by Romy Sommer
I had every right to contest the will and to expect a share of my own father’s inheritance. It wasn’t as if I’d asked John for much. He’d had no brothers or sisters, and his parents had died long before I was even born, making me his only blood relative. His only child.
I pushed away from the table, collected together our bowls, and carried them to the sink. ‘I should go.’
Tommaso’s elbows rested on the scratched pine table-top, his chin on his hands as he studied me. As if he was looking past all the layers of the years to the angry, hormonal teen I’d once been. Emotions I hadn’t felt in years bubbled dangerously beneath the surface, that familiar heat growing in my cheeks. Familiar and yet somehow alien, as I hadn’t blushed this furiously or this much since I last stood in this cottage kitchen.
‘There’s still half a bottle of wine to finish,’ he said, reaching forward to re-fill my glass. ‘Do you remember how to play Rummikub?’
I was tired, and more emotional than I had any right to be. I should probably go to sleep. But that big empty house held no appeal. ‘It’s been ages since I played, but it can’t be too hard to pick it up again.’ And it wouldn’t hurt to make friends with the enemy. Negotiating my share of this property would be much easier if I had him on my side.
But while I understood my own reasons for wanting to linger, why did Tommaso? We were foes, on opposite sides of an inheritance. Or was he so lonely that even my company was better than none?
He moved to fetch a battered box from a cupboard, as I slid back into my seat. Together we laid out the numbered wooden tiles, turned them face down and mixed them up, then each took fourteen tiles and placed them on their racks. As I studied my pieces, I sipped my wine.
I was burningly aware of Tommaso’s gaze on me, and when I sneaked a look at him, his brow was furrowed, as if he were troubled. Then his expression smoothed out, and I shrugged off the rather odd feeling his look had caused in the pit of my stomach.
In the heat of the game, amid the gentle ribbing, the shouts of triumph, the calculation of the pieces, my wayward emotions eased, and I let go of the little knot of stress I’d been carrying inside me since he’d invited me to dinner. Out of practice as I was, I even managed to win a fair share of the games.
We played for nearly an hour, until the bottle of wine was empty. Waving goodnight to Tommaso, I crossed the yard and let myself into the castello kitchen, which looked infinitely more inviting than it had a few days before. But beyond the kitchen, the dark and utterly silent house was another matter entirely. My footsteps echoed as I ascended the stone staircase and headed down the parquet-floored corridor to my room.
The startling ring of the phone, overloud in the silent house, made me jump. Heart still racing, I changed direction to John’s room, flicked on the switch to flood the room with yellow light, and dove for the phone.
‘I’m here!’ I panted breathlessly.
Cleo laughed. ‘I was about to hang up. I thought maybe you were out on a hot date.’
‘Hardly.’ Though dinner with Tommaso was the closest I’d come to a date since I gave Kevin his marching orders. ‘I was…’ I paused, not wanting to lie to my friend, but strangely not wanting to tell Cleo I’d spent the evening with Tommaso either.
I rubbed my eyes. ‘I was downstairs and had to run to get the phone.’
‘Pity! I hoped your breathlessness was caused by something far more gossip-worthy. So have you heard from your sexy lawyer again?’
‘He’s not mine, and he hasn’t called since he brought the estate agent around. Just one rather vague text. Maybe he’s changed his mind about taking me out after seeing me next to her. She’s really stunning. Like Monica Bellucci stunning.’
‘So what? You don’t have to be perfect to win a guy. You just have to be perfect for him.’
Unseen, I felt safe to roll my eyes up to the ceiling. Then wished I hadn’t. A great big spider web hung directly overhead. I wasn’t afraid of creepy crawlies, but even Cleo’s annoying optimism was better than spiders.
Cleo huffed out an impatient breath. ‘Anyway, this is the twenty-first century. You don’t have to wait for him to ask you out. You can ask him.’
That was exactly the sort of advice Geraldine would give. Geraldine never hesitated to call up a guy she liked. I wrinkled my nose. ‘Tell me about your love life instead. Are you still serious about this “no more dating” thing?’
