The Villa

by Rosanna Ley

  Gently she placed a cold wet cloth on his brow. Then … Dare she? Brushed her fingertip across his cheek, just to see. His skin felt cold and clammy.

  He opened his eyes. She blinked at the unexpectedness of it, at the alien blue stare, at the pale light of him. Had he forgiven her?

  ‘I am sorry,’ she murmured.

  ‘My angel.’ His mouth curved into a crooked, painful smile.

  Flavia was flooded with sweet relief.

  ‘My angel,’ he said again. Then closed his eyes and slept.

  ‘Sogni d’oru,’ she murmured. Sweet dreams … Golden dreams …

  Flavia put the book away for another afternoon. It was tiring her. Not so much the writing of it. What was exhausting was reliving the emotions. How could she help it? As she wrote about him, she remembered – the look of him, his paleness, the blue of his eyes; the scent of him, of illness to begin with, that faint smell of medicine fighting decay. And the way he spoke. My angel …

  The irony was not lost on Flavia. Flavia Farro had become Flavia Angel. But she was getting ahead of herself. There was still much more to tell, so much more that Tess would need to know …

  * * *

  Street food, market food; bloody and raw, vibrant and fresh – the true guts of Sicily. Tightly packed stalls in a network of narrow alleyways. Oxen and goat, cheeses and breads, offal and fish, fruit and vegetables. Arancini – little rice balls with meat or cheese. Panelle … Chickpea fritters, bought in the street, eaten with the fingers in a soft roll. Or as an antipasti – to undress the appetite. Hot and satisfying, crisp and succulent. A deep-fried Arab legacy.

  Bring the water to boil, add the chickpea flour gradually, stirring in the same direction. Flavia underlined ‘the same direction’. Add chopped parsley and black pepper. Cook to a paste that pulls away from the side of the pan. Turn out on to an oiled surface. Smooth. Cool. Cut into oblongs. Fry until golden. Add lemon juice. It is complete.

  CHAPTER 19

  They had driven along the coast to a small family-run restaurant. And Giovanni clearly knew the family; the signora and various signorinas kept dashing out of the kitchen red-faced and eager to check that he was happy and all was well.

  ‘The villa you have inherited. I must tell you. It is not a good place,’ Giovanni said, as their antipasto arrived. It was caponata, a sweet-and-sour vegetable stew made with aubergine, celery, onions and olives, a dish Tess’s mother often prepared, though hers was very different.

  ‘Not good in what way?’ she asked. ‘In a bad state of repair or bad history?’

  ‘Both,’ he said. ‘It is true that much needs to be done for the place to regain its former glory. And … ’ He touched his nose. ‘Bad things have happened there. It has a dark story.’

  Hmm. ‘No chance, I suppose, of you telling me what bad things?’

  Giovanni hemmed and hawed and waved away another waitress/signorina. ‘It is not for delicate ears,’ he said.

  Should Tess tell him that her ears were far from delicate …? Presumably it was all to do with the famous debt, theft and betrayal he kept going on about. And the mysterious ‘it’. Not to mention the war of course. And the fact that Edward Westerman had been gay.

  ‘Sicily has a legacy of darkness,’ he said, mopping up the last of his caponata with a chunk of sweet yellow Sicilian bread.

  Yes, she was beginning to get that.

  ‘It is therefore in your interest to sell.’

  Tess had always been a rebel. She realised now that she must have got this from her mother. She sipped the wine that Giovanni had ordered, a Nero d’Avola, rich and blackcurranty, with yes, just a hint of pepper. When someone tried to tell her what to do, she always wanted to do the opposite. ‘I’m going to keep the villa,’ she said. ‘For now.’

  Giovanni let out a deep sigh. ‘You are stubborn, no?’

  Tess put down her glass. ‘Perhaps. But I like the place. I hear what you say. And I’m grateful to you for trying to help.’ She crossed her fingers under the table. ‘But I don’t get any bad vibes from Villa Serena. So I don’t want to sell it – not yet.’

  Giovanni shook his head. He looked like the harbinger of doom. ‘And your mother?’ he asked gloomily. ‘What does she say?’

