The Place We Met

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘He’s all right,’ I allow, my mind unhelpfully reminding me just how strong his arms felt when they were wrapped around my soaking wet body. ‘But he clearly knows it.’

  ‘That’s just the Italian in him,’ she remarks, and I have to agree. Confidence comes as naturally to the men in Como as the requirement to make a cup of tea in a crisis comes to us Brits – it’s just bred into them from birth.

  ‘Did you see his eyes, though?’ Shelley pesters.

  I nod. I can’t deny that his green eyes are incredibly striking, even if I do get the impression that he’s a bit too pleased with himself.

  ‘They’re so exotic,’ my friend adds, her voice trailing off dreamily. ‘I mean, imagine waking up to those on the pillow next to you.’

  ‘Just the eyes?’ I exclaim. ‘Gross!’

  Shelley tries and fails to give my hand a playful slap.

  ‘Are you ready to order, ladies?’

  Marco is back with our Aperol Spritzes, and after depositing them on the table, he takes out a tatty notebook from his apron pocket with one hand and a chewed pencil with the other. Loath to admit that I haven’t even so much as glanced at the list of foods on offer, I hurriedly pick a Caprese salad for a starter followed by some simple gnocchi with basil pesto. One of the many good things about eating out in Italy is that the food is going to taste amazing, whatever you happen to choose.

  Unlike me, Shelley has no qualms about making Marco wait while she scans the salad selection, and I sense rather than see him staring down at me as she fires questions at him about how the chicken is cooked, whether melon is in season and if she can swap artichoke for extra olives. After changing her mind at least three times only to finally settle on a seafood pizza, Shelley then wants to know which wine Marco recommends.

  ‘The Barolo,’ he says without hesitation, and I look up in admiration.

  ‘The Barolo is forty-five euros a bottle!’ Shelley shrieks, so loudly that the surrounding diners turn to look.

  Marco merely shrugs. ‘You ask me what is the best, I tell you what is the best.’

  ‘Cheeky,’ Shelley grins, glancing at me. ‘What do you think, Tags?’

  ‘I think the house wine will be just fine,’ I say. ‘Shall we get a carafe or a bottle?’

  ‘A bottle,’ interrupts Marco, even though it’s very clear that I was not directing the question at him, and strolls away grinning before I can argue.

  ‘He must like you,’ Shelley says excitedly.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I’m mystified.

  ‘Because he wants us to stay longer. Why else would he upgrade us to a bottle?’

  ‘To make money,’ I deadpan, laughing as she tuts at me.

  The Aperol Spritz is going down far too quickly, and by the time Marco returns with the wine, the nervous energy and burning humiliation coursing through my insides has caused me to chomp my way through all four complimentary breadsticks.

  ‘Hungry?’ he enquires, surveying the empty wrappers.

  I narrow my eyes at him.

  ‘Taggie works at the Casa Alta, too,’ Shelley is now telling him.

  ‘Ah, yes. A good hotel.’

  Despite the fact that Shelley is doing all the talking, Marco is focusing all his attention on me, and I wonder when he’ll get around to telling her how the two of us actually met. Perhaps he assumes that I’ve already filled her in – but I haven’t. There’s only one person who even knows it happened, aside from Marco himself, and that person is definitely not Shelley. I love my friend, I really do, but she is one of the biggest gossips I’ve ever encountered, and if Sal finds out that I’m the type of woman who goes careering headfirst into lakes, then he might not think me trustworthy enough to become his official events manager – and I’m determined to prove my worth to him, whatever it takes.

  Instead of regaling Shelley with tales of my clumsiness, however, Marco is now telling us that he spent the summer season in Naples, where he was running his friend’s restaurant.

  ‘I am used to being the boss,’ he explains, looking over his shoulder to check that his own manager isn’t within earshot. ‘Being told what to do again, you know, it’s hard.’

  I stifle a yawn.

  ‘Sorry, do you think I am boring?’ Marco asks, amused, and I quickly shake my head.

