The Villa (45 page)

When it did happen, she was in her early forties and didn’t believe it at first. It couldn’t be. Not after all these years … But it could be, and it was, and it seemed like a small miracle when Tess was born, a tiny bundle of life and warmth, already squalling as if she knew quite well what she wanted. Flavia smiled. And as if she would fight for it.

‘Do you want to hold her now, Mum?’ the midwife asked Flavia.

Mum. Flavia wanted to laugh. She would never understand the English, they were a strange race indeed. But, ‘Yes, please,’ she said meekly. ‘I would like to hold her.’

They called her Teresa Beatrice.

Now, even more than before, life with Lenny was not just life with Lenny and the Azzurro. They became a family, a real family at last.

Yellow for the durum wheat glowing in the sunshine, yellow for saffron, yellow for lemons and yellow for golden, warm, runny honey.

Honey, known to the most ancient civilisations, has been produced in Sicily for thousands of years, but its flavour has changed over the
centuries. The flowers have changed and the honey known as
millefiori
(‘thousands of flowers’) reflects this heritage. These days, most Sicilian honey is made from orange blossom or eucalyptus nectar
.

Flavia’s favourite honey was Sicilian orange blossom. She put it in all her
dolce
, she told her daughter. It was light and fresh and tasted of spring. Of hope and of new beginnings …

Tess was glad when she received a surprise invitation to go to Millie and Pierro’s for lunch. She’d just received a text message from Ginny too. Nothing earth-shattering, but Tess was trying to give her some space – to be there, but not obtrusively there. And it seemed to be working. Ginny was communicating.

Lunch was laid out on their private terrace – a small spread by Sicilian standards, but it looked delicious. There was a simple green bean salad with bread and various seafood antipasti artfully arranged on white plates.

Pierro was darting about doing jobs connected with the hotel: one minute dealing with a difficult customer; next, finding a pair of pliers for a workman; then, taking a phone call …

Millie, in contrast, was relaxed as ever. Her ‘girl’ Louisa was on reception and Millie was happy to take a couple of hours off. ‘I deserve it,’ she told Tess. ‘Come here and let me look at you.’

Tess obliged, and Millie reached to kiss her on both cheeks, the Sicilian way. Today she was dressed in a fuchsia-pink top, with black cotton culottes and black pumps with a tiny fuchsia bow. Her lipstick though, was as bold and red as ever – a clash that only Millie could pull off so successfully, Tess thought.

‘How are you both?’ she asked. ‘How’s business?’

‘Good.’ Millie waved her to a chair. ‘And your father? I hear he’s doing well.’

Tess was faintly surprised. ‘Well, yes. Though according to my mother, his superman days are definitely over.’

Pierro came over just in time to catch Tess’s quizzical look. ‘What?’ He too bent to kiss her.

‘Just that in Cetaria everyone seems to know what’s happening to everyone else.’ Tess shrugged and tried to laugh it off. After all, they were her friends and it really didn’t matter …

‘They do.’ Pierro sat down in a chair opposite her. ‘And my wife is the biggest gossip of them all.’

Millie pulled a face. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ she said. ‘Good news travels fast, that’s all.’

‘And bad news travels faster,’ said Pierro.

Tess smiled. He was right there. She remembered something. ‘This morning, I could have sworn someone was watching me when I left the villa,’ she said. It was the strangest sensation; she had almost been able to feel the scrutiny, like the beam of a torch on her back.

‘They probably were.’ Pierro poured out three glasses of iced lemonade from the jug on the table. ‘In Sicily someone is always watching you.’

‘Really?’ That was worrying.

Millie clicked her tongue and told him to shush. ‘He’s kidding you,’ she told Tess.

Tess wasn’t convinced. But who was always watching?
And why would they watch
her
? She thought of Giovanni Sciarra and she shivered.

Pierro passed her a glass. ‘How were the builders yesterday?’ he asked. ‘Did they give you a good quote?’

Tess sipped the lemonade. It was home-made – from Sicilian lemons, no doubt – and delicious. ‘Not bad,’ she said. This builder had taken a lot more trouble looking around the villa, had commented on her plans in comprehensible, though pidgin, English and had given her some useful advice. Oh, and then there was the minor point that his estimate was ten grand less than Giovanni’s outfit’s.

