Rome is Where the Heart is: An uplifting romantic read, perfect to escape with (From Italy with Love Book 1)

by Tilly Tennant

  Rome is Where the Heart Is

  An uplifting romantic read, perfect to escape with

  Tilly Tennant

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  A Letter from Tilly

  Also By Tilly Tennant

  A Wedding in Italy

  The Little Village Bakery

  Christmas at The Little Village Bakery

  Acknowledgments

  For Jonny Fart Pants. You know I love you, farts and all.

  Chapter One

  Kate Merry had long suspected that Friday the thirteenth had it in for her. It couldn’t be personal, of course, but something had brought her to its attention and each time it came around she seemed to be the default victim. There had been flat tyres, burst pipes, redundancy notices, the dreadful skirt-in-pants debacle of one particular Friday the thirteenth in 2004, along with various smaller but no less galling offences over the years. Even as a child she had been on the Friday the thirteenth bad-luck radar, falling victim to a tricycle clash in the playground of her primary school that had resulted in a broken toe. But all those past days of misfortune would be eclipsed by the Friday the thirteenth when she was thirty, a day that would change her life forever. Kate wasn’t to know this when she opened her front door after a long day at work to find her husband standing in the hallway with his suitcases. But although this was by far the worst Friday the thirteenth ever, it also marked the day when lady luck had finally had enough of taunting her.

  She stared at the suitcases, and then noticed the taxi with its engine idling, just outside the front door. There was an obvious explanation but it was one she didn’t want to believe – couldn’t believe at all.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’d have thought it was obvious.’ Matt’s reply was casual, cold even, but Kate could tell by the way he couldn’t meet her eye he’d been caught red-handed in a way he wasn’t prepared for.

  ‘If it was obvious I wouldn’t have asked.’ Kate’s tone was crisp and belied her churning stomach.

  ‘I’m going to stay at Connor’s for a bit, sort my head out.’

  ‘Connor’s? What do you mean, “sort your head out”? What’s to sort?’

  ‘Us. . . at least, what I think about us.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What do you think it means? You can’t say you didn’t see this coming.’

  Kate stared at him. ‘See what coming? What are you saying, Matt?’

  ‘I need a break.’

  ‘What? A holiday? A week off? What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘I need to be away from you, that’s what it means.’ He rubbed a hand through dark hair that was already grey at the temples. He looked tired and drawn – a far cry from the bright-eyed eighteen-year-old she had married, the man who had been in her life since they’d started high school together. If she was really honest with herself she too had felt they had been stuck in a rut and they were a long way from the bubbly couple they’d once been. But this seemed so extreme. Things weren’t that bad, were they? Shouldn’t they at least talk about it first? Despite what he’d just said, she hadn’t seen this coming, hadn’t imagined for a moment that his complaints and grumblings of discontent meant anything.

  ‘You’re leaving me?’

  ‘It’s just space – you know? It’ll be good for both of us – it’ll help us both to decide what we want.’

  ‘I want you! I don’t need space to decide that! At least come in and talk to me before you do anything else. Twelve years of marriage has got to be worth that, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Kate, we’ve done nothing but talk and it’s got us nowhere.’

  ‘No, we haven’t! Not properly. You’ve never mentioned leaving! How is that talking?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have listened even if I had,’ he replied quietly. ‘And when were we supposed to get the time to talk when you’re never around?’

  ‘I have to work! I have commitments outside our marriage. Am I supposed to forget all that and be at your beck and call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?’

  ‘You’re always with your sisters—’

  ‘You’re saying I can’t see my sisters?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying,’ he fired back irritably. But then he checked himself, paused, and when he looked at her, Kate could see how much this was hurting him. So why was he doing it? ‘It’s too late,’ he said finally. ‘The rot is set in and I don’t see a way back from here.’

  ‘So when you said you needed a break that was a lie so that I’d let you walk out of the door without a fight? It was just so you could stop the meter running on that taxi waiting for you outside?’

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Oh, right. Because this way isn’t hurting at all.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I suppose what you were actually hoping for was to be gone before I got in from work, so that you could take the coward’s way out and not have to face me at all?’

  Matt shifted awkwardly, his gaze dropping to the antique tiled floor of their hallway. Kate let out a hollow laugh.

  ‘How inconsiderate of me to finish work early today. What would I have arrived back to? A note on the table? A text? Dinner in the oven? Nothing?’

  He shook his head, but he couldn’t look her in the eye.

  ‘Is there someone else?’ she asked in a low voice.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that? This, all of a sudden? If there’s nobody else then why are you leaving?’

  ‘There has to be another woman?’

  ‘Of course not – not if it was any other man we were talking about. But I know you, Matt, better than you know yourself, and I know that you need someone; you’re not built for life alone.’

  ‘Well maybe I changed! Maybe I’m not quite the pathetic needy man you seem to think I am.’

