by Gill Vickery
Amber tugged at a looped rope slung on pulleys between the balcony and the wall of the opposite apartment. ‘This rope thing must be the washing line – it’s got pegs on it.’ She leaned even further over the balcony and tugged again. The pulleys squealed and the pegs jerked towards her. Jade didn’t bother to warn her about the danger of dangling five metres above the ground; it wouldn’t do any good: Amber always acted first and thought later.
Amber straightened up. ‘Those Croziers that nicked our apartment, they’ve got a patio outside their back doors and the washing line’s right over it.’
Nonno would’ve said, Amber, it is ‘stolen’ not ‘nicked’. He hated slang. Jade forced herself to stop thinking about her grandfather. ‘The Croziers didn’t nick the apartment,’ she said. ‘You know we swapped because Mum thinks ground-floor flats are too noisy.’ All the same, Jade couldn’t help grinning at the thought of James Crozier trying to relax on the patio with a line of dripping underwear dangling over his head.
‘They think they’re better than us,’ Amber said. ‘They’re snobs.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘They’ve got snobby voices and an attitude.’
‘The dad has, I’m not sure about the mum and you can’t tell with the Goth boy . . . what’s his name, Nico?’
‘Nicholas!’ Amber mimicked Hattie’s cultured tones perfectly.
It was a pity Amber always assumed that people like the Croziers were snobs, Jade thought. Nico was interesting and she’d like to get to know him but Amber would make trouble if she decided to hate him.
‘Let’s go out,’ Jade said. ‘It’ll give us something to do while the olds are unpacking – you know they always take forever.’
Mum thought it was a good idea too. ‘Your dad’s having one of his naps and I’ll be glad to get some peace and quiet to myself’.
Jade took a purse and a list her mother had hastily scribbled down. ‘It’s just the basics – I’m not cooking tonight. We’ll eat out – we can afford it now.’
Nico heard James call to Mum from the paved area outside their bedroom: ‘We could sit in the garden – the trees give plenty of shade. I think we’ve done all right for ourselves.’ James could be so smug.
Nico crashed back on his bed and wondered how he was going to survive being cooped up with the muppet James for two weeks. He groaned. He was a prisoner.
No he wasn’t! He had a plan, a secret one, and he wasn’t going to be able to carry it out if he didn’t make a stand from the start. He sprang up and marched out to his mother. ‘Mum, I’m going for a walk.’
‘Not on your own,’ she said, exactly as Nico had anticipated. He suppressed a groan; just because he’d been ill with meningitis last year, frightening his mother half to death, was no reason for her to carry on treating him as though he were made of glass.
‘I’ll be perfectly safe,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve got the Signora’s instructions, I won’t get lost – you can’t get lost in Florence anyway, it’s too small.’
‘The instructions aren’t very clear.’
‘Only in the English bit. It’s more detailed in the Italian part. We’ve done directions at school, it’s not hard,’ Nico blagged confidently. His mother had no way of knowing he’d hardly understood anything. Mr Mowatt, the language teacher, hadn’t bothered to change textbooks since about 1950 and Nico thought he was probably learning to speak Italian the way people in bad historical novels spoke English – accurately but quaintly.
‘I’ll stay in touch,’ he said firmly.
Mum hesitated.
‘He’s sixteen, Hattie, not six,’ James said coming in from the doorway.
For once Nico felt grateful to James.
‘If he goes out . . .’ James slipped an arm round Mum’s waist and smirked suggestively, ‘. . . it’ll give us a bit of time to ourselves.’
Nico stopped being grateful. ‘I’m going,’ he said.
‘All right,’ Mum agreed, slapping James’s hand away. ‘Be back in an hour.’
Nico thought the slap was very half-hearted. ‘Two hours,’ he said firmly and left.
In the street, he hesitated. He couldn’t believe it; his mother had hardly argued about him roaming alone in a strange city – a strange foreign city. He looked at the map again. Now, which way should he go?
CHAPTER II
NICO GOT LOST.
