An Italian Holiday

by Maeve Haran

  Tony shook it, taken aback that this glamorous-looking man had a surprisingly damp handshake. ‘Tony Sutton.’

  ‘Married to Sylvie Sutton?’

  Tony nodded, scanning the man’s face for any mockery, the usual response from anyone who’d seen that damn phone-shot of him with Kimberley, but he found none.

  Behind them the hen parties whooped, drank expensive champagne from the bottle, and frolicked raucously in their tiny tutus, minuscule bra tops, bridal veils with tiaras and insanely high heels.

  ‘It’s the fashion,’ commented Hugo. ‘They all dress like a porno version of the bride. It doesn’t seem to matter if they’re from Knightsbridge or Basildon, they still behave the same.’

  The Basildon reference pained Tony. Kim had been from there after all.

  A very pretty and extremely drunk girl flashed past them through the open doors of the bar and jumped into the pool.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit dangerous?’ Tony asked, suddenly noticing that his margarita had been replenished without him even noticing.

  Hugo laughed. ‘I ask the waiters to keep an eye on them.’ He winked. Like the handshake, Tony was surprised at the faint leer on Hugo’s face, which seemed to undercut the sophisticated image. ‘There are plenty of volunteers, I can assure you. So what are you doing down here on your own?’

  ‘I’m in the doghouse. I was having an affair with a work colleague and my wife walked in.’

  ‘Bad luck. Still, there’s plenty around here to take your mind off it. In fact, there’s a rather hot young woman over there waving at you.’

  To Tony’s amazement, since he was feeling particularly rumpled and unattractive, a girl dressed in what looked like a Cinderella outfit chopped to just below the crotch was beckoning him over.

  Tony smiled and shook his head. ‘Too young for me, I’m afraid. I’ve made that mistake once. I’m sticking to women who know who Pink Floyd are,’ he grinned disarmingly at Hugo, ‘and can name them.’

  ‘You won’t get too many takers here, then.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the point,’ agreed Tony.

  Hugo sat on the stool next to him. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he glanced at two almost identical bottle-blondes except that, at second glance, one was obviously quite a lot older than the other, ‘the mothers are often up for it.’ He leaned against the bar looking at the blondes speculatively. ‘Sometimes with their daughter as well. Now that’s an experience to remember.’ The barman topped up Tony’s margarita yet again. ‘I might try those two a little bit later. The bridal suite’s empty and a bottle of Bolly usually breaks the ice.’

  Tony looked at him in frank amazement. ‘But they’re completely rat-arsed.’

  ‘All the better. They won’t remember anything in the morning.’

  ‘But you’re the owner. Don’t you have a duty of care or something?’

  Hugo shook his head and laughed at him. ‘They see it as all part of the fun. I know your problem. You’re a romantic.’

  ‘If not screwing two drunk women who’re paying my hotel for the pleasure makes me a romantic,’ Tony replied, trying to work out how soon he could get away from the man, ‘then maybe I am.’

  ‘Your loss.’ Hugo shrugged. ‘I might have a crack anyway. If they’re still conscious.’

  ‘My, you have high principles.’

  ‘Don’t be so pompous.’ Hugo turned to Tony, transforming back into the cosmopolitan charmer again. ‘So what are those four women really doing up at the villa?’

  Tony looked at his watch and started to climb off the bar stool. ‘I really wouldn’t know.’ Sylvie hadn’t shared much with him but his instincts told him Hugo wasn’t to be trusted.

  ‘I made Stephen Charlesworth a ludicrously good offer for the place,’ persisted Hugo, ‘and he still hasn’t accepted it.’

  ‘And what would you do with it? Fill it with more drunk mothers and daughters? Maybe he’s just careful who he does business with.’

  ‘And who are you to lecture?’ Hugo flashed back nastily. ‘Great photograph of you and your intern. I’m told everyone in London had a laugh.’

  ‘Thanks. Maybe I’ll drop in at the bridal suite later,’ Tony replied with a silky smile, ‘capture some of your touching memories for Instagram.’

