The Lemon Tree Hotel

by Rosanna Ley

  ‘When will it be ready?’ Silvio sniffed appreciatively. But his voice was low, as if he had appreciated the change in her.

  ‘It depends on whether or not you leave me to get on.’ But Elene managed to add the fish without moving away from him.

  ‘Can I pass you something?’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Anything at all you need?’

  She smiled. ‘The mushrooms.’

  ‘Va bene.’ He shifted only slightly to pass them over.

  ‘The pine nuts.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He shifted again.

  ‘And the white wine.’

  ‘Ah, don’t tempt me.’ This time he had to step away, and she felt the sudden draught of air between them and wanted to pull him back.

  ‘Remember the days?’ he asked her.

  ‘What days?’ She paused in the adding of the ingredients, the slow layering of the dish, the putting together – which was the part she always liked the best.

  ‘The old days, my love.’ He passed over the bottle of white wine. ‘You and me. A bottle of wine. A dish of your special trofie al pesto.’

  The days when her parents had been her parents and she hadn’t given a thought to the fact that they might separate. The days when she and Silvio had been young, and so much had seemed possible. She added the wine, blinked back a tear that wasn’t an onion-tear at all.

  ‘Hey . . .’ Silvio turned her around to face him. He tilted her chin. ‘No regrets, Elene?’

  ‘No regrets.’ She flung her arms around his neck and for the first time in years she realised that this was true.

  ‘What were you thinking about then?’ He stroked her hair. There had been such a tenderness in Silvio lately. She supposed that she had stretched him to his limits over the years. But the closeness that had lately grown up between them was special. And with it was a gentleness born of a love that was no longer young, but which had become so strong with the years, almost without her noticing.

  ‘I was just thinking about that man . . .’

  ‘What man?’ he frowned.

  ‘You know.’ She couldn’t bear to say his name. She turned back to stir the buridda. When the wine had evaporated she would add the passata and the spices. ‘The man who came here, the man in England, the man Mamma has no doubt gone to see.’

  ‘Ah.’ He sighed. ‘So, you are thinking of that again.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I?’ Elene pursed her lips, stirring the buridda more moderately now.

  ‘Because it makes you worry.’ He turned her back to face him again. It was like some strange dance they were having here in la cucina, Elene thought. ‘It makes you anxious, my love.’

  ‘I can’t help but worry.’ She looked up at him, into his eyes. He had helped her with so many things, her Silvio. But this, this was beyond even him. ‘He is a violent man. A disruptive man. A destructive man. I have seen the evidence, you know.’

  ‘Your mother is a sensible woman.’ Silvio held her in his arms. ‘Trust me. She knows what she is doing. It may be that this man, this Dante Rossi, is not so bad as we imagine.’

  ‘Then . . .’ But Elene couldn’t say it. Who had hit her? Her mind had thought it, but her voice couldn’t speak it. If she said it, it would become real.

  ‘Let it go, Elene.’ He ran his thumb along her cheek and she leaned against him once more. After a few moments he kissed her head and smoothed her hair from her face. She looked up and he kissed her lips. It was a long kiss, a strong kiss, a kiss she didn’t want to end.

  ‘Silvio,’ she whispered. How long since they had kissed that way?

  ‘But what about the food?’

  She punched him playfully in the stomach. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt like this, acted this way with him, her husband. He’d talked about the old days, but had they ever really enjoyed each other without her fears, her worries, her insecurities sitting on their shoulders throughout?

  ‘It will take at least an hour to simmer.’ Modestly, she looked down at the floor. ‘And so, if, as you said, you have finished for the day . . .’ She could hardly believe she was saying this. She wasn’t sure she had ever said anything like it before.

  Silvio looked as if he could hardly believe it either.

  But as they stood there staring at one another, there was a noise, as if the heavens had opened. There was something that scared Elene about the noise and Silvio must have felt the same because he rushed over to open the back door. The rain was lashing down. He swore softly. ‘I can’t see a bloody thing. But something’s happening out there. Let’s go out the front.’