He turned right down Via del Corno and walked randomly, happier than he’d been for a long time but then, how could he not be happy in the city of his dreams? He sloped down busy streets and across piazzas swirling with tourists. He walked on, accidentally coming across places he knew from books. He didn’t stop. He was in Florence for a fortnight; he could explore the famous places later. Now it was enough just to be here.
Walking made him hot in the bright Easter sun and when he turned into a small square and saw a gelateria he decided to stop and have an ice cream. The shop had a tiny frontage with two doors; Bar Vivoli shone in fluorescent lighting over one and Gelateria over the other. Nico wanted authenticity and the people going in and out seemed to be Italian rather than tourists so here was his chance. Silently rehearsing in Italian, I’d like a large pistachio ice cream please, he sauntered across the flagstone street and into the ice cream parlour.
Nico was too anxious about his Italian to take in the subdued lighting shining off polished wood and brass fittings. He couldn’t get Mr Mowatt’s strangled accent out of his head. He pointed at a swirl of pale green in a metal container and said, ‘Vorrei un . . .’ Before he could finish, the man behind the counter said, ‘You want pistachio eh? What size?’
‘Um, large. Grande, per favore, signore,’ Nico mumbled.
‘OK, grande,’ the man agreed and grinned.
The ice cream was a lot more grande than Nico had bargained for. He decided he didn’t care. He paid up, went to a table at the back of the gelateria and sat under a lurid fresco of Florence at sunset. While he ate he looked round at the grey marble walls and waist-high wooden panelling. Mirrors reflected warm golden light from two globes topping a floor lamp writhing from its base like a cast iron plant. Nico liked the Bar Vivoli Gelateria. He liked it a lot. He switched his phone off, took his sketchbook and pencils from a deep pocket inside his coat and began to draw.
Jade and Amber knew exactly where they were going: to the SITA bus station. After they’d collected timetables they left without discussing what they’d done or what it meant. They walked in silence, not going anywhere in particular now they’d started to put their plan into action. They went with the flow of tourists, taking in the warm stone of the tall buildings; the iron lanterns set high up; the green window shutters half open like drowsy eyelids; the shops and churches and statues and houses all blending effortlessly into one. ‘It’s not like Derby, is it?’ Jade said, breaking the silence.
‘What?’
‘I mean, there’s no concrete blocks or burger bars – not that I can see anyway. Everything matches.’
Amber stared around. ‘I never noticed till you said.’
They linked arms and wandered on till they reached a huge cast iron and glass market. ‘The shopping!’ they yelled, then dived into the noisy hall and went from stall to stall buying cheese and meats and bread and fruit and salad.
‘It’s weird, isn’t it? Everybody talking Italian all the time, not just us and Nonno and Mum.’ Jade found her eyes mysteriously prickling with tears. She’d thought she was over the hurt; it was a year since Nonno had died.
Amber marched silently out of the market. Jade didn’t take it personally. Like Mum, Amber managed pain by ignoring it and refusing to think about it.
It’d be nice to have someone to talk to about how I feel for once, Jade thought and trudged after Amber, her sense of loss weighing like a small stone lodged in her chest.
They wandered down a maze of streets tha
t opened onto a small square with people sitting on stone benches or standing around talking.
Amber pointed one of her shopping bags at a tiny, glass-fronted ice-cream parlour. ‘That looks good,’ she said.
‘Bar Vivoli Gelateria,’ Jade read. ‘Let’s go in.’
Inside the cool little shop Amber ordered two regular cups of strawberry.
The man behind the counter grinned. ‘For such beautiful sisters I give extra for free, no?’
‘As long as it’s free.’
While Amber paid, Jade looked round. The only available seats were at the far end where she saw Nico drawing intently in a small book. She wasn’t sure if he really was concentrating on drawing or just pretending he hadn’t seen them.
She went over, ‘Can we sit here?’
Nico stood up. ‘Of course.’
No one had ever stood for Jade before; she was impressed. Amber came up with the ices and stared in open astonishment as Nico got up for her too.
‘How long are you staying in Florence for?’ Jade asked.
‘Two weeks.’
