The Villa

by Rosanna Ley

  Yes, a part of her would always love Peter. But she had been wrong to imagine that he’d haunt her till her dying day, wrong to think she’d never be free.

  He nodded and closed his eyes. ‘You’re a wonderful woman, Flavia, my love,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have asked for more.’

  ‘And neither,’ Flavia had said firmly, kissing him on the head, her Lenny, and knowing every word was true. ‘Could I.’

  For every recipe there is a reason, wrote Flavia. Trade, social change, the season, the weather. Food is warmth. Food is identity.

  The final dolce was Flavia’s personal favourite. And so she had left it till last.

  The fig – like the pomegranate – was an ancient fruit and some might say that the best way to eat them was from the tree – ripened and warmed by the summer sun, velvety to the touch. Sinking into the taste of a ripe fig was to bite into musk and be rewarded with the sweetest most intense flavour imaginable; seedy and honeyed on the tongue. The fig was sensuality epitomised; sexuality symbolised in a fruit of the earth …

  Bake in the juice of oranges with red wine. Add cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla and honey to taste. Sprinkle with toasted almonds. Serve. Wallow …

  She had a dream that night – a memory dream. They were in a ballroom. In the centre of the ceiling was a revolving mirrored globe, its surface sparkling as it turned. Illuminating the bronze light fittings, the posters on the walls … She remembered the quiffed slicked-back hair, the tiny waists; stilettos, stockings and full skirts.

  Lenny was teaching her to dance, to waltz. One, two, three; one, two, three.

  ‘I’ll never get it,’ she said. She stamped her foot. ‘Never. It is too hard.’ One, two, three; one, two, three.

  ‘It’s easy if you just keep going,’ he told her. ‘And suddenly … ’

  Yes, you are enjoying it.

  Flavia put down her pen and closed her notebook. And that was the end of the story – more or less.

  CHAPTER 68

  It was no good, Tess realised. The boulder hadn’t moved. Her leg hadn’t moved. She hadn’t moved.

  She was going to run out of air and she was going to die. Here in this bloody underwater tunnel, alone and afraid. And it was her fault, for being irresponsible, for taking stupid risks, for not thinking …

  Sorry Ginny. Sorry Muma. Sorry Dad.

  Ten minutes left. And still Tess continued to struggle, couldn’t give up without a fight, for God’s sake. She even thought – one almighty push – it might have given just a tiny bit.

  And then she saw the other diver. And he saw her.

  He was through the entrance in seconds, checking she was OK, glancing at her air gauge, assessing the situation, the weight on her leg, the position of the rock.

  Tonino. No wetsuit. Just black shorts and full diving apparatus.

  He pushed with all his strength, once, twice … The rock budged. It budged enough for her to slip her leg free, inch out and ease through the gap in the rocks, back to the open sea.

  He was with her. He pulled her to him and put the spare breathing tube he was carrying, that all divers had to have with them, in her mouth. ‘OK?’ He was signalling. ‘Are you OK?’

  She nodded, though she didn’t feel OK. She felt weak and dizzy and spaced out. But she was alive. She clung to him. She was alive.

  ‘I cannot believe,’ Tonino said an hour or so later, as she sat in his studio, shivering, two towels and a blanket wrapped round her, a hot coffee and a brandy on the table beside her, ‘that you want to go back there.’

  He had brought her up to the surface, back to his studio, understanding instinctively that she didn’t want a fuss. She needed quiet, warmth, privacy.

  And he hadn’t – thank God – said ‘I told you so.’ He hadn’t said much, but he had stared at her with his dark eyes and he had held her close and he had looked after her.

  ‘How did you know I was in trouble?’ she had asked him, once they were on dry land and she was beginning to recover from the shock.

  ‘I saw you go out.’ His expression was unreadable. ‘You looked upset.’

  Tess nodded. ‘I was.’ She told him about finding Giovanni in the villa.

  He shook his head. Said something she didn’t understand.

  ‘What, Tonino?’

  ‘This thing must be sorted out,’ he said. ‘Once and for good.’

