Three Gold Coins

by Josephine Moon

  Henrik straightened, sweating and puffing, wiping his forearm across his face, and glanced down. Lara wondered if he was wearing underwear. It seemed like there was nothing under there but acres of tanned skin.

  ‘Would you like some help?’ she asked, taking a step forward to pull them up for him.

  Henrik’s eyes widened in surprise as he stepped backwards. ‘No, it’s fine.’

  Truly, it was nothing more than she would have done for Daisy or Hudson. They were just trousers, for goodness’ sake. But she held up her hands in apology and stepped back, picking up his coffee once more, feeling her face warm.

  She handed him the cup and glanced at his rippling abs. He was a pleasure to look at. And she felt things, things she really hadn’t felt much of in the past six years. Matteo had awakened those feelings and she happily let them burn like a cleansing fire.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, eyeing her cautiously.

  Henrik was silent for some time, staring at her over the handle of his spade. A long strand of blond hair hung loose and it was all she could do to stop herself from reaching up and brushing it from his cheek. She’d bet his hair was soft and well-conditioned.

  ‘See you later on for lunch,’ she said, and forced herself to leave before she did something she’d regret.

  She decided to clean the villa’s walls to rid herself of excess energy. They clearly hadn’t been done for some time, with dirt, dust and scuff marks on the paint and small spider webs in between the exposed bricks. She tied a red and white scarf around her head and got to work.

  Outside, attached to the bricks next to the huge double wooden doors into what would have been the receiving room, Lara found a diamond-shaped metal plate. Giardino dei Fiori—garden of flowers. She rubbed at it carefully, wondering who had named the house and what her intention had been for this land. For surely it had been a woman who’d named it, giving the sign a four-petalled flower, in the shape of a cross, with a circle at the centre.

  There were flowers on the property now. Small white bursts from oregano, basil and parsley joined the lavender and geraniums and the wildflowers that grew in the lawn. She turned to survey the vista of greenish-blue hills strung with vineyards or dissected patchwork fields of crops. She tried to imagine a time when flowers might have filled every inch of the view. What a magnificent sight it would have been.

  Samuel interrupted her after lunch as she hoisted up a bucket of grimy water to toss out onto the aloe vera plants. ‘The walls look good,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Lara had been working very hard. She gestured to the name plate on the wall. ‘Who named the property?’

  Samuel stroked his whiskery chin, something she hadn’t seen before; he was usually clean-shaven. ‘The villa was built by Assunta’s ancestors Sara and Guido Falco in the sixteen hundreds. They were from Venice originally, having made their wealth in investments in glass and jewellery workshops. But Sara was unhappy in Venice so they moved here. I believe she named the property.’

  ‘Lucky her.’

  They stood side by side in silence for a moment, considering the metal plate. Samuel looked as though he was about to say more on the subject, but then seemed to change his mind. ‘You know, you can take a break from all this work. It’s a very big house. It could take days to clean it all.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me; I’ve got plenty of energy,’ she said, shifting her bucket of water from one hand to the other. And she did. Her body felt like a well-oiled machine. This was another thing she loved about mania: the lack of pain. No headaches. No exhausted or strained muscles. No sore feet. She’d once fallen down the front steps of Eliza’s house while in an upward swing and not realised she’d torn a ligament in her knee until several days later, when the high fell away and the pain unleashed its fury.

  ‘Trust me, it’s better I just keep going,’ she said, flashing him a reassuring smile. ‘Use me while you can.’ Samuel nodded, seemingly somewhat relieved that he’d tried to help but it was unnecessary.

  It wasn’t as though she didn’t know she was having a mini manic episode. Quite the opposite. Lara knew it and she loved it. She was well-practised at self-monitoring as best she could, and at channel-ling her energies into positive pursuits such as exercise or cleaning or cooking. But it still felt great. So much of her life had been spent not feeling good at all—in fact, feeling terrible—that she couldn’t help but love these times. It was almost like a reward for getting through the lows. She felt she could conquer the world if someone would only give her half a chance; she’d sort out all those warring nations in a jiffy. She didn’t know how long this would last, but she was going to love it while it did. Usually, it was a few days. Sometimes a couple of weeks.

