Three Days in Florence

by Chrissie Manby

  ‘I was beginning to worry,’ Clare said.

  ‘There was no need for that,’ Kathy told her. She didn’t mention the bag snatch. She pretended instead that her mobile was on the fritz. She confirmed that she would be back in London the following day.

  ‘And then we can talk about the wedding properly,’ Clare said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kathy. ‘Yes, we can.’

  ‘Are you enjoying Florence?’ Clare asked.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Kathy said. ‘Even better than I imagined.’ Kathy told her mother about her day in the centre of the city, giving her all the details except for the mugging.

  After talking to Clare for five minutes, she phoned Neil again to finish the half-conversation they’d had earlier. Landline first. The phone rang out. She could imagine it echoing in the empty hallway of the house in Fulham until the answer-machine picked up. Then she tried Neil’s mobile number. Having read the number so many times over the past couple of days, she had almost come to learn it off by heart by now. Again, Neil didn’t pick up. What time was it in London? Two o’clock? He was probably at his mother’s house. She served Sunday lunch at one thirty prompt. Chicken, lamb or beef in rotation, but always with Yorkshire pudding. She wondered if Shelley was there too, officially celebrating the good news about the baby with her nephew and nieces. How would they react to the prospect of a new cousin? Probably entirely differently from the way they would have reacted to a new half-brother or sister. Still, Kathy would never have to test that.

  When Neil’s voicemail kicked in, Kathy left the usual sort of message, saying she hoped Neil was having a good day and that everything was OK back there in the UK, that he had everything he needed and that he was happy. The sort of message she didn’t think he had ever left for her, now that she came to think about it. With that little flash of annoyance, she also realised that she was glad she didn’t have to speak to him for once. Their phone calls over the past few days had not left her feeling uplifted. She always put the phone down feeling that Neil was disappointed about something and that something was probably her.

  Kathy ended the call by stabbing the off button. She sat down at Henry’s desk, looking out at the sky. The swallows were putting on their usual acrobatic display, swooping between the tall houses like mini fighter jets. The geranium on the windowsill opposite had put out more bright red flowers over the past few days, drawing the gaze with their vibrancy. But Kathy’s eyes were pulled back into the room, to the pile of sheet music Carla had tidied so hastily on Friday evening. She picked the top sheet off the pile and opened it.

  Tucked inside the commercially printed sheet music was a scrap of hotel notepaper, from the Palazzo Boldrini. Kathy had a pad of the same paper stashed away in her suitcase, with a couple of lavender stems she’d taken from the garden pressed inside it. On the piece of paper there was a wobbly stave, hand-drawn in biro. Kathy realised it must be one of Henry’s own compositions. She tried to hum the notes he’d scribbled. They went up and down a scale, tripping lightly, like raindrops or water in a brook. Like laughter. One of the notes was in the shape of a heart. Whether accidentally or on purpose, Kathy couldn’t tell.

  Kathy carefully replaced the notepaper in its hiding place and put it back on the pile. She had no right to look.

  Still feeling she couldn’t go back downstairs yet, while Henry was likely to be calling round for a new singer, Kathy lay down on the bed. Above her head, the cherubs fired arrows of love at one another. Kathy reached up and took one of the dangling festival passes between her fingers. It was for Coachella in California, one of the world’s biggest, she knew. The height of Sophie’s ambition was to go to it for her twenty-first birthday. What must it have been like to play there, to be on stage in front of thousands of people? It must make playing to two hundred seem a bit of a come-down.

  ‘But two hundred is still an awful lot if you’ve never really sung in front of an audience before,’ Kathy muttered to herself, justifying her decision.

  ‘You’ve sung in front of nearly that many people before,’ came her father’s voice from nowhere.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘You know you have. And you gave an excellent performance.’

  ‘Are you talking about the school concert?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘You were wonderful,’ her father’s voice said.

