Urban Venus

by Sara Downing

  One of the articles refers to a document which has since been moved to the Archivio di Stato in Florence. There is very little information about what the document might reveal, but I have to fully investigate any link I can find, so I jot down the details and make a mental note to visit the state archives when I get back to Florence.

  I decide to spend what remains of the afternoon – I look at my watch and there isn’t actually a lot of time left before I’m due to meet Vincenzo – strolling around on those four streets which follow the path of the Via Emilia. Just knowing that Maria could have lived around here somewhere is enough to inspire me to continue my search to find a link between us, should one exist. I gaze up at building after building, trying to will some images from my dreams to come back to me and help me identify the location.

  I clearly remember how I, as Maria, gazed upon the Pope’s procession from the window of Rosetta’s. What was the view outside, beyond the pageantry? Which buildings could I see across the street? I wrack my brains but nothing further comes back to me. And in any case, although the bare bones of those buildings may or may not still be here, the scenery has to have changed dramatically over nearly five hundred years, doesn’t it? I don’t find the whole process disheartening, though, being so near and yet so far. It all just serves to strengthen the bond between Maria and me, and as I walk around I become more certain that this IS the area where she spent her youth.

  ‘Race you to the top of those stairs,’ Vincenzo challenges me, as we arrive back in the hotel foyer at the end of the evening.

  ‘After three,’ I propose, but only wait for the count of two before I start bounding up the staircase.

  ‘Hey, you cheat!’ he calls, starting his run a couple of seconds behind me, but sprinting up two stairs at a time and reaching the top only a split second after I do.

  ‘Come on old man,’ I joke. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard at your age!’

  ‘I’d have beaten you if you’d played fair,’ he replies, grabbing me gently by the wrist and pulling me to him, nuzzling into my neck.

  ‘Your place or mine?’ he asks, his hands starting to roam.

  ‘Yours,’ I reply, anticipating what is going to happen next, and knowing that, should I change my mind, it will then be easier to make an excuse and retreat to the sanctuary of my own room. Although I don’t anticipate that I will change my mind; I’m ready for this.

  We wake the next morning to another gorgeously blue sky, and brilliant sunshine streaming into the room, a long shaft of light reflecting off the chandeliers and twinkling across the dishevelled bed. In our haste last night we hadn’t closed the shutters or the curtains, and now we lie here together, bathed in sunshine, awake at an earlier hour than we’d probably have chosen to be.

  ‘Oahhhrrrrr,’ Vincenzo emits as he rolls over lazily towards me, eyes barely open, reaching out one arm to pull me near. ‘Do we have to get up yet?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ I reply, ‘it’s only six thirty.’

  ‘Oh well, in that case we have plenty of time,’ he says, suddenly sounding more awake, and making his intentions on how he wants to spend the next few hours perfectly clear as he wraps himself around me again. We’d gravitated to our own sides of the bed during the night, but now there are barely millimetres between us again.

  ‘Happy Birthday, Bella Lydia,’ he says, as he starts to kiss me again. ‘I can’t believe you’re mine at last.’

  This has to be the best birthday wake-up ever.

  Twenty-Five

  ‘So, Lydia, how did the weekend go?’ Sophia asks me. She is perched on my bed as I unpack on Sunday evening, desperate for the low-down on my weekend with Vincenzo. ‘How was it, waking up with him on your birthday?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ I swivel round suddenly to face her, feeling as though all my secrets from the weekend have been laid bare. I blush to my roots, which only serves to confirm her suspicions that the relationship has progressed to a more advanced level.

  ‘Ah, well, you have that loved-up glow to you,’ she laughs. ‘I can always spot a woman who has been whipped off to a luxury hotel for the weekend and seduced by a handsome man. It’s not hard to guess. And now you’re bright pink, so you’ve given it away!’

