Flirting with Italian Read online

  That if you leave a comment I’ll be marking it out of ten. Or worse, that if you don’t leave a comment telling me how much you’re missing me I’ll give you cyber detention.

  Who was she kidding? No fifteen-year-old was going to waste time reading this. She was just going through the motions. A week or two and she could forget it. Not that the blog was helping. It was hard not to think about Tom back in the staffroom, his smile as he looked up and saw her …

  She sighed, reread what she’d written so far.

  … cyber detention.

  You can relax. I’ll take it as read.

  Before we get to the boring stuff …

  Boring was good. The sooner they switched off the better.

  … boring stuff, however, I thought you’d like to see where I live.

  The street is very narrow, cobbled and so steep that it has a step every couple of metres. It’s inaccessible to cars, although that doesn’t stop boys on Vespas—a danger to life and limb—using it as a shortcut.

  I live on the top floor of the yellow house on the left. No need for a workout in the gym. The hill and the stairs will keep me fit.

  It had been raining when she’d arrived and she’d been soaked through by the time she’d hauled her luggage up from the street. It hadn’t occurred to her to carry a raincoat; she was going to Rome, city of eternal sunshine. Ha!

  And she was out of shape. The stairs might kill her …

  I have a tiny terrace. The geranium is a gift from my new students (you might want to make a note of that), who are all extremely tidy …

  More than tidy. Well groomed, fashion-conscious, even the boys—especially the boys—with their designer-label wardrobes.

  … well behaved and produce their homework on time.

  A comment guaranteed to have her students switching off en masse.

  This is the view.

  A fabulous panorama of the city. Domes, red tiled roofs and the Victor Emmanuelle Memorial like a vast wedding cake at its heart. It was a view made to share while you drank an early morning cup of coffee, or a glass of wine in the evening, with the city lights spread out below you.

  Hard not to imagine sharing it with Tom, although he hated travelling. Getting him on the cross Channel ferry for a weekend in France had been hard work.

  It was a little soon to have made any progress in the ‘Italian lover’ department so, for the moment, she and her mug of cocoa had it all to themselves.

  You’re right, there are loads of churches. The dome in the distance on the left is St Peter’s, by the way. In case you’re interested. And this is the Mercato Esquilino, the local market where I shop for food.

  There’s a lot of stuff that you won’t find in Maybridge market. These zucchini flowers—courgettes to you—for instance. I bought some and put them in a bowl because the yellow is so cheery …

  She deleted cheery. She did not want anyone to think she needed cheering up.

  … so gorgeous, but the locals eat them stuffed with a dab of soft cheese and deep-fried in a feather-light batter.

  And, for the girls, especially the ones in the staffroom, this is Pietro, who sells the most sublime dolcelatte and mortadella.

  The food here is fabulous and I am going to need every one of those four flights of stairs if I’m not to burst out of my new clothes.

  Oh, yes. The clothes.

  And suddenly she was enjoying herself.

  She’d been met at the airport by Pippa, the school secretary, a young Englishwoman living in Rome with her Italian boyfriend. It was Pippa who had found her the apartment on the top floor of a crumbling old house. Apparently it belonged to the boyfriend’s family. Sarah’s first reaction on seeing it had been, ‘What?’

  It was a world away from her modern flat in Maybridge but, having been in Rome for a couple of weeks, she realised how lucky she was to get something so central. And she’d quickly fallen in love with its odd-shaped rooms, high ceilings and view.

  Pippa had introduced her to the transport system, shown her around and, having taken one look at her wardrobe, warned her that the cheap and cheerful tops, skirts and trousers that had been ‘teacher uniform’ at Maybridge High would not cut the mustard in Rome. Here, quality, rather than quantity, mattered.

  New job. New life. New clothes seemed the obvious extension and Pippa had happily introduced her to cut-price, Italian style. Discount designer outlets that specialised in Armani, Versace, Valentino. Fabulous fabrics and exquisite tailoring that looked all the better for the weight that had dropped off her in the past few months. And, of course, a pair of genuine designer sunglasses.