  She couldn’t agree more.

  ‘So, you thought I looked upset …?’ she prompted. He’d given her two brandies already. Any more and she’d be comatose.

  He shrugged. ‘I waited forty minutes,’ he said. ‘I was worried.’

  He waited for her? He timed how long she was in the water and he was worried about her? Didn’t that suggest that he cared?

  ‘I suppose I was lucky,’ Tess said carefully, ‘that you happened to have your diving equipment close to hand, after all this time.’ He lived practically at the water’s edge, but he must have got his act together in minutes in order to get to her so quickly …

  He avoided her eye. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘about diving again. Maybe after all, it is time to put the past to rest.’

  Hallelujah! thought Tess. He might not have been there for his friend – though from what he’d told her, that was hardly his fault – but he’d certainly been there for her. Without him … But when he said he was ready to put the past to rest, was he talking about diving? Or did he have something even more personal in mind?

  ‘Did you know there was a cave there?’ she asked him.

  Tonino frowned. ‘My grandfather told me of that cave,’ he said. ‘He called it the Grotta Azzurra.’

  Because of the light on the turquoise water, she guessed. She thought automatically of The Azzuro – her parents restaurant. Was that simply a coincidence? Of course Tonino’s family would know about the cave. They had always been linked to the sea. Spear fishing, tuna fishing … Tonino used to make a living from diving too.

  ‘But I did not know there was still a way in,’ he said.

  ‘There wasn’t,’ she told him. ‘But now there is.’

  Of course, he understood immediately. He knew how these things worked. He nodded. ‘The earth tremor,’ he said. ‘A rockfall.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And that’s not all.’ She told him what she’d seen in there. The pot and the bones.

  He was surprised – but not as surprised as he was when she said she wanted to go back there.

  ‘Why get involved?’ he asked. ‘Why not leave things be?’

  He was being remarkably dense, Tess thought. But then, she’d had longer to consider it properly, time when she was struggling for her life, the sort of time when revelations sometimes occur.

  ‘Your grandfather was a spear fisherman, wasn’t he?’ She sipped her coffee. It tasted of caramel, nuts and vanilla.

  Tonino raised an eyebrow. ‘So?’

  ‘So he knew this area underwater better than anyone?’

  He folded his arms. ‘Yes?’

  Did she have to spell it out? ‘So, my grandfather asked him to hide Il Tesoro,’ she said. ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘Because he was his closest friend?’ Once again, he shrugged. He wasn’t really trying.

  ‘Because, Tonino, he knew where it could be hidden and where it would be safe. And what’s more, he had the skill to get it there.’

  She watched understanding dawn.

  ‘You think he hid the treasure in an underwater cave?’

  Yes, it sounded crazy. But, ‘Why not? The top part of that cave is always dry. It would be safe, no one would ever find it, no one would even guess. You didn’t.’ Even Tess hadn’t guessed – until she saw the pot.

  ‘You think Il Tesoro – whatever it is – is hidden in that pot you saw?’

  ‘It might be.’ There was still something she didn’t understand. ‘But if Il Tesoro was hidden in the cave and your grandfather realised that the entrance to the cave had been sealed up by a rockfall,’ she said, ‘then why tell everyone that the trea
sure had disappeared?’

  Tonino frowned. ‘Maybe he didn’t put it quite like that,’ he said. ‘Maybe he said he could not locate it. Maybe he even told them about the cave, but they didn’t believe him.’

  That made sense. And even if Enzo Sciarra had believed him, he would have made damn sure that Tess’s grandfather didn’t.

  ‘The foundations of Sicily,’ Tonino murmured. ‘That is where he said it was hidden. Where no one would find it.’ He looked at her. ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Damn sure.’ Well, Tonino was the one who’d told her the story of Cola Pesce … She finished her coffee. ‘Any chance of another cup?’

  Over in the corner she saw the large design that Tonino had been working on. It was coming together. There was no illumination and yet still the turquoise and luminous greens on their transparent glass backing seemed to glow.

  He saw her looking. ‘I cannot finish it.’