  ‘No, you’re not. I was just … I’m sorry. Please carry on. I’m just tired, that’s all. I had a long day at work and I didn’t … Well, I haven’t been …’ I trail off as he fixes those bewitching green eyes on me again, and I feel something shift in the pit of my stomach, the echo of a forgotten emotion. It’s gone as soon as it appears, though, and so I go back to mutely studying my cutlery.

  ‘I will leave you ladies alone,’ he announces, abandoning us to pour our own wine.

  ‘I told you,’ Shelley says, her eyes bright. ‘Dreamy.’

  I manage to get through the rest of the evening without mumbling embarrassingly at Marco again, but I can’t help but feel on edge whenever he approaches our table. There’s something about him that is drawing me in, but it’s the same thing causing me to mildly freak out, and I can’t quite work out what is going on. I tell myself that it’s simply down to the fact that he’s seen me looking like a total idiot, and because he could, at any given moment, land me in it by telling Shelley about the incident at the beach, but even if it is, I can’t seem to stop looking at him. My eyes continually seek him out as he delivers food and drinks, only to drop as soon as he glances in my direction.

  By the time Shelley and I have finished the wine and are dithering over whether to order a panna cotta to share as dessert, I’ve decided that perhaps I might just like Marco a tiny bit. Well, like is a strong word, but I am definitely intrigued by him. Just as I’m coming to terms with this fact, the door to the outside seating area opens and a beautiful Italian girl makes her way straight over the threshold and across to where Marco has almost finished taking another order. My Italian isn’t good enough to follow exactly what she promptly begins yelling in his face, but the word ‘bastardo’ is self-explanatory, and she’s using it repeatedly.

  ‘Oh dear,’ mutters Shelley, as every head in the room turns to stare.

  Marco waits patiently while the girl finishes her rant, but when he goes to place a consoling hand on her shoulder, she bats it away.

  ‘She just told him that she hates him,’ Shelley whispers with barely concealed delight. ‘And that he’s a liar. Dear oh dear.’

  Eventually the girl runs out of steam and bursts into tears, but instead of following her out of the door and running down the cobbled street after her, Marco merely watches her go, shrugs, then goes back to work. When he arrives to clear away our glasses a good ten minutes later, Shelley is practically foaming at the mouth with unanswered questions.

  ‘What was that all about?’ she asks, subtlety and politeness apparently distant memories.

  ‘She was upset that I did not call her,’ Marco says, sounding bored. ‘But we have been on only two dates, it was nothing.’

  ‘Clearly not nothing to her,’ I blurt, only to be left cringing into my wine glass when he looks dismayed.

  ‘I didn’t make her any promises,’ he argues, clearly nonplussed.

  He’s making a fair point, I suppose, but the way he’s dismissing her when she’s so obviously distressed is borderline cruel. I can’t believe that I was beginning to like him. He may have hauled me out of the lake, but that doesn’t make him an angel.

  Shelley, however, is not one to be easily deterred.

  ‘So, you’re single, then?’ she prompts, although it’s not really a question.

  Marco looks directly at me before he answers.

  ‘That depends who is asking.’

  ‘Neither of us,’ I say briskly, and promptly order myself a huge slab of chocolate amaretti cake before he has time to reply.

  6

  Lucy

  ‘Pass the sprouts, will you?’

  My sister Julia is the only person I’ve ev
er met who would put the small, round, green element of a Christmas dinner at the top of her list of preferences – above even pigs in blankets. She’s a weirdo, and I tell her so as I lift the overflowing bowl up so she can reach it.

  ‘I’m weird?’ she scoffs, tossing her sweep of auburn hair over one shoulder. ‘You’re the one who’s chosen blood and guts as a career.’

  ‘Now, now, Ju. I’m sure there’s a lot more to nursing than that, isn’t there, Lucy?’

  Bless Dad, always coming to my rescue. He’s had to do it so many times over the years, the poor man, that it must have become like second nature. Being the younger sister, I’ve always had to put up with a fair amount of teasing, and it doesn’t bother me all that much, but I think that Dad, who is himself the youngest of three brothers, feels as if he should fight my corner a bit. Julia has always been the tougher sibling – small, wiry and no-nonsense – much more like our mum than I am.

  ‘So, where is it Lady Muck’s gone this year?’ Julia asks then, quickly changing the subject before I can launch into a speech about how vital it is that we save the NHS. She knows me well, my big sister.

