Three Days in Florence

by Chrissie Manby

  A few pictures further on, she came upon a shot of the music room, of the beautiful Bösendorfer piano and the stool she had shared with Henry Innocenti. It was a memory she’d hoped to cherish but it was overlaid now with that awful moment when Neil had shoved the five-euro note into Henry’s pocket after making him play ‘Yellow’ at the wedding dinner. Kathy cringed at the memory.

  She scrolled forward through the photos again until she got to a picture someone had taken of her and Neil, seconds after their engagement. She looked red, flustered. Had she known what was coming, she would definitely not have had so much wine. But then had she really known what was coming, she might have swerved the wedding altogether. She now understood why a public proposal was far from romantic, giving the person on the receiving end no real opportunity to answer freely or to ask questions of their own. It was an ambush.

  Kathy closed the photo app. But it had reminded her that she had yet to call her mother and tell her the ‘good news’.

  Clare answered her phone at once. Kathy wondered if her mother carried the landline receiver around the house in a pocket. She never let it ring more than twice.

  ‘Are you OK?’ was always her first question.

  ‘Of course,’ Kathy assured her.

  ‘You’re flying back this morning, aren’t you? I won’t be able to relax until I know you’ve landed so make sure you text when you do.’

  ‘I may be a while yet.’ Kathy explained the problem.

  ‘Neil left you at the airport? On your own?’

  ‘Mum, I told him to. No point in us all being stuck here. Besides, Neil probably needs a little time alone with the children. He had some big news for them last night and they’re still digesting it.’

  ‘What is it? He’s not ill, is he?’

  ‘No, Mum. It’s good news. We’re engaged.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It happened at the wedding. After the speeches. Neil asked me to marry him in front of everybody. The ring is … Well, you’ll see it.’

  Kathy looked at it on her finger. How would she describe it? Big? Flashy? A consolation prize?

  At the other end, Clare seemed lost for words. ‘Oh, my darling,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m so happy for you both.’

  ‘Thank you, Mum.’

  ‘Have you set a date?’

  ‘Not yet. I was surprised he asked. I had no idea.’

  ‘You must have had some inkling he was going to propose?’

  ‘No,’ said Kathy. That much was true. Kathy did not think the thought of marriage had ever crossed Neil’s mind. Especially not after … No, she wasn’t going to tell her mother about that. Not now. ‘We hadn’t spoken about it, that’s all.’

  ‘I suppose a divorce like Neil had would make any man shy of standing at the altar again. But I was beginning to worry about you. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have everything you want out of life because his first wife was unfaithful and ended up with half his money.’

  ‘More than half.’ Kathy heard Neil’s voice in her head.

  ‘I wonder what changed his mind?’ Clare mused.

  Kathy had an idea but she said, ‘Perhaps he just fancies a big party like his brother’s.’

  ‘How did the children react?’

  ‘They seemed pleased,’ Kathy lied. ‘I expect they’re glad I’m going to be around to look after him in his old age.’

  ‘You do look after him very well,’ Clare said.

  ‘He looks after me too,’ Kathy said. It felt like the right thing to say.

  ‘It’s a huge weight off my mind. Oh, Kathy, your father would have been so pleased. One of the things that upset him most about the cancer was that he knew he’d never be able to walk you down the aisle. But he wrote a speech,’ Clare told her then, ‘so he could be there in spirit whatever happened. I’ve kept it safe for exactly this moment. Oh, your dad loved you so much. I can’t believe he’s missing out on this. You were the apple of his eye.’

  ‘Mum, stop it,’ said Kathy. ‘You’re going to make me cry in the airport.’

  ‘I’m making myself cry here,’ said Clare.

  ‘Getting engaged is a happy event.’

  Clare gave an anguished sniff.

  ‘I should have waited to tell you in person,’ Kathy said. ‘Then I could be giving you a hug.’

  ‘That would have been nice,’ said Clare. ‘Will you be able to come and see me soon? Both of you?’