  Of course, there was the small voice in the back of her head telling her she’d regret it tomorrow when it all came crashing down. It was a bloody smug voice, that one, like having a boring accountant sitting on her shoulder while she was on a shopping spree. A complete party-pooper.

  There were so many voices. So many opinions. Some were her own. Some were other people’s. Some…well, she didn’t know whose they were.

  ‘The medications aren’t enough on their own. You still need to work to keep the swinging moods at bay,’ Constance had told her. She was a petite, fairy-like psychiatrist with long white hair and wrinkles that showed years of laughter. Her easy good humour gave the impression that she really had mastered her mind in her lifetime. ‘People with chronic illnesses that affect their body need to exercise and eat right every day to keep themselves at their best. You need to do the same for your mind. Meditation is your medication,’ she was fond of saying.

  Mindfulness was the key to everything, according to Constance. Being present, keeping your mind solely on the task in front of you, living in the moment rather than the past or the future, keeping gratitude diaries, meditating morning and evening. And yes, in Lara’s case, medication as well. ‘They are two halves of the one orange,’ she would say.

  Now Lara wondered, as she went to the outside tap to fill her bucket with water yet again, if she should contact Constance to check if her medications were still adequate. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been here before. This feeling wasn’t new, just unexpected. It was probably brought on by these insanely beautiful surroundings and maybe a blossoming relationship with Matteo. And she was beginning to realise that being away from the family home, away from Sunny and Eliza, was allowing her to find confidence in herself. She was caring for Samuel and getting about by herself. She was doing it, this thing, this life thing that others seemed to do so easily. Maybe she wasn’t manic at all. Maybe this was what it felt like to be normal.

  She lifted her face to the blue sky while the fresh water tumbled into her bucket, enjoying the feel of the sunlight on her closed eyelids, and the warm breeze caressing her arms.

  Matteo.

  A flood of pure lust washed through her and she dropped her head back, exposing her throat to the sun’s touch. There may have been a sensible voice telling her to slow down, but the desire to replace Dave’s imprint was much stronger. She needed to move on.

  Matteo.

  Lara opened her eyes and turned off the tap. She gazed over the hazy valley, then acted before she could change her mind.

  She tapped out a message.

  Can I come tomorrow? X

  His reply came within seconds.

  Yes please.

  Everything was changing.

  26

  Lara and Dave

  The sky was still black outside, though dawn wasn’t far away. The light was changing colour the same way the blackened knuckle of the ring finger on her right hand had been changing for the past couple of days, the result of her own stupidity during an episode—episodes that had been escalating, much to her shame. Lara had just pulled another all-nighter to polish the nineteenth draft of her screenplay, driven by today’s deadline for a prestigious state award for an unpublished script. Her fingers tapped across the keyboard o
f her laptop, ignoring her sprained finger, rewriting a sentence here and there, ensuring her formatting was exactly what the competition guidelines required.

  She was elated. This draft was good. Really good. Dave had read it a couple of times, laughing in the right places, offering some solid advice now and then, praising her for her work. ‘I can’t wait to see it on the big screen. You’ll be able to keep me in the lifestyle I so desire,’ he’d said, grabbing her around the waist and kissing her long and longingly.

  Lara had been working on her screenplay for three years now. It had all the makings of a great movie. An underdog from Italy, determined to make his mark on Australia after surviving the Second World War as part of the resistance against German occupation. A wealthy young woman from England who’d lost her whole family in the Blitz, but escaped with her mother’s jewellery collection, seeking a life away from a loveless marriage. And the man who chases her to Melbourne to claim her as his own.