Cleo groaned. ‘What love life? Even if I hadn’t sworn off men, I don’t think I’ll be getting the chance to date again any time soon. We’re working all hours at the moment.’
Guilt tightened my chest, but then I paused. Cleo didn’t sound as if she was complaining. She sounded … animated.
‘How is The Arse?’ I ventured.
She was quiet for a long moment. ‘Do you remember the rowing guys at uni?’
‘Arrogant, entitled, terribly fit. As I recall, you were all over them like a bad rash. Thank heavens you grew out of it.’
Silence.
Uh-oh. This was bad.
‘Just how hot is he?’ I asked, dreading her answer. ‘On a scale of one to ten, with one being a married sleazebag and ten being single, straight, good-looking and able to support himself?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘You are so screwed.’
‘I know.’ Cleo heaved a lovelorn sigh. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Don’t ask me. I’m even more clueless than you when it comes to men. I’m the one who dated my boss, remember? Look at how well that turned out.’
‘Kevin did propose to you…’
I hated the hopefulness in my friend’s voice. ‘He also slept with Geraldine,’ I reminded her. ‘The Arse is not going to propose to you. He’ll sleep with you, and he’ll move on.’ Just like every other man. ‘Promise me you won’t sleep with him.’
More silence.
‘Promise me, Cleo.’
She huffed out a breath. ‘Okay, I promise. No sleeping with the sexy client. Got it.’
‘Good.’
When I slid under the bed covers a short while later, teeth brushed and hair freshly braided to keep it from tangling in the night, the lightness I’d felt earlier with Tommaso was gone, wiped away by concern. Cleo had a tendency to fall for good-looking narcissists. And every single time she got her heart broken.
In spite of my exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep. The utter stillness of the nights still unnerved me. Even though the house in Wanstead had double-glazed windows, I was used to noise at night. Traffic rumbling past, drunken voices, TV sets and distant sirens; all those sounds of the city which formed a background to my life and which I’d long ago ceased to hear – and which I noticed now because of their complete absence.
Instead, there were new sounds, alien sounds – the rustle of wind in leaves, the hum of cicadas, a lone dog barking in the distance, and the scratchings of something up in the roof. I hoped it was an owl, because mice terrified me. Even more than spiders.
Then outside the window an owl hooted, and its mate answered from a distance away. Reassured, I closed my eyes. The owls would deal with any mice. The sound was comforting, almost companionable, as I finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 11
La vita è un viaggio. Chi viaggia vive due volte.
(Life is a voyage. Those who travel live twice.)
Time flowed over and around me like the slow-moving waters of a river, in that magical way that only ever seems possible in Italy, as if time were as flexible as a ball of dough, able to change its shape to fit my needs. Though I was busier than ever, I seemed able to cram so much more into my days than I’d ever managed to do in England.
Without the constant push and shove of London life, without the sense of urgency that always seemed to chase me there, I found time to sit beneath the wisteria with a cup of tea and a jam-filled cornetto, or to get lost in a pile of old magazines, or to idle away an hour beside the sickly green swimming pool watching butterflies dance through the overgrown flow
er beds, or a lizard dart up a warmed stone wall.
Cleo was very proud. ‘That’s exactly what you need!’ she said. But I still hadn’t told her I’d taken a job baking for the trattoria. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right?
Though it didn’t feel like a job, but rather like a chance to explore a creative side I hadn’t even known I possessed. I experimented, changing ingredients to add my own spin to old favourites, inspired by the seasonal produce in ways that supermarket-bought goods had never inspired me.
Each day, Beatrice’s driver brought something fresh from the farm – goat’s cheese, plums, butter, or fresh milk. I picked my own lemons, strawberries and blackberries, and even wild zucchini where it grew up between the flowers in the front garden.
Sometimes I worked in Nonna’s herb garden, clearing weeds, and drastically cutting back the herbs that had gone to seed, until the little walled garden was a neat patchwork of fennel, tarragon, thyme, lemon balm, and rampant mints.
