Three Gold Coins

by Josephine Moon

  With her free hand, she folded her scarf over on itself on the bed and laid it next to her open bag.

  ‘Any word from Dave?’ she asked quietly, almost not wanting to know the answer.

  ‘Haven’t seen him,’ Sunny said firmly.

  ‘Well then, there’s no reason for me to stay on at all if he’s gone away.’

  ‘It’s too early to say that for sure. You know what he’s like. He’s a plotter. And you know what the lawyer said: disappear for as long as possible.’

  ‘I miss the kids,’ she said, tears filling her eyes and blurring her vision.

  ‘I know,’ Sunny said gently. ‘They miss you too. Let’s Facetime tomorrow, okay? Maybe Hudson will join in if both Mum and I are there too. We’ll all talk to you and you’ll feel better just seeing everyone’s faces.’

  Lara sniffed. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Just stay where you are. Everything will be better in the morning. Give Matteo another chance. And, honestly, it sounds like Samuel might need you too.’

  Lara hid in her room, her washing and packing half completed. Her limbs were heavy with indecision, her chest tight. She’d thought she’d be on a train this evening. But now she didn’t know.

  Matteo texted.

  Can we talk?

  She couldn’t blame Matteo for frightening her with the gun. But she couldn’t yet think of him the way she had before, as a gentleman who cared for his elderly uncle despite his family’s disapproval. He had seemed the opposite to Dave. But now he was also someone who handled guns and was prepared to kill. Those things were difficult to reconcile.

  A cool breeze skittered through the room and brought goosebumps to her skin. She lifted up the duvet and covered her face, closing her eyes, feeling the weight of the fabric on her forehead and nose, her warm breath quickly turning stuffy.

  ‘Lara?’

  She froze, listening.

  ‘Lara? Are you there?’ It was Samuel’s voice from downstairs, calling up the stairwell. She never closed her bedroom door; there was no need. Samuel wasn’t able to ascend the stairs, so she had the whole top floor to herself.

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, swinging her legs out of bed and padding to the top stair. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Could you come down here for a moment, please?’ he asked.

  Her bare feet made tiny sounds on the tiles as she descended. Samuel was standing at the foot of the stairs, resting on his cane, looking painfully upwards to watch her. She came to the bottom and put her hand on his arm. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I…’ His face looked drawn, the skin pinched around his blue eyes.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ she said, and helped him to his room. He sat on the edge of his bed, and she sat in the chair nearby. He had the same look on his face he’d had that day in Rome when he’d asked her to help him.

  ‘I’m sorry for upsetting you,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I forget, you know, what women…or young women…’ He rubbed his hand across his mouth. ‘I know the thing with the wolves must have been shocking, and I should have said something different, to make you feel better. I was never good with words with my daughters and it seems I’m not much better now. I’m not like wine.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I didn’t improve with age.’ His eyes sparkled.

  ‘Ha! Good one.’ She smiled. ‘It’s okay, really. It’s not you. It’s me.’ That made her giggle. ‘I know that’s a line people use when they’re breaking up with someone, but it’s really true in this case. I’m easily upset, easily thrown off course.’ She tapped her temple. ‘I struggle.’

  He nodded slowly, as if now understanding better. ‘I hope you’re not breaking up with me,’ he said softly. ‘I want you to stay here, if you can. I’ve come to rely on you and enjoy your company, but if you’re leaving because of Matteo, or because of me and the way I blunder on…’

  Sunny had been right—Samuel needed her. It felt…wonderful. Lara held up her hand. ‘It’s okay. I’m not leaving.’

  ‘You’re not?’ His face relaxed.

  ‘No, I’m not. I like it here. I think Tuscany has been good for me.’

  Samuel nodded knowingly. ‘It has that effect on a lot of people.’

  ‘I don’t know how long I’ll stay, but for now, this is where I should be.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Lara felt herself glow with an unexpected sense of belonging. ‘You’re welcome.’