  Lara had been smiling for hours now, watching the words scroll by, a delightful shiver of excitement dancing down her spine. She just knew this script was going to win.

  Sometimes that happened to her in these long periods of mania. It was as if the veil between reality and the endless sea of possibility thinned, allowing glimpses of past, present and future to play like movies in her mind.

  She was going to win.

  Her heartbeat could barely keep up with her excitement. A whole new career and life was coming her way, and finally she’d be able to show Dave that she had so much more to give to this world than making lunches, running errands, folding his socks and meeting his physical needs. She wasn’t the easiest person to live with. She knew that, because he told her often. Finally, she could make him proud.

  The light was turning bluish-grey outside and the birds were chatting up a storm. Lara saved her document, then backed it up to her USB stick, and shut the laptop, leaving the stick on top of the lid. Later today she’d take it to the printers to print and bind copies to post to the judges. But right now, she needed sleep. Finally she could rest, knowing she’d done it.

  She yawned, the tidal wave of sleep deprivation washing over her and, just like that, her eyes closed.

  She awoke in the afternoon, slumped painfully over her desk. She felt confused and thirsty, as though she’d taken a sleeping tablet, and had a horrible pain in her neck and shoulder, her right arm numb. She began to cry with the pain, stumbling to the kitchen to find water and painkillers, willing her head to stop spinning. On the bench, near Dave’s favourite gold-rimmed coffee mug, he’d left a note.

  Hey sleepyhead. I tried to wake you but you were snoring like a navvy :) I’ll be home late again, sorry. Vicki’s helping me with an assignment. Thanks for putting up with me.

  Lara smiled, her head-spin slowing, and checked the time. It was already three o’clock. She needed to get to the printers right away if she was going to get this script into the post today.

  She staggered upstairs and showered, wetting her hair, washing away the dregs of exhaustion. Back downstairs, she grabbed her handbag and car keys, wincing as her sprained knuckle bent too quickly, and went to her laptop for the USB stick. But it wasn’t there. She must have knocked it off while she was sleeping. She searched the desk, moving the laptop, shoving her research books and reams of pixelated drafts of the script to the side, moving the chair and climbing under the desk.

  Nothing.

  Biting her lip in frustration—she was always losing things; it drove her mad—Lara turned on her laptop and rummaged in her handbag for another USB stick, taking calming breaths against the rising panic and the ticking clock. It was okay; she could just copy it from her hard drive. It wasn’t a big deal.

  Except it was a big deal, because she was clumsy and inefficient and must be going crazy because she couldn’t find the file. She went to the folder labelled Screenplay, but it was empty. She used the laptop’s search function, but nothing came up. It was ludicrous. It had to be there. It was there just ten hours ago.

  Wait. If she’d accidentally deleted it, it would be in the trash.

  But that too was empty.

  She continued searching for the USB stick long after the deadline had passed, distraught but consoling herself that when she found it she could submit the script the following year.

  Over the next few days, Dave helped her look, even emptying out all the rubbish in the bin and searching through it with rubber gloves, assuring her it would turn up.

  But it never did. Her screenplay was lost for good. Lara felt truly broken. How crazy and dysfunctional she must be if she couldn’t even print out a document and get it in the post. The darkness descended over her, and there it stayed for the longest time.

  27

  Lara

  The white broderie anglaise dress was sleeveless, cinched at the waist and came to just above the knee, and it allowed the light breeze skimming through the open driver’s-side window to caress Lara’s skin. Her hair was freshly washed, and drying in long ringlets. She smelled of roses—it might be old-fashioned, but she loved it. She pressed her lips together, tasting the vanilla lip gloss she’d applied. Her sandalled foot pressed down on the brake and she acknowledged a slight tremor in her hand as she cut the engine. There was soft light coming from the windows of Matteo’s cabin, and when she opened the car door she could hear gentle mandolin music playing inside. She stood, placing her feet firmly on the ground, smoothed down her dress and breathed.

