One Night in Italy

by Lucy Diamond

  Anna stared at him. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Give it here. We’re having the works, sunshine. Can’t do a proper review without sampling the booze, can I?’

  ‘Ever the professional.’

  ‘You know it.’ She ran her eyes down the list of vintages. White, red, rosé, fizz … She looked up and grinned at him. ‘What’s your poison? Only I was thinking I’d try the prosecco.’

  ‘I like your style. Let’s have a look.’

  She held it away from him teasingly. ‘I thought you wanted to keep a clear head?’

  ‘Me? Never. I was worried about you. Can’t have you getting trollied on the job now.’

  She arched an eyebrow. ‘Sounds like a challenge to me.’

  They both laughed. ‘Even if you get completely lashed, you’ll write better copy than Marla anyway,’ he said. ‘So bottoms up, I say.’

  Anna tingled at the unexpected compliment. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Do you know what, I’m going to go crazy and have a cocktail. Our readers would want us to sample a broad range of drinks for their benefit, wouldn’t they? We can’t just stick to boring old house white or whatever.’

  ‘That’s so considerate of you,’ he said. ‘And I will too.’ He peered at the wine list. ‘A Bellini, that’s got my name on it.’ He winked. ‘When in Venice …’

  ‘We’re in Sheffield.’

  ‘Don’t spoil it. Come on, this is your chance to live your Italian dream, for one night only.’

  She gave him a long-suffering look.

  ‘Can’t you hear the bells from the campanili? The sound of water slapping against the gondolas? The flap of a thousand pigeons taking off from St Mark’s Square?’

  ‘You sound as if you know it well,’ she said in surprise.

  ‘Yeah, I was there last year with Julia.’

  ‘Ahh.’ Julia. There was a conversation-stopper if ever she heard one. The famously beautiful Julia, Joe’s long-standing girlfriend. ‘What do you fancy to eat?’ she asked, changing the subject.

  They pored over the menus for a few moments. Everything sounded utterly delicious, but Anna couldn’t help a sneaking disappointment that all of it was in English. Shame – she’d been hoping to impress Joe with her Italian vocabulary, translating various dishes for him. Was that a bit sad of her?

  Yes. Because he had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend, she reminded herself sternly. She wasn’t supposed to be trying to impress Joe or any other man for that matter. What was wrong with her?

  ‘Good evening. Are you ready to order drinks?’ The waiter had appeared beside them from out of nowhere and stood attentively, his pen poised over the notepad.

  ‘I think we might be,’ Joe replied. ‘Anna?’

  She looked up at him and he was smiling at her in such a sweet, affectionate way, it made her brain scramble. ‘Um …’ she started, trying to pull herself together. ‘I’ll have a Spring Sling, please.’

  ‘And I’ll have a Bellini. Cheers.’

  ‘Shall we share some bruschetta while we think about food?’

  ‘Definitely. And some olives too, please.’

  ‘No problem. Bruschetta and olives. Thank you.’ The waiter was Italian and Anna thrilled to hear his accent. She only just managed to stop herself asking where he was from. Di dove sei? Give it a few drinks and she’d be whipping out her father’s photo and passing it round the waiting staff, she thought to herself. Have you seen this man?

  ‘Hey, cheers for this, by the way,’ Joe said as the waiter vanished again. ‘Total perk.’

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Anna said. ‘That reminds me.’ She rummaged in her handbag for her notepad. ‘I should probably jot down a few first impressions of this place before we drink too much.’

  ‘Always on duty, Scoop.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ She began writing. ‘Good service,’ she murmured as she wrote. ‘Candles. Decent menu – didn’t you think?’

  He nodded. ‘Decent menu.’

  ‘The waiter pronounced “bruschetta” properly,’ she went on, her writing getting messier and more abbreviated as she went. ‘Nice buzzy atmosphere – thirty-something crowd, would you say?’

  ‘Yep. Music’s a bit shite, if you ask me. I think the owner likes his soft rock by the sound of it.’

  They listened to the background strains of a power ballad and Anna wrinkled her nose. ‘Shite music,’ she wrote, then stuffed the notepad away again as the waiter returned with their drinks. ‘That’ll do. The review’s coming together.’

  ‘It’s practically written itself already,’ Joe agreed as the waiter set their cocktails carefully down in front of them. ‘Cheers!’