  ‘Well, I will, definitely,’ said Kathy. She knew that Neil might have more important things to do. He usually did.

  ‘There’ll be so much to talk about. Do you think you’ll have the wedding near you? Or near me?’

  By ‘near me’, Clare meant at St George’s, the church where she and Eddie had married. The church where they’d met, in fact, as members of the choir.

  ‘We probably won’t go for a big white wedding, Mum,’ said Kathy. ‘Seems a bit over the top, given Neil’s been married before and I’m hardly twenty-one. But,’ she added quickly, ‘I promise you’ll be involved in every aspect of the planning. There’s no way I could do it without you. You’ll come dress shopping, of course.’

  ‘Try and stop me. Will you have bridesmaids? Sophie and Amelie will want to be bridesmaids, I expect.’

  Kathy doubted it. ‘Look, Mum. I’ve got to go. I don’t have much battery left on the phone. Neil’s taken the charger.’

  ‘Get home safely, won’t you? I hope you don’t have to stay in Florence for three nights. I don’t like to think of you being there on your own.’

  ‘I thought it was your favourite city.’

  ‘It was,’ said Clare. ‘But that was because I had your dad by my side.’

  Once again, Eddie’s absence opened up between them, like a crack in the earth. Clare wasn’t the only one who’d felt safer while Eddie was alive but Kathy had to be strong. ‘I’ll take care, Mum. Chances are I won’t get any further than the airport. Neil is going to sort out a new ticket as soon as he lands. He thinks he can get me on a BA flight tonight. The last thing he wants is to have to look after the children on his own all weekend.’

  ‘Your future stepchildren,’ Clare observed. ‘You’re going to be a mother at last.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kathy. ‘After a fashion. Look, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘OK, love,’ said Clare. ‘Have a safe trip home. I love you!’

  ‘I love you too.’

  Kathy had lied about her phone. It had plenty of battery life and she had the charger in her handbag. Neil would be upset when he got back to London to discover that was the case. But Kathy didn’t want to talk to her mother any longer that day. She was glad she’d been able to call Clare with the ‘good news’, but the fact was that if she’d continued to talk about it, she would almost certainly have given voice to the thoughts that had been eating her up over the last week. Since V-Day, as she called it in her head.

  A coffee would have made things feel a good deal better. Kathy pulled her purse out of her bag and checked – knowing all the while it was hopeless – that she hadn’t kept a couple of notes from their last trip to the Eurozone. No such luck. She checked the pockets in her handbag. She even felt around to see if a couple of coins might have slipped through to the lining. Nothing. She did have her cards, though. She could get some money out of a cashpoint. The exchange rate wouldn’t be great. Neil always made sure to order their holiday cash months in advance to ensure the best deal. But this was an emergency. Would he really expect her to go the whole day with nothing but water?

  ‘Probably,’ said a little voice in Kathy’s head.

  ‘Sod it,’ she said out loud.

  Kathy did a few quick sums in her head and decided she should take out two hundred euros. What she didn’t spend – and she would spend as little as she could, of course – she and Neil could take on their next trip abroad. She imagined justifying the decision and was satisfied that Neil would agree.

  With the crisp new euro notes in her hand, Kathy went straight to the
coffee counter. She ordered an espresso. Then changed her order to a double. And a pastry. One of the type filled with chocolate spread that she hadn’t been able to eat at the palazzo for fear of Neil’s or Margaret’s or Sophie’s disapproval. The barista rewarded the upgrade with a nod. Kathy stood at a high table to knock back the coffee and eat the delicate little pastry that was gone in a couple of seconds. She used her finger to pick up the last of the crumbs and savoured their buttery taste. She felt immediately more human as the coffee went straight into her veins.

  As she finished, she watched the people coming and going. She glanced at the clock on her phone. It was still only nine. Even if Neil could get her on that evening’s BA flight by pulling rank as a frequent flyer, Kathy still had ten hours to go before she would need to be at the check-in desk again.