  Her knock-offs from Maybridge market wouldn’t fool anyone here, especially not her students, who wore cashmere sweaters and designer label everything with catwalk style.

  Italians are incredibly elegant, even in the classroom, and my first task was a complete revamp of my working wardrobe. It was tough, but I know you’ll appreciate my sacrifice.

  Spending so much on clothes had come as a bit of a shock to the system but her savings account was no longer burdened with the price of her dream wedding dress. And handing over her credit card to pay for her spending spree had slammed the door on any lingering hope that Tom might come back. Or that her sacrifice in giving up her job so that he could return to Maybridge High would bring him to his senses.

  It was too late for him to be having regrets.

  There is also a rule that no one should come to Italy without buying at least one pair of shoes. I bought these. And these. And these.

  She stretched out her foot to admire the sandal she was wearing. Well, she wasn’t on holiday. One pair was never going to be enough and, just to make the point, she picked up her phone and took a photograph of it.

  As you can see, there is a lot more to Rome than a load of old ruins, but since you’re expecting churches and I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, this is Santa Maria del Popolo. You’ll probably recognise it from one of the gorier bits in the film Angels & Demons. Rome, boring? I think not.

  The blog was probably not quite what the Head had in mind, Sarah thought, smiling to herself. With luck he’d remove the link from the school website sooner rather than later. Then, as she loaded up the pictures, she wondered if Tom would bother to read it. Whether Louise could resist taking a look.

  Those shoes would provoke envy in the heart of any woman. Especially one whose ankles were swelling …

  Several of her ex-colleagues had made a point of texting Sarah to let her know that Louise was pregnant, but not before Tom had told her himself. Wanting her to know before she heard it from anyone else. As if it would hurt any less.

  She gave herself a mental bad-girl slap as she clicked ‘post’, but there were limits to her nobility.

  Finally, she checked her email. There was one from her mother, attaching a photograph of her dad being presented with an award from work for twenty-five years service. Another from Lex, who wanted to know how she was progressing in her search for a dark-eyed Italian lover.

  Short answer; she’d had no time.

  Faced with a slightly different syllabus to the one she’d been teaching, getting to know her students and finding her way around a strange city, she didn’t have a spare moment. She’d even taken a rain check on Pippa’s offer to go clubbing with her and her boyfriend, and she replied to Lex, telling him so.

  Or perhaps she was just being cowardly. Getting back into dating was hard. She couldn’t imagine being with someone else. Kissing, touching, being touched by anyone else.

  There were a couple of emails from colleagues at Maybridge High, asking how she was coping. One wanting to know when she could come and stay. The other wanting to know when she’d be home for the weekend.

  She wrote cheery replies saying, ‘any time’ to the first, ‘no idea’ to the second, telling them both about the shopping, sightseeing and her new colleagues, several of whom had invited her to spend her weekends with their families.

  It was kind of them
but the last thing she wanted was for her social life to revolve around work.

  Been there. Done that. Using the T-shirt as a duster.

  It wasn’t as if there was any shortage of things to see and do.

  Her degree might be in History but the Romans, beyond Julius Caesar, Hadrian’s Wall and Antony and Cleopatra, were pretty much a blank page and her spare time had been spent being a total tourist, sucking up the sights, taking pictures.

  But Lucia had been on her mind a lot and on Saturday she was going to visit the village of Isola del Serrone.

  Sarah had no intention of revealing her identity. She just wanted to know what had happened to Lucia. If she had a good life. And, if she was still alive, that she was well cared for. Her family owed her that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS

  This weekend, dear readers, I abandoned culture, history, the familiarity of the city and took a train ride out into the Italian countryside.

