by Fay Henson
An intense gushy feeling swept through me. How privileged I was to know such caring people, including the tall blond male lying there next to me. I checked the time on my phone, it was nine thirty-five. I decided to go and have a shower and get dressed before Joe woke up.
I carefully tipped myself out of the little bed, plucked the towel hanging from the hook on the back of the bedroom door then turned the key to let myself out into the hallway. The bathroom was free and this morning, someone had actually opened the window to air. I pulled the light cord to switch the light on and stopped to look at myself in the mirror. I knew that I’d been a fool, all done on the spur of the moment without a second thought.
I sat on the loo and stayed there for a while thinking. Back home, a lot of people had said how much they liked my natural long auburn hair. I hadn’t liked it that much when I was young but over time it literary grew on me especially as I hadn’t known many people with the same natural colour; it was a bit different. Mum had said that my grandma had auburn hair too.
And when I’d sometimes flicked through the magazines belonging to the hairdressers where I helped, I’d noticed there were loads of hair models also with long auburn hair and now it was too late; I’d gone and messed up. My hair was short, black and sticking up in every direction.
I’d seen girls and women go in and have a complete change of style and colour, all done for different reasons, and then the following week they were back again wanting to revert to their original colour. It wasn’t a quick process either. Sometimes the stylist would put a lot of light foils in to break up the colour and add more foils the next time and the next, or she’d use the strong colour strippers which could be a bit hit and miss. And if the style had been too short, no way could the hairstylist do much to change anything there, so like me, they had to live with it.
Now I had the extra worry about my infected tattoo. I had no idea what it’ll look like when or if it eventually healed. I loved Sora, but couldn’t stand seeing that mess on my wrist. I couldn’t help but cry, I’d been a right idiot.
I remembered I’d left Joe in the bedroom and wondered if he was still asleep. I had to pull myself together before he came looking for me. I didn’t want him to see me like this so I wiped away the sorry for myself tears and blew my nose before running the shower with great anticipation on how I’d manage keeping my horrid tattoo dry.
I opened the bedroom door to see Joe standing in his boxers near the window which he’d already opened and was pushing the shutter outwards allowing the warm morning air to drift in.
‘Good morning,’ he greeted. His lovely smile immediately replaced my negative spirit with one of gladness. Glad that he was there.
‘Bon jorno,’ I replied trying to appear bright and cheerful.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Tons better,’ I said, ‘those drugs are fantastic.’ I pointed to my packet of antibiotics.
I wasn’t properly dry and I was just about managing to hold my towel around me whilst closing the door with my foot. One slip and I’d be mortified at showing all of myself to him as I had no secret plan to accidently on purpose drop my towel; yet.
When Joe returned from having a shower I was already dressed. I’d been thinking about Lula and that guy last night, and since we’d seen him go into an alleyway, I was eager to suggest about going back there. Only to see, I told him.
‘I don’t suppose it’ll hurt if we take a look,’ he said.
‘Wonder where it leads?’ he asked. We were both standing at the entrance to the gap in between the two buildings.
‘One way to find out,’ I replied throwing him a oh please, can we? look.
The only way to have described it was that it was a disgusting narrow alleyway with a steep descent stinking of pee and pigeon poo. We had to be extremely careful not to slip on the damp and green mossy covered paving as we descended between the tall stone buildings either side. It was obvious that the sun hardly touched this alleyway and surely it was utterly pointless in hanging out clean washing on the lines above. It was pigeon paradise.
It became apparent from the cigarette ends and rubbish discarded that people used it as a cut-through to reach a street in view at the bottom. That street was also jam-packed with tall narrow buildings but at least the sun reached it. We strolled along the one-way street for a while.
‘Oh, come on Joe, this is pointless,’ I said, ‘let’s go back.’
‘I didn’t like to say anything.’ I ignored his comment.
So we turned and started strolling in the opposite direction when up ahead we could see someone stepping out through a doorway onto the street.
The guy who was then facing into the entrance was speaking to someone. A woman’s voice could be heard and then a child’s.
‘Hey, do you reckon that’s the guy?’ Joe asked.
‘Could be,’ I said clutching at straws, but I didn’t really have a clue.
‘Umm, and from here, maybe there is a bit of a resemblance of who we saw in the gardens last night,’ said Joe, ‘come on, let’s be tourists and go up past them.’
I took out my phone like we were looking at google maps and Joe was pointing in different directions as if we were searching for somewhere. I looped my arm with Joe’s and as we got a bit closer, their tense voices could be heard quite distinctly. Every now and then, a little girl interrupted them whilst she played with a dolls pram she’d dragged outside until, who I assumed was her mother, said something and the little girl immediately sat on the step in silence.