‘So will you go ahead?’ Millie looked worried. ‘Can you afford it?’

‘Yes to both questions.’ Tess accepted some bread from the basket Millie handed to her and helped herself to some
calamaretti
– baby squid with pine nuts, parsley, garlic and breadcrumbs – that she had first tasted at one of her lunches with Giovanni. If she was going to keep the villa and make it into a business, then the work had to be done, and she was damned if she was going to let Giovanni railroad her or Tonino frighten her away. She was a big girl now. She could make her own decisions.

‘They did an excellent job on converting the hotel,’ Pierro said, turning round to survey his pride and joy. ‘And if anything should go wrong, they are always reachable.’

‘Probably because we always pay on time,’ Millie commented. She crossed her legs, letting one of the black pumps fall to the floor.

But Tess couldn’t help feeling that Pierro’s recommendation was worth a hundred of Giovanni’s …

Millie popped a stuffed mussel between her red lips and chewed it thoughtfully. She frowned at Tess. ‘But how will you manage to pay for it?’ she said, as if talking to herself.

Pierro shot her a look. ‘That is not our business, my love … ’ But before he could say more, his mobile rang and he got up with a gesture of apology to answer it, wandering away from the table and talking in rapid Sicilian that lost Tess completely.

Millie leant forwards confidentially. ‘Have you come into some money, darling?’ she enquired. ‘How wonderful.’ Her eyes – green and gleaming – seemed to invite confidences.

But Tess was wary. That sensation of being watched when she’d left the villa this morning had unnerved her. And it wasn’t the first time. She’d paused on the steps, looked around. Life was continuing as usual in the
baglio
(though Tonino was nowhere to be seen) and there were just a few people down in the bay. She thought she saw the glint of something – the sun on a camera lens maybe – on the hills behind the village, where she had walked with Tonino in the olive grove. But …

It was probably her imagination. Still, after Giovanni had threatened her in the cafe, after Tonino had told her to go home, she had decided: she would tell no one here about David’s money. Not Giovanni, not Tonino, not even Millie. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them, it was just beginning to
irritate her that here in Cetaria everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business.

So, ‘Something like that,’ she told Millie, and gave her a secret smile. She helped herself to some bean salad and
gamberoni
.

Her friend looked a bit put out, but thankfully Pierro returned to the table at this point and she let the subject drop.

During lunch they talked of other things – the weather in England, what had been on the world news, how Tess was planning to manage the B&B and finally of Pierro’s mother, who was threatening to come and stay with them – indefinitely.

‘A fate worse than death,’ said Millie, rolling her eyes.

Tess didn’t mention Giovanni – she’d already decided to keep quiet about that too. She didn’t want to make too much of it, didn’t want to cause any more trouble with him. She knew how much damage an unthinking word could do.

At 2 p.m. Pierro excused himself and Tess made to go, but Millie kept her there for another forty-five minutes, chatting aimlessly, with
dolce
– home-made almond biscuits – and fresh coffee. You would never imagine that she had a hotel to run, Tess thought.

‘I really must be off,’ Tess said at last. ‘I need to contact the builders and get things moving.’ Plus she wanted to do another dive. After the storm and the earth tremor, the sea had looked fresher, brighter, more inviting than ever. Once the builders got started there’d be less time for diving. And
anyway, who needed an excuse – Tess wanted to be in there.

She tore herself away from Millie, who suggested that she call in on the builders pronto and even gave her directions to the office, which was only a few streets away. ‘Sicilians prefer to do business face to face rather than by phone,’ she told her. ‘Better to strike while the iron is hot, as they say.’

But once she’d left the hotel, Tess changed her mind and decided to return to the villa and do the dive first – even builders had siestas in Cetaria.

The
baglio
certainly was sleepy in the early afternoon heat, the shops (including Tonino’s studio) all closed. But again, she felt it. That sensation of someone watching.

Ridiculous, she told herself, starting up the steps. Finding her key, she let herself in the side gate and walked round by the white jasmine to the front of the villa, her mind already planning the dive she was about to do.

