Messy, Wonderful Us

by Catherine Isaac

  ‘Sorry I haven’t been to visit,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, it’s fine! I’ve been busy anyway. We’ve been focusing on applied genetic and molecular technologies recently and it’s been quite hard. Plus . . . I’ve been seeing someone.’ I glanced up to see his reaction, but he gave nothing away.

  ‘Yes, how’s it going with Olivier?’ So he had at least read my emails.

  ‘Oh, I’m with someone else now actually,’ I said breezily. ‘Neil. He’s a rugby player. From Exeter.’

  In the numb silence that followed I considered telling him that it really wasn’t serious between me and Neil from Exeter. But something stopped me. There had been scores of girls in Ed’s life already and I’d never heard him dismissing any of them as unimportant. I didn’t like the idea of being a late developer, though I unquestionably was. By then, I’d never even had a steady boyfriend.

  ‘Are you seeing anyone?’ I asked.

  ‘What? Uh, no. I mean, I was . . . but it didn’t work out.’

  ‘How come?’

  His Adam’s apple rose, then fell slowly back into place. ‘I’m . . .’ But his voice trailed away and, if he ever did come up with an answer to the question, I can’t recall what it was.

  ‘I’m really glad it’s working out for you, Ed,’ I said.

  His eyes softened and the most unusual smile appeared on his lips, one that could just as easily have indicated happiness as sadness. ‘I feel the same about you, Allie.’

  The words made my chest tighten. And for reasons that I would think about many times afterwards, emotion swept up into my throat and made the back of my eyes tingle.

  We started to meet up two or three times a year after that. In between, his business grew at an unstoppable rate. Ed seemed to work like a machine, ‘all the hours God sends’, according to his mum. He was secretive about his personal life, but once everyone started using social media, was regularly tagged on Facebook at business events in London with an Annabel or a Francesca on his arm, exquisite women whose self-assurance shone from their clear complexions and Yves Saint Laurent smiles.

  All of this added to a gnawing apprehension each time I was due to meet him, a concern about how much we’d still have in common. But I came away every time with the same conclusion: life might have left us with different scrapes on our knees, but, at our core, we were the same people we’d always been. Almost the same.

  As the years passed, a clear difference began to emerge and our reunions, intermittent as they were, had an increasingly significant and not entirely welcome effect on me. Namely, I couldn’t stop thinking about him afterwards. I’d replay entire conversations, try to relive the same shiver down my neck that I’d felt when his hand had brushed against mine. This continued even after I finally did get my steady boyfriend.

  I distinctly recall more than one occasion when I’d be sitting on the sofa with Rob and a Chinese takeaway, challenging myself to conjure up an image of each minute detail of Ed’s face. The freckle under his left eye. The slight curve of his nose. The dip of his cupid’s bow. When I’d hit on it, sharp as a photograph, a liquid warmth would spread right through my chest and appear on my cheeks. Then Rob would turn to me, frown, and ask: ‘Are you all right? I think you’ve had another reaction to those prawn wontons.’

  Chapter 40

  Ed

  Ed and Julia had gone to Paris for the honeymoon and he’d taken her for lunch at L‘Abeille. It more than lived up to its two Michelin stars and the glowing reviews he’d read during his careful research before the trip. The surroundings were soothing and elegant, the food refined and thoughtful. But she didn’t eat. Instead, she pushed away each of the three courses she’d ordered and refused to either touch them or talk to Ed throughout.

  He’d witnessed her moods before and knew she could be prone to sulking. He’d seen it first when her parents apologetically broke the news that she couldn’t use their villa in Tuscany for a long weekend, because they’d already promised the dates she’d wanted for her book club to friends.

  But what he experienced that lunchtime, as rain fell in sheets outside the high windows, was unlike anything that had happened before. Each time he tried to engage her in conversation or reach out for her hand, she’d snap it away. He considered everything: did she hate the restaurant? Would she have preferred New York? Had he said something offensive in his sleep? He truly didn’t have a clue. Yet, tension hung in the air like a bad smell, before he could bear it no longer.