  ‘I never said you were pathetic and needy, but I don’t believe for a moment that you’re up to life on your own. It’s just not the sort of person you are.’

  ‘Believe what you like. I’m leaving and it’s down to nothing apart from the fact that you and me don’t work any more. This marriage is dead in the water, and it has been for a long time now.’

  ‘So that’s it? We don’t try? We don’t fight for it? If there’s no one else then there’s no reason why we can’t work it out.’

  ‘There’s no fighting to be done, and I don’t want to work it out. I’ve grown up, Kate; I’m not the man you married. We were too young, and we thought we could survive growing up but we couldn’t. That’s all there is to it.’

  Kate stared at him, tried to be strong and calm, but inside there was a mess of emotions that couldn’t be contained. ‘You selfish bastard,’ she said, fighting back tears. ‘We’
ve known each other since we were eleven and that’s all I’m worth? We’ve both grown up but I’ve grown up living a life that includes you. I’ve gone out of my way to make you happy, considered your feelings in everything I’ve ever done since we got together and you throw it back in my face without so much as an explanation, without one attempt to make it work when the going gets a little tough? You’re bored and now you want out, and you don’t give a shit about the consequences, or what it means for your wife, who has lived her life with you always at the forefront of every decision? I thought you were better than that. It just goes to show that you never really know anyone at all.’

  He didn’t say another word. He didn’t even say goodbye. Matt picked up his suitcases and left, and he never slept under their roof again.

  Chapter Two

  Six months later Kate’s living room was bathed in the warm morning sun cascading through the blinds. It set the deep red of her chimney-breast wall ablaze, reflecting back from the gilt of the ornate mirror that graced it, and gave the room all at once a vibrancy and cosiness that spoke volumes about the person who lived there.

  ‘Keep still!’ she chided, slapping Anna’s legs. Her sister was perched precariously on a stool as Kate pinned the hem of a blue satin ball gown. Anna was taller than Kate by an inch, the same shade of red hair tumbling around her slender freckled shoulders, her eyes a deeper shade of the colour that turned from blue to grey to green depending on the light.

  ‘I am keeping still,’ Anna complained. ‘Sort of anyway. It’s hard to keep still on a wobbly old stool.’

  Kate blew a stray lock of hair away from her forehead as she leaned back to assess her handiwork. ‘It’s about as straight as it’s going to be with fidget-knickers wearing it.’

  ‘Oi!’

  Kate grinned. ‘You can get down now and take it off – carefully!’

  Anna stepped off the stool and took herself to the full-length mirror that Kate used for dress alterations to admire her reflection. ‘It’s gorgeous. I can’t believe you made this.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m crap?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Anna laughed. ‘These bloody corporate award nights are a pain in the arse. It’s all very well for those at the top of the food chain who can afford to spend five hundred quid on a ball gown to get pissed in at what amounts to a glorified work’s outing, but I can do without such frivolities. That’s why I’m so thankful I have you to help me out. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t had you. I suppose I would have had to stump up the cash or wave goodbye to any future promotions, but it would have pissed me off. I couldn’t do what you do, not in a million years. I think it’s amazing and you’ve saved me so much money!’

  ‘That was the idea,’ Kate said as she packed away some loose pins. ‘I would hate for you to miss out on this awards thing, especially if you’ve won one and you hadn’t turned up because the dress code pissed you off. . .’ She looked up and caught the grin flashed by Anna. Kate’s sister may have been complaining about it, but secretly she wouldn’t have missed the event for the world, just in case she had won an award. ‘Besides, the chance to make a ball gown – you were hardly going to stop me, were you?’

  ‘I don’t know why you keep going into that awful office when you could open a shop to make your own dresses and people would flock to you.’

  ‘I doubt that would happen. I’ve got a mortgage to pay on my own too – at least until Matt and I manage to sell the house.’ Her gaze swept over the living room. High ceilings, original coving, a Victorian fireplace with a wood-burning fire, beautiful bay windows that invited daylight to flood in, wooden floors and antique furniture. She and Matt had stretched themselves to buy it, sank their last pennies into it, and it was all she had ever dreamed of in a house. She had thought that she and Matt would live there together forever. Now she faced the prospect of losing not just him but the house as well. Divorce proceedings were close to being done, and she had made it all too easy for Matt to get his own way. Perhaps the fight had gone from her; perhaps a small part of her thought that he wouldn’t really go through with it, and by being agreeable she might make him see what he was throwing away and he would change his mind. Perhaps she loved him too much not to let him have whatever made him happy, or perhaps she loved him so little that she no longer cared. Kate didn’t even know herself how she felt any more; her emotions had been such a jumble since the bombshell had been dropped, and it was only now, as things were winding up, that she was beginning to sort things in her own head. Despite all this she had fought a little harder over the house. She loved it and she wanted it; the house represented security and familiarity, and it was all she had left to cling to in the storm of the life she had known being ripped up around her. It was tough, paying the mortgage alone, but she would have continued to do it if she had a hope of ever getting a mortgage that would lend her Matt’s share too so she could buy him out. Sadly, her financial adviser had told her quite emphatically that wasn’t going to happen and so she had to be prepared for the worst. Knowing that hadn’t stopped her from trying to stay there for as long as possible though.