  Tess hadn’t told her. But she could guess the reaction. ‘She won’t like it,’ she admitted. ‘She’ll want me to put in on the market and get back to the UK. Pronto.’

  Giovanni waved a languid finger in the general direction of la cucina, and one of the girls appeared to whisk the plates away. ‘Sì, sì, beni. Yes, it was good,’ he told the anxious face. He turned his attention back to Tess and nodded sagely. ‘Your mother is a wise woman,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she knows more than she says?’

  Probably. She didn’t say very much, after all. Tess leaned forwards. ‘So what is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It?’ He frowned.

  ‘What is the thing you thought she might have asked me to look for? Something special? Something secret? Something valuable?’

  Giovanni glanced swiftly from side to side and then fixed his gaze somewhere over her left shoulder. ‘No capisco,’ he muttered. ‘I do not understand you, Tess. It is of no importance.’

  She wasn’t convinced. It had certainly seemed important the last time he mentioned it.

  Their pasta arrived with a flourish. Spaghetti con le fave – with wild fennel, broadbeans and olive oil. Giovanni had informed her on checking with the Senora when they first arrived, that it was today’s best pasta and that therefore they both must order it.

  ‘And if you do not sell,’ he continued, when the waitress had disappeared. ‘What will you do with the place? You mentioned holidaymakers, I think.’ He managed to imbue the word with so much distaste that Tess had to smile.

  She speared a broadbean. This must be their season; she thought she’d spotted some growing by the roadside on the way here. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ she said. Because however would she find the money to do it up? Tess thought of the pazienza both Santina and Tonino had mentioned. She hadn’t yet thought of an excuse to visit Santina again (or a way of finding out when Giovanni might not be at home). And she hadn’t yet had a chance to quiz Tonino about the famous family feud. But she had a few days left. She just had to be patient.

  CHAPTER 20

  During the next two days it was as much as Ginny could put up with – no word from Ben, and listening to Becca drooling incessantly on about Harry this and Harry that and Harry was the boy she’d been waiting for all her life. All her life. At seventeen. Honest to God. Sometimes Becca just did her head in.

  Pictures were appearing on Facebook with alarming rapidity. Harry and Becca in a bar having a drink on their first ‘anniversary’ (one day after they got together), Harry and Becca on the beach kissing. Yuk! Why would anyone want to see that? Status: Becca is in a relationship. No …

  Whoever would’ve guessed?

  Finally, when Ginny had reached the depths of despair because Ben hadn’t messaged or texted her, he called.

  ‘Hi, babe,’ he said. ‘Fancy meeting up for drinks?’

  Did she? Oh yes, yes, yes.

  She got ready in a flurry of nerves and anticipation, phoning Becca twice to check her outfit was OK and then changing her mind and opting for the jeans she’d been wearing to start with.

  She was forty-five minutes late and was practically peeing herself with terror at walking into the pub on her own. Even before her eighteenth birthday last month she’d had fake ID for ages – everyone did. But she wasn’t used to pubs. And …

  He was with five of his mates. There was a pub quiz. It was awful.

  Ginny clammed up. The Ball had so many knots and tangles, she couldn’t speak. She felt a complete idiot – even more so because the one answer she knew was the name of one of the characters in EastEnders. What a loser!

  At the end of the evening though, Ben clamped his arm round her shoulder (which was difficult as she was so tall) and said, ‘D’you wanna come back to mine?’ Li
ke they were going out or something.

  Ginny shrugged and tried to look as if she’d been expecting this development. ‘OK,’ she said, in her couldn’t care less really sort of voice. But it meant something. It had to mean something. Didn’t it? She began to breathe more easily.

  On the way back to his, they talked about families.

  ‘What’s your dad like then?’ Ben asked. He had a flap of dark straightened hair that hung over his right eyebrow – sexy and dangerous.

  ‘My dad? No idea,’ she said. This had been her stock response for the last few years when asked about her father. To start off with, when she was a kid, she hadn’t thought too much about it. There was Mum, there was Nonna and there was Pops. It seemed enough.

