by Rosanna Ley
As for Elene . . . Chiara’s heart softened as she watched her daughter catch up her nut-brown hair, swirling it into an efficient chignon. Elene was an attractive woman, but in an understated way; she wore a bare minimum of make-up – a flick of eye-liner, a sweep of pale lipstick. Her bone structure, skin, and posture allowed her to get away with it, though. The women of their family were fortunate in that regard.
‘Is there anything else, Mamma?’ Clearly, Elene wanted her out of the kitchen. Behind them various members of Elene’s team were washing, peeling and preparing, ready for the lunch service.
Chiara put a hand to her own hair. ‘I need to talk to Silvio,’ she murmured, half to herself. She still felt slightly spaced out, as if a dream from last night had not quite left her, was still misting around her mind, determined not to let it clear.
‘What about?’ Elene’s eyes were sharp as her father’s, and she was defensive of Silvio, always had been since the day she first brought him back here. Even back then, Chiara had known that there was nothing wrong with Silvio Lombardi – a boy from the village – he could be trusted, and he seemed to adore Elene. But . . .
‘I have some jobs for him, that’s all,’ she said mildly.
Elene straightened her chef’s apron as if she meant business. Her eyes were steely. ‘He’s busy, Mamma.’
‘Doing?’ Chiara arched an eyebrow. It was an instinctive reaction and so she could not take it back. Silvio was supposed to be answerable to her – which she knew was tricky, given that she was his mother-in-law – but this never seemed to happen. Instead, she had to chase after him constantly to find out what he was doing, drag him away to see to what actually needed doing, and then watch him return to his original task the second her back was turned. Of course, he was busy. Why wouldn’t he be busy? He too worked full-time here at the hotel.
‘I imagine he’s working in the kitchen garden.’ Elene glanced outside. The window looked out on to the olive grove, but they had created a small area for herbs just outside the back door.
The trees stood, soft and serene, reminding Chiara of the man she’d seen yesterday. Maybe she too would take a walk outside later, she thought; the trees always seemed to soothe her, maybe they would chase that dream away.
‘Such a lovely day.’ Elene sounded almost wistful. ‘A shame to be cooped up inside.’
‘As we all are.’ Too late, Chiara bit her tongue.
Silvio meant well. And he worked hard enough. But right from the first, Chiara had questioned her daughter’s judgement – perhaps wrongly, she realised now.
‘Do you love him?’ she had asked her when Elene first broke the news of their engagement. The words came out more harshly than she’d intended – so many words did. He seemed a decent boy – but where was the edge, the spark? Would he be enough for her daughter, for any woman of their family?
‘Mamma . . .’ Elene’s eyes told her nothing.
‘Do you?’ This mattered so much to Chiara – she, who hadn’t been allowed the luxury of love.
‘There are other things.’ Elene’s chin jutted in that way Chiara recognised. It told her there was no point in pursuing this line of conversation, and yet still she did.
‘What things?’
‘More important things.’
‘Elene.’ Chiara gripped her daughter’s arms. ‘Nothing is more important than love.’ She heard the tremor of passion in her own voice.
But Elene shrugged her away as she had shrugged her away so often. ‘Silvio is reliable,’ she said. ‘I can trust him. He gives me what I need.’
And what do you need? But Chiara did not ask this question. Perhaps she was afraid of what she might hear, that what Silvio provided was precisely what she and Alonzo had failed to give their daughter: solidity, attention, the kind of security she craved.
Elene was stubborn as always. ‘Papà likes him. He has already given his blessing.’
‘You have spoken to him already?’ Chiara was surprised.
‘He’s my father.’ Elene stood straighter. ‘He said it was my decision. He said that I was old enough to know my own mind.’
There was no denying the sub-text behind her words. ‘And so it is.’ Chiara sighed. ‘And so you are. But . . .’
‘But?’