  34

  It had been a week since the disastrous sex date. Lara had not replied to Matteo’s text messages. He was confused, understandably, and wanted to see her. But she didn’t even know how to start explaining, either to him or herself. She’d spoken several times to Sunny and Eliza, and Sunny had been right: seeing them all on the screen and having a big long chat—even with Hudson!—had done wonders for her spirits. Although their worst fears hadn’t been realised and Dave hadn’t appeared, they said it would make everyone feel better if she stayed where she was, hidden away in the Tuscan hills.

  ‘Just enjoy yourself,’ Sunny had enthused. ‘Who knows when you’ll get the chance again to be overseas?’

  ‘Yes, you deserve it,’ Eliza chimed in, though she sounded a little jittery—but that was probably just the slight delay in audio. ‘After everything you’ve been through, you really need this retreat.’

  Lara had to admit that it felt right to be here. She would just take it a day at a time.

  Matteo came to the villa to fortify the goat pen, and she made sure she was out of sight, busy cleaning upstairs. But he texted again.

  Please, can we talk?

  She didn’t know where to begin. It was all so big.

  Lara had spent years in therapy learning about the profile of abusers like Dave. They were suave, perfect on the outside, and role models in the community. Sometimes they even volunteered in areas where they could find their victims, such as in charities for survivors of domestic violence, or children’s charities—or animal shelters. They dressed well and helped old ladies across the road. They would love-bomb you in the beginning, then withdraw affection and make you think you were crazy. They said you were imagining things, that you were being ridiculous, that you always forgot things. This was Dave’s trademark too—just as described.

  Gaslighting.

  The gaslighting was well established before he began physically hurting her. It took years after she’d escaped him for her to piece it together. Dave was a craftsman.

  And then there was the sex, the ‘games’ he’d wanted her to play, making her feel immature and silly if she didn’t like it. Childish, he called her. He intimated that he could find his pleasure elsewhere if he wanted. So she gave in, suffering his hand tight on her shoulder, or throat, or across her face, blinding her, or pushing her face down into the pillow as he forced his way inside her. He only climaxed when she cried. It only stopped when she cried.

  He explained to her that psychological studies showed over and over that all men had these desires. It was totally normal. He was a psychologist! He knew what was healthy and what wasn’t. He loved her.

  Was it true, she asked Constance, that all men had rape fantasies?

  Not just a fantasy, Lara. It was rape. Full stop.

  It made her sick now, remembering it.

  She couldn’t explain all that to Matteo. She could barely explain it to herself.

  Samuel’s confession that he wanted Lara to stay had deeply affected her. It must have been difficult for him. She wanted to nurture him, rather than just do the basics, so recipe research became her new favourite pastime, even when she’d technically clocked off from work.

  Late into the night she would lie there, the glow of the phone screen keeping her company as she scrolled through mouth-watering pictures on Pinterest. She found recipes for bulbs of fennel, brushed with chicken stock and roasted in a deep baking dish, braised until they were brown, tantalising juices escaping. A hearty rust-coloured lentil soup, with fire-roasted tomatoes floating on top, decorated with s
prigs of fresh thyme. Handmade focaccia, browned around the edges, olive oil and rosemary sprigs on top. So many of the recipes she found were based on ‘peasant’ food, once a staple of working families who relied on dense nutrition in economical packages, and now on-trend, with broths and cheap cuts of meat featuring prominently.

  In Fiotti she wandered the provedores’ stores and picked fresh ingredients to take home and experiment with. She went through the hundreds of books lining the shelves near the fireplace in the living room downstairs, and found battered, yellowed, musty recipe books in Italian, which she couldn’t read but still enjoyed turning the pages. Many of the old books had grainy pictures in black and white. She loved to find pages that were stuck together, splattered with real food made by a real person who’d cooked just over there in the kitchen with the pans hanging from the walls and ceiling, a chopping board in constant use.

  The recipes she saw in these books made her hungry. But it wasn’t just a hunger for food. It was a hunger for connection, love, family. Putting food on the table was a great act of love. When she’d been with Dave, it was an act of service, one she did to earn her keep.

