The moped had returned, and by the time Alessandro killed the engine outside an apartment block in the suburbs of the city, Kate was wishing she had accepted the offer of a lift in his sister’s car earlier. Lucetta might have driven like a maniac too, but at least there would have been four steel walls to keep her safe instead of fresh air.
‘Is this where you live?’ she asked, looking up at the terracotta building as he helped her off the bike. It was flat roofed, lined by elaborate balconies that looked like frills around a dress. Every balcony had plants, chimes or washing hanging from it, and some had vegetables and fruits growing in pots that covered tables, while the building itself was shaded by tall cypress trees. The neighbourhood was far more unremarkable than the centre of Rome, but it had a homey atmosphere and a certain urban charm that Kate warmed to immediately.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes, very much.’
‘I will take you to meet Mamma now. She is excited.’
‘Is she?’ Kate asked doubtfully as she followed him into the lobby, unsure what to make of that information.
He led her up two flights of stairs and along a corridor to an unassuming wooden door. As his key went into the lock, Kate wondered if it was too late to run away, but she took a deep breath and followed him into the apartment.
The main living space was a strange but comforting mix of old and new. It was evident that everyone who lived here or who had lived here before had left their mark on the décor. Sleek lamps sat alongside faded prints of saints, a state-of-the-art TV jostled for space with a dusty old record player, while white walls and warm honeyed wood adorned with crocheted doilies contrasted sharply with chrome and glass shelves. In a strange way, it worked. Evening light poured in through the huge windows that led out onto the balcony, while a clunky old air-conditioning unit whirred and cranked in the background to keep everywhere a pleasant temperature. It smelt of rosemary and freshly baked bread, and it was a world away from her posh but frankly soulless hotel room.
A tiny woman, steel grey hair cropped into a bob and held back from her face by a patterned headband, came through from what Kate presumed to be the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. She broke into a broad smile as she saw Kate and Alessandro standing in the living room.
‘Hello, hello!’ She nodded, beaming at Kate as she stepped forward to shake her by the hand. Alessandro kissed his mother and then spoke to her in Italian. She nodded and grinned again at Kate. ‘Hello, Kate!’
‘Her English is not so good,’ Alessandro said in a low voice.
‘Probably better than my Italian,’ Kate said. ‘Buongiorno,’ she added, smiling at Alessandro’s mother. The woman gestured to the window.
‘Buonasera!’
‘Oh,’ Kate said, glancing uncertainly at Alessandro, who nodded encouragement. ‘Buonasera, Signora Conti,’ she corrected herself, addressing Alessandro’s mother in the way she had been practising in her head the whole way over. ‘Of course, it’s evening.’
‘See, you will learn Italian quickly with my mother,’ Alessandro said with a grin.
Kate thought, not for the first time, she might quite like to learn Italian. At least she wouldn’t feel so ignorant right now if she could have just a tiny conversation with his mother. It would most certainly go on her list of things to do when she got home and started that brand new single life she had promised herself.
Lucetta came through from another doorway off the living room, struggling under the weight of a huge swathe of white silk and lace.
‘Ciao, Kate!’ she called.
Alessandro frowned but Lucetta merely smiled sweetly.
‘Kate and I are friends already,’ she said to him, and Kate silently marvelled at how the promise of a free favour could change someone’s attitude entirely. That morning she had fired death stares at Kate mean enough to fell a man at twenty paces, and now it was all ciao and best friends. But perhaps she was being unfair, and perhaps Lucetta was only suspicious of Kate in the same way Anna had been suspicious of Alessandro that morning on the phone.
Lucetta dumped the dress on the sofa and began to undo the plastic cover protecting it.
‘Not now,’ Alessandro scolded. ‘We will eat and then Kate will look at the dress.’