  I have to say that up till now I’ve been more than a little reluctant to discuss Vincenzo with Sophia and Leonora. Like me they’d had their doubts about him in the early days, but unlike me they haven’t revised that opinion more recently, as they’ve never had the chance to get to know the real him, the kind, sensitive man who isn’t all brash womaniser and really does care about me. If I still had any inkling that Vincenzo was just trying to charm me in order to get into my knickers, before casting me aside for the next pretty face to pop into his life, then I wouldn’t be where I am now, and I certainly wouldn’t have let things get as far as this. I was hurt too much by Ed to allow myself to fall for insincerity all over again; I’d have been the one to put a big stop to it long since.

  But it’s hard to make them see that, and I don’t really know where to start. I know it’s because they care about me and don’t want to see me hurt again and all that, which is lovely, but really, I do trust Vincenzo, more now than ever. I know he genuinely cares for me and it’s not just me falling for his charming spiel in the aftermath of post-coital endorphins. This is different. For both of us.

  ‘What time are we meeting the others?’ I ask, hoping she won’t pry any more. The weekend was too special to dissect with a friend so soon, so I try to instigate a change of subject.

  ‘In L’Incontro Bar at eight, and then on from there, to wherever you fancy!’ she replies, taking the bait. ‘A couple of rounds of birthday cocktails, followed by an evening of dancing, partying hard, or whatever you want!’

  She has arranged for the old ‘gang’ to go out to celebrate my birthday. I do feel I’ve already done all the celebrating I need with Vincenzo, and I’m really tired. I could do with a whole night’s sleep, in my own bed, alone, but I can’t use that as an excuse and it is very sweet of her to sort it all out. It will actually be lovely to go out with the whole gang again; it’s something I’ve not really done since breaking up with Stefano, and I miss it.

  I’ve been out with the girls plenty of times, and sometimes we’ve met up with one or other of the boys, but it isn’t like it used to be, and quite frankly, I don’t see how it ever can be. Not for me, anyway. They will always have each other, and that will continue long after I’ve left Florence, but it’s nice to think that I might be able socialise with Stefano again without any hard feelings, and tonight will be the test of that.

  As I get ready for the evening ahead I have to admit to being slightly nervous about it, but I am buoyed up with courage by the warm, fuzzy sensation still lingering from the weekend, plus a real ‘birthday feeling’, just like I used to get when I was a child. Today feels really special, and not just because it’s my birthday AND the official start of a new relationship. I feel like nothing can touch me at the moment, as though I’m floating above my own charmed and lovely life, smiling down on it all and considering myself very lucky, with a self-satisfied nod of my head.

  The bar is heaving when we arrive, but the boys have nabbed us a couple of tables outside, so we will have the added advantage of being able to people-watch on the Piazza della Repubblica whilst we drink and catch up on everyone’s news.

  I love this place; aside from the bar prices, it’s a great place to meet, and all the beautiful people of the world seem to pass by, like a cat-walk of the more glamorous element of Florentine society. There’s nothing really to compare to it back home, either in Sussex or up in Newcastle. And over here there’s always this added magic of being outside in the evening, without sporting goose bumps or a heavy-duty coat. We Brits only get that for a handful of nights a year if we’re lucky, and that’s usually with the aid of a patio heater, pelting out enough energy to produce its own sizeable hole in the ozone layer.

  Once again I realise I’m starting to f
eel wistful about my time here coming to an end. I know I still have a couple of months to go, but what then? I do have a degree to go back and finish, there’s no denying that, but this place is a world away from Newcastle and all that goes with it. I’m really struggling to imagine myself slipping comfortably back into my old studenty ways as they were. Perfect days and evenings like this only serve to make it harder to imagine that it all has to end at some point. I know I’m here to work hard, and really I do, but despite that, the whole experience has the overriding feeling of a holiday to it. And what of Vincenzo and I? What happens to us when I have to go back home? Is this just a holiday romance or will our relationship stand up to the distance test? Too early to say, I think.