‘Same as us,’ Amber said licking her strawberry ice slowly and looking at Nico through her long eyelashes. ‘We saw you at the airport. You and your mum were reading. Your dad was organising stuff.’ Jade knew Amber was trying to find out what sort of boy Nico was and not being subtle about it.
‘James Crozier is not my father. My dad lives in the States with his second wife and my name’s Collier.’
‘Right.’ Amber went on staring.
‘James is on a trial holiday with us to see how we get on together. If it works out he wants to move in with us.’
‘D’you like him?’ Amber asked.
Is she dumb or what? Jade thought. It was obvious Nico couldn’t stand James.
Nico shrugged. ‘He’s better than some of the boyfriends Mum’s dragged home. I don’t see much of him normally; I’m away at school.’
‘Away? Like at boarding school?’
Nico nodded.
‘Like Hogwarts?’
Nico sighed. ‘No.’
He must’ve been asked that a million times and was sick of it, Jade thought. ‘What about the Goth thing? You can’t be a Goth at school,’ she said. For a wild moment she had an image of a school full of white-faced, black-uniformed pupils treading silently up and down endless stone staircases.
‘No, it’s got a strict uniform policy, you can’t customise it at all or you get an imposition.’
Imposition? What was that? Like a detention or something, Jade supposed.
‘I dress like this because I made a bargain with my parents. Mum was wrecked when my father walked out. I said I was going to leave school and live with her but my father said I had to stay on for my own good. I knew I couldn’t win and I agreed not to kick off about going back if I could do what I wanted when I was at home.’
‘What’s that?’ Amber asked.
Nico smiled, a bit maliciously Jade thought. ‘Paint and draw all day,’ he drawled, ‘wear whatever I like.’
‘Did it work?’ Amber said.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Your mum didn’t mind the Goth thing?’
Nico shrugged. ‘What could she do? Dad promised to let me exercise my self-expression. If I make him put up with it when I’m with him, she has to go along with it too.’
Hattie Crozier – Hattie Collier – seemed so uptight she must’ve freaked out the first time she saw Goth Nico. Jade started to laugh. Amber joined in. Nico cracked a smile, and then laughed out loud.
He’s nice when he laughs, Jade thought.
‘How about you?’ Nico asked. ‘Are you here to visit relatives?’
‘Not really,’ Jade said at exactly the same moment as Amber said, ‘No.’
If Nico thought that was odd he must’ve been too polite to say so. ‘You speak Italian really well, and your mum – I just kind of assumed you had people here.’
‘Like we told the Signora, we learned off Nonno, our Italian granddad,’ Jade said.
‘Was he from Florence?’ Nico asked.
‘He lived in the countryside just outside the city, till World War II. He was a partigiano – a resistance fighter – for a bit then he was forced to go on the run. He escaped to England right at the end of the war.’
‘Impressive.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Amber said, glaring at Nico as if he were disagreeing with her. ‘He was shot in the leg defending an English spy. It left him with a bad limp.’
‘Poor guy,’ Nico said.
Amber was still glaring. She thrust her right hand out, fingers splayed. ‘And the enemy sliced off two of his fingers.’ She folded down her index and second fingers.
Trust Amber to go the whole nine yards, Jade thought, though she had to admit, it did have an effect on Nico: he dropped the languid pose, whistled softly and said, ‘He must’ve been treated like a hero when he went back.’
Please shut up! Jade thought. Nico didn’t know it but he couldn’t have said anything worse.
‘He never went back to Italy,’ Amber snapped.
‘That’s tragic – why not?’
‘Family stuff,’ Jade said quickly and turned the questioning in Nico’s direction. ‘Why are you in Florence?’
Nico’s kohl-rimmed eyes glittered. ‘Mother and I agreed that James’s trial had to be here . . .’
Apparently James hadn’t had any say in the arrangement. Jade felt a bit sorry for him.
‘. . . because we like art and because we have this thing about a detective series set in Florence.’
‘The one your mum was talking about to the Signora?’
‘That’s right. My mother wants to do a pilgrimage to all the places Alessandro Lupo – that’s the detective – goes to in the books.’