Lucetta pouted, but she dragged the dress from the sofa and hung it from a doorframe. Signora Conti gestured for Kate to sit at a table already dressed in a lace cloth and set for a meal. She hadn’t expected to be fed and had snacked on crisps from the hotel vending machine as she got ready for Alessandro to pick her up. She was glad now that she hadn’t asked room service to bring a sandwich up to her because it looked as though Signora Conti had gone to a lot of trouble to make a meal. She hoped it wasn’t in her honour or anything silly like that, and that it was just the regular family meal she was being asked to sit in on. If anything, she quite liked the idea of being asked to sit in on the regular family meal – it felt more personal, more special – that they were accepting her as more than a visitor. Why did that matter so much?
As Alessandro pulled out a chair for her, she glanced up and caught his eye and her heart did a little jig. That was why – because despite her best efforts not to acknowledge the swooping of her stomach every time he looked her way, her heart couldn’t lie. She was falling for him, whether it was sensible or not, and if anything, this strange state of friends but not quite anything else was making it worse. Like being on a diet, when usually she couldn’t care less if there was chocolate in the house, the minute she was forbidden to eat it she craved it like nothing else. That was the feeling she had for Alessandro now – he was forbidden and she wanted him more for it. This couldn’t end well, and she had to get it out of her system before it got any worse.
As these thoughts whirled through her mind and she got settled at the table, another girl came in. She was younger than Alessandro and Lucetta, perhaps in her early twenties, softer featured with the prettiest green eyes, which were all the more startling against her olive skin.
‘Ah,’ Alessandro said, beaming. ‘Kate, this is my favourite sister, Abelie.’
Lucetta cuffed him around the head as he sat, but he merely laughed and patted a chair for his youngest sister to sit next to him. Kate was at his other side, and she smiled and greeted Abelie who gave a shy hello in return.
‘Kate will be our saint,’ Alessandro said to his sister. ‘When she has fixed Lucetta’s dress we will have peace in the house at last.’
‘When you find a wife we will have peace in the house,’ Lucetta fired back. Kate felt herself blush, and dipped her head in the hope that nobody would notice until it had gone. She couldn’t help but wonder at the insensitivity of the comment too, in light of his one doomed engagement, but it seemed he was used to no pulled punches from his sisters, as he merely grinned.
‘You will be married first,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘And your poor husband will send you back after a week.’
‘At least I have found a husband.’
‘I don’t want a husband,’ Alessandro said.
‘You will have to have a husband because you will never find a wife.’
Oh please make it stop! Kate knew it was only banter, but she wished the conversation would turn to something less embarrassing. Every time Lucetta said the word wife, Kate was sure she was looking directly at her. She wasn’t, of course. It just felt that way, because why would anyone do that when she’d only met Alessandro a matter of days before?
Signora Conti had a humble home and a tiny kitchen, but her food was better than anything Kate had tasted in any restaurant since she’d arrived in Rome. A first course of small tortellini pasta in a light broth was followed by some kind of delicious Italian sausage she’d not heard of before, served with lentils. Never in a million years would she have cooked lentils at home for any meal, and if she’d served them up to Matt she’d have been asked why she was giving him hippy food, but whatever Alessandro’s mother had done to them, they were delicious. There was a divine de
ssert she’d never had before that Alessandro informed her was called affogato.
‘It’s all amazing,’ Kate said. She turned to Signora Conti. ‘Grazie!’
Alessandro’s mum beamed. ‘Prego.’
‘I can’t believe how much work your mum has done to cook all this,’ Kate said to Alessandro.
‘Because Alessandro didn’t return home for lunch today, Mamma has made the day back to front and we are eating lunch now,’ Lucetta said. ‘This is how we eat every day for lunch.’
Kate frowned. ‘Really? I would just have a sandwich for lunch at home, sometimes not even that.’
‘Not in Italy. Lunch is our big meal, and our small meal is in the evening.’
‘Oh, so is she annoyed that she’s had to make the day back to front?’
‘No,’ Alessandro cut in with a smile. ‘She is happy you could come and we do this often when one of us cannot be here for lunch.’
‘Oh,’ Kate said, relieved but not certain that he wasn’t telling her a little white lie to make her feel better about messing up his family’s day.
As Abelie and Signora Conti cleared away the remains of dinner, Kate turned to Lucetta. She was feeling a little sleepy already, pleasantly full from the good food, but if she didn’t make a start on the task she had promised to undertake she’d be here all night.