  Stefano is leaning over the railing around the little terraced area in front of the bar, chatting to a girl who must have spotted him as she was passing by. I take in his back view, fully appreciating that it’s still as gorgeous as ever, his bottom pert in those ever-present black jeans which the men of this country seem to wear so well.

  There’s a lump in my throat when I recognise the girl as Adriana, the one he was with the day I bumped into him leaving the café. She spots me and waves, somewhat over-enthusiastically given our single meeting, and with a quick ‘mwa-mwa’ of double-cheeked kisses for Stefano and another wave to me she is off, swinging her designer handbag and glossy sheath of hair, her six-inch heels proving no impediment to her speed. There goes a girl who is confident that she has what she wants in life.

  ‘Hi Stefano, how are you?’ I begin, moving in and kissing him on both cheeks, which still harbour a faint aroma of their previous kisser. ‘I hope I didn’t scare her off? Isn’t she joining us?’ I consciously adopt what I hope is a smiling, bravado expression to show that I am perfectly fine about him and this new woman in his life.

  ‘No, she’s just off to meet her new boyfriend,’ he replies, and sees the look of surprise on my face when I say:

  ‘Oh, I thought…..’

  ‘Yes, so did she, for a while at least. But I wasn’t ready. It was too soon after, well, you know…’ he says, clearing his throat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, suddenly finding a tiny speck of dirt on my shoes fascinating and not being able to look him in the eye. ‘She seems really nice.’ A platitude, I know, and no, I don’t think she’s very nice actually, but I have to say something.

  The thought of Stefano seeing someone else still bothers me, and I know that’s unfair, especially now that I’m with Vincenzo. But neither do I like the thought that he’s still hurting, and I feel the need to appease my conscience, somehow or other. But I don’t quite know what to say to him. Trolling out an Oh well, never mind, I’m sure the right woman is waiting for you just around the next corner, seems a bit insipid, so I settle for rubbing him gently on the arm and giving it a sympathetic little squeeze, in the hope it conveys the right message. This time I manage to meet his gaze, and neither of us looks away.

  The moment is broken when Stefano takes a deep breath and launches in with: ‘I hear you and Vincenzo are together now. How are things going? Are you happy?’ He says this last with something of a pinched smile and narrowed eyes. I didn’t know he knew about us, but then news travels fast on the Florentine grapevine and I suspect he wasn’t surprised to hear it; he’d always thought Vincenzo liked me, hence his defensive stance whenever Vincenzo came on the scene.

  Dante butts in, hands me a cocktail menu and deposits two damply alcoholic birthday kisses on my cheeks, saving me from having to answer Stefano’s question. I am very happy, ecstatically so, but I don’t really want to have to tell him that, and rub salt into a wound that’s obviously still a little bit raw.

  ‘I’ll go for a Negroni, I think,’ I tell Dante and he beckons to the bartender to come over and take our order.

  Two hours later and we’re still here. In the end we decided to stay and order food in the bar; I’ve not really got my dancing head on, and the others were happy to go with the flow, as long as I was having a good time and doing what I wanted. It’s expensive in here, but it’s not like we make a habit of it, and in any case it IS my birthday, and the gang have allowed me to buy some drinks for them all, so I don’t feel too bad on behalf of their bank balances that we haven’t moved off somewhere cheaper.

  I’m tucking into my Risotto con Fili di Zafferano – delicious! – when an uninvited, but not unwelcome, guest appears beside me. It’s Vincenzo. I think I might have told him in a text earlier on that we were coming here, but I hadn’t really expected that he would show up. I just hope Stefano is OK with my new man’s sudden appearance, and I look across at him for a reaction. Vincenzo notices me doing this and whispers quietly in my ear, as he pulls up a chair and squeezes in beside me.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, cara, you are with me now,’ he murmurs, and his warm breath sends shivers up my spine.

  ‘Yes, but he’s my friend. It’s hard for him,’ I whisper in reply.

