was to hope that absence in this case would not make the heart grow fonder, but rather the opposite. Hopefully, as the weeks and months passed, she would gradually be able to get him out of her head.

  She and her mum went riding on Sunday morning and then the three of them went to the pub for a roast lunch. Although high summer, it was still unusually hot for England, and sitting out in the beer garden under a parasol reminded her of her days in Rome. And being reminded of Rome also brought memories of its inhabitants – one in particular. It was almost a relief when her mother brought up the subject.

  ‘Angela told me you spent a lot of time with her future brother-in-law while you were in Rome.’

  ‘Yes, Corrado, he was very kind. He took me out and showed me the sights.’ She went on to tell her parents about the glories of the Eternal City, finishing with the open air concert. Her father, surprisingly, was impressed. Normally he stayed well away from her romantic involvements, preferring to leave that area to her mother.

  ‘Sounds like he’s got a brain on him, Joanne. And a good bit of culture. I like that in a man.’ He glanced across at her and nodded. ‘You’re an intelligent girl. You need an intelligent partner.’

  ‘He’s not my partner, dad, and he never will be.’ Even Jo herself could hear that this denial had come out far too quickly. She did her best to explain before her mother joined in. ‘He’s a very nice man, but we’re very different. Besides, he’s going to be my brother-in-law.’

  ‘Not that different. You’re both very bright and cultured. Angela says he’s very handsome and you’re a very pretty girl. You could do far worse.’ He grinned at her. ‘Besides, Angela tells us he’s worth a fortune.’

  Jo was beginning to wish her little sister had confined her conversations with her parents to matters relating to her own relationship with Mario, but it was too late now. She did a bit more explaining, deliberately doing her best to leave out any mention of Corrado’s views on love and sex. She had never discussed sex with her father and she had no intention of starting now.

  ‘It could never work, dad. He’s got his business there in Rome – and yes, I gather he’s doing really well for himself – and I’m stuck in London.’

  ‘But you’re not irrevocably stuck in your present job, are you? By the sound of it, your boss is a source of considerable frustration to you.’ As so often was the case, he knew far more of what was going on inside her head than he let on.

  ‘Ronald can be a pain and, of course, you’re right: I enjoy my job, but I could change if an opportunity came up. But that’s hardly going to be in Rome, is it? Besides, conservation’s a fairly small sector and there’s not a lot of money in charity work, for obvious reasons. At least I’m reasonably well paid where I am.’ She took a mouthful of Chilean red and did her best to change the subject. ‘Did I tell you about Mario’s house? The pool’s amazing.’

  Unsurprisingly, her mother failed to take the bait.

  ‘So, what about that man you were telling us about last time you were here? A banker, I think you said he was.’

  Jo hadn’t thought about Markus for a good few days now and she was almost annoyed to be reminded of him.

  ‘I went out with him a couple of times, but he very definitely wasn’t my type. That’s all over.’ She refrained from going into any detail, hoping her mother would change tack. She did,
but in an unwelcome direction.

  ‘Oh, dear, that’s a shame. But of course, Angela said the problem with Mario’s brother is his attitude to women. You really wouldn’t want to get involved with a womaniser, would you? What was it Angela said? He likes to “play the field”.’

  Jo gave an inward sigh.

  ‘He’s a nice guy, but he’s got commitment issues.’ This sounded like a safe way of describing him.

  ‘She said he doesn’t want to settle down, even though he’s in his mid-thirties. Of course, you’re going to be thirty yourself very soon.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’ Jo took refuge in her wine glass.

  ‘Anyway, Angela said it’s such a shame he’s the way he is, as the two of you get on so well together.’

  ‘She’s right: we do. But he isn’t going to change, so let’s just drop the subject. It isn’t going to happen.’

  Her parents must have heard the steel in her tone and the conversation turned to her upcoming birthday. As it would be during the week, she agreed, reluctantly, to come back a week on Sunday for lunch with her mum and dad and a bunch of people she hadn’t seen for years, whose average age was probably approaching seventy. Still, it kept her mum happy and it wasn’t as if she had anything better to do that weekend.

  That evening, as she waited for the train back to London, she phoned Angie. After hearing about her sister’s success in a show jumping competition the previous day and congratulating her, she turned the subject to Corrado.

  ‘Angie, do me a favour and try to steer mum away from Corrado next time you’re speaking on the phone. Dad’s already trying to marry me off to him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jo. I suppose it’s just because now that I’m getting married, they want you to settle down too.’

  ‘I am settled – apart from my pain in the arse of a boss. Anyway, we both know any settling down isn’t going to be done with Corrado.’ She hesitated. ‘Have you seen him recently? How’s he doing?’