  ‘Salute! ’ Anna said, clinking her glass against his. ‘Up your bum.’

  ‘Up yours and all.’

  The waiter cleared his throat and they both jumped, having quite forgotten he was there. ‘You are ready to order your main courses now?’ he asked as Anna and Joe burst into giggles.

  The world seemed to shrink around their candle-lit table for two as the evening went on. Anna couldn’t remember ever laughing so much over dinner. They worked their way through the drinks menu, both deciding that PornStar Martinis (passionfruit, vodka and champagne) were the most amazing things ever, then forced down a pudding each. ‘For the sake of the review’ had become the catchphrase of the night.

  The bill was pretty hefty when they finally declared themselves done, and Anna handed over her card hoping a) that it wouldn’t bounce and b) that the newspaper would actually refund the full amount. Marla hadn’t given her any indication of budget restrictions in her Post-it-handover and Anna hadn’t thought to check with Imogen. Ahh, well. Even if she had gone wildly over the limit and had to cough up the extra, it would be worth it. She’d had that much fun.

  Loath to end the evening, she took her time getting up from the table and fiddling with the button on her cape. ‘Well …’ she said reluctantly. ‘That was lovely. But I guess—’

  ‘We could go for a last drink,’ Joe said, interrupting. ‘If you want to, that is. It’s only just after ten.’

  Her heart leapt. ‘Great idea,’ she replied, feeling a warm glow inside. Joe didn’t seem in any rush to hurry back to Julia, did he? And she only had her empty flat full of Pete’s crap awaiting her. ‘How about the Lescar for a quick one? Drink, I mean. Not …’ Help. There was no filter on her brain any more. She started walking towards the door before he could see how flustered she was, how red in the face.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, following her.

  The Lescar was five minutes up the road and on her way home; a stylish, dark-walled pub with a beer garden and great Sunday dinners. But before they turned off the main road towards it, they passed Nando’s and Anna’s eye was drawn to two people sitting at a table by the window. One of them was Pete. The other was a woman she didn’t recognize, with chestnut hair cut in a pixie crop.

  Anna stopped, wobbly on her high boots, and watched as if in a dream while the two of them leaned across the table towards each other and kissed.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she gulped, unable to drag her gaze away. The red wine and cocktails and all that food started swirling unpleasantly in her stomach. Her head hurt. Who was this woman? Why was Pete snogging her? He even had his hand on her face now, their lips seemingly glued together in unstoppable passion.

  ‘Are you all right? What’s up?’ Joe’s words made her start. She’d forgotten he was even there.

  ‘I …’ She opened and shut her mouth feebly. None of it felt real any more – the laughter and great food of Enrico’s, the review she had to write tomorrow, the vision of her boyfriend kissing another woman. She was freezing cold all of a sudden and pulled the cape tightly around herself. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she mumbled. ‘Sorry. I – I just remembered …’ All plausible excuses failed her. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘I don’t understand. What happened?’

  ‘Sorry, Joe,’ she said. Oh no. Was she actually going to cry? Please don’t let her cr
y. ‘I can’t …’ She held up her hands. ‘Bye.’

  He looked confused, bewildered even, but she just wanted to get out of there, had to escape before Pete turned and saw her. Joe was saying something but she didn’t stop to listen, just began running. Go. Adrenalin spiked her bloodstream as she ran, breath juddering out of her with every step.

  All of it was starting to make sense now. Perfect, horrible sense. It was like a veil lifting and revealing the truth in all its ugliness beneath. His excuses for not seeing her recently. Blowing her out on Saturday night. The change of football night – she should have guessed that was a lie. Football night was entrenched in Pete’s week, an immovable boulder. As for that sex-text he’d sent the other evening … had it even been meant for Anna’s eyes, or had he intended it for Pixie-woman?

  She clutched a hand to her chest as she walked the last few steps to her building, feeling as if the bottom had fallen out of her world. How long had he been cheating on her anyway? Was he planning to dump her?

  Back in the safety of her flat, she flopped onto the sofa and the tears fell thick and fast. She still couldn’t quite believe it. And there he’d been on New Year’s Eve talking about moving in with her! Maybe it was her fault for being so unenthusiastic and not cutting him a front door key with her own teeth, there and then. Maybe if she’d been nicer to him, more encouraging, she wouldn’t have driven him straight into the (annoyingly thin) arms of Pixie-features …

  She blew her nose and hiccupped, then wrapped her arms around herself. Then something occurred to her. Pete’s spreadsheet. Was Pixie-chick on there?