  ‘I wish we could help,’ Anna said softly. ‘Lily and I talk about it all the time but we don’t know what we could do, and you wouldn’t take money from us anyway. . .’

  Kate shook herself. ‘Don’t be daft. Of course I wouldn’t take your money, and it’s not for you and Lily to worry about; you’re my sisters, not my keepers. It’s not anyone’s mess but mine and Matt’s, and I don’t expect anyone to bail me out.’

  ‘I know but. . .’

  Kate forced her brightest smile. ‘Now, do you want a corsage on this? It looks a bit bare around the neckline. Or we could sit one on the waist if you’d prefer?’

  ‘Kate. . .’ Anna frowned. ‘You’re not fooling anyone, you know.’

  ‘Not you as well. Lily was grumbling at me last week.’

  ‘That’s what sisters do. We may not share a room any more—’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘—but that doesn’t mean we stop thinking and caring about you when you’re not there.’

  ‘I know, and I appreciate it, but I’m fine. You’re both worrying over nothing.’

  ‘Who’s worrying over nothing?’ Lily appeared at the doorway carrying three mugs on a tray, which she deposited on a side table before giving Anna’s dress an approving once-over. The youngest of the three sisters, she shared the delicate colouring of the other two, but her eyes were an even deeper shade of blue.

  ‘Everyone,’ Kate replied, a note of irritation creeping into her tone. ‘I’m thirty and I think that’s old enough to look after myself.’

  ‘No woman is an island,’ Lily returned sagely as she handed out the drinks. ‘I have Joel and Anna has Christian and you used to have Matt, but you were unlucky and that ended and we want to support you.’

  Despite her irritation Kate had to laugh.

  ‘I just don’t need everyone mollycoddling me all the time,’ she said. ‘Even Matt keeps phoning, convinced that living in the house alone means I’m going to blow it up or something. He obviously only cares because he’s thinking about his investment, not because he cares about me, and frankly I wish he’d stop. If Mum hadn’t brought us up to be so infuriatingly polite I could tell him to piss off.’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ Anna said. ‘I mean, I do remember you melting my favourite Barbie on the stove when we were kids.’

  ‘And you dropped my Hornby set down the stairs – the signals at Clapham Junction never quite worked the same after that,’ Lily added.

  ‘Then there was the time you flooded the bathroom. . .’ Anna gave Lily a knowing look.

  ‘And when you chucked warm water on the patio to melt the ice but then it froze again and Mum went flying down the garden path. . .’ Lily put in.

  ‘And—’ Anna began, but Kate shushed her.

  ‘OK. But that was when we were young. Every kid has daft accidents.’

  ‘I didn’t,’
Lily said mildly.

  ‘Well, we all know you’re Miss Perfect,’ Kate said tartly. ‘Mum and Dad’s baby – they protected you from everything.’

  ‘I don’t think either of us have had quite as many as you,’ Anna put in. ‘I think it comes from doing everything at a hundred miles an hour.’

  ‘And you’re the oldest so you probably had all your accidents before I was born,’ Kate said, looking pointedly at Anna.

  ‘I’m only two years older than you!’ Anna laughed. ‘What on earth did you think I could get into at two?’

  ‘And I’m only two years younger than you,’ Lily reminded Kate. ‘Which means you were the baby for two years before I arrived so you can’t use that excuse on me.’

  ‘And get you,’ Kate said, eyeing the slight bump at Lily’s midriff, ‘the baby of us the first to have a baby of her own.’

  ‘I know,’ Anna chimed in. ‘I feel almost lazy that I haven’t bothered to reproduce yet.’

  Lily giggled. ‘You’ve got the career. If I was a high-flying number cruncher I would have put it off too.’ She smoothed a hand over her belly. ‘We probably should have waited until Joel and I got married, but we’ve been together for a while now so it doesn’t feel like a huge issue. It’s lucky he’s as excited as me, because it seems that baby will come when baby wants to come.’

  ‘It turns out it’s lucky I didn’t get pregnant,’ Kate said. ‘All the times Matt put me off the idea I should have known . . .’

  ‘I’m sure that wasn’t the reason,’ Anna said.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ll never know,’ Kate replied briskly.

  Lily exchanged a worried glance with Anna before turning to Kate. ‘You say you’re OK every time we ask, but are you really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s just that . . .’ Anna paused. ‘You seem as if you’re hiding a lot of what’s really going on in your head.’

  Kate took the dress that Anna had wriggled out of and slipped it onto a hanger as her sister pulled on a dressing gown and clipped her hair back. ‘Honestly, I’m fine, so everyone can stop worrying about me.’