Next morning, Debbie woke up early, feeling rested and refreshed after sleeping remarkably soundly. Alice was still fast asleep in the other bed so she crept quietly into the bathroom, showered, and changed without waking her. She had an initial moment of confusion when hot water started coming out of the tap marked with a C. Only then did she remember that C stood for caldo, hot and F for freddo, cold. When she was ready, she let herself out silently so as not to disturb Alice, and went through to the breakfast room. Two cups of coffee, two glasses of orange juice and two croissants filled with apricot jam, and she was ready for the day.
She went out past the reception desk that was now staffed by a matronly lady, reflecting that this boded well for Alice’s self-imposed temporary vow of abstinence. Outside, she checked her watch and saw that it was still only a quarter past seven. She really had got up early. It wasn’t cold, but it was certainly much cooler than the previous afternoon and evening. The sky was a clear, cloudless blue so doubtless the temperature would soon rise again in the course of the morning. But at least for now, she was reassured that she should be able to climb the hill on the other side of the river without too much discomfort.
Apart from teams of street sweepers and noisy little trucks going round washing the streets with whirring brushes, there weren’t many other people about this early on a Sunday morning. Debbie was able to make her way with ease up to the cathedral, finding that it looked even more impressive in the daylight – the early morning sun reflecting off the shiny white marble, highlighting the exquisite sculptures set into the façade and the bands of green and red stone cutting across it at regular intervals. She remembered Pierluigi’s description of it and had to agree with him. It really was amazing. After standing in silent appreciation for several minutes, she crossed the piazza and followed the little arrows along the main shopping streets until she came to the Ponte Vecchio.
Debbie had often seen photos of the Ponte Vecchio – probably one of the most photographed bridges in the world – leading over the river Arno. She could see that, as well as serving as a means of getting across the river, the bridge was also a shopping mall in miniature, with tiny shops lining both sides of it. At this time of the morning these shops, mostly selling jewellery, were all still boarded up, but she could imagine how busy this thoroughfare would become later in the day. Above the shops to the left of her was a long line of windows at first-floor level, protected by hefty iron gratings. This, she knew, was the fortified passage that had been built to serve as a private walkway for the dukes of Florence from the Palazzo Vecchio across to the Pitti Palace on the other side of the river.
But she didn’t stop to consider the history of the bridge or to admire the view up and down the Arno from there. She had other things on her mind this morning. She turned left at the end of the bridge and walked parallel to the river until she saw a sign to the right pointing up the hill towards Piazzale Michelangelo. This started as a gently sloping road, leading to one of the old gates in the original walls of the town and, beyond that, it then became rapidly steeper until it turned into a wide flight of stone steps leading ever upwards.
Debbie climbed at a steady pace, trying to count the steps as she did so, but she lost count somewhere around a hundred. However, even with a pause for a breather halfway, she was delighted to find herself at the top much sooner than she had expected. She turned left and walked along the road as far as the terrace where she and Alice had fed the little sparrow the previous day. She went across to the railings, breathing hard, but not too badly out of breath. All the cycling she had been doing in Cambridge had obviously been to good effect.
At this time of the morning, she was the only person here and, for a few minutes, she found herself able to relax and survey the full beauty of Florence without an accompanying background hubbub of voices. It was a lovely, still morning and the heat haze hadn’t yet built up. Opposite her, in the far distance, the outline of the tree-clad hills and the mountains beyond was crystal clear. She stood there for a few minutes, breathing in the view and the atmosphere until she was disturbed by the grating noise of metal chairs being pulled across the paving slabs behind her. She turned to see the staff of the café starting to get ready for the daily onslaught. Spotting the waiter who had served them the previous day, on impulse, she went over to him.
‘Buongiorno.’ She was determined to practice her Italian.
‘Buongiorno, signorina. Ben tornata.’
‘You remember me?’ She was impressed. Ben tornata meant welcome back.
‘A tall, beautiful English girl who speaks Italian – of course I remember you.’ He gave her a cheeky grin and she smiled back, trying not to blush.