‘Would you like me to look at your dress now?’
‘Thank you!’ Lucetta leapt up from the table in a way Kate was quite sure she wouldn’t manage with the amount of food she’d just packed away. ‘I will get it now!’
‘Do you need some help getting into it?’ Kate said as Lucetta made her way to where she’d left the dress hanging. ‘Perhaps we should go into one of the bedrooms and try it there?’
‘Sì,’ Lucetta said, and beckoned Kate to follow.
‘You are very kind,’ Lucetta said as Kate helped her into the dress. ‘I can see why my brother likes you.’
Kate was glad Lucetta was facing forward while she zipped up the dress, because she was certain her expression would have given away emotions that she didn’t particularly want Lucetta to be aware of. ‘I like him too,’ she replied carefully. ‘He’s been kind to me this week, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have seen such a lot of Rome without him.’
‘He is a good man,’ Lucetta agreed, ‘and life has been unkind to him, which makes us all sad.’
‘Hmm,’ Kate said, and she didn’t dare elaborate any more on that point. ‘Let’s have a look at you properly.’
Lucetta turned around and Kate studied her thoughtfully. The dress was pure white, lace-embellished, with a demure scooped neck, full skirt, structured corset and a sweeping train. But she could see straightaway why Lucetta wasn’t happy with it. ‘It’s beautiful, but there’s something not quite right.’
‘I am glad you agree,’ Lucetta said. ‘The dress shop does not.’
‘I don’t necessarily think it’s a fault in their alterations, though,’ Kate replied. ‘I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to nip it in a little at the waist because it’s not showing off how tiny yours is. . . but I think the sleeves are what’s making it look odd. See here. . .’ She stepped forward to inspect a sleeve and then manipulated it into a few different shapes until she was happy. ‘That’s a much more flattering length. Or you could go full sleeve but we’d have to somehow get matching lace from somewhere. But the length they are now is neither here nor there and makes you look wider than you are. They need to be shorter or longer.’
‘Can you do it?’
Kate looked up. ‘Are you sure you want me to? Once I’ve cut there’s no way back if you don’t like the result.’
Lucetta nodded. ‘I do not like it now so it will be no worse.’
‘You might think it looks a lot worse afterwards. At least you have a dress you could wear now if it really came to it, but if I alter it and you think it looks horrible. . .’
‘You will not make it look worse. Did you make the dress you are wearing?’
Kate nodded as she glanced down at the fifties-inspired rose-print number she had picked out for her visit.
‘It is beautiful. You will make a good job of my wedding dress – I know it.’
Kate took a deep breath. She wasn’t happy about this despite Lucetta’s confidence. She could make it look very much worse working on a borrowed sewing machine without her own tools and on a type of fabric she had never sewn before. ‘I don’t know whether you ought to ask the dress shop to do it for you,’ she said. ‘They’re used to working on wedding dresses and I only make everyday wear for myself.’
‘Alessandro said you made a beautiful big dress for your sister. He saw the photo.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘This is not so different.’
Kate let out a sigh. She had said she would help and it didn’t seem as if she was going to be able to wriggle out of it now. She didn’t want to wriggle out of it, and she was happy to help anyone where she could, but this felt like a huge responsibility. She sincerely hoped she would be forgiven if it all went horribly wrong, but from what she knew of Lucetta so far, she wasn’t sure she was the forgiving kind.
It was 11.30 p.m. by the time Kate turned off the sewing machine. Her fingers ached from handling such heavy material and her brain and eyes were tired from the concentration. It probably wasn’t at all how a professional wedding shop would have done the alterations and she wasn’t that happy with what she’d done (nor did she feel confident that it was in any way good enough) but as Lucetta had been so insistent that she couldn’t possibly make the dress any worse, she’d done what she could. Lucetta was asleep on the sofa where she had got tired of watching Kate work, Abelie had gone to bed, while Alessandro and his mother were talking in low voices in the kitchen. Kate wondered whether she ought to wake Lucetta to try the gown on, or if it would be better to sneak back to her hotel now and let her try it on alone in the morning. At least that way Kate wouldn’t be able to see the disappointment in her face when she decided it still wasn’t right.