  It’s a bit unnerving, buying a ticket in a foreign language. I’m working on my Italian and I can ask the right questions. ‘Un’andata e ritorno, per favore …’

  Unfortunately, I don’t understand the answers. It’s like listening to a radio that’s slipped off the station. My ear isn’t tuned in to the sounds, the inflections of the language. I have to listen ten times as hard and even then I’m only catching one word in five.

  Somehow, though, I caught the right train and made it safely to my destination.

  MATTEO DI SERRONE was furious. Isabella di Serrrone might be the darling of the Italian cinema, but right at that moment she was no favourite of his.

  He’d planned an early escape from Rome, but had instead become embroiled in his cousin’s latest indiscretions when she’d arrived on his doorstep with an army of paparazzi in her wake.

  She knew how he loathed the media. They’d all but destroyed his mother and they would do the same to her if she gave them half a chance.

  Now, instead of a quiet early morning drive to Isola del Serrone, a day in the vineyards checking that everything was ready for the harvest, he was in her limousine, playing Pied Piper to her escort, with his sulky teenage brother for company.

  ‘Cheer up, Stephano. You, at least, are getting something out of this,’ Matteo said.

  ‘Stop acting the hard man. You know you’d do anything for Bella,’ came the swift reply.

  He glanced at the boy. Made-up, in wig and dark glasses, with his cousin’s coat thrown around his shoulders, he was pretty enough to be mistaken for her. Pretty enough to have fooled the following pack of photographers.

  ‘Not quite anything,’ Matteo said and, as he grinned, the tension leached out of him. ‘I promise you that, not even for Bella, would I be prepared to wear lipstick.’

  *

  The mountains towered, clear and sharp, rising dramatically from the valley floor. Sarah looked up at them, peaceful, unthreatening in the sunlight, and tried to imagine them in the middle of winter. Covered in snow. The haunt of wolves and bears.

  Unless, of course, Lex had made it up about the wolves and bears. Which was entirely possible.

  Early in October, the sun was still strong enough for her to be glad of the straw hat she wore to keep it off her face. She paused by the bridge to look down at the river, trickling over stones, very low after the long hot summer. Took her time as she walked up the hill towards the village, looking around her for a glimpse of a familiar wall. The ruins of a once grand house.

  Steps led up to a piazza, golden in the sunlight, shaded with trees. There were small shops, a café where the aproned proprietor was setting out tables and a church that seemed far too large for such a small place.

  It was pretty enough to be a film set and she stood in the centre of the square, turning in a slow circle, taking photographs with her phone, making sure that she missed nothing.

  As she came to a standstill she realised that she was being stared at by the man wearing the apron.

  ‘Buon giorno,’ she called.

  He stared at her for a moment, then nodded briefly before retreating inside.

  She shrugged. Not exactly an arms-wide welcome and, instead of crossing the square to have a coffee, ask him about the village, she walked towards the church. It was possible that the priest would be her best bet. She’d scanned a copy of Lucia’s photograph onto her netbook before framing one for Lex, but she didn’t have it with her. She wasn’t planning on flashing it around. But she could at least describe the house.

  It was dark inside after the glare of the sun, but she could see that several people were waiting in the pews by the confessional boxes. Clearly the priest was going to be busy for a while.

  It was a pretty church, beautifully painted, with a number of memorial plaques on the walls. Maybe one of them would bear the name Lucia? It would be a starting place.

  As she looked around, a woman arranging flowers in a niche by a statue of the Madonna stared at her over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. Clearly the village wasn’t used to strangers and, feeling like an intruder, she decided to come back later when the church was quiet. Once outside, she followed a path that continued up the hill.

  High ground.

  That was what she needed. Somewhere she could look down on the village, see everything.

  She continued upwards, passed houses tucked away behind high walls that offered only the occasional glimpse of a tiny courtyard, a pot of bright flowers, through wrought-iron gates. Above her there were trees, the promise of open vistas and she pressed on until she found the way unexpectedly blocked by a wall that looked a lot newer than the path.