  In the lobby, a few people were milling around talking excitedly. ‘What’s going on?’ Elene addressed this to Emanuele, who was on reception.

  ‘There is a storm,’ he said. ‘Rain and . . .’

  ‘A mudslide,’ someone shouted. ‘I saw it – down in Vernazza. I was on the upper path heading back here. I saw it racing down the mountain, a river of mud. Tables and chairs, rubbish bins, cars even were being swept up in the torrent. Madonna santa! People were rushing into shops and bars to escape. But they couldn’t keep out the water. It was wild. Crazy, I tell you. And the noise . . . I’ve never seen or heard anything like—’

  A landslide. Elene felt the panic deep in her belly. ‘Isabella.’ She grabbed Silvio. ‘Where is Isabella?’

  She saw the fear flare suddenly in his eyes. ‘Jesus . . .’

  ‘Emanuele? Where is Isabella?’ Elene was conscious of the hysteria in her voice. But he must know. Someone must know. ‘Where is our girl?’

  CHAPTER 48

  Chiara

  The following morning, Dante picked Chiara up from her B & B. ‘Wear your hiking boots,’ he’d told her.

  ‘I don’t have any with me.’

  He laughed. ‘No worries. You’ll be fine. This walk will be nothing – not after the mountains of the Cinque Terre.’

  Chiara hoped he was right. These cliffs of West Dorset weren’t so steep admittedly, but they were very muddy.

  The previous afternoon, it had taken Dante a full hour to accept the fact that she was even here. Chiara knew how that felt.

  ‘I’m on holiday,’ she had replied to his question. ‘That’s what I’m doing here.’

  ‘On holiday?’ His eyebrows had shot up to his hairline and she’d had to laugh.

  ‘Why not?’ She shrugged. ‘You told me about the place and I have to admit, it sounded pleasant enough.’

  ‘Pleasant enough?’

  Chiara wondered when he was going to stop repeating everything she said. ‘What would you recommend?’

  ‘Recommend?’

  She clicked her tongue. ‘Which flavour?’

  ‘Oh, liquorice, if you are a fan.’ At the mention of ice cream, he seemed to come to his senses.

  ‘I’m a fan,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Definitely liquorice then.’

  ‘It was a shock, that is all,’ he told her over dinner that night in the West Bay Inn. He had recommended the lobster, and she was happy to follow his directive once again. This was his town now after all.

  ‘How do you imagine I felt when you turned up unannounced at The Lemon Tree Hotel not so long ago?’ she retorted.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘It already feels like very long ago to me.’

  ‘Is that so?’ But Chiara had to agree. When she thought about everything that had happened since . . .

  ‘But you came here alone?’ Dante looked around the cosy bar as if some holiday companion might suddenly vaporise and join them at their table. Allora. That too had happened before.

  The waitress brought over their wine. Dante poured them both a glass, and Chiara took a tentative sip. It wasn’t the wine of the Cinque Terre, but it was good nonetheless.

  ‘Completely alone,’ she confirmed. ‘Salute.’

  ‘Salute.’ Again, he raised an eyebrow.

  And he deserved an explanation. ‘I needed a break,’ she began. ‘It has been a very busy and eventful end to the summer.’


  Dante picked up his glass. ‘I wonder what your husband might say to that.’ He held the red wine up to the light as if he might see some answers there.

  ‘Alonzo and I have decided to separate.’ She said this quickly, could hardly look at him. ‘I don’t want to go into the details.’

  He shrugged. But if she had been expecting his eyes to light up with hope – they didn’t. And why should they? She had rejected him twice already. If nothing else, his pride must have taken quite a battering.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, as I already said, I thought I’d take a holiday,’ she said. Keep it simple – that was probably the best way. After everything that had happened between them she felt strangely insecure. She didn’t know what Dante felt now. She couldn’t tell. She’d never seen him so in control of his emotions.

  And they had kept it simple – so far. Over dinner she had told him about Isabella and Ferdinand Bauer.