‘This is probably going to sound like a silly question.’ She was delighted to find the words coming out pretty easily in Italian and to see comprehension on his face. ‘But do you know of another spot like this up here somewhere?’
He looked a bit puzzled. ‘You mean another café?’
‘No, a place like this with roses and benches, with a view over the city.’ She decided to tell a little white lie. ‘A friend of mine was telling me about it.’
He hesitated, resting on the back of the chair beside him. ‘Roses, you say? What about the Giardino delle Rose? That’s close by.’
A place called the Rose Garden? Debbie nodded eagerly. ‘That sounds perfect. Where’s that?’
‘Have you just come up the steps on foot?’
She nodded again. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, you’ve walked right past it. It’s just down the hill from us. Go back to the steps, start going down and you’ll see it on the right. Big iron gates.’ He hesitated. ‘It might still be closed at this time of day, but you can try.’
‘Thank you so much. That’s wonderful.’
She hurried off back to the steps and started descending, delighted her Italian had been up to the task, and excited that the friendly waiter might have actually pointed her in the direction of her special place. Certainly, the name was auspicious.
Before long, she came to a pair of rusty iron gates on her right. Earlier, she had been concentrating so hard on climbing the never-ending steps on the way up that she must have trudged right past without noticing. Attached to the gates was a transparent plastic sign, clearly marked Giardino delle Rose. The bad news was that the gates were secured with a chain and a padlock and the sign indicated that the garden would only be open to the public from 10 a.m. on Sundays. Debbie glanced at her watch. It was still only just after eight o’clock.
She peered through the bars of the gate and immediately noticed two things. First were the numerous plants, among them rose bushes, and second, two solid wooden benches. The closer of the two, set in the shade of a clump of trees, was empty, but the other looked as though it had somebody sitting on it. From behind, it looked like a man wearing a funny, flat-topped hat. After a moment’s hesitation, Debbie called out to him.
‘Buongiorno. Posso entrare? Can I come in?’ It was a long shot, but he might just be able to open the gate. There was no response from him, so she tried again, a bit louder, still without any result. Then, to her surprise, there was the sound of footsteps and a woman appeared from the right, holding the end of a hosepipe.
‘Can I help you?’ She looked friendly enough. By her accent, Debbie reckoned she was local to these parts.
‘Yes, I’m very sorry, but I’ve come all the way from England to see this garden and I’m only here today. I don’t suppose you could let me in, could you?’
The gardener dropped the hose and walked across to the locked gate, glanced around, then shook her head. ‘We’re closed until ten, and I’m afraid I don’t have the key to this padlock.’ She hesitated, checking once more that Debbie was on her own. ‘Listen, if you go on down the steps, you’ll come to a door set in the wall, right at the corner. That’s the way I came in and I’ve a feeling I may have forgotten to lock it behind me.’ She gave Debbie a wink. ‘I suppose if you were to find it open and wander in, nobody would blame you. Just don’t tell my boss I let you in.’
‘That’s terrific. Thank you so much. I promise I’ll be very quiet and I won’t say a word. After all, I’m foreign and I don’t speak Italian, do I?’
‘Of course you don’t.’ The lady smiled and then lowered her voice. ‘Actually, you speak very good Italian. My compliments. Now don’t hurry. I’ll need a couple of minutes to go down and check that I did forget to lock it.’ She grinned at Debbie. ‘And, by the way, when you come in, close it behind you, would you?’
‘You’re really, really kind. Thank you so much.’
Debbie watched the gardener turn and set off across the cobbles and on down a narrow path until she disappeared from sight. She waited by the gate for a minute or so, breathing in the atmosphere, increasingly convinced that this might finally be the place of her dreams. Then, after a bit of time had passed, she set off down the steps and easily found the sturdy wooden door set in the stone wall. She pushed it with the palm of her hand and it opened. After going in, she pressed it closed behind her until she heard it click, and then climbed up half a dozen steep steps into the garden.
