Three Days in Florence

by Chrissie Manby

  Now, upon waking, Kathy realised the world was full of noise. Outside the window, which she had left open overnight, the swallows were finding breakfast, squealing through the sky, like feathered fighter pilots, as they plucked their desire from a buffet of unlucky flying critters. Meanwhile the city’s hundreds of bells announced that it was seven in the morning, and in the street below, a lorry full of what must have been empty bottles from the nearby bars and restaurants clattered over the uneven paving. Friends greeted one another loudly. A dog barked its own hello. Somewhere nearby, someone sang a snatch of opera in an impressive tenor voice. Was that really ‘Nessun Dorma’? It was like the soundtrack to a Hollywood movie version of Italy.

  Kathy went to the window and looked out at the view. The sky, which was striped vanilla-ice-cream yellow and baby blue, promised another glorious day ahead. And she would be spending it in Florence. Her heart gave an involuntary skip at the thought. Then she searched about for her phone, thinking, as she always did whenever they were apart, that she had better check Neil had everything he needed before she started her own day. Only then she remembered that she didn’t have her phone. Or her bag. Or her purse. Or her engagement ring.

  ‘Ugh.’

  That remembrance punctured the Florence feeling somewhat.

  But she couldn’t dwell on it. She wouldn’t. There was still a chance that the police would catch the bag thief. Carla had said she would phone the station first thing to ask for a progress report. Somebody might have tried to sell Kathy’s things on to an undercover officer. Or the bag might have been discarded and handed in. Often thieves just took what they could use immediately – like cash or credit cards – and chucked the rest. They might not even have noticed the ring tucked deep inside a pocket …

  Kathy crept to the bathroom. Though it was already noisy outside, she wasn’t sure if everyone in the house was up and she didn’t want to interrupt anyone’s dreams. But the taps in the basin came to life with an almighty clanking. No chance in this house that anyone would stumble in on someone else in the bathroom. The plumbing practically sang that it was in use.

  She splashed water on her face and did her best to tame her hair, which had fluffed up with the borrowed shampoo. Of all the things she had lost in her handbag, she would soon be missing her make-up the most. She had to make do instead with pinching her cheeks and nibbling at her lips, like some 1920s heroine.

  And of course she wasn’t the first to be up in this house of hoteliers. Roberta was already fully dressed, beautifully coiffed and in the kitchen, issuing instructions to an elderly man, bent almost double with age, who seemed utterly oblivious to everything she said as he went about his business.

  ‘Kathy, this is Ernesto, our venerable chef,’ Roberta said, then introduced Kathy to him in Italian. Ernesto did not turn round but merely nodded and continued to crack eggs into a frying pan. Roberta rolled her eyes at Kathy over Ernesto’s head.

  Carla was also up and dressed, running plates to and from the terrace where the hotel’s paying guests were making the most of the early sun. Manu was at the kitchen table, taking bites from a pastry between vanquishing more monsters on his tablet. Faustino was at his feet, waiting for the inevitable crumbs to fall. Faustino tore his eyes away from Manu for approximately three seconds, to check whether Kathy was carrying food as well. When he saw she wasn’t, he gave her a perfunctory wag of his pom-pom tail.

  Beyond the kitchen, the sitting room, where Kathy had met the family the previous evening, was still dark but Kathy could just make out a lumpen shape on the sofa. That must be Carla’s brother beneath a pile of blankets. So he had come home, after all. A large pair of brown shoes, kicked off just inside the front door, confirmed it. They were very big shoes. Their owner was either very tall or he looked like a kangaroo.

  Roberta handed Kathy a coffee cup and a plate. ‘Help yourself,’ she said. Then, ‘Manu, go and wake your uncle, please. He’s making the place look untidy.’

  ‘In a minute.’ Manu had to make sure the monsters were absolutely dead first. Then he would do his grandmother’s bidding.

  ‘In the traditional way?’ Roberta suggested.

  The grin on Manu’s face lit the room.