  ‘She should give love a chance,’ Dante had said.

  ‘Ever the romantic,’ Chiara had been able to tease.

  And she had told him about Elene and Silvio, and their plans for renovation, the sketches made by the Signor Bauer himself.

  ‘A bit cheeky of them,’ he observed, cracking a claw and extracting the meat with the lobster fork.

  ‘You are not joking.’

  ‘But, Chiara, my dear . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ She raised her eyes and found herself staring into the dark brown depths of his.

  ‘Why was your daughter unable to express to you how much she wanted things to change?’

  ‘That’s a question I have been asking myself,’ she admitted. She mixed a little mayonnaise dressing with her salad. It was an Italian-style salad, a nice mixture of leaves, and really very good. Elene’s feelings on the matter were something she had already tried to address, but she felt there was a lot more to be said. What would it take, she wondered, for Elene to tell her what she really thought – about everything?

  ‘And Alonzo?’ He asked this at the end of the evening, even though Chiara had told him she didn’t want to discuss it.

  ‘He will live in Pisa full time.’

  Dante nodded. ‘And so, you thought you could come and find me, and . . .’

  Give our love a chance at last, thought Chiara. But he looked so despondent. Did he imagine that she thought she could just click her fingers and he would come running? Was that what she had thought?

  ‘Didn’t I mention, Dante?’ Chiara finished the last of her wine. It was time to return to the B & B – alone. ‘I felt I needed to take a holiday, that is all.’

  Of course, both of them knew that wasn’t all. How could it be?

  Today, Dante took Chiara up the cliff in the other direction. He pointed out the places where the sandstone had eroded. ‘The cliff, it is vulnerable,’ he said. ‘To the wind and the rain.’

  She nodded. They were all vulnerable.

  They walked down on to another beach where a few small wooden boats had been discarded on the pebbles and left to rot, the peeling paintwork just a snapshot memory of what they had once been.

  ‘This is Eype,’ he told her. ‘It’s my favourite beach around here. I come here quite often.’

  Chiara gazed over the pebbles to the earthy green waves rolling in to shore, leaving arcs of white sea-foam on the beach behind them. ‘It’s lovely.’ Even on this blustery October day. It was not like the beaches of the Riviera Ligure di Levante naturally – nothing could compare to Sestri Levante and the Bay of Silence . . . But it was wild, and it had a sense of vastness and clarity. She could certainly see the appeal.

  Dante took her up the lane and across Eype Down to a small café attached to a farm.

  ‘Dante!’ A silver-haired woman sitting at an outside table jumped to her feet. ‘I was coming to see you later.’

  ‘Hello, Maddy.’ He spread his hands and grinned.

  That grin, thought Chiara. It was good to see that grin. But who was Maddy, so able to inspire it?

  ‘Well, as you see, here I am.’

  ‘But not with your gelato,’ she teased. Her blue eyes sparked with humour. She was around their age, Chiara guessed, with a slim figure and a ready smile. She felt a small stab of pain in her chest. Was it jealousy? They seemed to know one another rather well.

  ‘I took a day off from the gelato,’ he admitted. ‘Don’t hate me.’

  ‘How could I?’ She beamed.

  Chiara stood there feeling totally excluded. She had been an idiot to come here. She should have known. Of course, Dante was going to meet someone else eventually – an attractive man like him. Clearly, he already had – which was why he had been so reserved the night before. And how could she blame him? It was a miracle he had waited so long – if he had in fact waited at all . . .

  ‘Hello there.’ The woman – Maddy – smiled at her, and Chiara attempted a graceful smile back. She must make the best of it and then leave as soon as she could in order to preserve what little dignity she had left. ‘Hello.’

  ‘This is Chiara.’ Dante seemed to realise that he had been remiss with the introductions. ‘A friend from Italy.’

  A friend . . . The casual words stung. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ Chiara extended a hand.

  ‘And you.’ Maddy’s eyes were frank and curious as she shook it. ‘Are you here on holiday?’