She walked slowly up the path towards the benches she had seen. The path led her through the rose garden and along the side of a lawned area, surrounded by trees, shrubs and flowers. The scent of roses filled the air and she could hear the twittering of birds in the branches. It felt peaceful, relaxing and somehow very, very familiar. As the path levelled out onto the cobbled area, she found herself confronted by two statues. The first was a massive metal outline of a suitcase, complete with a handle that formed a frame through which to view the roofs of Florence below.
The second was more unsettling. There, right ahead of her, was the wooden bench she felt increasingly sure she had seen so often in her dreams. But sitting on it was the man in the funny hat she had viewed from the gate – only it wasn’t a real man. In fact, it wasn’t necessarily even a man. Like the suitcase, this was also a statue, this time of an androgynous being, made of what looked like bronze. The figure was sitting on the bench, with its left arm resting along the back of the bench, as if waiting for somebody to sit down alongside. She found herself gawping as she approached it.
She stood for a good few minutes, just staring down at the figure, before slowly, almost reluctantly, taking a seat on the bench. The feel of the sun-warmed wood beneath her was unmistakable, as was the scent of roses in the air. She raised her eyes and looked straight ahead, the panorama of the rooftops of Florence matching up exactly with her mental image formed over so many years. She relaxed against the statue’s bronze arm running along the back of the bench, and her right hand quite naturally landed in the statue’s other hand, resting on its bronze knees. As she took hold of the metal hand with her fingers, she distinctly felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
This was it. This was her spot, her special place.
She felt her eyes burn and first one, and then a flood of tears began to run freely down her cheeks. Years of pent-up emotions spilled over and she sobbed her heart out. The disappointment she had felt as a teenager, when her mum and dad hadn’t been able to scrape up the money to send her on the school trip, rose up and was washed away. Even as she wept, she knew that she wasn’t weeping out of sadness. Instead, she was crying with relief, with joy, with a sense of belonging she hadn’t felt before.
‘Are you all right, signorina? I couldn’t help noticing that you were crying.’
Debbie looked up, reaching into her pocket for a tissue with her free hand. It was the gardener from before, standing in front of the bench, looking concerned. After blowing her nose and wiping her eyes, Debbie took a big breath before replying.
‘Thank you, but I’m fine.’ She took another deep breath. ‘I’m sorry about this. It’s hard to explain. I’ve been dreaming of this place ever since I was a little girl and now I’ve finally found it, it’s had more of an influence upon me than I expected.’
She glanced sideways at the bronze figure. She was still gripping the hand tightly and it felt comforting. So comforting, in fact, that she felt the beginnings of a smile forming on her face.
‘I’m fine, honestly. Thank you so much for your concern.’
The gardener didn’t look convinced.
‘You’re not the first person to have a funny turn with this statue, you know. We had a lady here a month or two ago who grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go. We almost had to prise her away.’
The image made the smile on Debbie’s face broaden. With sudden decision, she released the hand and stood up. To her relief, there was no sense of loss and the feel of the warm metal against her palm stayed with her even after she had thanked the kind gardener and made her way back down through the garden and out onto the steps once more, remembering to pull the door closed behind her.
She walked slowly back across the Ponte Vecchio, which was already filling up with people, and through the backstreets to the pensione. All the way home, she could feel the smile still on her face.
After an exhausting walking tour of the sights that day, and a whistle-stop tour of half a dozen English language schools that didn’t really produce much more than the recognition that they existed and that they boasted signs screwed to the walls of buildings advertising their presence, Debbie and Alice took the number 7 bus to Fiesole. This was on the hill, the other side of town from Piazzale Michelangelo, but the bus driver, a woman this time, demonstrated the same racing and rallying skills as her colleague the previous evening.
As the bus climbed the hill out of Florence and they were thrown from side to side round the corners, the views got better and better. Debbie saw that the hillside was peppered with magnificent villas, most surrounded by imposing cypress trees, presumably planted centuries ago to provide some shade against the heat of the sun. Some of the villas were the size of small castles and no doubt cost as much. For a moment she found herself wondering if Pierluigi came from somewhere as opulent as this. The realisation that he and she were from very different worlds struck her yet again.