  Dad frowns at the mention of Mum’s nickname, a forkful of roast potato frozen in mid-air on the way to his mouth, and for a moment I think he’s going to tell Julia off, but then he manages to swallow whatever remark it was that reared up.

  ‘The Maldives,’ I tell her, curling up my nose.

  Julia and I might be as different as sprouts and chocolate, in both looks and personality, but one thing we do agree on is that our mum is a complete idiot. Once we’d stopped crying over the fact she’d left Dad for a rich neighbour eight years ago, we came up with the ‘Lady Muck’ moniker to cheer ourselves up – an attempt to make light of a situation that was anything but. The ‘Muck’ part is because David, her new husband, is a pig farmer. A very successful pig farmer, but a pig farmer all the same. Dad, who is a far less smelly but not quite as rich dentist, assures the two of us that he’s over it all now, but I still notice him wince whenever either of their names comes up in conversation. I haven’t spent Christmas with my mum since she walked out, because I refuse to leave Dad by himself, and Julia only did the one time. ‘Once was more than enough,’ she’d muttered darkly after the event.

  Perhaps I had taken the breakdown of their marriage harder because I was a bit younger than Julia when it happened, but then I suppose twenty isn’t all that young. The older I get, the more I realise that Mum must have been waiting years for the right time to go. When I finally turned eighteen it must have felt even more exciting to her than it did to me, because it meant that I’d soon be moving away to study, and that she would no longer have any reason to stay. I try not to think about it, but it’s always difficult not to at this time of year, especially when I’m witness to Dad rattling around in our big family house on his own. He assures us that he doesn’t get lonely, but I’m not convinced.

  ‘The bloody Maldives,’ Julia exclaims, stabbing one of the seventeen or so sprouts on her plate with a fork before mashing it aggressively until it turns into mush. I’m holding my tongue, because I’m already feeling tremendously guilty about the fact that I’m abandoning the two of them to fly out to Lake Como in two days with Pete – especially as I missed New Year’s Eve completely last year due to work. Dad took the news with his usual good grace and even bought me an Italian phrase book as a last-minute gift, but Julia, predictably, was less impressed. Having met Pete a grand total of twice since we got together, she’s decided that he’s an ‘oaf’, and that I could do better. I know she’s just being protective, in the misguided and clumsy way she always is, but I wish she’d listen when I tell her that, this time, I’ve found a good one. Perhaps it’s because her girlfriend, Abby, chose to spend their first festive period as a couple with her own family rather than ours, or maybe she’s simply miffed that I’m going back to Lake Como without her. Even though I was fourteen and she was twenty the last time we had a holiday there, it’s always been our special place, and now I’m sharing it with someone else. I can understand why that might be upsetting.

  Dad wisely chooses that moment to fetch the remaining crackers from the box, and we spend a riotous ten minutes retrieving small plastic prizes from where they’ve been flung mid-crack across the room, and reading out terrible jokes to one another.

  ‘Why was Santa’s little helper feeling depressed?’ calls out Dad.

  Julia rolls her eyes.

  ‘Because he has low elf-esteem!’

  I giggle despite the clanging awfulness of the joke, and attempt to get my jumping frog toy to leap into my wine glass. Pete and I haven’t done our present exchange yet, and I wonder for the millionth time what he’s bought me. His main present from me was supposed to be the holiday, but since he insisted on paying me back for his half, I had to rush out and panic-buy him some other things to open. Now I’m scared that he won’t like them. When I’d confessed my fears to Julia, she’d tutted and told me that I should have simply wrapped him up a dirty rugby ball and a pint of ale. She may have a point.

  Once we’ve eaten enough food to render ourselves sleepy, the three of us stack the dishes in the kitchen and retreat to the sofa with a second bottle of wine and a large box of Quality Street.