  ‘Why not?’ She wasn’t sure yet what it was supposed to represent.

  He avoided her gaze. ‘There is an important missing piece,’ he said.

  He could say that again. The making of mosaics wasn’t the only jigsaw going on round here. ‘And don’t forget the skeleton,’ Tess reminded him.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He was looking at her as if she might have imagined it.

  But she hadn’t. Who was it that had met a watery death down there? It must have been a fair time ago – if her theory was right it would have been before 1945, sometime before Alberto Amato went back for Il Tesoro. So someone else knew where it was hidden. And if it was in the days before diving apparatus was readily available … Had someone – without the underwater experience of Tonino’s grandfather – gone for it and failed?

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Tonino, ‘we should tell the authorities?’ He went over to the stove to fetch more coffee.

  Tess stared at him. Was he mad? ‘Would that be the authorities who tend to have close links with the Mafia?’ she asked. And maybe Giovanni Sciarra too.

  He poured the coffee, glancing over at her. ‘I see your point.’

  ‘Which is why we have to go back there and check it out first,’ Tess said.

  ‘We?’

  ‘We, as in you and I.’ Which bit didn’t he understand? Which way would he go?

  She waited. She couldn’t do this without him. Wouldn’t do it without him. And she had to do it – no question. She had never really understood why Edward Westerman had insisted she came to see the villa before she inherited it. Perhaps he thought it was the key to bringing her family back where he thought they might belong, perhaps he himself regretted not going back to England – to his own roots. Perhaps he just wanted to give them the chance. Or perhaps, she thought, he had hoped she could solve the puzzle of the missing Il Tesoro and uncover the truth. So … ‘Will you be my diving buddy?’ she asked.

  He grinned. ‘Try and stop me,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 69

  Ginny did the relaxing breathing exercise that her psychotherapist Jayne had shown her and then she phoned her mother.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she said. Jayne had convinced her of the benefits of conversation. If you communicate, Jayne said, you have a chance of being understood. Ginny had been trying this lately, and found it to be true.

  ‘Of course, darling,’ said her mother. ‘Any time, you know that.’ She sounded pleased to hear from her and kind of distracted at the same time.

  Ginny wondered exactly what was going on in Sicily. Her mother certainly sounded different.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  So Ginny took another deep breath and she told her. She told her about how she had flunked her exams so that she wouldn’t have to go to uni, she told her about her pregnancy scare, she told her about her plan to go to Australia and she told her about Jayne.

  There was a short silence. Ginny knew it was a lot to lay on her in one helping. But she had always been close to her mother. Until … Well, she wasn’t sure exactly when. And so her mother had earned the right to know what was going on.

  ‘Why do you need to see a psychotherapist?’ Tess asked at last in a small voice.

  So Ginny told her about the Ball.

  It was her father who had suggested she go talk to someone. He had suggested it because one day he was driving her back from Pride Bay where they had spent a whole day together doing not much more than staring at the ocean and eating ice cream, when she flipped.

  It came out of nothing. Ball rising.

  ‘That was a top day,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And where were you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where were you on sports day?’

  ‘Er … ’

  ‘When the dads were doing the sack race and I fell over in the egg and spoon?’

  His hands were tense round the steering wheel. He pulled over. ‘Ginny … ’

  ‘Where were you on the night of the hurricane?’ Her voice was rising, and she could hear the emotion underneath, like the turquoise underbelly of a surfing wave. ‘When a tree blew over and crashed into the front bedroom window and Mum screamed and we thought the world was coming to an end?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Where was Father Christmas?’ Her voice was a whisper now.

  He didn’t reply. He looked down.

  She hit him on the shoulder. ‘Where were you when I had chickenpox? And nightmares and exams and food-poisoning and there was a spider in my bedroom … ’ Her voice faltered and he looked up at last.

  ‘And Mum had to get the next-door neighbour in to get rid of it.’ She sighed. ‘Where were you?’ And sat back, crumpled and spent in the passenger seat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ginny,’ he’d said. ‘I truly am.’ He put his hand on her arm, wiped what might have been a tear from his eye and started the VW.