The couple were so engrossed with their discussion long after we’d gone by, I actually didn’t think they’d even realised that we or anyone else had walked past.
When we reached the top of the street, we turned and watched the guy bend down and kiss the little girl on the head, hug the woman and left via the stinky alleyway.
‘You’ll never guess,’ Joe said with a look like he was trying to tease me.
‘Oh go on then,’ I said, ‘what juicy gossip have you discovered?
‘They’re not Italian.’
‘Really?’ I said, ‘that’s not quite what I expected you to say.’
‘And which now makes sense to me,’ he said, ‘why I couldn’t get what him and Lula were saying to each other last night in the gardens.’
‘But what language is it? Where are they from?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘So; Lula, that guy, woman and little girl are all connected somehow,’ I said, ‘and that could mean then, that when I stayed the first night with Lula, Vico her boyfriend and another guy, it couldn’t have just been Italian I was hearing. I’d never had known, it all sounds the same to me.’
14
What a whopper
We were back in the room again and I was sitting on the bed with my legs crossed in a world of my own sketching Sora with her new short and dark spiky hair. This time I’d sketched her with tears in her beautiful eyes because she was also regretting having her long auburn hair cut. It took me a while before I realised that Joe had said something to me.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘Do you want to go and see the last horse race trial this evening?’ asked Joe, ‘or would you prefer to go to the main event tomorrow?’
‘Or both?’ I replied.
‘If you’re up to it, sure.’
‘Nah, only kidding,’ I said, ‘I think I can wait now until the biggie tomorrow, I feel good though.’
As I was speaking, even then there were sounds of drum beats and chanting voices somewhere in the distance.
‘Tell you what, I wouldn’t mind a plate of pasta this evening, I think I’ve eaten quite enough pizza for a while.’
‘Yeah me too,’ he said patting his firm abs.
‘Listen, it’s not even twelve o’clock,’ he said, ‘fancy hiring a bike for a couple of hou
rs?’
I was just about to reply.
‘You can ride a bike can’t you?’ The cheeky devil, I thought. I playfully thumped him, leaving him with a dead arm and jumped off the bed in case I got one back. He moaned with the pain and rubbed it frantically, but I knew he was just fooling around. We put some footwear on again and went out.
‘I’ll ask for some information in that shop over there,’ he said, ‘see if they know where we can hire a couple of bikes, come on.’
We went over to a newsagents and Joe went on inside whilst I stayed outside to look at the racks of Siena souvenirs on display. I’d better think about what I could buy for Zoe and Em, also I was sure Mum would have liked something from there too. Well, there didn’t seem to be a short supply of all the usual stuff like T-shirts, mugs, peaked caps, fridge magnets as well as amazing pictures of the horse race, I guessed was last years. I’d think about what I could get them, I still had time. Joe came back outside.
‘Apparently Siena has a bike-sharing scheme, called something like SiPedala and the woman told me that there’s a place where we can go to organise the hire,’ he said, ‘but they could be closed today because it’s a bank holiday here.’
‘Oh, a bank holiday?’ I said, ‘you’d never think it with all these shops open.’
‘But she also said that there’s an app which I can download onto my phone instead, if they’re shut.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
Miraculously we found a place to park our bums and went through the process of downloading the app successfully. Then Joe managed to locate the places in Siena where we could find the bikes and also how to pay online. I was glad he knew what he was doing. I’d had probably given up.
‘Well, there’s actually a place near the Fortress it says here, which incidentally is close to where we were watching Lula and the guy last night.’
I hadn’t noticed the Fortress but that was probably because it was dark and I was more intent on seeing what she was up to handing over that money.
‘It also tells us that there are three bikes left available at that place,’ he said, ‘shall we go for it?’
‘What ya waiting for.’
When we reached the bike collection point, there were only two left, the ones Joe had luckily reserved online. The bikes were very modern-looking and I liked the grey baskets on the back.
‘Where are the gears, Joe?’ I asked whilst standing astride my large white bike, ‘and what does this do?
‘Hang on a minute,’ he said whilst reading some instructions, ‘OK, I understand now.’
Joe explained a couple of things to me, and one which really appealed to me was the fact that somehow the bike electronically helped you go up hills. All you had to do was press a button when the power was needed. Bit different to the one I had a few years ago.
‘Cool,’ I said.
Although it was a national bank holiday in Italy, nobody seemed to stay at home, and it struck me just how many car drivers were trying to find a place to park. There was no chance in this part, it was jam-packed.
Before we set off on our bikes, we pushed them over to an area near a kiosk and a bar where groups of people were looking at the view. From there, on the other side of a small valley you could see the massive black and white marble cathedral with its tower and to the left there was a huge brown coloured church. It was a good enough place as any to take a selfie with Joe; I got out my phone and hoped he wouldn’t mind.