  ‘Uno, due, tre …’ Manu counted, as he posed in the manner of all small boys about to start a running race, arms and legs ready to pump all the way to victory. He set off across the floor at speed, darting through the door and skidding across the polished boards of the sitting room, coming to a halt only as he leaped on top of the body on the sofa.

  From the body on the sofa came a surprised ‘Ooof’ as Manu landed, then from Manu a squeal of delight as his victim came to life and rolled him off the sofa to the floor for a tickle fight.

  ‘You little—’ Admirably, Manu’s uncle managed not to swear.

  ‘Nonna made me do it!’ Manu protested. ‘Help! Help! He’s tickling me!’

  Manu wriggled free, leaving his uncle sitting on the floor, still wrapped in a blanket but now entirely awake. Manu was a very effective alarm clock. His uncle got to his feet, made a fruitless attempt to flatten down his wayward hair, and wandered to the kitchen door.

  He stood in the frame, observing the scene inside with a faint and bleary smile. He took in the faces of the people there, his eyes finally alighting on Kathy, who was sitting at the table with a pastry and coffee in front of her. He continued to smile at her familiar face, because her face was familiar to him, it seemed.

  ‘Henry,’ said Roberta. ‘This is Kathy Courage.’

  Kathy got up and stuck out her hand towards him. The realisation had hit her just moments before. How had she not put two and two together? The family name? The piles of sheet music in the attic room? The backstage passes and the montage dedicated to famous pianists on the back of the wardrobe door? Even the smell of his shower gel. ‘We’ve already met,’ she said.

  She was sure Henry’s smile stiffened just a little as he said, ‘Indeed, we have. Hello again.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Kathy gabbled an explanation to Roberta of how she had already met her son. Roberta seemed most interested to hear that Kathy played the piano.

  ‘Well, you must feel free to play ours,’ she said. ‘We love music in this house.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to inflict my playing on you,’ Kathy said.

  Henry didn’t leap in to say that she was being too modest about her ability this time, which was a disappointment.

  ‘And I played for her fiancé’s proposal,’ he said in turn. ‘Your favourite song. “Yellow” by Coldplay, wasn’t it?’

  Carla was passing with some plates to be returned to the kitchen. When she heard Henry mention Coldplay, her eyes widened, as though she had just heard him mutter an ancient curse, which it clearly was to him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kathy. ‘Though that’s more Neil’s favourite song than mine,’ she added quietly.

  ‘What a lovely coincidence,’ said Roberta, oblivious to the peculiar tension between her son and her guest. ‘It feels more than ever like Fate that you came to our house, Kathy dear.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ said Henry.

  While Henry helped himself to coffee, which he drank in two swift gulps, then refilled his cup, Kathy ate the pastry she had been so looking forward to with a little less relish than she might otherwise have done.

  Henry leaned against the sink for a while, giving Kathy the side-eye, she felt – she didn’t dare look at him. Then he left the kitchen and his mother followed him into the sitting room, to stand over him as he tidied the blankets he had slept in. Although they were trying to keep their voices down, Kathy couldn’t help but tune in to the conversation that was, of course, about her.

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ Roberta asked. ‘Why are you being so prickly?’

  ‘I’m not being prickly.’

  ‘Henry Innocenti, you are. Do you have a headache by any chance?’

  ‘I’m not hung-over, if that’s what you’re asking. I though
t I’d been relegated to the sofa for someone who really needed a bed for the night. Some poor backpacker who’d been ripped off and only had the clothes she was standing up in. Kathy’s new fiancé could probably afford to buy this place ten times over. Why didn’t he arrange for her to stay somewhere in the centre?’

  ‘As it happened, he did suggest she find somewhere else to stay and he would call through with his credit-card number. But how could I possibly agree to that?’ Roberta hissed. ‘The poor woman had just been robbed. She’s all alone here. I couldn’t send her out again into the city on her own. It’s not about money, Henry. It’s about making a woman feel safe. You’d have wanted someone to do the same for your sister.’

  ‘If I had the money, I would have arranged for my sister to take a taxi straight to the Four Seasons. As her fiancé should have done. Instead, I had to sleep on the sofa with Faustino farting in my face all night. What have you been feeding him?’