  ‘What’s the matter, Julia?’

  Her slim jawline pulsed. ‘I’m fine.’

  The waiter came to take away her plate and, concerned, asked if there was a problem with the food. She refused point blank to answer him, glaring straight ahead as if he didn’t exist.

  ‘I don’t think she’s very hungry,’ Ed told him.

  He nodded and as he disappeared, she leaned in, her eyes glowering. ‘Do not answer for me. I’m not a child.’

  ‘I had to say something. Julia, tell me what’s the matter.’

  ‘If you don’t know then there’s no point in me telling you,’ she hissed. ‘I think we should just leave.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, feeling more than a little pissed off. He knocked back his drink and she pulled an expression of pure disgust. Then he paid the bill and they stepped outside into the rain. Paris in springtime isn’t always beautiful, it turns out. She did not hang about to talk, instead marching off towards the Arc de Triomphe. He chased after her, pleading with her to stop, until she spun around and unleashed her full fury on him, her mouth contorted into an angry grimace.

  The accusations concerned a woman at the airport, someone Julia believed he’d been flirting with. As they’d flown in three days earlier and she hadn’t mentioned it at all in that time, by this stage Ed couldn’t even work out which woman she was talking about.

  ‘The blonde with the baby!’ she shrieked. ‘How dare you try to pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about. You piece of shit.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She just kept shouting, as tiny, watercolour blood vessels appeared on the delicate skin around her eyes. It wasn’t the first time, she told him. He was always looking at other women, flashing his smile and turning on the charm. She’d thought after they married it would all end but Ed had proved her wrong and was as much of a bastard as she’d feared he had the capacity to be. By the end of her speech, her tears made thick, dirty tracks in her make-up and she could barely catch her breath.

  She turned and fled and he chased after her, grabbing her by the arm, trying to reason with her. But a man stepped in and told Ed to leave her alone, clearly drawing unfavourable assumptions about what was going on. So he backed off and stood helplessly as his new wife ran away from him, expensive wine hummed through his system and rainwater seeped through the shoulders of his jacket.

  He walked around the city for two hours after that, trying to piece together what had happened at the airport and how she could have reached the conclusion she had. The woman had been about twenty-five. She was pretty, he couldn’t deny it. Yes, he’d noticed her. But had he been flirting? With a crunch of self-loathing he thought that perhaps he had.

  He replayed the scene in his head, over and over. How he’d stepped in when she was struggling up the steps in the departure lounge with her baby in a pushchair. How he’d offered to carry the chair for her while she held the child in her arms. How she’d smiled and thanked him and looked at him like he was some kind of hero. How he’d liked that.

  He’d told himself he hadn’t tried to be anything other than decent, that he’d have done the same for anyone, skinny jeans and pretty eyes or not. But was that the truth? Perhaps Julia knew Ed better than he knew himself. Either way, why had she waited three days to mention it, before making an almighty scene?

  If he was simmering with resentment and confusion about this in the beginning, all that soon dissolved in the hiss of the rain. By the time he traipsed back to the hotel, drained and
exhausted, all he wanted was for this not to have happened. His marriage and everything he’d invested in it was bigger than one argument, as bad as it had been.

  She was lying in bed, cleanly showered, her creamy skin naked under the sheets. She turned to look at him. Her lips were swollen and flushed from crying, but her beauty still took his breath away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, as he’d sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she replied. Then they kissed and fell into each other’s arms and had slow, tender make-up sex. By the following morning, all was forgotten.

  Chapter 41

  Allie

  The kind of taxis I’m used to taking have an aroma of stale tobacco, a driver delivering a party political broadcast and a potpourri of stains on the back seat you wouldn’t touch without surgical gloves.

  So when Ed said he would arrange ‘a car’ to take us to the vineyard, I’d naively assumed that was the kind of thing we’d be taking. Instead, I walk down the stone steps of the hotel to find a gleaming black Mercedes S-Class purring on the gravel and a driver resembling an Armani model inviting me to slip inside. I spend most of the journey worrying about how much this is all costing – the hotel, the food, the drinks, all of which Ed has stubbornly refused any money for.