How could she put this to get through to her? ‘I just want you to know, cara, that you do not have to make this choice,’ she told her. ‘You can wait. You can reconsider. You can marry anyone. Anyone you choose. And perhaps one day—’
‘I do not want to wait. No one is going to appear like magic with a glass slipper in his hand. Life is not a fairy story.’ Elene had glared at her. ‘I have chosen Silvio. You put him down. But what do you know about him, really?’
Chiara shook her head. ‘I’m not putting him down.’ Though she supposed that she was. ‘And I know better than anyone that life is not a fairy story.’ She swallowed. Better not dwell on that. Elene looked up to her father – even seemed to idolise him, which seemed hardly fair given his lack of parental contribution over the years. Oh, of course, it was good and right for her to love her own father. But did she love a version of Alonzo that didn’t really exist? Sometimes, Chiara couldn’t help but wonder. ‘It’s only that if you don’t love him—’
‘Oh, you pretend to be so gracious.’ Elene was angry now. Her eyes were bright, as if she might cry.
Chiara had handled this badly. What was meant to be a loving mother and daughter chat had turned into something quite different – again.
‘But you always criticise me. There is always something wrong. I can’t do anything well enough for you, Mamma . . .’
‘Elene . . .’ She tried to soothe her. ‘It’s not that, Elene. I’m only thinking of—’ You. But her daughter had turned on her heel and left the room. Leaving Chiara to reflect once more: was it true? Were her expectations too high?
No. It was just that she wanted her daughter to have what she could not, that was all. She wanted Elene to be happy.
And so, Elene had married Silvio, and he had come to live and work at the hotel. It was a good plan. Silvio was practical – he could turn his hand to plumbing, gardening, and all kinds of building maintenance. Chiara had to admit that he’d added to the smooth running of The Lemon Tree, and that she had grown to appreciate him too. And then of course there was their daughter Isabella, ah, Bella . . . the granddaughter she adored. But was Elene truly happy? That, she would love to know.
‘And the jobs on your list, they are important, sì?’ Elene was bustling around the kitchen now, fetching a large pan and a glass bottle of rich green olive oil, grabbing two fat bulbs of purple-white garlic from the terracotta jar.
‘Yes.’ Chiara turned around to leave the kitchen. They hadn’t shared a coffee or a cosy chat after all – why had she thought this might happen when it so rarely did? Instead they had ended on the usual note of tension. ‘I’ll go and find him.’ Too bad if Silvio would rather be weeding the kitchen garden. This was an old building and it required tending – inside as well as out. There was broken plaster work in one of the rooms – the maid had reported it – and this was not good enough; it needed to be repaired before the next guest arrived.
As she left, she heard the unmistakeable sound of Elene slamming the pan on to the marble counter. But Chiara was still in charge – however difficult Elene and Silvio might find that. Nevertheless, she exhaled with relief as the swing doors of the kitchen closed behind her. As someone once said: if you don’t like the heat . . .
She fanned herself with her clipboard, glanced towards the reception desk where Isabella was smiling and chatting to a guest – and froze. She stared at the man who had his back to her. There was something so familiar about the way he stood, the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head. Surely? She remembered the man she’d seen in the olive grove yesterday. Of course. He bore even more resemblance to Dante at close quarters. But it couldn’t be him. Oh, mio dio . . . How could it be him?
Chiara found she couldn�
��t move. And by the time she’d half recovered, taken a step forwards, stepped back again, the man had nodded to Isabella and walked away past the desk. Now, he was almost out of sight.
‘Nonna?’ Isabella had seen her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Chiara approached the reception desk, struggling to remain calm.
‘You’re very pale.’
‘Nonsense.’ Chiara leaned heavily on the desk. Truth be told, she was feeling a little dizzy, she almost thought she might fall. ‘I’m perfectly fine.’ She was hardly in her dotage. Fifty-nine and fit as a fiddle.
‘If you say so, Nonna.’
‘I do.’ And she forced a smile. The man had disappeared from view. He’d probably gone into the courtyard. ‘That man,’ she asked Isabella, ‘was he the one who checked in yesterday?’