With day after day of dry weather, the front garden, facing south and basking all day in the sun, began to wilt, so on the next market day I bought an irrigation system, and using Google, and YouTube, I fitted it myself, winding the hose through tangled beds of feathery dusky pink irises, Tuscan Blue rosemary, fragile, fragrant jasmine and banks of wild roses in yellow and white. I’d never felt more capable and proudly independent than the moment when the automatic sprinklers switched on, showering the garden with a fine spray.
Bernardo from the furniture store dropped by to view the broken furniture I’d set aside, the rickety chairs and legless side tables, even an old card table that had seen better days. He wandered through the house, obviously delighted by the treasures he found. I was glad someone thought they were treasures. To me they looked like junk.
He pointed out which pieces of furniture were valuable antiques, and advised I contact an antique dealer in one of the bigger towns. Then he drove off with his little van packed full. Even better, he left me with the phone number for a reliable company that could deliver a skip for all the things that couldn’t be salvaged.
By the time the sun set each day, I was exhausted – happy, but exhausted. I lay chin-deep in the hideous plastic bathtub in the guest bathroom, with the tap drip-dripping into the cooling water as I soaked away the day’s accumulated dust and grime.
After several days of trial and error with the pool chemicals I’d bought at the co-op, I managed to turn the pool from green to a murky blue, clear enough that I was no longer afraid to venture into the water. At the end of a long day, there was nothing more restorative than floating in the pool as the stars came out against the darkening sky.
Then I would sit on the terrace beneath the fragrant wisteria to enjoy the sultry nights and the fresh breeze which carried with it the scents of lavender and earth from the tangled and overgrown garden. With my feet propped on the low stone wall of the terrace, I sipped wine and gazed up at the stars, trying to recognise the patterns.
I overcame my initial guilt at helping myself to the contents of the dusty wine cellar beneath the house by rationalising that at least half the wine was mine.
In the cellar I also found my father’s journal, full of detailed notes on each of the bottles stored in the cellar – their ages, origins, how they’d been made, even their flavours. Armed with this notebook, I sampled the wines, and learnt a great deal more about the process of winemaking than I could have imagined.
I could even hear the echo of John’s voice in my head as I read his notes, remembered evenings when he’d encouraged me to sample different flavours. My school friends had been awed that my father let me drink wine, in the same way I’d been awed that their fathers took them camping or fishing, or even someplace as simple as the movies – or remembered their birthdays.
As the sultry evening air wrapped itself around me, I learned to identify the different flavours in each wine. Not just sweet or dry, but the subtler hints of oak, cherry, pear and chocolate. I definitely liked the chocolate flavoured wine!
It was only late at night, alone with the chirp of crickets and the distant hoot of a hunting owl, that I sometimes felt lonely. Since that evening we’d dined together and played Rummikub, I hadn’t seen Tommaso. I heard his car come and go, but he didn’t come knocking on the door, and no way was I going to be the needy, desperate kind of woman who’d go knocking at his.
Several days went by before I even remembered Luca’s text, and realised I hadn’t yet replied. Since the castello’s phone signal was still as elusive as a decent, single, straight man in London, I sat cross-legged on the crocheted blanket spread across John’s bed, and dialled his number.
‘Fioravanti.’ Though his answer was curt and distracted, the gorgeous tenor was enough to make my insides turn liquid. When he heard my tentative voice and gave me his undivided attention, that was even sexier.
‘Tomorrow, I take you for lunch,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.
‘If you’re not too busy?’
‘For you, I can never be too busy.’ There was a seductive smile in his voice, and my breath fluttered in my chest.
‘I also need to find a hardware store.’ Nothing like killing two birds with one stone.
‘No problem. I pick you up at ten.’
I woke extra early the next morning and had all the day’s baking done early enough that I still had time to style my hair. Luca drove into the yard as the Rossi’s farm van drove out.