  She sat on the edge of the fireplace in the kitchen, facing the dining table, and imagined preparing the recipes in the books in her hands. The huge boards of antipasto, with the herbed balls of bocconcini, the rolls of shiny prosciutto and salami, the mounds of khaki and black olives, the fire-roasted capsicums and the deep purple figs. She could see the bruschetta with its finely chopped tomatoes and flat-leafed parsley, a drizzle of golden olive oil on top. The main courses might have included a rich mushroom risotto, just like the one in the heavy, musty book she held now, alongside meatballs in burgundy sauce, and spezzatino con patate e piselli—a thick beef stew with potatoes and peas—to fill the workers’ bellies. For dessert? Tiramisu, of course. Who didn’t love coffee-flavoured sweet mascarpone, preferably laced with liqueur?

  Food and family went hand in hand. Bonding together over meals. She ran her palm over the matte texture of the pages in front of her. Food connected people all over the world, in every city and village and home. Samuel had lost his feasts and his family. She wanted to get them back for him, somehow. Lara was so supported by her mother and sister, she knew she’d simply shrivel up and die like an untended flower if they left her.

  She began to form a menu in her mind for a dinner party. She had no one to invite other than Samuel. And the food budget he’d given her wouldn’t cover a banquet. But that part was easy; she could help with that. She’d be happy to pay for all the food if she could organise something special for him. A surprise party, perhaps. A dinner here in this villa that, according to Matteo, used to hold many such feasts, laughter and love spilling out the windows and doors. Samuel had probably not known anything like it since Assunta’s death fifteen years ago. Fifteen years. That was a bloody long time to be without connection and celebration.

  This was a house built for big families.

  She’d known it the first morning she’d woken up in this house. It was not a house for a lonely old man and his badante. So as she was sitting there, hard red bricks beneath her, a fireplace with no ashes in it because it hadn’t been used in so long, a copper frying pan hanging on the wall next to her, reflecting the light from the chandelier over the dining table, her gloominess disappeared, replaced by this new vision. She knew then why she’d been so drawn to Samuel when she’d seen him in that street in Rome. He’d needed her, but the truth was she’d needed him too.

  35

  Samuel

  Samuel could see plain as day that the incident with the wolves had damaged any early romance between Lara and Matteo. It had been a week, and still she was hiding in her room, another recipe book from the library shelves tucked under her arm as she’d taken the stairs two at a time at the sound of Matteo’s truck. Samuel pondered this as Matteo and Henrik spread goat manure around Henrik’s rows of vegetables, the black pellets spilling from large hessian bags, raining down on young green leaves of eggplant and capsicum. Henrik wasn’t the greatest gardener that Samuel had ever seen, but he’d been true to his word and had been here almost every day since they’d met, slowly building up terraces of reddish-brown earth and transplanting seedlings.

  Matteo stood and stretched his back, then left Henrik to finish up, coming to Samuel’s side, dragging empty hessian bags beside him. ‘The f-f-farm has more manure than it can d-d-deal with,’ he said. ‘At least it’s going to a good home here.’

  Samuel eased himself down onto the bench seat that Matteo had kindly brought over for him, resting his broken wrist in his lap. ‘I’m surprised they’re not a fully permaculture farm,’ he said. ‘It seems like that would be an easy thing to do with so much free labour around in people like Henrik.’

  ‘I agree,’ Matteo said, sitting beside him. ‘I g-g-get frustrated with the limitations there and I would like to see it grow and diversify.’

  The two men sat in silence a moment, Samuel enjoying the scent of fresh earth and straw coming from the garden terraces, and even the goat manure. Goats, being herbivores, had manure rich in earthy smells, like any good compost really.

  ‘Is Lara here today?’ Matteo asked casually, eyes straight ahead on Henrik, who was using his rake to spread the pellets.

  Samuel scratched under his chin, thinking quickly. ‘She’s upstairs. She’s been studying recipes from the old books in the library.’