  ‘Claire seems to have gone to bed,’ Martin announced, as if he hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘So she does,’ yawned Monica, who had stayed up with him through another bottle of red wine, after Sylvie had pointed to her watch and finally took herself upstairs as well. ‘Would you like to show me her room?’ Monica offered.

  Martin got up, a sudden look of doubt on his face which touched kind Monica. Doubt, she suspected, was not one of his usual sentiments. ‘Do you think I should sleep somewhere else? Not disturb her if she’s tired?’

  The trouble was, in this enormous house only the four bedrooms were properly usable. Sylvie’s room treatments were amazing, but so far they were just for show to demonstrate their potential.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Monica soothed, ‘she’s got a big bed. I expect you can slip in without waking her. So would you like me to show you up now?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Martin said gratefully, stumbling a little as he spoke. Five more minutes and he’d be so asleep he could doss down in Trafalgar Square without waking.

  Monica led him, holding his small backpack, up the grand stairs and pointed to Claire’s door. Good luck, she almost added.

  Five minutes later, before Monica was even undressed, there was a piercing scream, as if someone in the house had seen a ghost. Three women rushed out to the landing, in various stages of waking.

  ‘What the fuck?’ asked Sylvie, from beneath a layer of a crusted white substance, rising in peaks across her face. ‘Egg white,’ she explained, and tried to rub it off. ‘Meant to be brilliant for the skin.’

  They pushed open Claire’s closed door.

  A naked Martin was standing in front of the life-size doom painting, lit from below by a nightlight, staring fixedly at the equally naked women stretched across red hot racks, screaming in agony, being prodded by leering demons with animal faces and long monkey tails.

  To the embarrassment of Monica and Angela, and the wild amusement of Sylvie, he had an enormous erection.

  Meanwhile, Claire slept on unaware.

  Becoming suddenly conscious of his priapic state, Martin grabbed a T-shirt which, given his continued tumescence, merely had the effect of looking like a tent at a rock festival.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he demanded, indicating the picture.

  ‘I think,’ Angela tried valiantly to keep a straight face while the others collapsed in giggles, ‘it’s a medieval painting intended to warn fallible mankind against the pleasures of the flesh.’ She didn’t add that it seemed to be having the opposite effect on Martin.

  Finally, Claire sat up and noticed four people in the bedroom, including her naked husband. ‘What the hell is going on?’ she demanded.

  ‘Martin’s discovering the lessons of medieval morality,’ Angela explained. ‘Perhaps you should have warned him he was sharing a room with four life-size women being sizzled alive to punish them for the error of their ways.’ She wondered if Claire might see the message as relevant to her.

  ‘Oh that thing.’ Claire shrugged insouciantly, clearly not in the least affected by its warning. ‘I never even notice it any more. For God’s sake, Martin, put something on and get into bed!’

  ‘Thanks a million, Monica.’ Claire grabbed her next morning. ‘I’m really sorry about last night. All my fault. I was so angry with Martin for just turning up that I didn’t take him upstairs myself.’

  ‘I think we all quite enjoyed it.’ Monica grinned.

  Claire looked at her, puzzled. ‘And you really will take him off somewhere today?’

  ‘He seems to have plenty of places he wants to visit.’

  ‘That’s Martin for you.’ The tone of bitter resentment in her voice took Monica aback. ‘Claire . . .’


  ‘Yes?’ Claire was grabbing a quick croissant and slathering it with home-made jam.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t say this . . .’

  Now she had Claire’s attention.

  ‘This thing with Luca. Are you sure you aren’t falling for the idea rather than the man? Growing lemons in the lovely sunshine of Lerini? Miles away from Twickenham and all your boring responsibilities?’

  ‘You think it’s all a sad mid-life fantasy?’

  ‘Well, you know, staying here, in this amazing house, waited on, fed, the sunshine and the beauty, able to go and do what we want and answer to no one, it is all a bit unreal, isn’t it?’

  ‘But that’s not what I’ve fallen for. It’s Luca himself.’ Her voice softened. ‘I feel with him I could be part of something. And I think he actually wants me to be.’