  Outside, the summer sun warmed the pavements. It was shaping up to be another glorious day. A quick look at the weather app on her phone had already told Kathy that Neil would be flying back into chilly London rain. She should at least stand outside the terminal, find a spot away from the smokers, where she could feel the sun on her face, and snatch her last chance of a tan.

  Kathy walked out through the big automatic doors and wandered the length of the terminal. From the far end, she could see the Tuscan hills. She gazed enviously at a white house set in a coppice high above the airport. What were the people who lived in that house doing now? Drinking their morning coffee with a view over the valley? Could they see the Duomo from there?

  Kathy sat on her suitcase and looked at the view until a smoker in search of solitude also found her secret spot.

  Smoked out, she abandoned her place and dragged her case back towards the terminal entrance. She headed for the row of seats where she’d been sitting earlier. They were all full. There was nowhere else to sit down. A school group had colonised every chair. Even the stools at the bar were full.

  Kathy drifted around the polished halls with her suitcase. This was going to be a long day. Unless …

  The centre of Florence was perhaps half an hour’s cab ride away. Kathy knew from her research – back when she’d still thought Neil might agree to tag on a few days in the city after the wedding – that the price of a cab from the airport to the centre was fixed at about twenty-five euros. She had in her handbag 195 euros after her morning snack. It was more than enough to pay for a cab to the city and back and have lunch at a café in between.

  Kathy felt her heart quicken as she considered her plan. She’d never been abroad alone before, had always travelled with her family or a boyfriend. These days she relied on Neil to tell her whether or not her plans were sensible. He was big on travelling safely. He had told her to stay put in the airport but it was a glorious day and Kathy was just half an hour away from the city she’d dreamed of since she was a child. It was crazy to come this far only to spend ten hours sitting in a plastic seat at an airport – assuming she could even find a plastic seat to sit on – when she could be strolling the streets of Firenze. It would be a criminal waste of a perfect opportunity.

  ‘But you’ve got all your worldly belongings with you,’ Neil’s voice said. ‘You can’t drag them around all day.’

  Actually, Kathy could drag them around. She’d packed especially lightly – cabin baggage only – because Neil hated to wait at luggage carousels. She had just a small wheelie case and her ‘travelling handbag’ with all the zip-up pockets. She’d manage. All over the world every day, women had far bigger adventures in more dangerous places. They crossed deserts. They circumnavigated the globe. If Victorian women had climbed mountains in their petticoats, Kathy Courage could manage a single day alone in Florence.

  She followed the sign to the taxi queue.

  She was going in.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sitting in the back of a taxi, Kathy’s courage wavered. Neil had been quite firm about it. She should stay in the airport terminal. And the taxi could not have been more different from the car she and Neil had travelled in earlier that morning. The fake leather seats in the back were held together with duct tape that scratched Kathy’s bare arms. There was no air-conditioning. The driver instead had rolled down all the windows. He was smoking out of his and every time the taxi paused at a light, the smoke would snake back into the car through the window next to Kathy.

  But even the fug of cigarette smoke and the cloying scent of one of those horrible air-fresheners could not dampen Kathy’s excitement. She kept an eye on the journey’s progress via the map on her phone, as Neil often did to make sure a cabbie wasn’t ripping him off. The names of the streets were musical, even if, for the moment, the buildings were not. Along one road, there seemed to be an inordinate number of petrol stations.

  Then, as if a mirage had appeared, they were driving up to a medieval arch. The taxi driver bullied his way through, squeezing his car under at the same time as two scooters, whose riders beeped their disapproval. And on the other side, everything changed. It was as though the arch was a portal to another time. The streets suddenly narrowed. Pedestrians had to squeeze themselves into doorways to let the taxi pass as it slowed to walking pace, beeping to let them know it was coming.

  They crawled on into the city. A horse might have been faster. Kathy felt like a child again as she peered out of the window, feeling transported back to the Florence of Dante and Galileo. Of Michelangelo and the Medicis. Of her parents when they were young.

  And there was the Arno!

