Dolci di Love (9 page)

D
aniel woke up on the tiny couch in his cramped hotel room, fully clothed and with an appalling hangover.

His neck hurt, his head hurt, his back hurt, and the cloying scent of expensive perfume in the air led him to believe the blonde woman he'd met at the café was not far away.

He could not remember her name or how she came to be in his hotel room.

Daniel was not in the habit of picking up women and bringing them home. He, of all people, knew the peril in that, and he couldn't believe he would do something so loathsome now, when he was already in such a mess.

Bones creaking, he got to his feet and snuck a look at the woman, lying on her back in his bed, the sheet wrapped loosely around her, one arm curled around her head. She was sound asleep also mostly clothed, and he saw that she was older than he'd originally thought, older than him. She'd not taken care of her body as well as Lily had; she'd spent too much time in the sun, perhaps, her neck showing the telltale signs nothing but a turtle neck could ever cover up. But she looked happy, even when she was sleeping.

He turned away from her and slipped out onto the little balcony, pulling the door shut behind him and lighting a cigarette as he
watched a drugged-up zombie couple stagger down the cobbled road below. They zigzagged unnecessarily around the straight line of parked motor scooters that framed the curb and finally collapsed on the steps of the church opposite the hotel, like two deflating balloons.

Daniel blew a lazy smoke ring into the early morning air and thought about another body back in Montevedova; a perfect body really, if you liked that sort of thing, which he obviously did, if fleetingly. Now, in hindsight, he thought what he had mostly liked about that body was the ease in which the woman who inhabited it did so. She liked it herself and not in an obsessive way, but in a way that was just good to be around. She ate pasta and bread and pizza like it was going out of fashion and gorged herself on cheeses and salamis and all the things Lily didn't go near because they had added preservatives or hormones or were really dolphins or some other B.S. the green police had brainwashed her into. He suspected for Lily that it was mainly all about not getting fat. Italian women didn't seem to care about getting fat. They thought curves made them sexier, and they were right, although it was the not-caring-what-anyone-else-thought that Daniel had originally found so sexy.

He stubbed out his cigarette. How could he have been so stupid? No, worse than that, so
ordinary
? That set of sexy curves and devil-may-care attitude had gotten his attention, sure, when he was at his lowest ebb. But to get so much more? It was such a cliché it made him sick. He was such a cliché it made him sick.

‘Hey, Danny?' he heard the blonde woman call huskily from inside. Ingrid, her name, came tumbling back into his consciousness along with the embarrassing memory of telling her too much. They had done nothing but talk, and it had been him doing most of the talking. And most of the drinking. God,
he was such a sap. A self-obsessed, boring, stupid sap. He tried to remember Ingrid's story, what she had told him. She was married, he thought, to someone who was at a convention in Rome—or was it Milan?—and she'd always wanted to see Florence so had come here alone while her husband was convening.

‘Oh, there you are.' She smiled when she found him on the balcony.

She was wearing a fluffy white hotel bathrobe and she'd fixed her hair. He had no idea how she was going to be this morning, how he was going to be. He dreaded whatever was about to happen, felt the tension knot harder in his aching back and shoulders.

‘Shall I call room service?' she said, and it was such an uncomplicated suggestion he nearly wept. ‘I don't know about you, but I'm desperate for coffee.'

He started to shake his head but actually, when he thought about it, he was hungry. And he wasn't sure if he felt like being with Ingrid, but he also wasn't sure if he felt like being alone. He started to say that perhaps eggs were in order, and maybe a bloody Mary, but when he opened his mouth, something else entirely came tumbling out.

He was out of his depth, not just here in this hotel room but everywhere. In his life. He was drowning in his life and he had no one to blame but himself, and no hope of being rescued.

What he wanted to tell this woman, this Ingrid with the easy charm and the warm smile, was that breakfast was a great idea, but what he did instead was start to weep, desperately and uncontrollably, like a child. Like a baby.

Ingrid was not altogether taken aback. She had a good instinct for people and thought he wasn't a bad one. She was worried about him. And the weeping didn't bother her that much either; she was used to seeing grown men cry. She had three sons, now all in their twenties and all tending toward the ‘sensitive' side of the spectrum.