I wore the one and only dress I’d packed for this trip, a shift dress in sage-green that was guaranteed to bring out the green in my eyes. The admiration in Luca’s gaze made all the effort worthwhile. I might not want to indulge in a holiday romance, but he was so good for my self-esteem!
He didn’t take me to Montalcino though, but rather eastwards through the Val di Chiana, through vineyards and forests and fields of sunflowers to the medieval hilltop town of Montepulciano which straddled a massive limestone ridge. It was at least twice the size of Montalcino, making the little town that had so enchanted me seem like a rustic village in comparison.
We parked in a small and cramped metered parking lot, then strolled through the public gardens, around a monstrously-sized war horse sculpture, and through the Porta al Prato, the original thirteenth-century gate into the town, to the Corso, the main thoroughfare.
‘I prefer Pienza for its beauty,’ Luca said as we made our way up the busy street. ‘But if it’s shopping you want, this is the place.’
He took me first to a coffee bar for macchiatos, which we drank standing at the bar. This coffee did not have the slightly burned, bitter espresso taste I was used to getting at Costa, but a rich, full-bodied brew that lingered on my tongue. As we sipped, we pored over my shopping list. There was boring, everyday stuff like nails, plaster-filler, and tools, but also more exciting things like lampshades and curtains.
Most men’s eyes would have glazed over at the list, but Luca took it all in his stride. Once we’d finished our coffees, he led me to first one shop then another, even getting involved in picking out fabrics and giving advice without any dampening of his enthusiasm. He paid for the new curtains, too, insisting they were a housewarming gift and waving away my objections. Really, could this man be any more perfect, without being gay?
As we walked, I caught glimpses between the buildings of views out across the landscape. ‘We must be really high!’
He nodded. ‘Montepulciano is the highest hill town in Tuscany.’
My thighs agreed. No one in Tuscany needed a StairMaster, that was for sure.
Once we’d ticked off everything on my list, we returned to the parking lot to stow the shopping bags in the back seat of Luca’s sports car.
‘Now, we act like tourists.’ Luca held out his hand, and I took it without thinking. His hand was warm and strong, not too soft, not too rough.
He took me for lunch at a caffè, where we were seated on a shaded terrace hemmed in by wrought iron railings, with breathtaking views of the surro
unding countryside falling away beneath us. Luca ordered a local wine for me to try, the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, an intense wine with plummy, fruity flavours, an easier-drinking wine than the Montalcino wines I’d sampled, but more complex than the Chiantis Cleo and I often drank down at the pub.
‘Like our own Brunellos, this is made mostly with Sangiovese grapes, another local variant, but it is not so pure as our Brunellos.’ There was affection and pride in his tone.
‘You’re not having any?’ I asked, gesturing to his empty wine glass.
He pulled a face. ‘I have to drive. It wouldn’t be good for an avvocato – advocate – to be caught breaking the law.’
‘So it’s not that you’re trying to get me drunk?’
He grinned, eyes flashing with mischief, and didn’t answer.
The waiter took our orders, and Luca insisted, ‘You must try the ragu. It is made with a pasta that is a local speciality, pici.’
When it came, the pasta was like fat, hand-rolled spaghetti, dripping in a rich duck sauce. Luca watched as I tasted the pici, smiling widely at my obvious enjoyment. His passion for food and wine was such a stark contrast to Kevin, who’d been more impressed by the trend factor of a restaurant than its actual food. I’d just bet Luca would love Borough Market.
‘This sauce is so good!’ I moaned. ‘I could practically take a bath in it.’
Another dangerous twinkle lit up Luca’s eyes.
‘Uh-uh!’ I waved my fork at him ‘Don’t get any ideas!’
‘I make my own pici, but I make mine all’aglione, in a tomato and garlic sauce. Or in season, with truffles. You will come for dinner, and I will make it for you.’
Again, not a question, and now the dangerous twinkle was accompanied by a grin that brought out his dimple. ‘But I promise it will be so good you won’t want to waste it on bathing.’
I choked on my mouthful and had to dive for the water glass. No holiday romance! I needed a passion killer, and quick.