  Roberta broke off chiding her son to chide the dog. ‘Faustino, you know you’re not allowed on the sofa. Did you let him get onto the sofa, Henry?’

  ‘Like you never do.’

  ‘Only if he’s very, very tired,’ said Roberta.

  ‘That’s beside the point. Mother, it’s just not right that I should be kicked out of my bed for yet another of your waifs and strays who isn’t actually a waif and stray at all. I have to work. I need my sleep. No wonder this hotel is on the verge of ruin. Less than half the guests ever pay! We’re not running a charity mission, Mamma. I thought we agreed that things had to change around here.’

  ‘You know it is the family tradition that we help people whenever we can,’ said Roberta.

  ‘Deus ope, manus mea. I know. And that’s how we’ve ended up living in the gatehouse instead of the palazzo,’ said Henry. ‘Do you suppose I’m allowed into my bedroom to fetch a change of clothes? Or has the poor waif with the millionaire fiancé had my stuff put out onto the landing?’

  ‘Henry, please don’t be unkind to our new guest. She’s suffered enough unkindness in this city already.’

  ‘When’s she going?’ Henry asked.

  Roberta hesitated, ‘On Monday, I think.’

  ‘What? That’s ridiculous!’ said Henry.

  ‘Just two more nights.’

  ‘That I have to spend bunking with the dog on the lumpiest sofa in Italy.’

  ‘Henry …’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. It’s the code of the Innocenti, I know.’

  ‘You should always be kind, because you never know when a stranger may be your saviour.’ Roberta reminded him of Carlo Innocenti’s lucky break when he helped the army general. The story that had started the Innocenti legend.

  Henry sighed heavily enough for Kathy to hear.

  Moments later, he and Roberta were back in the kitchen, both smiling broadly and looking as though they’d been having a conversation about the weather. Roberta reminded Manu that Faustino was not to be fed from the table. Manu slipped Faustino a piece of pastry the moment Roberta’s back was turned. Henry asked Kathy if she would like some more coffee. To anyone who hadn’t eavesdropped on the conversation he’d just had with his mother, he would have seemed perfectly pleasant.

  ‘It’s going to be a beautiful day,’ he said. ‘You don’t know Florence, do you, Kathy?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said.

  ‘Then you must make sure to see all the sights. The Uffizi. The Accademia. The Ponte Vecchio.’

  Thanks to Carla, Kathy already knew Henry wouldn’t wish a visit to the Ponte Vecchio in the middle of summer on his very worst enemy. But she told him she was grateful for the suggestions. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I was thinking I should spend this morning looking for somewhere else to stay. It isn’t fair of me to take anybody’s bed. I was very glad of your company yesterday evening,’ she looked to Roberta and Carla, ‘but I do feel much better after a good night’s sleep. I’ve lived in London for years so I’m pretty streetwise. I’m sure I can find somewhere I feel perfectly safe. Anywhere but by the main station, right?’

  As she spoke, Kathy thought she could see some genuine warmth returning to Henry’s face. Or relief, maybe. But—

  ‘No!’ Carla and Roberta chorused at once.

  ‘We wouldn’t hear of it,’ said Roberta.

  ‘It will be very difficult to find anything decent on a Saturday night at this time of year,’ Carla added.

  ‘Anyway, it’s been decided,’ Roberta insisted. ‘Henry says he’s perfectly happy to sleep on the sofa for a few nights. It will do his back the world of good. He’s always complaining that the mattress in his room is too soft.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘You are,’ his mother and sister said together.

  ‘Well, you must let me pay to stay here,’ Kathy tried. ‘I’ll get Neil to call with his card later on. Or do a bank transfer.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Henry, even as his mother and sister shook their heads.

  ‘And in the meantime, I’d like to help in any way I can. Perhaps I could do the washing-up.’

  ‘That’s an excellent thought,’ said Henry.

  Roberta disagreed. ‘It’s kind of you to offer but Ernesto has a system in the kitchen, which is why the washing-up is best left to one of us. It will only upset him if he has to tell someone new what needs to be done.’