‘Places in Florence?’
Nico nodded. ‘And places roundabout – Lucca, Siena, Torre Del Lago.’ His sly smile turned mysterious. ‘Me, I want to do something else, something that Mother knows nothing about.’
‘What?’ Jade and Amber said.
‘I’ll tell you if you keep it to yourselves because I don’t want Mother to know about it.’
‘OK,’ Amber said immediately.
Jade hesitated. Why would Nico tell two people he’d only just met a secret he needed to keep from his mother?
‘OK,’ she agreed, partly because she wanted to know the secret and partly because she couldn’t think of a reason to refuse.
Nico leaned forward and spoke softly, ‘E. J. Holm, who writes the Alessandro Lupo books, is a recluse. All his fans are mad to know more about him. I think he lives near Florence and I’m going to find him.’
‘That’s the big secret?’ Amber said. ‘You want to find out where some writer lives?’
‘If my mother knew she’d want to do it with me and she’d be so embarrassing I’d want to top myself.’
Jade bit her lip to stop from laughing. It was a bit sad being tied to your mum like that though Jade had seen enough of Hattie Collier to know she was a complete control freak, which was hardly Nico’s fault. ‘Why d’you think this E. J. Holm lives in Florence?’
‘Because he writes as if he knows every corner of it. I don’t think he could do it that well unless he lives here or . . .’ Nico tapped his black fingernails thoughtfully on the table top, ‘. . . unless he lives nearby. A village called Montebosco appears in all the books and the Signora said it’s modelled on Borgo Sant’Angelo. You remember? The village she said had a great restaurant that she’s invited us all to?’
Jade nodded.
‘I think E. J. Holm might be based in Borgo Sant’Angelo and I’m going to be spending a lot of time there, exploring,’ Nico said.
Jade stood up abruptly. ‘We need the loo.’ She grabbed Amber and they fled to the lavatory, slamming the
thick wooden door behind them. There was no chance Nico could hear them in here.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Amber said. ‘If he sees us poking around in Borgo Sant’Angelo he’s going to start asking questions.’
‘We’ve just got to tell him.’
‘Are you mad or what?’
‘We’ve got no choice! He might tell his mum he’s seen us there and she might tell our mum. And if she finds out . . .’
‘What’s to stop him telling his darling mummy anyway?’
‘Because if he tells our secret, we tell his.’
‘It’s hardly the same thing, is it? If our mum finds out she’ll be devastated, if his mum finds out she’ll be a bit mad.’
Jade clutched her sister’s hands. ‘I still think he really, really wants to get away from her and that James,’ she wheedled. ‘I don’t think he’s going to risk us telling on him.’
Amber shook her hands free and glared at Jade. ‘I suppose – but I’ll kill him if he tells.’
‘I’ll help you.’
Jade hugged her twin, knowing she’d hug back. It always happened after they’d argued; it made them feel one again.
‘How much shall we tell him?’ Jade asked.
‘Only enough to shut him up, not the whole thing about Nonno.’
‘Course not! D’you want to tell him?’
‘No, you’re better at that stuff than me.’
Jade led the way back; there was no point in messing about, she came straight to the point. ‘Look, our nonno lived in Borgo Sant’Angelo.’
‘Wow!’
Jade waved Nico’s excitement away. ‘He had some sort of quarrel with his family during the war and that’s why he never went back after it ended. He died last year and Mum decided now’s a good time to come to Italy to find out a bit about her heritage. 2005 is sixty years since the war ended and Mum doesn’t think there’s much chance of anyone being left who’d remember Nonno.’
‘OK.’
‘She wants to visit Borgo Sant’Angelo, to see where Nonno came from, but she doesn’t want to talk to any of the relatives because of the quarrel. We want to, though. We’re going to try and find his family, to explain his side of things.’ Jade’s eyes filled with tears. Although she hadn’t meant it to happen she decided to make use of it. She let a tear trickle down her cheek. She heard Amber sniff and grope noisily in her bag for a tissue. Jade let another tear fall.