  ‘I insist that I at least pay for this car,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he replies dismissively.

  ‘No, but I want to. I’m the reason we’re here in the first place, so there’s no way I’m going to leave you to stump up for everything.’

  ‘I hate to break this to you, Allie, but I’m not only here to do your detective work. I am technically on holiday too.’

  Twenty minutes later, our car pulls up outside a stretching, single-storey building, painted in creamy white and with a high brick arch that leads us into the La Cavalletta estate. To the left is the glass-fronted entrance to an elegant, airy showroom, but we are directed ahead into the courtyard to wait for our guide.

  We follow a pale stone path, until we find ourselves surrounded on three sides by twenty or more arches, arranged around a square lawn as green and smooth as a billiard table. Beyond that, as far as I can see, there are neat rows of thick, tumbling grapevines that ripple in the haze. Aside from the faint hum of a tractor in the distance, there is an almost monastic silence.

  ‘Bonjourno. Signor Holt, I presume?’

  We turn to find a short, jolly-looking man in his early forties, with ruddy cheeks, white laughter lines fanning from his eyes and a double chin that slopes all the way down to the collar of his yellow polo neck shirt.

  ‘I am Valerio, your guide. How are you both?’ He grins, delivering a vigorous handshake to each of us. ‘Are you enjoying your time in Italy?’

  ‘It’s absolutely beautiful,’ I reply.

  ‘I’m glad you think so. And welcome to La Cavalletta, which we think is a very special place,’ he announces proudly, opening his arms. ‘Follow me and I will tell you a little bit about the winery.’

  We stroll along the path into the sunshine as he talks. ‘The winery has been in the Zenetti family for generations and in that time they have passed on, from father to daughter and son, a deep love and knowledge of the vine variety and its cultivation in this unique and diverse environment.’

  He invites us to follow him down to the cellars, explaining that production began more than ninety years ago, when two brothers established the vineyard. Today, it is run by the great grandchildren of one of the brothers, Giovanni, and they’ve invested heavily in the business since they took over.

  ‘The other brother didn’t have a family?’ I ask, deliberately putting off addressing the real topic we’re here for.

  ‘Their involvement ceased a few years ago. The site has been completely modernised, using the latest advances in engineering. That way they could build a new structure with the greatest of respect for our environment. The building we are entering is less than four years old.’

  He unlocks a heavy oak door and invites us into the dark, where the heat dissolves instantly. Dozens of huge wooden barrels line up under a ceiling of softly lit vaulted brick arches, while a far wall is dominated by even larger copper containers.

  ‘In here, the temperature and humidity levels are perfectly controlled so that the wine can age,’ he says. Valerio continues to explain how the knowledge of their grandfathers has been interpreted and refined, using modern fermentation techniques to produce the most elegant wine they could.

  ‘It’s a wonderful place,’ Ed says.

  ‘And you haven’t even tasted the wine yet!’ Valerio laughs. ‘Any further questions before we move on?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ Ed replies. I lift my eyes briefly to him and can immediately tell he’s not going to ask about the grapes.

  Chapter 42

  Valerio invites us to step out of the cellar and pulls shut the heavy door behind him. Since we’ve been inside, an expanse of pale grey clouds has bruised the sky, softening the light over the vineyard.

  ‘I wondered if you happen to know Stefano McCourt?’ Ed asks casually.

  ‘Yes, I know Stefano. But he doesn’t work here anymore I’m afraid. Come, follow me,’ Valerio says, heading along the gravel path.

  I don’t think he means to be abrupt, but Ed was so convincingly nonchalant that the conversation has ended prematurely. I trail after them, as a bead of sweat trickles down my spine.