  Kathy thought she saw Henry roll his eyes. It was hard to believe this was the same person she’d played duets with just a couple of days before. Neil’s crass move with the tip had clearly made a more lasting impression than their time together at the piano keys.

  ‘There must be something else,’ Kathy persisted.

  ‘She could go to the market with Manu,’ Henry suggested.

  ‘Who’s “she”?’ Roberta asked. ‘The cat’s mother? Kathy is sitting at the table, Henry.’

  Kathy dropped her eyes.

  ‘Kathy. You,’ Henry addressed her directly, ‘could go to the market with Manu.’

  ‘But I always go with you, Uncle H,’ Manu protested.

  ‘Then it will be a nice change for you to go with someone else.’

  ‘Awwww,’ Manu complained. ‘But we always get gelato.’

  ‘I like gelato,’ said Kathy. ‘You could show me the best place to buy some.’

  ‘See?’ said Henry. ‘Sorted. Kathy will take Manu to the market and I will—’

  ‘Do the washing-up, then fix that dripping tap in the bathroom of room six,’ said Roberta. ‘Perfect. I’ll get the shopping list from Ernesto. Manu, will you take Faustino with you? He needs a walk.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you you’d sing for your supper?’ said Carla to Kathy then.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Kathy was only too glad to have something to do that would take her out of the house and away from Henry Innocenti’s obvious disapproval. Having convinced herself otherwise the previous evening, now she found herself agreeing with Neil that it was not a good idea to stay at the Casa Innocenti any longer than she had to. Henry was right. Neil could pay for her to stay just about anywhere in the city for two nights.

  But of all the people who could have turned out to be Roberta’s son …

  Kathy was deeply hurt to think that when Henry looked at her he was not remembering their shared moment of enthusiasm over the lovely old piano at the palazzo. He could only associate her with Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’, Neil’s very public proposal and the way he had stuffed that five-euro note into Henry’s shirt pocket afterwards. ‘Get yourself a new shirt.’ Kathy’s cheeks flushed as she remembered it. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been the one to say it. Henry must have thought Neil was a real prat and her association with him had tarnished her. No man liked to have another man take the mick out of him like that.

  On the other hand, what right had a thirty-something bloke who still lived with his mother to act like such a git? Kathy had heard that Italian men took a long time to leave home, and this was a beautiful home, but what kind of man was content wi
th a poky attic room when he should have had a house of his own? He didn’t have the right to be so proud of himself or to be so judgemental of her. Kathy told herself she didn’t have to take any notice of his opinion.

  ‘Take Faustino!’ Roberta called, as Manu and Kathy were heading out. ‘Walking helps with his digestion.’

  While Manu was looking for Faustino, who was snuffling around on the terrace, looking for anything the official guests might have dropped over breakfast, Henry met Kathy in the hallway.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said unexpectedly, ‘if I seem a little … a little grumpy this morning. I had a hard night.’

  ‘On the sofa, of course. I’m sorry. I could sleep on the sofa instead.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Henry said. ‘My mother would never have it. But I also wanted to apologise for Thursday evening.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you in any way. When I played “The Way You Look Tonight” I had no idea that you were …’

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence. He’d had no idea Kathy was at the wedding with a boyfriend. Because she hadn’t told him.

  ‘I should probably be apologising to you,’ said Kathy.

  If the implication was that they had indeed been flirting?

  ‘I didn’t say—’

  ‘I didn’t ask—’

  Henry gave her a brisk smile. ‘Anyway, here’s Manu. And the farting fluffball. Enjoy your trip to the market. And your gelato. A taste of the real Florence. See you later.’

  ‘You can hold the dog if you like,’ Manu said to Kathy, once they were out on the street.

  ‘If you’re sure?’

  ‘Course.’

  Kathy soon found out why Manu wasn’t keen to hang on to Faustino’s lead. Though the dog was only the size of a large hedgehog, he pulled on the lead with the strength of a wild boar and he had obviously never been taught to walk to heel. Manu shouted instructions at him all the time but was absolutely ignored – just as when he tried to teach Faustino tricks. It was fortunate that Faustino was just as keen to go to the market as they were.