I took a shot of the view then I turned to put my back to the cathedral across the way and sidled closer to him at the same time as he turned to see where I’d gone. I moved my arm to get the phone in a good position in front of us.
‘Come on,’ I said.
‘If you must,’ he sighed. I sensed he forced a smile.
‘Sure it’s OK?’
‘Yes, go on.’
So I took the shot.
‘Look, it’s come out nice,’ I said, ‘Mum and Dad would like to see that one...’ and just as I was saying that, I had a terrible feeling creep over me fixating me to the spot.
‘but?’ he said.
‘but, they can’t, not yet, they haven’t seen my hair,’ I said. ‘What am I gonna do?’
We were still leaning against the wall and he put his arm around my shoulder.
‘We’ll get round it somehow, now let me see this photo.’
I handed him my phone so he could see it properly but by then, the phone’s display had returned to a different screen. He swiped the screen to get to the menu and touched the gallery symbol. Oh no, I thought.
It wasn’t difficult to see the recent pictures I’d taken, and from where I was standing I could spy the one I’d taken of the guys putting up the barriers, and the one of him I’d taken on our first day when the coach had stopped at that little town. I moved only my eyes to look at Joe and to check his expression. I could’ve died.
‘That’s not on, Caylin.’ Joe used a serious and disappointed tone.
He was looking at the shot I’d taken of him only that morning when he was asleep next to me.’
‘I’m sorry...’
‘Please don’t do that.’
My heart felt very heavy with the fear I’d gone and blown it. A few moments ago I was worrying about what Mum and Dad would say about my hair, and now, I was in a turmoil over upsetting Joe. I had to remedy the situation. He was about to delete the photos of himself. Why? I wondered. I snatched my phone out of his hand, to stop him.
‘And please don’t you do that,’ I said angrily, ‘I like how you look, I like your blond hair especially in the morning and I like your pendant.’
He could take that how he wanted.
‘And I like being with you.’
There, I’d said it.
Two or three older-looking tourists weren’t standing that far away from us, and I caught one of the women’s eyes and going by her sympathetic expression, I guessed they’d heard everything; how embarrassing. That put me in a bit of a strop.
‘We’d better go,’ I said as I haughtily yanked my bike off the path and onto the road followed by Joe. He caught hold of my handlebars stopping me from going any further.
‘Look, it doesn’t matter,’ he said, ‘ I just don’t like photos of myself that’s all.’
‘Well, you’ve nothing to worry about, you look perfectly fine to me,’ I replied.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘girls love to be with tall guys if that’s what bothers you.’
I had to stop speaking and digging myself deeper into a hole at the expense of making him feel more uncomfortable; he might not have even been thinking about his height.
‘Come on,’ I said putting my bag into the basket, ‘which way shall we go?’
‘Hum, I think it’ll be best if we try to avoid Piazza del Campo, bound to be chaotic again,’ he said, ‘let’s go past those market stalls and stadium over there and then round to the left after that brown church and see where it takes us.’
It’d been ages since I’d ridden a bike, so I was quite wobbly and giggly.
‘Don’t forget to keep on the right,’ he shouted from behind.
I’d forgotten about that; I was more intent on wondering how my bum looked.
We’d cycled past a place like a bus station on the right-hand side and on the left was a huge hotel and next to that were loads of market stalls in a park area. But we didn’t stop, we went off the road to the right and slipped down a narrow street. From then, I spent most of my time laughing and ringing my bell, warning people I was coming.
We just kept on peddling around all the different streets without any particular aim, some even the wrong way and just enjoying the freedom and ease of getting around. I started to recognise where we were and I slowed down and then stopped. Joe pulled up alongside me.
‘What’s wrong?’
&nb
sp; ‘I sort of recognise this street, I’m not sure if this is where I stayed with Lula and Vico,’ I said, ‘let me see.’
The club flags were of the design I recognised, orange and white with a unicorn. I let my bike roll along some more until I could see the parking area which was definitely where I remembered Vico had parked his car. Every parking space was filled but it was impossible for me to describe the type of car he had. I recalled that the apartment was in a building up the road from the parking area, so we had to be close to it.
‘I think this is it.’ I looked up to the opened first floor kitchen and bathroom windows and where my All Stars had been hidden. The downstairs wooden door was ajar slightly and leaning with my bike, I pushed it open some more. The smell of the unkempt apartment lingered inside the hallway.
‘Look at this,’ Joe whispered. He was pointing to the door buzzers fixed to the outside stone wall. There were two, one blank with no name, I guessed an empty apartment, and the other had two hand-printed surnames, one underneath the other.
‘V. Lorenzini,’ he read, ‘definitely Italian.’
It sounded nice the way he pronounced Lorenzini, kind of swirly.