  Valerio leads us into the glass-fronted showroom we passed when we came in. It’s a large, uncluttered space, where natural light spills onto the polished wood floors and oak beams slice through a smooth, plastered ceiling. The only décor on the walls are blown-up black and white photographs from a bygone age, of young men smiling among twisting, sunlit vines, all Brylcreem and biceps.

  There are only two other customers, browsing the freestanding shelves that display wines for purchase, some gift boxed, most neatly lined up in glossy bottles. Valerio invites us to join him round one of three barrels that stand on their ends to act as tables. He disappears behind a counter momentarily, before producing a small silver bucket and two crystal glasses. Then he pops open a bottle and pours a measure of sparkling liquid into each.

  ‘This is our award-winning Spumante Brut. It’s an elegant drink, which we produce using a slow Charmat method,’ Valerio tells us. ‘This means that the secondary fermentation – when the bubbles are made – takes place in a low-pressure steel tank, rather than in the bottle itself. We do this over a period of five months, which allows us the high level of quality control necessary for its aromatic taste. Please,’ he says, inviting me to take a sip.

  Fragrant bubbles dissolve on my tongue. ‘It’s delicious,’ I tell Ed, who lifts his glass to his lips.

  We taste five wines in all – a fruity red, a grappa so strong it could fuel a Mini Cooper, and two more whites, one of which is a handmade, limited edition reserve.

  ‘Well, I’m certainly not going to waste this by spitting it in the silver bucket,’ I tell Ed, taking a sip.

  ‘You say that as if you’ve spat any into the silver bucket,’ he points out.

  Admittedly, this might go some way to explaining my dramatic sense of well-being and relaxation, which is so pronounced that I’ve almost forgotten why we’re here until Ed makes a second attempt at raising the subject of Stefano.

  ‘Did you know Stefano well?’ Ed asks.

  ‘Not really, but we spent a week together. It was me who took over his job so I only met him for those few days. He showed me the ropes. Nice guy. Are you from England?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right – Liverpool.’

  ‘Ah! So that’s how you know Stefano. He told me he was born somewhere near there.’

  Ed and I exchange a small frown, but neither of us decide to correct him.

  ‘We heard he moved somewhere near the coast. Was it another vineyard he went to work for?’ Ed asks. If the alcohol has gone to his head, he doesn’t show it. ‘We’d love to look him u
p.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe so. He inherited his uncle’s boat yard. It’s somewhere on the Ligurian coast. Portofino or Santa Margerita Ligure I think.’

  ‘Portofino?’ Ed looks surprised. ‘I’ve been there. It wasn’t cheap.’

  Valerio laughs. ‘He could’ve sold it, but from what he said, the boat yard held sentimental value, a bit of a personal passion. So, he persuaded his wife to move there. Which it’s why it’s me showing you round today and not him. Some of the others who work here are still in touch with him. If you want to leave your details, they can pass on a message?’

  Ed looks at me and he can see from my expression that leaving another note for him is not my preferred option. ‘You don’t have his email address or a number that you could give us?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m sure the office will have it. Though, perhaps it’s best if you leave your details and they can send them on to Stefano. If you’d like to go and see Olivia, our new receptionist, she can contact him. It’s her first week so I’ll tell her to expect you.’

  After the tasting, we spend a little time browsing the shelves, the neat rows of amber-coloured grappa di Lugana, golden passito, ruby red Bardolinos and jars of acacia honey. They’d make lovely gifts for family and friends but that’s hardly an option when everyone thinks I’m in Portugal.

  ‘What do you think about leaving another note?’ Ed asks under his breath.

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t just go leaving letters for him all over Lake Garda.’

  ‘Maybe this might be your chance though?’

  ‘But if he gets both letters, it’s going to look weird. It makes us look too desperate. I’m going to have to think of something else.’

  When it’s time to head back to the hotel, I step outside into the sunshine, feeling mildly intoxicated, and am greeted by our driver, who opens the car door for me. We’ve settled in the back and are about to drive off, when there’s a knock on the window and a young woman appears, breathlessly pushing her fine strands of dark hair out of her eyes.