  Was what Roberta had said by her husband’s graveside true? That when you’ve known and loved someone well, you can still talk to them even if they aren’t in front of you or at the end of a phone? Doesn’t mean they stop talking to you either …

  ‘OK, what would you do, Dad?’ Kathy asked the empty air. ‘About tonight.’

  And in her head, her father answered, ‘I’d go to the party, make a terrible job of singing, then drink all the free booze.’

  Kathy laughed at the imaginary answer.

  ‘Seriously,’ her father continued, ‘what have you got to lose? Courage is your surname. Time to show some. Unless you’re really Kathy Coward and you’re not my little girl after all. Be Kathy Brave.’

  Kathy sat up in bed. That was what her father used to call her. Kathy Brave. He’d first called her that when she was going into the hospital operating theatre for the procedure that would fix her eye. ‘You could not be more beautiful to me,’ he said, when she asked him if it would make her pretty. ‘In any case brave is better than beautiful and brave is what you are.’

  He reminded her to be brave all the time. Not just when she was facing physical pain, as with all the medical tests, the injections and the months with an eye patch. He reminded her when she was facing exams, when she was facing the humiliation of another sports day, when she was facing the knee-shaking terror of having to stand up in front of the whole school to sing a solo with the choir, aged fifteen.

  ‘They’ll all be looking at me,’ she had complained.

  ‘Let them look,’ Eddie told her. ‘Let them remember the girl with the fabulous voice. If you don’t get up there on stage, you’ll be letting the choir down, of course, but, ultimately, you’re the only person who will really miss out. If you do get up there, you won’t regret it.’

  On the day of the school concert, her father had had to tell her a thousand times that he believed in her. And he’d been right: singing that solo had been the highlight of her school career. Afterwards, people seemed to treat her differently. They talked to her in the classroom in the morning before the day started. They talked to her in the canteen queue at lunchtime. She was invited to some parties. That solo was the beginning of a new era.

  By the time she got to university, Kathy was no longer Cross-eyed Kathy. She had plans, she had ambitions, she had friends. So, when had Kathy got so cowardly again? She knew exactly when. Her self-confidence had started to shrink after Eddie died. It turned out that even though she was away at university she still needed him as a cheerleader.

  Why had she never been able to hear his voice like this before? Was it just that she’d never really listened for it? Was it that other voices had come to seem louder in her head? There were always people talking for her. Her mother projecting her fears, which had only got worse after Eddie’s death. ‘Be careful. Take care. Are you safe?’ Neil projecting his need always to be the strong one, which meant Kathy always had to be weak. His children casually expressing their disbelief that a woman her age could possibly still have dreams and ambitions of her own. A dream like standing on a stage again? That was nuts.

  Where had Kathy’s voice gone?

  ‘It’s still there,’ her father’s voice said in her head. ‘Use it.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  She imagined her father opening his arms to give her a hug as he had on the morning of the school concert. ‘You will never regret being brave.’

  Chapter Forty-one

  Even so, as Kathy went back downstairs, part of her was still secretly hoping that Henry would have found an emergency singer and her gesture would have to be nothing mor
e than that, a gesture that would leave her feeling absolved.

  Henry was still on the terrace, sitting on a chair by the wall, scrolling through the contacts on his phone. Kathy crept out there and joined him. ‘Henry, are you still looking for someone to sing with you this evening?’ she asked.

  He was. ‘Got two hopefuls more to call. Otherwise I’m going to have to do the singing myself, which is not ideal. Not for the requests the client wants.’

  ‘If they can’t do it,’ said Kathy, ‘maybe … maybe I can sing with you if you’re desperate.’

  Henry put his phone back in his pocket. ‘I’m desperate,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a bit rusty so it would be good if we could have a quick practice before we go, but if you really think I’ll be good enough … I mean, obviously you should phone those other singers first in case one of them is available but …’

  Henry jumped up and planted a kiss right in the middle of Kathy’s forehead. ‘You’re a lifesaver,’ he said. ‘Kathy, you’ve saved my bacon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You’ll be great. This is brilliant. I cannot tell you what a bloody relief it is.’