  It’s nice to be here, back in the Suffolk village where I grew up, in the house I know so well that I could find my way around it blindfolded. After the noisy A&E department of the hospital and the even noisier London streets, Newton is deliciously peaceful and sleepy – and I felt myself relax as soon as Julia and I boarded the train at Liverpool Street station yesterday. We went for our usual walk around the village before lunch, the three of us, instinctively taking the route that wouldn’t lead us past Mum and David’s house. It doesn’t bother me now as much as it used to, but a few years ago there was an uncomfortable five minutes when Mum happened to be putting out some rubbish as we wandered by, and Julia had marched off refusing to talk to her. Dad, of course, had tried to apologise on her behalf, but Mum somehow managed to turn that into a row, and I wasn’t the only one who ended up in tears. It’s a good thing they’re not around this year, her and David. I don’t know how Dad can stand it, the thought of them living less than ten minutes’ walk away. I could never endure such a thing.

  Julia was the first to set up home in London, and I followed a few years later. We never discussed our reasons for choosing the big, grubby capital as our base, but I think neither of us liked the idea of moving too far away from Dad. By leaving him, Mum upgraded us from being merely his daughters to his part-time carers, such was his heartbreak at the time. I now know exactly where I get my fragile heart from, but knowing how similar we are makes me love him even more. Plus, I get my bubbliness and warmth from him, too, and it’s those two qualities that have helped me to become so good at my job. I see my colleagues struggling sometimes to even reach across and take someone’s hand, whereas I’m happy to dish out my affection to whoever needs it. Working at a hospital can be such a complicated business, but if I’ve learned anything since becoming a nurse, it’s that often, a hug is just as good medicine as a syringe full of drugs.

  Not long after Mum left all those years ago, Julia insisted that Dad must redecorate the house. ‘Paint away any trace of her,’ she’d barked, anger making her unreasonable. He’d nodded along, of course, but completely ignored her advice. One thing he did do, though, was unearth a box of our childhood drawings from the loft and create a huge collage, which is now framed and sitting proudly on the wall above the television. Glancing up at it now as the closing credits of the Doctor Who Christmas special file up the screen, I find my eyes drawn to the picture in the centre, the one of the secret beach on the shores of Lake Como that I used to pretend was mine. I wonder if I could find it again.

  Julia has wrestled the chocolates away from Dad and is selecting all the revolting coffee-flavoured ones for herself. When I look at him, I see that he’s smiling at her adoringly, and my heart swells with love for him. I ma
y have had some less-than-brilliant boyfriends over the years, but Dad has always been consistently amazing. He’s my hero, and I can’t wait to introduce him to Pete. Perhaps this time next year we’ll all be sitting here, the five of us. I honestly can’t think of a single thing that would make me happier.

  As the light outside the living room window turns from slate-grey, to dark violet, to black, I allow myself to picture a future Christmas Day. A tree propped up with presents and decorated with strings of different-coloured lights, Julia and Abby laughing together as they pour the champagne, Dad in his red apron, popping his head around the door to give us an update on lunch, and Pete by my side, our baby bouncing on his lap. All of us smiling, all of us happy.

  It’s the future I want, and I’m going to do everything in my power to get it.

  7

  Taggie

  The first thing I think when I open my eyes is that Father Christmas must be real after all, because there’s definitely something small and solid resting against my feet at the end of the bed. But I’m thirty-two years old, which means I haven’t had a stocking on Christmas morning for sixteen years.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’

  Bruno returns my gaze, his big eyes conker-brown, and puts his little head on one side.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ I whisper, smiling as he replies by lifting his leg into the air and furiously licking his nether regions. It would be gross if he wasn’t so ridiculous, and I tell him so as I extract my warm toes from under him and shuffle them into my slippers. Tiptoeing along the hallway, I pause by the next door along and smile as I make out the sound of three different snores. None of the others are up yet, which means that Bruno and I can enjoy a blissful morning coffee before the madness begins.

  Despite Shelley wishing repeatedly for a flurry of festive snow over the past two weeks, it looks like Christmas in Lake Como is going to be another stunner of a cloudless day. The sun is already up and warming my favourite bench in the back garden, and I know that if I walk to the far wall and peer down over the side, I’ll see merry twinkles on the surface of the water. The sunshine doesn’t mean that it’s hot, though, and before I head outside, I wrap a long scarf around my neck and select a woolly hat from the eclectic collection piled up by the front door.