  Her heart galloped as she opened the laptop, not sure she even wanted to find out. With trembling fingers she clicked on his spreadsheets and scrolled through them.

  Science-fiction and fantasy novels

  Sex with Anna

  Monthly outgoings

  Blades team-lists and match-performance

  Tax return …

  Hmmm. Well, there was nothing untoward there. Nothing un-Pete-like whatsoever. Maybe this woman was a one-off. Maybe – her stomach lurched in panic – maybe he’d seen her and Joe in Enrico’s, had jumped to conclusions and pounced on Pixie-chops as some kind of rebound thing.

  She wrinkled her nose. Nah. Turning the other cheek was not Pete’s style. If he’d seen them in Enrico’s, he’d have blundered in there furiously, maybe even taken a pudgy swing at Joe. All the same, it did remind her that appearances could be deceptive.

  Maybe there was some excuse, some perfectly good reason for Pete being with that woman. Perhaps she’d got it wrong, in fact, and it wasn’t even Pete at all! She’d been meaning to get her eyes checked for months; she was certain she’d become more short-sighted recently.

  The tiny flame of hope sputtered and went out as quickly as it had ignited. Don’t kid yourself, Anna. You’re not that short-sighted that you can’t recognize your own so-called boyfriend snogging the face off some other bint.

  She was about to close the laptop again when something nagged her about Pete’s list of spreadsheets. How come ‘Science-fiction and fantasy novels’ was the most recently updated? She hadn’t seen him read a book for weeks.

  She clicked it open … and stared open-mouthed. The sneaky bastard. The cheating, lying, book-dodging git. Turned out, this particular spreadsheet wasn’t a compilation of his favourite books at all. Once opened, the title was in fact Sex with Katerina. Anna’s eyes boggled as she started to read through the entries.

  Smashing blowjob in M&D’s bathroom – 10

  Quickie in Greyhound toilets. Dirty girl! – 9

  BEST EVER. Her place. Tantric! – 11

  Anna’s eyes smarted and she let out a shocked sob. Oh, Pete. Oh, Pixie – or Katerina, rather. Oh no!

  She pushed the laptop away but the words danced around her brain tormentingly. She’d have nightmares for the rest of her days. A quickie in the skanky Greyhound toilets, for heaven’s sake. Yuck. As for her doing that to Pete in the 1970s avocado-green bathroom at his parents’ place … Words failed her.

  In a fit of anger, she snatched back the laptop and, with two clicks, deleted the entire spreadsheet. In another two, she deleted the one about her as well. And five minutes later, she’d created a brand new document. This one was called: Pete, you spineless loser, consider yourself DUMPED.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Il caffè – The café

  On Thursday, Sophie braved the twisting flurries of snow and went to meet Anna in Marmadukes, a café opposite St Marie’s Cathedral. It had felt like serendipity the week before when Sophie had spotted the Facebook update made by her chef friend Marco, saying he’d just spent a week at a trade fair in Rimini and was now visiting his parents nearby. She’d met Marco back when she’d worked in an amazing pasticceria in Rome, and they’d always got on well. If his parents were nearly-locals, he would probably know the area pretty well and she was sure he wouldn’t mind helping out.

  Marmadukes was small and cosy, with trays of yummy-looking pastries and cakes on the counter, and ‘Cast No Shadow’ by Oasis playing from the speakers. ‘Cold enough for you, Alf?’ the lad behind the till was asking the elderly man in the woolly hat he was serving.

  ‘Cold?’ scoffed the man. ‘This is warm, this. Two foot of snow we’ve got up on the hills. Had to dig us way out just now. This is nothing!’

  Sophie hid her smile. Yorkshire people were brilliant, she thought to herself as she squeezed through to see if Anna was in the back room. Warm, indeed. It was bloody Baltic outside, but there was a certain type of stubbornness here – amongst men, in particular, she’d noticed – that meant they steadfastly refused to acknowledge even a trace of weakness.

  Anna had found a table round the back and waved as Sophie came in. Her long, dark hair was pinned up with a green pencil and she wore black-rimmed glasses and a spotty purple scarf around her neck, as well as the more conventional outfit of a black V-neck jumper and jeans. ‘Hi!’ she called.