  He seemed so pleased. Meanwhile, Kathy was beginning to get scared. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t phone the others?’

  ‘I’m not phoning anyone else. You’re coming with me to the Michelangelo Plaza. You’re going to sing like an angel. You’re going to have a wonderful time. And I might just forgive you for having nicked my bed for three nights.’

  When Carla came back shortly afterwards and heard the news, she, too, was delighted. ‘I’ll dress you,’ she said.

  ‘And I can lend you some of my jewellery,’ said Roberta. ‘A singer should always have sparkle.’

  ‘I can teach you some useful phrases to say between the songs,’ said Manu.

  ‘Don’t teach Kathy any more useful phrases,’ Carla and Roberta said in unison.

  Even Faustino seemed to understand that something exciting was about to happen. He danced around Kathy’s feet as Carla shuffled her into her room and flung open her colourful wardrobe to find the perfect outfit. Roberta joined them with a huge jewellery box that was like a pirate’s treasure chest, over-spilling with diamanté and faux pearls.

  There was much to be said about the principle of ‘Fake it until you make it.’ Standing in an apron in the kitchen, Kathy had dismissed out of hand the idea that she could sing in front of an audience. But now that she was putting on the outfit, she started to feel differently. In Carla’s beautiful gunmetal dress – the one she’d ‘bought’ from Nico’s boutique the day before – Kathy instantly felt the need to stand a little straighter and hold her head a little higher. Meanwhile Roberta persuaded her to wear a pair of chandelier earrings that dangled almost down to her shoulders. Every time she moved her head, they sent fireworks of glittering light across her face and décolletage. It was like having personal lighting.

  She needed make-up too, the women decided.

  ‘You have such beautiful eyes. You need to wear lots of mascara.’

  Carla applied so much that Kathy felt she could hardly open her eyes, let alone bat her lashes.

  ‘And lipstick,’ said Roberta, unscrewing a tube of bright carmine.

  ‘I never wear lipstick,’ said Kathy. It was truer to say that she hadn’t worn lipstick since meeting Neil’s children. Sophie didn’t think anyone over thirty should bother adorning themselves. ‘It’s like putting glitter on a turd,’ was what she’d once said. Roberta and Carla believed the exact opposite. They treated Kathy’s transformation like an art project.

  Roberta and Carla stepped back to admire their handiwork. ‘You certainly look the part,’ Roberta declared.

  ‘You look very nice,’ said Manu, shyly.

  ‘Not like un grosso culo peloso?’ Kathy joked.

  ‘Like una bellissima principessa,’ said Manu, before running away to hide his furious blushes.

  ‘What do you think, Dad?’ Kathy silently asked her father.

  She thought she could hear him say he loved it. Especially the lipstick.

  Chapter Forty-two

  By five o’clock, Kathy and Henry were as ready as they would ever be, having spent half an hour practising, with Faustino providing accompaniment. The party was being held on the other side of the river, in the gardens of the exclusive Michelangelo Plaza Hotel. As they walked there, Henry brought Kathy up to speed with the evening’s plan.

  ‘We have to play from seven. The birthday girl arrives at eight. It’s a surprise party. I hate surprise parties,’ Henry added. ‘If anyone ever threw me a surprise, I would turn round and walk out. I don’t think it’s fair to dump someone in a room full of all the important people in their life without giving them a chance to get prepared first. I once played at a party for a man turning fifty. That was a surprise. The even bigger surprise was that the wife had booked the mistress to do a belly-dance that evening.’

  Kathy winced in sympathy.

  ‘Kathy,’ Henry said then, ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I’ve been really unfair to you. When I first realised I was sleeping on the sofa because Mamma and Carla had given you my bed – you, the Queen of Sheba – I was angry. I made all sorts of assumptions about you based on what little I knew of you from two brief encounters at the Palazzo Boldrini. But you’ve mucked in and got your hands dirty. You helped Carla sort things out with Nico. Manu adores you – he wouldn’t have played that hairy-arse joke on you otherwise. You let Mamma talk to you about Papa. That’s worth more than any amount of money. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure having you as the Casa Innocenti’s latest official waif and stray.’