She opened the front door, stepped inside the hall and stopped abruptly. Listened. Something wasn’t right. She frowned, took another step inside. She could hear a noise – like a drill, then a hammer, then the soft murmur of voices. Someone was here in the villa.

She hovered by the kitchen doorway. She should leave immediately, get help (but no one was in the
baglio
…), perhaps even run back to the hotel for Pierro if Tonino wasn’t around. She remembered his words: ‘
I cannot always be here to protect you
.’ No. She couldn’t ask Tonino.

And besides … she took another step inside. All her instincts were telling her not to leave, to find out who was here, to find out what was going on. This was her house, damn it.

Who’s there?’ she called. Silence. ‘Who’s there?’

The food was the security and the sense of continuity.

Granite di caffè
, Flavia decided.
Put the water and sugar into a pan, heat until the water dissolves. Boil for one minute, simmer, add the coffee, blend, take off the heat. Add the vanilla pod and the cinnamon. Mix well. Cool. Freeze for two hours taking out to stir every fifteen minutes. It should
, she wrote,
be a fine granular consistency, almost mushy at the end. Whip the cream and icing sugar until stiff. Divide your granite between however many glasses, add the cream and serve with warm brioche.

One day, when Tess was three years old, Flavia received one of Peter’s letters.

‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Flavia,’ he wrote. ‘I even thought about not telling you at all.’

Even after all this time, Flavia felt icy fingers clutching at her heart.

And she was right.

‘I have cancer,’ he wrote, ‘lung cancer. Should have given up the weed years ago, but … ’

She’d never even known he smoked. Flavia blinked at the words on the page. How could she not have known such a small, such a fundamental thing?

He hadn’t smoked in Sicily, had he? – at least, he never said. He hadn’t smoked when he came to the cafe that day.

I never knew him at all, Flavia thought. I don’t know him now.

‘I want to see you,’ he wrote. It was the first time he had suggested a meeting in all these years. ‘Could you? Would you?’

Could she? Yes, she could. Lenny had never been a possessive man. He didn’t question her movements (though to be fair, they were usually around the kitchen of the Azzurro) and he respected her privacy. Would she? That was another thing. She did not want to betray her husband. She did not want to lie to him either. But where was the harm? And Peter … Peter was ill. Peter needed to see her. Could she refuse him?

She met him in Lyme Regis in a tea shop on the seafront. The tide was high and the waves were wild and grey; anything less like a Sicilian sea she couldn’t imagine.

She told Lenny she was going shopping with a friend. Alice, a woman she’d met at Tess’s nursery, someone Lenny hardly knew. Lenny would collect Tess from nursery, and look after everything at the Azzuro. Flavia cooked the day’s meals in advance and arranged cover. Lying to Lenny was the worst part. But … She hated the guilt that settled over her as she tried to meet his frank and open gaze. “Of course you should go, love,” he said, making it easy for her. Oh, Lenny …

She could – she supposed – have told him she was meeting Peter. She could have told him about the letters too and that Peter was ill and that he wanted to see her. Lenny – being Lenny – might have understood. But he might have understood too much. He might have
understood why she had agreed to go, and Flavia didn’t want to hurt him. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve it.

Peter was thinner. His hair was thin too, fine like baby hair. And soft, she thought. His face had new lines and pouches of loose skin – especially round the eyes – and his mouth was harder. His eyes were as blue as the sky, as blue as they had always been.

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. And he held her hands across the table as if they were lovers.

They drank tea and ate toasted teacakes and talked – for hours it seemed like. Not just about his life and her life over the past years, but about the cancer. When he talked, she thought she could detect a shortness of breath, and her heart went out to this man she had loved. They were both in their forties now – middle-aged, she supposed, though she didn’t feel it, especially with a young daughter to look after and a business to run. But Peter’s life had not worked out the way he hoped. And now it would be cut short before he was fifty.

‘I must go,’ she said at last. ‘Lenny will worry … ’

He shook his head. ‘Who would have thought it? My Flavia, so English … ’

My Flavia …

‘I have been here twenty-five years,’ she reminded him. ‘I think in English these days.’