  Then she realised that for her friends it was different. They all had fathers. Fathers who they talked about at school, fathers who took them out at the weekends, who drove nice cars and came to parents’ evenings and shows. She realised too that Pops was trying awfully hard to fill this gap; that he – if not her mother – acknowledged that there was a gap. But whatever he did, however hard he tried, it wasn’t quite the same.

  ‘You’ve never known him then?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Never met the guy.’ Ginny had accumulated as many facts about her absent father as she could. His name was David; he was what her mother referred to as ‘a bit of an old hippy, I’m afraid.’ And there was the photo of the two of them – Mum and David; he with the careless smile, the casual arm around her, the faraway eyes … She wondered where his eyes had been that day of the photo. Where his head had been.

  To give Mum her due, she had never criticised David. ‘You were unexpected,’ she had told Ginny one day when she was about five or six years old. ‘A wonderful gift.’

  An accident, she meant. An unplanned pregnancy. Ginny knew that now. But she liked the way Mum put it – as if Ginny had been a nice surprise waiting on the doorstep one morning.

  ‘And David?’ She could never say ‘my father’ and her mum never tried to make her.

  ‘He was never really cut out for fatherhood,’ her mother said.

  Ginny had tried to analyse her tone. She had always been interested in personalities and working out what made some people tick and some people tock. This was the reason she’d first started studying psychology at A level and why she had applied to do a psychology degree at uni in September too.

  Ginny shuddered at the thought of this, felt the Ball perform a half somersault. And it wasn’t anticipation – it was hideous terror. Everyone was supposed to want to go to uni – unless they weren’t clever enough of course. No one was supposed to dread it.

  But psychology … the science of people and their minds and behaviour which had promised so much, had turned out to be little more than a bunch of theories and statistics. That Ginny, frankly, couldn’t get her head around. Similarly photography, which had seemed promising enough to start with, consisted more of studying other photographers’ methods than taking your own photos. And General Studies just meant having a good argument. (Which was why it was her best subject, she supposed.) College, Ginny had decided, was a con.

  She staggered a bit – not from the drink, she’d taken it easy tonight, but cos it was hard to walk when a boy who was shorter than you had his arm round your shoulder. She was walking hunched forward, her hip level with his waist. Really, she should have her arm around him.

  Her mother’s tone when she spoke about David and fatherhood (and why wasn’t he cut out for it? Everyone else seemed to do it. Wasn’t it something you took on regardless rather than something you were or weren’t suited for?) wasn’t wistful or loving or regretful – it was just kind of accepting.

  ‘Did you love him?’ Ginny had asked once, when she was about ten or eleven and needed to know these things.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said her mother. ‘I loved him.’

  That was good. ‘And now?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Do you love him now?’ Sometimes her mother could be remarkably dense.

  ‘Not in the way you mean,’ her mother said (though in truth Ginny didn’t mean in any special way, she just meant love). ‘Not any more. It’s all too long ago.’

  That of course, was in the days pre-Robin, in the days when there wasn’t a man in her mother’s life – or at least only the occasional, unimportant, unremarkable date. It was in the innocent days, the days when Ginny laughed a lot and everything seemed simple. It was also of course Before the Ball.

  ‘Did he just bugger off somewhere then?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Yeah. To Australia.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go too and have me there?’ Ginny had asked her mother. She quite fancied Australia. Her life would have been very different.

  ‘I thought about it,’ her mother said. ‘But there wasn’t long to go. And there was Nonna and Pops … ’

  Even at ten or eleven Ginny knew what she was saying. Her grandparents could be relied on. David could not.

  She didn’t say this to Ben – it was too private. She just churned it around in her head like she often did. And she and Ben walked on and up the hill towards where he lived.

  ‘Mine left about ten years ago,’ Ben volunteered after a while. ‘He lives in Bristol with his new wife. She’s a right old dog.’

  Ginny wondered what it would be like to know that your father had a new wife – old dog or no. Because it was all very well for parents to rant on about how they too had a life to live and how they shouldn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t live through their child/ren (her mother did this a lot; it was her Me-Time rant). But they had brought them into the world, hadn’t they? So they were responsible and your child should be your first consideration surely, way before enjoying yourself or swan-ning off on holidays or marrying a new wife or whatever.