  ‘I’ve really enjoyed myself,’ Kathy said honestly.

  ‘Let’s hope you enjoy this evening too.’

  Soon they were at the hotel. It was as grand as the Palazzo Boldrini. It must once have been the home of someone very important indeed. Now it was the latest addition to a luxury hotel chain, catering to a glamorous international crowd that could feel at home anywhere in the world so long as the chain’s familiar crossed-keys logo was found above the door. The traditional Tuscan interior was offset with glitzy furniture that would have looked right anywhere from Los Angeles to Lagos.

  One of the management team showed them to a staffroom where they could change. Henry merely ran his hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up and looking, if anything, slightly less tidy than before. He also opted to discard the red bow tie he’d been wearing.

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to be that sort of crowd tonight. Thank goodness.’

  Kathy had to change her shoes and put on an extra layer of lipstick. She was properly nervous now. She imagined the acid in her stomach churning and bubbling like one of Ernesto’s pasta sauces. But she was also excited. In the dress Carla had lent her, with Roberta’s enormous sparkling earrings, she felt at least she looked as though she might be able to pull off this adventure. She patted her hair, tucking a stray strand behind her ears. Henry’s face appeared in the mirror beside hers. He untucked the strand she’d just tidied away.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, while Kathy was still startled by the sudden intimacy of the gesture. ‘Now let’s go and set up.’

  The hotel garden – which was every bit as beautiful as Roberta had said – was already dotted with early party guests, catching up with old friends and new gossip as they sipped Prosecco and ate canapés. It was a boho sort of crowd, artistically dressed in floppy linens and tie-dyed silks that evoked the hippie trail yet were obviously expensive. They had the carelessly glossy look of the very rich. Which is what they were, Henry assured her.

  ‘The husband is an industrialist. The wife is the daughter of a politician. The guests are some of the city’s most wanted – as far as guest lists are concerned, anyway. This party is costing a fortune.’

  Henry procured a couple of glasses of Prosecco from a passing waiter.

  ‘Now, I wouldn’t normally countenance drinking on the job,’ he said, as he handed Kathy one of the g
lasses, ‘especially as you’re going to be singing. But in exceptional circumstances such as this … Here’s to your Florentine debut, Ms Courage.’

  The bubbles felt like glitter on her tongue. She hoped they might gild her singing.

  Henry checked his watch. One minute to seven.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ he said. He sat down on the piano stool and played a little tune of his own composition to get an understanding of the piano. Meanwhile Kathy stood at the music stand, with the sheaf of lyrics Manu had printed off from the Internet and the set list in her shaking hands. There was lots of Abba and Adele – both had an easy range – and Henry had put some thought into the order in which they would play, beginning with a song Kathy knew well, a number she would be able to sing easily though her voice – and, indeed, her whole body – was trembling with nerves.

  ‘Just think of it like posh karaoke,’ Henry had suggested on the walk over.

  Kathy had never done karaoke sober, let alone in front of such a crowd.

  Henry played the first few bars of the Carpenters’ classic ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’. Kathy looked across to him. Their eyes met. He gave a nod of encouragement and Kathy began to sing.

  Chapter Forty-three

  And from the moment she started singing, Kathy knew for sure that it was going to be OK. As her voice floated over the garden, no one looked up and winced, wondering what that awful noise was. No one covered their ears. For the most part, the party guests continued to chat to their friends but a couple actually moved closer to the stage and seemed to be listening appreciatively.

  Kathy and Henry moved smoothly from one song to the next. As promised, Henry matched the key of every new tune to Kathy’s capabilities. Somehow, she thought, he knew how to make her sound better than she really was.

  ‘No,’ said her father’s voice in her head. ‘The truth is you really are better than you think you are.’

  How could Kathy have forgotten how much she loved this?