  Chiara avoided Dante’s amused glance. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Just for a day or two.’

  ‘A day or two?’ Dante turned to face her. ‘That is all?’

  ‘Well, I can’t have you skiving off work in order to show me around,’ she threw back at him. ‘There are the fans of your famous gelato to consider.’ Because she had now tried it, and it was very good.

  ‘You have a point, my dear.’ Maddy laughed and waved them away. ‘Go ahead, have your lunch and your catch-up. I’ll be in touch later, Dante, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  They were quiet as they walked back along the cliff-top.

  ‘She seemed very nice,’ Chiara said at last, ‘your friend.’

  ‘Oh, she is.’ Dante paused and gazed out towards the grey-green ocean. The clouds were building. It looked as if they were in for some rain.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Chiara blurted.

  ‘Glad?’

  ‘That you’ve met someone.’

  There was a pause. It grew longer and longer, and still she couldn’t look at him.

  ‘Chiara.’

  At last, she turned. ‘Yes, Dante?’

  ‘Why have you come here – really?’

  She shook her head. The sea breeze was catching the words from her throat and she felt she couldn’t say a thing.

  He took a step closer. He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Maddy is just a friend,’ he said. ‘She happens to have a husband – I have supper with them sometimes. They live only three doors away from me.’

  ‘I see.’ Now she felt even more of a fool. But he hadn’t made a move towards her the night before. Here she was, on her own, on his territory, and he had given her nothing but a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘But I’d expected . . .’ Her voice trailed. What had she expected? Dante wasn’t one given to fleeting liaisons – he had told her as much. He wanted a long-term relationship. He always had. When they had spent the night together back at The Lemon Tree Hotel after her argument with Alonzo, that is what he’d thought they were embarking on.

  ‘You have turned me away not once but twice,’ he reminded her now.

  ‘Third time lucky?’ she whispered.

  He chuckled and pulled her closer, into a proper hug. ‘I’ve always liked a woman with a sense of humour,’ he growled into her ear. ‘But . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  He drew away from her once more. He still hadn’t kissed her, and she was beginning to doubt he ever would. ‘What is the real purpose of your visit?’ he asked again. ‘The truth now.’

  A gull shrieked in the darkening sky. Chiara took a deep breath. ‘I wanted to see you.’
/>   He nodded. ‘I’m not an arrogant man, Chiara, but I had gathered that much.’

  Chiara stood up straighter. ‘I’m not making assumptions, Dante,’ she said. ‘I know I’ve let you down – more than once.’

  ‘This is true.’

  ‘And I don’t even know if anything could ever happen between us now.’

  He gave her the eyebrow.

  ‘But I wanted to try.’ There, she’d said it. But of course, he must have known.

  ‘Did you indeed?’ He stroked her hair from her face and tucked a stray tendril behind her ear. The gesture was almost unbearably tender.

  ‘I wanted to let you know that I care.’

  He stared at her for what seemed like minutes. Would he kiss her now? Apparently not. Instead he tucked her arm in his. ‘It’s too cold to be discussing this on the cliff-top,’ he said. ‘We will go to my house. We will talk. We will drink wine, and I will cook you dinner.’

  Chiara caught her breath. This was what she had wanted, but . . . ‘I could leave,’ she said.

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow. If I’m in the way, I mean.’

  They negotiated the path downhill. ‘You’re not in the way,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know if I have the strength to let you hurt me again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Chiara felt the tears sting her cheeks. But she knew.

  ‘Can you give up The Lemon Tree Hotel?’ he asked her. ‘That is the bottom line, no? Would you be ready to leave your life in Italy and come here to be a part of mine?’

  Chiara knew that at this point she had to be totally honest. ‘I don’t know.’ She sniffed.

  ‘Exactly.’ He quickened his pace. ‘So, are you asking me to leave this place, this place that I have made my home, this place that I love?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Are you asking me to give up my business?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Because it may only be gelato.’ He sounded very defensive now. ‘And it may only be a kiosk by the harbour . . .’