But the sudden contrast of the silence from the whirring of the machine seemed to rouse Lucetta, and she sat up, rubbing her eyes and looking expectant as Kate stood and shook out the dress.
‘Can I try it now?’ she asked.
‘I suppose you should. If it’s still wrong I’d rather try and sort it before I leave tonight.’
Lucetta snatched it from her and headed for the bedroom. ‘It will be perfect.’
Let’s hope, Kate thought as she followed.
Once again Kate helped Lucetta into the dress and zipped it up. Then Lucetta went over to the full-length mirror at the corner of the room and immediately began to smile. She studied her reflection for a moment, while Kate waited anxiously, and her smile began to grow. She spun around and grabbed Kate to kiss her on both cheeks.
‘You have done a miracle!’ she cried.
‘It’s OK?’ Kate asked feeling slightly shell-shocked.
‘Sì!’
Lucetta dashed out of the room and called Signora Conti. Kate saw the old lady’s face light up as she laid eyes on Lucetta in the dress.
‘Molto bella!’ she cried. She turned to Kate. ‘Molto bella! Grazie!’ And then she rushed over to hug Kate too, who was beginning to feel distinctly overwhelmed by the reaction. Alessandro stood behind his mother with a broad smile.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It looks wonderful.’
Kate shrugged. ‘It was nothing. I’m just glad you’re all happy.’
Signora Conti began to speak rapidly, gesticulating between Alessandro and Kate.
‘My mother says she would like you to be our guest for a proper family lunch tomorrow. I think she will be very hurt if you say no; she wants to repay you for your kindness.’
‘There’s no need,’ Kate said, half wishing she could slip away now and avoid any more fuss. ‘You’ve been so good to me already that I’ve been repaid in full, if I needed repaying at all, which I didn’t really. It was honestly nothing that I would
n’t have done for anyone.’
‘And that is why you should come. You would have done that for anyone, and that makes you a kind person. Let us honour that.’
‘But. . . I did say I would meet Jamie tomorrow and he’ll be sad if I let him down again,’ Kate replied, more for an excuse to get out of the offer than for anything else.
‘Your American friend?’ Alessandro turned to his mum and they had a brief conversation. Then he turned back to Kate.
‘Mamma says Jamie should come with you. She says a friend of yours is a friend of ours. She says if he is handsome he might be a husband for Abelie.’
‘He certainly won’t be that,’ Kate smiled. ‘I think he’d rather have you than your sister.’ She checked her watch. It was certainly too late to message Jamie now, so she would have to ask him in the morning. It was a hell of a change of plan to drop on him too. She had thought that the best thing from now until she went home was to avoid another day out with Alessandro and spend it alone exploring or with Jamie – both of those options would be ultimately less painful. Every second she spent in Alessandro’s company would make things harder when she eventually had to leave him and head back to England. A broken heart was one souvenir of Rome she didn’t want to take home with her. But as Signora Conti, Lucetta and Alessandro all looked at her hopefully, she realised that it was going to be much harder to let them down than to break it off now. And she supposed that if Jamie was with them it would dilute the tension between her and Alessandro too. ‘I’ll have to ask him tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘But he loves company so I think he’ll say yes.’
‘Va bene,’ Lucetta said. ‘That is that. I will take off my dress and I will drive you back to your hotel now. In the morning I will come for you and your friend.’
Lucetta was almost as crazy a driver as her brother, but Kate had seen enough of the traffic in Rome over the past few days to realise that this was pretty much standard for the roads here. Rome looked beautiful at night – grand buildings lit up from the streets below, fairy lights strung outside restaurants and the pavements still filled with tourists even at this hour. It really was the eternal city – eternally present and eternally busy. Too soon Kate was going to have to leave it, and for the first time since her arrival, the thought pricked at her heart.
Rome is Where the Heart is: An uplifting romantic read, perfect to escape with (From Italy with Love Book 1) Page 12