‘Yes, that’s him, Signor Bianchi.’ She tucked a strand of raven-black hair behind her ear. To Chiara’s secret delight she had inherited the colouring passed down to them both by Chiara’s mother. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No, no, it is nothing.’ Of course, it was not him, just a coincidence. A man who happened to be around Dante’s age and height, his arrival coinciding with that half-forgotten dream. And after all, how could she even guess what he looked like now? How white his hair might be, how bent his back, how weathered his skin? Once she had thought that he was her destiny – but that was a very long time ago.
Isabella was frowning. ‘Could you look after the desk for five minutes, Nonna? I need to check something in the office.’
‘Of course.’ Chiara pulled the hotel’s register towards her and stared at the name. Bianchi. There was something . . . But. For a moment she was lost, once again, in thought.
‘It was a feeble disguise.’ The voice was a soft growl. It was one so familiar and yet one she had not heard for over forty years.
For a moment, she was motionless. Then she spun around. ‘Dante,’ she breathed.
‘The very same.’
He was smiling. His face was broader and his skin more lined. His dark hair was now flecked with silver. His eyes were the same though – velvet-brown and deep as a well. He had put on a little weight around the middle – but not too much. Chiara couldn’t take her eyes off him.
‘But – why?’
‘Why the subterfuge?’ He was still smiling. ‘It has been a long time.’
‘Yes.’ Such a long time.
‘I didn’t want to charge in and create any kind of problem for you.’
‘Then what did you want?’ She was still staring at him. She was surprised she could even speak.
‘I just wanted to . . .’ He paused. ‘Observe.’
‘Observe?’
‘Exactly.’ His eyes were searching her face.
Madonna santa . . . After forty years apart – what did he want to observe?
‘But then I saw that you might have recognised me, and so . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I came clean.’
Chiara nodded, though her thoughts and emotions were so tangled she could barely make sense of what he was saying. Bianchi and Rossi . . . Honestly. White and red, she got it now, of course. ‘But, why are you here at all?’ Wasn’t he supposed to be in England? Making his gelato miles away from The Lemon Tree Hotel, from Vernazza?
‘You could say that I am paying a visit to an old friend.’ He leaned towards her, kissed her on both cheeks.
The touch stung. Chiara felt as though she were on fire. It was the shock. Or perhaps another hot flush? Or something altogether more dangerous? Whichever, she couldn’t use her clipboard to fan herself again. It would be too obvious. ‘Or?’
‘Or you could say that sometimes, even after forty years, it can still prove impossible to get a woman out of one’s mind.’
CHAPTER 6
Isabella
Isabella hadn’t had a chance to speak to her Aunt Giovanna last night, so she nipped down to the cottage the following morning to ask her about Ferdinand Bauer.
She found her on the back terrace feeding her hens, murmuring to them gently as if they shared a language all of their own. And for the first time, she wondered, was her Aunt Giovanna lonely living here in the cottage in the grounds of The Lemon Tree Hotel? Had she wanted to live here when the idea was first presented to her? Or was there a different kind of life that she might ever have desired for herself?
‘Bella. What a lovely surprise.’ Her aunt fetched a jug of lemonade and they settled themselves on the worn wooden bench on the back terrace opposite the olive grove.
‘There’s a guest at the hotel who would very much like to talk to you, Aunt,’ Isabella began.
‘Oh? Why on earth would anyone want to talk to an old lady like me, my dear?’
Isabella laughed. ‘Who wouldn’t want to talk to you?’ Her aunt had so many visitors; Isabella knew that over the years she had become a bit of an unofficial counsellor for the inhabitants of Vernazza and the other four villages.
‘Ah, well, people think because I am old that I must be wise,’ she said, ‘when you and I are sensible enough to know that this is not necessarily the case.’
But in her case, it definitely was. Isabella regarded her thoughtfully. ‘This young man wants to talk to you about the old convent, I believe.’