  ‘Hi,’ said Sophie. ‘Let me just grab a tea and I’ll be right with you. Do you want anything else?’

  ‘Those pain au chocolats looked pretty tasty to me,’ Anna said. ‘I will if you will …’

  Sophie grinned. ‘Two pains au chocolat coming up.’ She dumped her coat on the back of a chair and went to the counter.

  The tea arrived in Yorkshire Tea mugs (of course) with dinky old-fashioned bottles of milk, and they both set to work on the pastries. ‘Thanks so much for doing this,’ Anna said, dabbing a stray flake with her finger and popping it in her mouth. ‘It’s really kind of you.’

  ‘No problem,’ Sophie said. ‘I don’t know how much he’ll be able to tell you, but I thought it was worth a go.’

  ‘Any kind of information would be a bonus,’ Anna admitted. ‘According to the internet, Rimini itself is really long and stretched out – fourteen kilometres of beaches apparently, so there are just tons and tons of hotels and resorts. Mum could have been anywhere.’ She slid the photo across the table in a plastic wallet. ‘But if your friend has any idea about where this was taken then that would be a start.’

  ‘Sure,’ Sophie said. She looked at the photo of the dark-haired man in the centre, his arm around a beaming young woman. ‘Wow. So this is your dad.’

  ‘That’s him. Gino.’

  ‘I can see the resemblance,’ Sophie said, peering closer. The photo didn’t have the sharpest definition ever, but there was no mistaking the olive complexion and dark features that both Gino and his daughter shared. She tucked the plastic wallet carefully in her bag. ‘How exciting. Leave it with me. Hopefully Marco will come up with something helpful.’

  ‘Thanks. I can’t wait to meet him – my dad, I mean. I don’t even know if he knows I exist.’

  ‘Are you still planning to go out to Rimini yourself, see if you can track him down?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘That’s the plan.’ Anna stirred her tea, looking more pensive. ‘Although a lot of things are up in the air right now, unfortunately.’r />
  ‘Oh. Good things or bad?’

  ‘Bad.’ Anna sighed. ‘I found out last night that my boyfriend has been seeing someone else. Which was lovely.’

  Her fingers trembled on the teaspoon and Sophie noticed the dark circles under her eyes. ‘Oh shit. Are you sure?’

  ‘Totally sure. Sure beyond doubt.’ She pulled a face. ‘For one thing, I saw them kissing in Nando’s. And for another, I discovered he’s charted the whole torrid thing on a spreadsheet.’

  Sophie’s mouth fell open. ‘No! A spreadsheet?’

  ‘Yeah. A sodding spreadsheet. Every bloody detail.’

  ‘That’s horrible. And at the same time, totally lame.’ Sophie sipped her tea, then snorted. ‘On a spreadsheet indeed.’

  ‘I know, right? What kind of twat does that?’

  ‘A twat who doesn’t deserve you, that’s who,’ Sophie told her. ‘Honestly. Does he catalogue all his books in alphabetical order as well?’

  ‘Yep. And he’s kept a detailed log of every financial transaction he’s ever made,’ Anna replied. ‘Including – and I kid you not – the one time he actually gave a homeless guy a quid.’

  ‘God. Last of the big philanthropists.’

  ‘Yeah. Last of the flaming dickheads, and all.’

  There was a pause. The two women on the next table were having a gossipy ‘He didn’t’, ‘He did!’, ‘Tell me he didn’t!’, ‘I’m telling you he did!’ conversation, which was rising in volume.

  ‘So, what happens now?’ Sophie asked Anna. ‘Does he know that you know?’

  ‘No. We’ve got that delightful conversation yet to come. I emailed him to say he’s got to get all the stuff out of my flat by nine o’clock tonight or I’m chucking it out on the street, so he’s probably got the hint that I’m a tad cheesed off.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Although knowing what a plank he is, he might even have missed that clue, to be honest. Anyway. Sorry to bang on about it. Not your problem.’

  ‘That’s all right. I hope you sort things out.’ Sophie eyed Anna over her mug. ‘You know, in my experience, hopping on a plane for an adventure – like, to Rimini – is pretty much the best thing you can do after a broken heart. Maybe you should take off for a bit? Get away from it all.’