  ‘But you’ve only met the man a couple of times. I mean, obviously he’s very attractive, but aren’t you getting a bit carried away? And now that Martin’s here, oughtn’t you to spend some time with him?’

  Claire poured herself another coffee without answering. It was true she hardly knew Luca. Maybe it was right that it was just a powerful attraction. But there was no way she was going to spend the day with Martin instead of him.

  ‘OK, well, good luck. I’ll certainly look after Martin today.’

  Ten minutes later, Claire sat in the back of the bus down to Lerini hardly even noticing the beauty of her surroundings or the rollercoaster nature of the journey. In spite of what she’d said to Monica, she was feeling sick and guilty. But the awful thing was, it wasn’t about Martin. It was about Luca.

  She knew that Beatrice would have somehow conveyed the existence of Martin to her nephew and even though no actual words had been spoken between them about her marital state, she could sense that he was starting to have feelings for her.

  The bus disgorged its passengers in the small piazza near the quay and Claire followed the happy holidaymakers and giggling schoolchildren, feeling depressed and at a loss.

  She walked slowly towards Luca’s lemon gardens, passing his niece Fabiella, who had shown her around on her first visit. Was it her imagination, or was Fabiella’s greeting less than friendly? She rang the bell and one of the pickers let her in. As she climbed up towards the covered terrace where the family usually gathered, she passed Luca’s eighty-year-old father. His smile was as merry as usual, but Claire feared that his grasp of things wasn’t what it had been.

  Finally, she came across Luca making himself a coffee in the smallest of the funny little Italian coffee pots that always made her smile.

  But Luca wasn’t smiling.

  He turned towards her. He seemed to be waiting for her, to see what excuse or explanation she was going to try and offer.

  ‘Luca . . .’ she began. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Me also,’ he seconded bitterly. ‘Very sorry. When were you going to tell me that you had a husband? Next week? Next month? Never?’ The coffee pot boiled over like his anger and he picked it up and threw it onto the soft ground, burning himself in the process.

  Claire rushed forward and took his injured hand in hers. ‘I didn’t tell you I had a husband because I thought it might be the end between us, or at least change everything.’

  ‘Of course it would change everything! I saw how you wanted to understand what I was trying to do here, the way you cared about it as much as I. It seemed to me that it was more than the interest of a visitor who would soon be gone.’

  ‘It was. I do care very much about what you are trying to do here and I would very much like to be a part of it.’

  Claire wasn’t even sure herself what she meant by this, but Luca opened his arms, his anger melting. ‘Chiara mia. Then I do not know what we are going to do.’

  Behind them they heard the sound of clapping. It was Luca’s father. ‘I am so happy, my son, that you have found love with so kind a lady as this.’

  ‘My poor father,’ Luca looked careworn for the first time, ‘he no longer understands life as he used to.’

  Claire allowed herself to be hugged delightedly by Luca’s father.

  ‘Maybe he’s the lucky one.’ Luca sighed and sat down at the shade-covered table and dropped his head into his hands.

  Angela dived into the pool and felt its greeny embrace surround her. Under the water was a separate world, the sound muffled, the silence exaggerated, but wasn’t it actually a metaphor of the entire time they were staying here?

  She surfaced, shook out her hair, and leaned on the edge of the pool looking down towards the coast. The sun sparkled on a sapphire-coloured sea and the heady scent of wisteria was almost overwhelming. But it wasn’t just the beauty of the place that affected her. She liked Beatrice and Immaculata. Even the silent Luigi and the smouldering Giovanni had become familiar. And as for Claire, Sylvie and Monica, women she wouldn’t even have noticed before – well, maybe Sylvie, no one could miss Sylvie – without her knowing it was happening they had become part of her emotional landscape.

  A pang of guilt assailed her. Stephen might have intended this to be a haven for them, but the offer from Hugo was serious. Would the villa make a lovely hotel? There was no doubt it would. The views alone were spectacular, and its hidden, almost secret location made it incredibly desirable. Sylvie had already shown the potential of the wings in a few days with some moth-eaten fabric and her staple gun. The pool would need to be enlarged and the curious high hedges with the mysterious vegetable gardens Monica was so excited about would have to be flattened to make bigger gardens. Angela smiled. Something would certainly have to be done about communication, though oddly, this sense of being cut off had contributed powerfully to how she felt about the place.