  There was a gate set into it but, as she reached for the handle, assuming that it was to keep goats from wandering into the village, it was flung open by a young man with a coat bundled under his arm.

  It was hard to say which of them was most startled but he recovered first and, with a slightly theatrical bow, said, ‘Il mio piacese, signora!’

  ‘No problem …’ Then, as he held the gate wide for her. ‘Thank you.’ No … ‘Grazie.’

  ‘My pleasure, signora Inglese. Have a good day,’ he said, grinning broadly, clearly delighted with life.

  She watched him bound down the steps. By the time he’d reached the square he was talking twenty to the dozen into his phone.

  Smiling at such youthful energy, she looked around her. There was nothing beyond the wall except a rough path which led upwards through thick, scrubby woods to the top of the hill. With luck, there would be a clearing at the top, a viewpoint from which she could survey the surrounding countryside.

  She closed the gate and carried on, catching the occasional glimpse of a vast vineyard sloping away into the distance on her right. Then, as she neared the top of the hill, the thicket thinned out and her heart stopped.

  Ahead of her, the path edged towards a tumbledown stretch of wall. Part of it had fallen away so long ago that weeds had colonised it, growing out of cracks in the stone.

  Patches of dry yellow lichens spread themselves out in the sun where Lucia had sat, smiling one last time for a man who was going away. Who she must have known she’d never see again.

  Only a dusty footprint suggested that anyone had been this way since.

  She took a step nearer. Reached out to lay her hand on the warm stone.

  Here. Lucia had sat here. And as she looked up she saw a house. The house. No longer a grey, blurry ruin in an old photograph, but restored and far larger, grander than she’d realised.

  It wasn’t the front, but the side view of the house and what had been rubble in her picture was now a square tower, the stucco a soft, faded umber in the strong sunlight.

  There were vines, heavy with fruit, trailing over a large pergola at the rear. A rustic table set beneath it where generations of a family could eat beneath its shade.

  The garden was full of colour. And above the distant sound of a tractor, the humming of insects in the midday heat, she could hear water running.


  The spring that had been their only water supply all through that harsh winter.

  Her hands were shaking as she used her phone to take a photograph of the restored scene. Only the wall—Lucia’s wall—had not been rebuilt. But why would it be? There was no one up here to keep out. On the contrary, it appeared to be a shortcut into the village and she glanced back down the path, wondering who the rather beautiful young man could have been. Family? A friend. Or an illicit lover, maybe, from the smear of lipstick on his lower lip, making his escape via the back way.

  She took off her hat, fanned herself with it, turned again to look at the house. Wondering who lived there. Could it be the same family who’d owned the house when it had sheltered Lex?

  Unlikely.

  According to the website she’d found, the Isola del Serrone vineyard had long ago become a co-operative run by the villagers.

  And the glimpse of a swimming pool suggested that the house had been bought by some wealthy businessman who used it as a weekend retreat from Rome.

  Whatever, there were no answers here. Only the wall was as it had been and on a sudden whim she turned, put her hat down and hitched herself up, spreading her arms wide to support herself as Lucia had done. Closing her eyes, imagining how she’d felt, the sun warm on her face, danger passed. A last moment of happiness before Lex was repatriated, sent back to his rejoicing family, and she was left alone.

  ‘Well, don’t you look comfortable?’

  Sarah started, blinked. The man standing on the path had appeared from nowhere. His face was in shadow, his eyes masked by dark glasses so that she couldn’t read his expression but, while his tone was neutral, it was not friendly.

  ‘A m I trespassing?’ she asked, doing her best to remain calm despite the frisson of nerves that riffled through her. He didn’t look dangerous, but she was on her own. No one knew where she was.

  ‘This is private land, signora.’

  ‘But there’s a footpath—’

  ‘There is also a gate. Hint enough, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘It was locked.’