  When he dropped her at Nonna’s he got out to hug her. ‘If I could turn the clock back … ’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  The following day he gave her a business card. Jayne Cartwright. Psychotherapist, she read.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked him, holding the card out in front of her as if it might bite.

  ‘I thought you might want to talk to someone,’ he said. ‘It could help.’

  Ginny was about to snap his head off, then she thought – maybe it would.

  ‘I can make you an appointment,’ he said. ‘And I’ll take care of the bill – obviously.’

  ‘A Ball?’ her mother said.

  ‘Jayne thinks it feeds off my anger,’ Ginny told her. ‘On pressure, repression, confusion, anxiety, you name it really.’

  ‘Oh, Ginny.’ Her mother sounded heartbroken. ‘I never realised you felt that bad.’

  Neither had Ginny really. She only knew it now because she felt so much better. In three sessions with Jayne she had talked and she had breathed and she had written (often from the perspective of one or other of her parents – which was weird) she had drawn and visualised and imagined. She had given up smoking too. And the Ball …

  ‘It rolled into a corner at first,’ Ginny said. ‘Shame-faced. Its voice getting a bit muffled and faded.’

  ‘And now?’ asked her mother.

  ‘It still seems to be lying low. I think … ’ she hesitated, afraid to say it almost, ‘ … it’s disappeared.’

  ‘Well. Great … ’ said her mother, sounding pole-axed.

  It was, thought Ginny. And if it came back Jayne had shown her what to do to make it go away again.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come to Sicily,’ her mother said.

  ‘Oh, It’s been around for ages,’ Ginny told her. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’

  ‘Even so … ’

  She could tell her mother was grappling with the old guilt. ‘It’s not your fault, Mum,’ she said. ‘You have a life too – not just me. Please live in the now.’

  ‘I’m coming back right away. I’ll book a flight for tomorrow,’ her mother said in her determined voice – the voice that
always did what it said. ‘You come first, Ginny. You always have.’

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘Don’t tell me not to come, Ginny,’ she said. ‘I need to see you.’

  Ginny smiled. ‘And I need to see you. So I was thinking. Can I come over – to Sicily, I mean? I’d love to see the place where Nonna grew up.’

  ‘Darling, of course you can!’ She sounded delighted. ‘Come over for as long as you like and we can travel back together. We need to talk properly. We need to make a plan.’

  ‘OK,’ said Ginny. ‘Sounds good.’ And it did.

  CHAPTER 70

  The following afternoon, Tess got ready for the dive with mixed feelings. It was like falling off a horse, she told herself, you had to get straight back on … Which was why when Tonino had said: ‘When?’ she had said: ‘Tomorrow?’

  She would have cancelled it to go back to Ginny, but now she didn’t have to. Tomorrow had become today and as she pulled on her wetsuit, all she could think of were those moments in the tunnel, trying to pull herself free. The sense of entrapment, the powerlessness … She tried to shake it from her head. She had to put it behind her now.

  Down in the bay, Tonino was waiting for her, already wetsuited up. They had decided to go at siesta time. ‘The baglio will be at his most quiet,’ he had said, as if he too thought he was being watched, with someone recording his every move.

  He too was banishing his ghost, Tess thought, as she gave him a quick wave and made her way over. They might, of course, be completely mistaken about the cave and Il Tesoro. The pot she had seen might contain nothing more than a few stones, shells and sand. The skeleton … She shivered at the memory of it … Could have been anyone.

  But they had to find out. And if it proved a fruitless exercise, what did it matter? They would both feel a whole lot better just for trying.

  In his studio yesterday afternoon, when she had finally stopped shaking, when she had drunk his coffee and his brandy, and after they’d decided to do this dive together, today, she had at last – reluctantly – got up to go.

  He didn’t hold her, he didn’t kiss her. But he put one hand on her shoulder and fixed her with that look. ‘Promise me, Tess,’ he said. ‘Promise me you will never do it again. Never dive alone.’