  And then there was Hugo himself, and how she was beginning to feel about him. Angela leaned over the edge of the pool and hid her face in her cool wet arms, her chest suddenly painful. This was dangerous. How the hell had it happened?

  She got out of the pool and dried herself, pushing away this unfamiliar self-doubt. She was always someone who looked on the positive side. She stretched. Physically she’d never felt better.

  Passing the bench near the asparagus bed she couldn’t resist checking her phone. To her amazement she thought twice about opening a message from Drew, but it was nothing to do with Fabric. He hoped she was enjoying herself. He’d just seen Stephen, who’d asked how it was all going for them.

  She sat down under the pergola breathing in the wisteria and thinking of Stephen. What a strange and curious man he was. So generous but she was still not quite convinced of his motives. Could anyone be that altruistic as to lend his gorgeous house to four women, some of whom he didn’t really know, simply because he wanted some advice? She was unlikely to find out, so why bother thinking about it?

  Instead, she opened another message from Hugo. Did she want to go to Capri for lunch?

  Angela found she was smiling. She’d better go in and get changed.

  ‘You’re looking happy,’ commented Sylvie, sitting on the terrace wearing motorcycle leathers.

  ‘And you look sexy.’

  ‘What a waste,’ laughed Sylvie. ‘I’m going with Alessandro to an art exhibition.’

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Claire’s gone to Lerini to explain to Luca that she finds she has a husband, and Monica’s babysitting the husband while she does it. What are your plans?’

  Angela found she was blushing faintly. Bloody ridiculous. ‘Capri for lunch,’ she announced.

  ‘Better get your skates on. I think I can guess who with.’

  Tony woke up and ordered breakfast in his room. He didn’t fancy any more unpleasant male banter with Hugo Robertson, or to discover whether he had indeed attempted to seduce the mother or daughter, or indeed both. Hugo, he suspected, was the kind who would tell.

  The waiter arrived with an enormous tray, complete with a red rose and snowy white tablecloth, and placed it on a stand which he carried out onto the balcony. Tony ate his brio
che staring down into the turquoise blue beneath him and pondered what to do. He was half tempted to cut his losses and go back to London, regardless of what Sylvie said. If she hadn’t responded to his gift even with a message, then he might as well chuck in the towel.

  And yet if his indiscretion had taught him one thing, it was that he loved her. He grinned to himself. After his anger had died down, he’d even admired her tactic of sending out that phone-shot. Of course it was embarrassing but how many women would have thought of it and then dared to do it? And she hadn’t followed it up with cutting the arms out of his suits, or putting his wine on the doorsteps of all their neighbours, as various celebrated dumped wives had done. Not that he had any posh wine. Sylvie was the type to blow her top but not hold grudges.

  Be original, that woman Monica had insisted, but where had that got him? Maybe it was time for one last attempt – with flowers. Not that flowers would be easy. Sylvie had always made flowers a special feature of the homes she designed, no daffs or carnations for Sylvie. She refused even to order through Interflora because she wanted to be absolutely sure what she was getting. Sylvie’s houses were full of forests of foxgloves or dwarf cherry trees.

  But he couldn’t think what else to get her. Jewellery was too individual, especially in Sylvie’s case, and clothes were a minefield because, let’s face it, Sylvie was no waif of a model. But if he bought L, it was often too small and if he bought XL, she wouldn’t speak to him, so clothes were out. Scarves were a possibility but she had enough to last several lifetimes already.

  Flowers it would have to be.

  He went down and on the way out asked the hotel’s concierge if there was a florist in Lanzarella. The man eagerly got out his weddings book to show him and insisted they could order for him but Tony politely refused. These were his last-chance flowers and he wanted to choose them himself.

  The only proper florist in the area, the concierge conceded finally, was in Maggiore, the next town along the coast.