  Matteo nodded and kicked out his muddy work boots to stretch his legs, leaning back in the seat. ‘I’m having time off this week,’ he said. ‘It’s a s-s-slower time after mating season and before winter.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Trip up north.’

  ‘North?’ Samuel felt a twinge of worry. Lara’s question the other week about who had named this villa had stirred up uneasy feelings.

  ‘I want to visit some farms and cheesemakers along the way. I am researching, in truth. Thinking about career options.’

  Samuel waited. He had the same sense he’d had when his now son-in-law Marco had come to see him, wearing a formal shirt and a slightly crooked tie, requesting a special meeting to ask permission to marry Giovanna. Samuel continued to watch Henrik, one brace of his overalls swinging loose behind his shoulder, now heading to the tap to turn on the water and wet down the fertiliser.

  ‘If I could c-c-convince her to come, would you let Lara accompany me for a couple of days? I know tomorrow is her day off; I could take her with me and she could see some of the country, then I can p-put her on a bus back to you on Monday. I just thought…’ Matteo shrugged. ‘She’s on holiday, you know.’

  Samuel stroked the skin of his throat, now so loose. Sometimes when he looked in the mirror those folds of skin reminded him of a Brahman cow.

  ‘That would be fine,’ he said.

  ‘Really? Thank you.’

  Henrik came back with the hose and began to water the vegetables, a wide mist of fine spray catching the sun and casting rainbows over the seedlings.

  ‘Are you going to visit Carlo, by any chance?’ Samuel asked, as inconsequentially as he could. The guilt of unfinished business nagged at him.

  Matteo shifted in his seat, signalling they’d entered tricky territory. He was a good Italian boy, Matteo. Of course he would visit his relative while he was up north.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen him. He’s been up in the mountains years now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Samuel agreed.

  Carlo. Once a treasured in-law and friend. Samuel missed him and he needed to resolve their outstanding matter before…Well, neither of them was getting any younger. The opportunity to make amends could be taken out of their hands at any moment. He wasn’t sure he believed in premonitions or visions, but he’d been dogged by a feeling of doom lately. Time was slipping away. Death was coming for him. So be it. He would stare Death in the face and quell its enthusiasm. He wouldn’t lie down for Death. Instead, he would take this chance to mend som
e old broken fences.

  He could ask Matteo to take him north so he could visit Carlo in person but, to his utter disgust, he truly didn’t think he could make the trip without collapsing. And right now, he wanted that wrist to heal so he could get back to milking his own damn goats; he couldn’t take the chance that his health would be made worse by a road trip.

  His only consolation was that he might be able to help Lara and Matteo, two young lovebirds who had flown off course, to find their way back together.

  ‘Actually,’ Samuel said, ‘why don’t you take Lara with you for the week? Then she could really see some of Italy.’

  Matteo turned to look at him, his raised eyebrows and a small smile showing his disbelief. ‘She hasn’t spoken to me since the whole wolf thing,’ he said, shaking his head, his smile vanishing. ‘I will be lucky to convince her to come for a couple of days, but a week?’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Samuel said. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘But even if you c-could conv-v-vince her, you still need her here to look after you.’

  Samuel’s pride prickled at this even though he knew Matteo was right. His wrist was halfway there, but he wouldn’t be able to do enough for himself. And then there was the highly disagreeable thought that he could have another fall and no one would be there to help him. Also, he still couldn’t milk the goats.

  Henrik began to sing quietly to himself while he hosed the plants. To Samuel, he looked like an overgrown teenager at odds with the world, determined to do his own thing.

  ‘There’s always Henrik,’ Samuel said quietly, leaning close to Matteo. ‘Could the farm spare him for a week? Maybe he would like to spend more time here and really get into his study of bacteria or whatever it is he’s trying to do.’

  Matteo jiggled his knee from side to side, his thoughtful frown turning into a smile. In a conspiratorial voice he said, ‘You know what? He’s not very good in the factory. Domenica is worried he will break something expensive. She’d probably be happy to have him away for a while.’