  I think back to all those other times when we just seemed to stumble across Vincenzo on a night out, or rather he would stumble across us. In those days his presence wasn’t always entirely welcome within our little circle, and I used to wish he would just go away. This time I’m glad he’s here, despite any adverse reaction Stefano might have to him. As my boyfriend, he has every right to be at my birthday bash, whether invited or not.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me joining you,’ he offers to the rest of the group, making eye contact with each person around the table. Actually the lads – with the obvious exception of Stefano – welcome him wholeheartedly, shaking hands before passing him a menu and a wine list. Sophia and Leonora share a conspiratorial glance and Leonora looks over at Stefano to check he’s OK.

  ‘So, Vincenzo, I hear you are now the luckiest man in the world,’ Stefano ventures, quite bravely I think. ‘Look after her, she is very special.’ Whilst he delivers this with a smile on his face, there is more than a tiny hint of a threat in his eyes. Hurt her, and I will tear you limb from limb, is his implied meaning, and I look across at Stefano and give him my hugest, most sincere smile, both to say thank you for his kind comment and to reassure him that I will be alright.

  Vincenzo goes on to behave himself impeccably throughout the meal, making charming conversation with the girls, and fitting in companionably with the lads. Not surprisingly, Stefano is rather quiet, sitting back broodingly whilst the others chat, and studying Vincenzo intently, as though waiting for the one false move which could justify him pouncing.

  I don’t know why I might have expected Vincenzo NOT to behave tonight, but then I suppose I only have my experience of other nights out in his presence to base my opinions on, back in those days before we got together. On such occasions he’d generally arrive with a decorative partner on his arm, behave badly, drink too much, flirt with me and/or my friends, and leave very drunk. Tonight he is the model of a well-behaved boyfriend and is thoroughly charming company. I know he can be like this, but the others haven’t seen this side of him very often, so I am glad he has broken free of his poor track record and set out to impress them all. Maybe Sophia and Leonora will stop stressing about us now.

  The evening comes to a natural end and the others drift off, leaving Vincenzo and me alone. Stefano begrudgingly manages to shake Vincenzo’s hand when he leaves, but not without whispering something quietly in his ear, which I don’t catch.

  ‘You don’t mind me coming tonight, do you?’ Vincenzo asks. ‘It’s your birthday, and I was missing you!’

  ‘It’s fine, really it is,’ I reply, although I will have to get it through to him that sometimes I might just want to see my mates, without him. I’d hate him to turn into one of those possessive, jealous types who feel they have to follow their other half everywhere. Ed was a bit like that, well, till Jules came along, at least, and he no longer felt the need for us to be joined at the hip. Why didn’t I spot the signs at the time?

  ‘Your place or mine?’ Vincenzo asks me for the second time in as many
days, as we pour the last few dregs of wine into our glasses.

  ‘No offence, but I really need to go back to mine. Alone,’ I reply. I explain to him that I’m simply exhausted – he can take the credit for that, after all – and he doesn’t seem to mind too much, interpreting it more as a sign of his prowess as a lover than a knock-back.

  ‘I’ll walk you home then,’ he offers.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I graciously accept. ‘So what did Stefano whisper to you earlier?’

  ‘Break her heart and I will kill you.’

  ‘You’d better not, then!’ I joke as we get up to leave.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘You’re going to need a bit more than that,’ Leonora says as I go to leave the apartment, carrying a small, collapsible umbrella, my only weapon of defence against the raging storm outside.

  None of us slept well last night; the storm started in the early hours of the morning and, used only to the gentle chirruping of the local birdlife as night turns to day, the uncharacteristic crashing and banging of the wind, plus the clatter of torrential rain lashing the windows, had us all out of bed and drinking hot chocolate by five-thirty. We sat companionably yawning in our pyjamas for some time, contemplating whether we really had to go out today, or if anything we needed to do could be done from home instead. Sophia and Leonora sensibly decided to spend the morning indoors, as it surely must pass over at some time, but I really want to get across town this morning to the Archivio di Stato and so decide to stick to my Plan A.