  ‘Mine went off to live in a hippy colony,’ Ginny told him. At least it was interesting. Better to be absent and interesting than around but boring, bald and with visible nose hair.

  At the age of fourteen she had missed him fiercely and considered trying to contact him via the internet. At fifteen she changed her mind and hated him with equal ferocity. He had never tried to contact her, had he? Why should she bother to try and get in touch with him? Maybe she’d just turn up in Australia one day when she was hugely successful (at what, she wasn’t sure) and show him what he had missed out on when he walked away. What had he missed out on? asked the Ball. Ginny ignored it.

  At sixteen she began to blame her mother for letting him go. Obviously she hadn’t tried hard enough to keep him.

  But now, well, she had learnt to use his absence to her advantage. She had seen how strict her friends’ fathers could be. One lone parent was far easier to manipulate. Her mother wasn’t a pushover – she could be one tough cookie. But she was susceptible to emotional blackmail. And Ginny had become expert at applying it.

  Back at Ben’s he suggested a movie, popcorn and beer. When the movie finished, Ben put on another one and Ginny fell asleep.

  At some point in the night they transferred themselves to the bed, though they kept most of their clothes on. Ben could take hers off later, Ginny thought – partly in hope and partly in terror. She cuddled in close to him and they kissed – hot kisses getting steamier by the second. He was touching her, in all the right places too, sending sweet streaks of desire right through her. But just as she thought, this is it, this is it, he stopped, grunted, ‘Sorry. Better get some sleep then I s’pose. And turned around. Huh? By then Ginny had woken up – in more ways than one.

  In the morning, Ben’s mother made her a bacon sandwich and she went home to analyse what had happened.

  He hadn’t seemed up for it – not really. Could it be possible that after all, Ben was gay? It seemed unlikely. Did he just want someone to watch movies with or sleep with? Maybe. Did he not fancy her? His kissing suggested that he did. Or did he fancy her and also respect her? Er … Was he waiting – for a sign that Ginny didn’t know about – or to get to know her better, or until a de
cent period of time had elapsed? Skittering sea lions. Studying psychology was – as she’d suspected – absolutely useless. Because Ginny had no idea.

  CHAPTER 21

  It was almost the end of her week and Tess woke on Tuesday morning with a sense of sadness. Tomorrow she’d be driving to Palermo and flying back to the UK. Time had gone too fast. She was looking forward to seeing her family. But Robin … She stretched out in the big chestnut bed. He’d sent her several texts and tried to call a few times, but she hadn’t replied or picked up. Cowardly, maybe, but she’d face him in due course. It was unresolved between them – she knew that – and they had to talk. But it would be in her own time and on her terms.

  And she was no further in her quest for information. She had gone round to Santina and Giovanni’s house twice yesterday, knocked on the door as if she was ‘just passing’. Once there was no answer, once Santina had answered but Giovanni was around and they hadn’t had a chance to talk. It was all very well being patient, but Tess was beginning to feel as if this was a non-starter.

  As usual, Tess breakfasted on the terrace where the air was still and warm. And as usual she could see Tonino in the bay, standing on the white rock by the look-out post, his face as rugged as the stone he worked in, his dark hair outlined like a raven’s wing against the pale blue of the morning sky, his body – he was dressed in black jeans and white T-shirt today – in clear relief against the navy ocean.

  Looking out to sea. The man was always looking out to sea, but she hadn’t yet seen him go in it. Well. She cleared her breakfast things and took them into the kitchen. Inside, the villa was cool and yet welcoming – completely contradicting what Giovanni had told her at dinner the other night. So … Was Giovanni Sciarra being straight with her – or did he have another agenda?

  Tonino was in his studio when she got down to the bay. Since the morning he’d made her coffee, his replies to her questions had been mostly monosyllabic, his expression neither friendly nor hostile. Indifference – and it was infuriating. She had no idea what he thought of her, and for some reason that she didn’t want to acknowledge, she felt rattled by this.