  She still had time to back out.

  But she didn’t want to, even though she’d stared at her scar in the mirror for a long time and known there was no way Matteo wouldn’t notice it.

  Suddenly, she felt sick. What was wrong with her, organising a sex date?

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t a sex date. Maybe Matteo just wanted to share some food and get to know her better. Share more wine, talk more about their lives.

  Who was she kidding? It was a sex date.

  Oh, popsidoodles.

  The front door opened. The light from inside the cabin backlit Matteo’s body like a golden halo.

  ‘Lara, please come in,’ he said, striding to the car. He stopped in front of her, smiling broadly, holding out his hands for hers, his gaze running down her body. ‘You are beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her heart beat wildly under the dress. She registered his newly ironed cotton shirt and it touched her, thinking of him going to that trouble.

  He kissed her on each cheek before resting his forehead against her own. Her stomach flipped with nerves. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him once more. Toothpaste. Laundry powder on his cotton shirt. And something else. Raw sexiness, maybe.

  He lifted his head, his eyes dark and liquid. He traced his fingers lightly down her bare arm, sending waves of goosebumps spinning across her skin. Blood drained from her head, gathering force further down.

  She giggled. This situation was overwhelming.

  ‘You are nervous,’ he whispered.

  ‘No, not at all.’ She wanted that to be true.

  Then he kissed her, his lovely lips catching hers and holding them there, his beard rubbing against her skin and igniting new sensations. A small moan escaped her throat and his lips smiled against hers. He lifted his head and admired her as if she was the loveliest thing in the world.

  ‘Come inside,’ he said, his voice husky.

  She followed him, shimmied out of her sandals at the door and left them near his filthy work boots, and crossed the threshold. Inside the cabin, Matteo had lit a dozen candles, which flickered inside glass jars. A bunch of fresh pink flowers overflowed from a pottery vase on the tiny dining table. His bed was made with fresh white sheets.

  He scratched the back of his head, suddenly not as confident as he had seemed a moment ago. ‘I forgot to make dinner,’ he said, heading to the cupboard doors.

  ‘No, please, I don’t want dinner, really.’ Lara caught his arm and pulled him towards her.

  ‘Wine?
’ he suggested, but it came with a raised corner of his mouth, a knowing smile. He was just going through the motions.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, pulling him even closer, relieved to feel the sharp edge of manic power coursing through her, turning her into someone confident and stunning. She wanted this. She needed it.

  He gathered her to him, crushing her against his chest. One hand cupped the back of her neck as he kissed her again, this time harder, hungrier.

  She longed for him to take her out of her mind and into her body and bring her to the edge of madness and maybe even just over it, where she could spin in the light and the ecstasy and fly free of her past.

  Very gently, he inched her towards the bed. She went with him, her eyes closed, lost to his touch as his lips traced down the side of her neck and along her collarbone. When they reached the mattress, he broke their embrace, smiling, holding onto one of her hands as he flung back the sheets and sat on the edge with her standing in front of him.

  Her fingers wound through his soft curls as he kissed her hip, his hands holding the backs of her thighs, slowly raising the hem of her dress.

  Her fingers moved to the buttons on his soft shirt and worked them open, unwrapping his torso. Her palms moved over his hot skin.

  His lips nibbled their way around her navel.

  And then they found her scar. She froze.

  He leaned back, dropping her dress, his hands still on her body, and looked into her eyes. She held her breath, waiting for the questions. But he continued to hold her gaze with his.

  Before he could speak, she bent and locked her mouth onto his and climbed into his lap, her legs either side of his muscly thighs. She hadn’t come here to dredge up her past. She’d come here to feel even more amazing than she already did. She’d come here to cross the final threshold of moving on.

  He welcomed her, his hands running up her spine, sending bursts of pleasure over her skin. He murmured words of appreciation in Italian—words she couldn’t understand but which filled her with excitement. He was relishing her body.