‘Is that so?’
Isabella felt her scrutiny. ‘I have no idea why,’ she added. ‘Though he seems to be very interested in the history of the building.’
‘Hmm.’ Giovanna sipped her lemonade. ‘And is that all he is interested in, do you suppose?’
‘Who knows?’ Isabella pretended not to understand her aunt’s meaning. Yes, he was young, yes, he was attractive, and Isabella was certainly not blind. But that was absolutely all there was to it – and all there would ever be. Guests were off-limits – she had learned that to her cost.
‘And what is he like, this young man?’
‘Oh, late twenties, tall, fair, inquisitive . . .’ Isabella’s voice trailed.
‘Then, yes.’ And Giovanna’s milky brown eyes positively gleamed. ‘I would be most happy to talk to him, my dear.’
*
Back at the hotel, things were not running as smoothly as usual. One of the guests was asking about gluten-free bread, so Isabella went into the kitchen to quiz her mother about it.
Elene was not in a good mood. ‘They want this, they want that, they want the other. Since when can people not eat good, honest bread baked in the same way it has been baked for centuries?’ She was clattering pots and pans around and slamming cupboard doors and the rest of the kitchen staff seemed to have retreated to the other end of the room.
If they weren’t careful, they wouldn’t have any staff left. Emanuele had already got into a complete grump about having to look after things last night, and he’d been late for his shift twice this week already. Isabella didn’t want to bother her grandmother with the matter. When Isabella had come back from the office to reception this morning, Nonna had been white as a sheet. She’d insisted she was fine, but Isabella was far from convinced. That made twice in two days that Nonna had looked near to passing out.
‘Mamma – what’s wrong?’ Isabella wondered if she should fetch her father. He was always calm in a crisis, and they needed her mother to supervise lunch, otherwise they would have a lot of very unhappy guests to contend with.
‘Wrong? Why should anything be wrong?’ Another pan clattered on to the stove.
Isabella winced. ‘I don’t know. You seem unhappy.’
‘Unhappy – pah! Wouldn’t anyone be unhappy working in a hot kitchen all day?’
Well, yes, but her mother usually welcomed it. ‘Did Nonna come in earlier to look at the menus?’ This was a fair guess. Life would be a lot easier if her mother and her grandmother could get along better, but they both knew which buttons to press and sometimes they pressed them with wild abandon and total disregard for each other’s sensitivities.
‘Don’t talk to me about the menus, Bella,’ Elene snapped. ‘God knows they take
long enough to prepare in themselves – and that’s without any cooking.’
‘I know, Mamma.’
‘As if I can’t decide what dish should be eaten when. As if I don’t know what ingredients are available and when it’s market day and—’
‘Perhaps we should talk about it with Nonna,’ Isabella soothed. ‘Perhaps you should always make the final decision and be done with it.’
‘As if I could be trusted to make any final decision.’ Elene took hold of her kitchen knife and sliced it neatly through an innocent and glistening onion.
Once again, Isabella winced. ‘We could bring it up at the next meeting?’ she suggested.
‘No point.’
‘Mamma, there’s always a point.’ Isabella put an arm around her mother’s shoulders – they were thin and tense. ‘Come on now, don’t get so upset. Nonna would hate to think she’d upset you. She’s not quite herself today, you know, maybe she’s coming down with something and—’
‘Oh, that’s it. Defend her – you always do.’
‘Mamma!’ Sometimes Isabella wondered who was the daughter and who was the mother around here.
Elene shrugged her away. ‘Basta. Enough. I have work to do, Bella.’
‘Shall I fetch Papà?’
‘Why? Can he cook lunch all of a sudden?’
No, but he could talk to you. Isabella didn’t say this out loud. She peered out of the window. Very likely he’d be out in the grounds somewhere. There was no time to lose. Her mother was pressing bulbs of garlic as if she meant them actual bodily harm. ‘I’ll just . . .’