She reached for Daniel, led him back inside the room, sat him on the couch, wrapped her arms around him, and pretended he was one of them. It was what she would want someone to do for any of her boys if they were this unhappy.

‘W
hat's going on in there?' Luciana asked as she stood behind Violetta, whose ear was currently pressed against the door into the
pasticceria
. ‘Can you hear what Lily is saying to the little girl?'

‘No, I can't. Not with you booming like a foghorn behind me,' complained Violetta. ‘These ears are nearly a hundred years old. They're tired, give them a break.'

‘Well, you could afford one of those thingamajigs that pick up even the smallest sound if you would just consider what I was saying about the
cantucci
.'

‘Pick up even the smallest sound?' Violetta spun around, furious. ‘Why would I want to do that? I barely want to hear the biggest sounds, especially when most of them involve you heckling me about our family business or that young whippersnapper Fiorella Fiorucci challenging my authority and asking lame-brained questions!'

‘She's hardly a whippersnapper, Violetta: she's eighty-five. And she was only suggesting—'

‘I'll tell you what Fiorella Fiorucci can do with her suggestions!' Violetta exploded. ‘She can put them where the monkey put the peanuts! She is trouble, that woman—short, fat, and practically-
legally-blind-by-the-look-of-those-glasses trouble. We need to get rid of her, and soon. She's feeding conspiracies to the widow Ercolani like peppermints. She has the widow Mazzetti checking the rule book every five minutes on one trumped up charge or another. She is not one of us, Luciana. She is not!'

Luciana picked nonchalantly at the hem of her dress. ‘I think she is just what the doctor ordered,' she said. ‘And she's fun.'

‘What the doctor ordered?
Fun
? Pah! What in the name of Santa Ana di Chisa has got into you?' She nudged her sister in the shoulder with her curled hand. ‘I can usually rely on you to back me up, but ever since that mouthy young trout showed up, you seem to have hitched your wagon to her caboose.'

Luciana nudged her right back. ‘She only turned up yesterday and my wagon is hitched to your caboose, Violetta,' she said. ‘It will be forever, but if I can stop your caboose from going off the rails and plunging down a deep ravine, taking me with it, I will.'

The pain in Violetta's chest tightened its grip.

‘Why are you doing this?' she asked her sister.

‘Doing what?'

‘Turning against me!'

‘I am not turning against you, Violetta. I am trying to help you. Same as always.'

‘Same as always means you agree with me.'

‘Same as always means I say that I agree with you. It doesn't mean I actually do.'

‘You don't?'

‘Not always.'

‘Then why say that you do?'

‘Because I believe in you…that's what sisters do. And because it usually doesn't matter. But this is different. This time, you need to hear the truth.'

‘And what would the truth be?'

‘That we can't go on the way we are, with the
cantucci
or, for that matter, with the League. We are old, Violetta. We are very old and getting older, we need to let some new light shine in or we could be snuffed out forever.'

‘We're not candles!'

‘No, but if we were, we would be melted down to ugly little stubs and our wicks would only just be flickering.'

‘Nonsense! I could still burn down the whole of Montevedova if I wanted to.'

‘You could do it by mistake the way things are going.'

‘You're either with me or against me,' Violetta said, the unsteady beat of her ancient heart clattering in her ears.

Luciana snorted. ‘Funny that. Mussolini said the same thing. And anyway, you know I'm with you. You've known that since…'

They both looked over at the pictures of their late husbands on the mantelpiece.

‘I was right,' Violetta said gruffly. ‘The thing is, I was right. It worked out. I knew.'

‘Yes, that's my point. You were right, and I was with you then and I've been with you ever since, so you should listen to me when I say that this time I am not so sure.'

They were quiet for a moment, Violetta cursing the wretchedness of having her sister lose faith in her just when she had lost faith in herself. She could not go on without her. Not today. She would have to deal with this another time.

‘Burn down Montevedova by mistake? Nonsense!' she said, attempting a halfhearted kick in the direction of her sister's shin.

‘With me or against me indeed!' snorted Luciana, attempting the same manoeuvre.

‘Watch out or you'll topple over and I won't be able to get you back up again, you silly old woman,' warned Violetta.

‘Well, watch out or I'll topple over and not want to get back up again,' came the retort.

The sound of the bell above the door ringing in the bakeshop brought their quarrelling to a halt. Lily was leaving the premises.