  Sluggish and brown, it did not look like the river immortalised in literature and opera but Kathy was still enchanted. Especially when she looked up to her right to see what was arguably the most famous bridge in the world. The Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge, lined all the way across with buildings. Higgledy-piggledy, in a dozen different colours and distinctly ramshackle, they looked ready to fall into the water.

  I’m going to walk across the Ponte Vecchio at last, Kathy thought, as she saw it. Excitement bubbled in her stomach and her heart. She was really in Florence now!

  She asked the driver to take her as near to the Duomo as possible. He dropped her off at the piazza Santa Maria Novella, opposite the main railway station. She counted out four notes to pay him and he got out of the car to help her unload her luggage after she told him to keep the change.

  The piazza Santa Maria Novella was not Florence’s most Instagrammable location but to Kathy, who had never before stood in a piazza in a proper Italian city, it was magical enough. The church of Santa Maria Novella dominated one end of the square, splendid in black and white marble, facing a grand obelisk in the middle of an ornamental lawn. She had been dropped off right in the middle of Florentine life. Elegantly suited men and women on their way to work crossed the piazza as though they were in a catwalk show. Dodging out of the way of the scooters and the taxis, Kathy sheltered in the shade of a colonnade as she took in the spectacle. She felt a little underdressed in her linen shirt and Marks & Spencer chinos, but she was there to see things, not to be seen.

  The Duomo was signposted, of course. Kathy pulled her case, rattling, across the square and joined a throng of human traffic heading in the right direction. At a crossroads she had to wait as a procession passed. A group of men dressed in Renaissance costume paraded slowly along the street to the beat of a single drum. At the front of the procession a horse wore matching Renaissance livery. The men walking behind it each carried flags. As they drew level with Kathy they stopped and tossed them high into the air, catching them with the skill and precision of a band of manly majorettes.

  Kathy was immediately enchanted. It was as though the show had been put on especially for her. As the members of a German tour group that had somehow surrounded her tried to catch a frame of the flags unfurled in mid-air, she watched the spectacle hungrily, wishing she knew what the procession meant and where it was going. She snapped some photos of her own to show Neil.

  Once the parade had moved on, Kathy continued on her path to the cathedral, keeping her eye on the sign
s that seemed sometimes to be leading her in a circle. She followed a rat-run of ever-decreasing alleyways – vicoli – until she saw sharp sunlight on the cobbles to the end of one, and there, the vista suddenly opened up again.

  At last, Kathy stood in the shadow of the world-famous Duomo. It was all she could do not to cry out in happiness. She had made it to Florence and she had made it to the Duomo. The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. What was more, she’d made it there by herself. She felt like a medieval pilgrim, though her journey had been considerably less arduous.

  The black, white and green marble-striped walls of the cathedral were exactly as she had imagined them. The doors, so intricately carved, begged to be inspected more closely. And that huge dome, orange terracotta striped with white tiles, was a true feat of engineering. In front of the Duomo was the Baptistery, itself bigger than the average church back home. And there was the Campanile – the cathedral’s bell-tower – even taller than the dome. Kathy’s parents had climbed that tower many years before.

  Though it was still relatively early, the enormous piazza del Duomo was thronged and the queue to go inside the cathedral snaked already almost all the way around the building. While sparrows strutted their stuff across the flagstones, swallows wheeled overhead. A cluster of young soldiers leaned against an armoured car, while young female tourists (and some older ones) queued to be pictured alongside them. Street sellers tried with their brightly coloured tat to catch the attention and pester power of bored children. A group of nuns in sober grey and black hurried by, like busy pigeons, and were ushered ahead of the queue into the nave.

  Of course Kathy wanted to look inside the cathedral but the signs all around made it clear that she wouldn’t be allowed in with her suitcase. She’d have to save making a proper visit for another trip. There would be another. She was sure about that. For now, it was just enough to stand in the cathedral’s shadow and listen to the great bells in its campanile sound the hour. One, two, three … Eleven o’clock.