The bus came to a halt in the main square of Fiesole and the doors hissed open. This paved area was just about the only relatively flat space they had seen since beginning the climb up from the outskirts of Florence. Over to the left was an imposing church, and the square was ringed by what they now recognized as typical Florentine buildings – sturdy façades, the plaster a creamy, light ochre colour, with green shutters and pink terracotta roofs. There was what looked like a craft fair going on and the centre of the square was full of stalls offering handmade objects for sale.
As they strolled through the crowd, admiring the paintings, pottery and woodcarvings, Alice returned to the subject that had occupied both of them on and off for most of the day.
‘You say yourself that you’ve read lots of books about Florence and you’ve spent hours on the internet, researching the place. That postcard you’ve got only shows the view, not the place from where it was taken. That rose garden is something you’ve dreamed up – you most probably saw it in a book somewhere and, although you don’t remember, the image must have lodged in your head.’ Alice glanced across at her. ‘Or are we talking something supernatural here? You don’t really think you were there in a previous existence?’ Debbie could hear from her tone what she thought of that idea and she agreed with her.
‘Nothing like that. I’m not totally bonkers, you know.’ She remembered Pierluigi asking her if she had been a Medici princess in a previous life and discounted it now, as she had then. ‘I’m sure you’re right. I must have seen a photo or something and it affected me subliminally.’
‘And your reaction to it, crying your eyes out?’
‘I invented, or found, or remembered, this special place years ago when I was a girl at school. Sitting there today with that statue’s arm round me brought back memories, that’s all.’
Alice nodded approvingly. ‘So it all goes back to when you were a teenager. It’s probably all tied up with hormones and sex and stuff like that.’ She grinned. ‘So, talking of sex, did the hand you were holding remind you of anybody? Like a certain tall, handsome doctor, by any chance?’’
‘I don’t know if it reminded me of him, but I certainly thought about him.’ Debbie felt another little stab of regret that he wasn’t here with her, but the joy of having found the solution to her longstanding mystery more than compensated for his absence. At least for now. ‘Anyway, now’s the time to reveal where we’re eating tonight. It’s a little restaurant that got great reviews on the internet and, unless I’m mistaken, that’s it over there.’
They were shown to a table outside on a roof terrace, with a stunning view over Florence. From up here, the whole city was laid out before them and Debbie could easily make out Piazzale Michelangelo, with the hills towards Siena beyond. It was too far away for her to spot her rose garden, but she didn’t mind. Now that she knew the place was real, she intended to return as often as she could.
Once Debbie had overcome her fear that this restaurant might turn out to be too pricey and pretentious, she began to enjoy herself. It certainly wasn’t pretentious. Yes, most of the other diners most probably had more money than the two of them put together, but it didn’t matter. They were all there for the view, and the food – and both were excellent. Quite a few of the tables contained children alongside the adults, and a number of the kids spent the evening running about and playing. The waiters and other diners didn’t bat an eyelid and Debbie found herself comparing their reaction to similar places in the UK, where she felt sure a very dim view would have been taken.
They started with glasses of Prosecco to celebrate Debbie’s birthday then moved on to Chianti Classico while they ate ham, fresh pasta, and then wonderful little lamb chops, cooked over a charcoal grill. At the end they were too full to manage dessert, but the waitress brought them some cantuccini – rock-hard almond biscuits that they dipped in their red wine to soften before nibbling them. It was a memorable meal.
By the time they finished, the sun had set and darkness had fallen. The lights of Florence twinkled down below them in the distance and a light breeze had brought the temperature down to a comfortable level. Debbie felt very full, very happy, and very pleased that she had accomplished what she had set out to do.
‘So, how does this birthday match up to others you’ve had?’ Alice sounded equally content.
‘Brilliant. Yes, I know it’s all been a bit of a mad rush, but I’m so very pleased I came. And I’m pleased you came with me, Al.’
‘I’ve enjoyed it as well. I really have. So, can we say Florence has lived up to your expectations?’
Debbie nodded decisively. ‘Very much so.’
‘And when are you coming back again?’
‘Just as soon as I can.’