‘Quick, wave your scarf at Ciacci. We need Del Grasso to stall her until someone remembers where Alessandro is this morning.'

L
ily was hurrying past the Hotel Adesso when the little grey-haired woman she had seen hollering down the hall the day before scurried out of the doorway and grabbed at her arm.

‘You want stay in lovely four-star hotel?' the old woman asked her.

‘I tried to yesterday,' Lily said, gently extracting her arm from the vice-like grip. ‘But there was a problem with the plumbing.'

‘Problem? There is no problem.'

‘The drains were blocked. There was a huge fuss.'

‘Oh, that,' the woman said. ‘False alarm.'

‘False alarm? I could smell the drains from here in the doorway.'

‘There is no problem,' the woman insisted, tugging at her arm. ‘I promise. You stay here. Is very nice. Four stars.'

‘The lady at the tourist office said it had no stars,' Lily informed her.

‘Lady at tourist office is like to drink too much.'

Lily looked up at the hotel. It did look nice, and the awful smell had gone completely, but she'd already paid 500 euro to stay with Violetta, and anyway she didn't want to think about this now. She didn't want to think about anything.

‘Thank you, but I'm fine where I am,' she said, and after something of a tussle, she pulled away, continuing down the hill, cursing the cheerful ivy that draped elegantly over a garden wall, the faded turquoise of a shuttered building, the rustic charm of an ageing street lantern. Yes, Montevedova was beautiful. She got that. But what did she need with beauty?

She was almost back at her dry parapet when progress was halted by a slow-moving group of old women who all but blocked her path. So many old women! Where were they keeping the young ones?

No matter which way Lily stepped to overtake the shuffling group, they seemed to form a clump right in front of her, but just before she lost her patience and demanded that they either get out of her way or hurry up, they stopped, more or less delivering her like a pea down a slippery chute to the open door of Poliziano, a charming old-fashioned café with views out across the valley.

A grizzled old man was leaning on the counter sipping a glass of wine and Lily needed no further encouragement. She went in, crossing to a tiny Juliet balcony overlooking the view. It had room for just one table and so she sat down, ordered a coffee, and, after a pretence at hesitation, upon seeing it was almost eleven o'clock, a glass of prosecco. The coffee was good, but the prosecco better. Its tiny bubbles seemed to smooth away the enormous wrinkle that Francesca had made in her morning.

It wasn't the child's fault; she was—well, Lily didn't want to think about what she was. She was perfect. There it was. Plain as a pickle. Perfect. But why wasn't her hair being brushed? Why did her wings have holes in them? Who was taking care or, rather,
not
taking care of this tatty little Tinker Bell? Lily's missing certainty popped in for a brief visit as she sipped her drink. If Daniel walked through the door right then, she was certain what she would do. She would shoot him. In the heart. And then the head, and then the balls. And then she would feed what was left of him to the pigs.

She ordered a second prosecco.

This soothed her wounded heart a little more.

The balcony she was sitting on had a similarly splendid view to the one in her room, but, on reflection, Lily couldn't think why she had chosen it—it was a table for two: a hopelessly romantic spot to stare into a lover's eyes and be swept away in the magnificence of the surroundings.

Did Daniel bring his lover here, she wondered? Had they sat at this very table and gazed at each other while Francesca and her baby brother stayed at home taking care of themselves? Who was this man she had known so well for so long? A liar, a cheat, not even a good father.

She put her glass back on the table. She'd come to Tuscany because she wanted her husband, wanted to reclaim the love they once shared, wanted to get back what she'd lost. But now she saw what a fool's errand that was.

It was one thing to look at a photo and to rationalise a situation, even in a drunken my-husband-has-another-family-and-I-must-go-and-do-something-about-it way. But to see the results of that with her own eyes? To feel that little body pressed into hers? There was no going back from this.

She looked across to the grandfather clock in the corner. It was still not midday, but taking the time difference, jet lag, and her stewing emotions into account, Lily considered a third glass of prosecco. It was only low alcohol after all. Practically lemonade. Hardly worth counting.

But something about the way the waitress (finally, someone under thirty) looked at her when she came to collect her drained glass made her change her mind.

She paid the bill, leaving a generous tip, and, fuelled by what little alcohol there was in those Italian bubbles, she decided to find an Internet café or a telephone to check in with Pearl.

The thought of work hinged her back to her old self a little. She knew where she was when it came to Heigelmann's—nothing had changed there—but she had taken only a couple of steps outside the café when she heard someone calling out to her.

‘
Signora! Signora Turista!
'

She turned to find Alberto waving at her from outside his shop.

‘Again,' he called, ‘I am about to sit down to lunch! Bread, prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella, more tomatoes freshly delivered from my grandmother with instructions about a pretty blonde.'

She laughed but shook her head.

‘I'm sorry, Alberto, I'm just—'

But as she spoke an argument erupted from the doorway she had just passed. It was another bakeshop, more tacky than the Ferrettis', this window stuffed full of
cantucci
in a myriad of flavours and a brassy rainbow of fancy wrappings.

A curvy woman in a wraparound dress backed out of the store, almost bumping right into Lily. She was shouting in Italian at someone inside and came so close Lily could smell her. She was slightly lemony and very angry, her long dark hair flicking wildly from side to side like a horse tail swatting flies.

Lily could have reached out and pulled it. It was Daniel's lover, of course.

‘Eh, Carlotta! Causing trouble again!' called a handsome young man from the
gelateria
opposite, and Daniel's lover spun around and unleashed a tongue-lashing on him as well.

‘Carlotta, Carlotta,' he repeated, shaking his head and backing into the ice cream store.

Carlotta! How dare she have such a turbulent, exotic name and cheeks aflame with such passion?

Another angry woman emerged from the tacky
cantucci
shop waving her fist at Carlotta, who started backing in Lily's direction. Desperate to avoid either winding up underneath her feet or face
to face with her, Lily spun on her heels and hurried toward Alberto who was still standing outside his shop watching the commotion.

‘You change your mind, no?' Alberto grinned. ‘My grandmother's tomatoes do this every time.'

Lily stepped inside his little wine shop but again refused his offer of lunch although it looked appetising enough set out on a white platter on his desk: the cheese pulled into chunks and tossed with chopped fresh tomato and torn basil leaves, a crusty loaf of sliced ciabatta next to it. But distress curdled in her stomach. Her head pounded. Carlotta!

‘So what's the story with the woman in the street?' she asked.

‘Crazy,' Alberto answered with a disinterested shrug. ‘Nice girl, good girl, but crazy. Whole family is crazy. She gets fired from the Borsolini brothers once a week. But they crazy too. You would like a glass of wine?'

She couldn't bring herself to ask any more, to ask if he knew of Daniel, or Francesca, or that fat baby boy. For a start, she didn't want to make a big deal of her interest, but also she was afraid that if she started asking questions, she might never stop. Did Carlotta know that Daniel had a wife? That her daughter's dress was dirty? That you could be as crazy and as nice as you wanted but that it wasn't right to steal someone's husband, someone's future, someone's dreams, someone's daughter?

If Alberto noticed she was distracted, he didn't let on, keeping up a steady stream of chatter about his wines, the recent rain, the local food, the bar he was going to later in the day to meet with his friends, in case she was interested.

She wasn't, but she did get him to tell her a little about the town and if there was much more to it than she had already seen. The news was disheartening. Montevedova, Alberto told her, really only had two streets, the Corso and the lane that forked in the opposite direction at the parapet. In any case, the two of them joined up
again at the
piazza grande
at the top of the village, where he was meeting his friends if she changed her mind.

There were back alleys and hidden pathways between the two main lanes, he explained, but pretty much what Lily had seen was what there was.

‘Everybody must know everybody else here,' she suggested. ‘You must bump into each other all the time.'

‘You would think so,' Alberto agreed, ‘but some like to keep to themselves. And the good thing about a small town is that you do always know where everyone else is so you can
not
go there, you can go somewhere else.'

This was a very good point.

Lily already knew where Francesca and Carlotta were and could only assume Daniel was not far away.

Inferring that she had already enjoyed all the sights Montevedova had to offer, she asked Alberto what she could explore farther afield. He suggested she head to one or another of the nearby towns, none of them as beautiful as Montevedova but all worth a look anyway. He then took her down to his basement and showed her out the back door, which was close to the bookstore. She bought a guidebook and headed to her car.