I had been living in Milan for a week. A week that seemed like a whole year.
I didn’t hear from Niccolò. In some moments of weakness, I thought of calling him or sending him an e-mail, but I didn’t do it. I was too wounded and fragile to risk another humiliation.
Immediately after our last surreal conversation, I returned to Venice. There I was on the train, leaning against the window, tears streaming down my face – tears that not even the icy air conditioning could dry.
I reached home on foot, completely oblivious of what was going on around me. I barely knew where I was and didn’t know what was happening to me. I couldn’t stop shamelessly sobbing. I didn’t care about people staring as I walked along the canals. The wet mascara had turned my face into a bizarre carnival mask.
When I got to my house, I climbed the stairs slowly and at my apartment door I let myself slide down onto the floor. I couldn’t stop crying. I never thought I could produce so many tears. You would think that by now my tears would have drained every ounce of water from my poor tired body. Maybe it’s because I religiously consume two litres of water every day as an alleged guard against cellulite.
My apartment was silent and messy. I was renting a small place on the Cannareggio neighbourhood, since my ex-fiancé and I had put the place we bought together up for sale. At the moment the apartment seemed the perfect hide-out. An empty space where there were no memories of men who had wounded me.
I undressed, removed my make-up and slipped into bed. I spent two entire days in bed, getting out only to go to the bathroom or to eat some butter cookies that I kept hidden in my kitchen. I always hid sweets, so I wasn’t tempted. But it was an emergency now. A tornado had wrecked my insides. I had to cure my broken heart. My self-esteem was completely destroyed. I needed sweets!
When our hearts are shattered, we lose any sense of time. It doesn’t matter what time it is or what day of the week. The only thing we care about is what we’re feeling inside. Small splinters seem to pierce the heart. There is an acute feeling of loss, of absence – a longing for the return of love, of something whole – but it rarely happens. We feel our throats closing, we are sleepless, unable to breathe.
Time has stopped and we keep going back to the past to analyze what happened. We search for answers in small details. We try to understand if things could have gone another way, if we had acted differently. If we had said something different. When we suffer for love, we are like animals in a cage, animals that have known freedom and lost it. We feel empty, hopeless. All that appeared important now seems lost.
Love is wonderful when overwhelms us. It empowers us – we feel cheerful, attractive, carefree, happy – in one word it makes us feel immortal. Yet when it ends, we are left alone to endure the pain of still loving that person who maybe never loved us. It’s like a sudden and violent death. The euphoric mood becomes desperation. The enchantment becomes a nightmare.
I checked my telephone continuously hoping for a message. Maybe Niccolò had changed his mind, telling me he regretted his decision, that he realized I was the woman to love, not a skinny Anna with a pretty face. But nothing. Total silence.
At one point I started to fantasize that a meteorite would crash into his beautiful Milanese house, destroying all of his sophisticated designer furniture!
On the third day, when I began to recover a bit of my strength, I got out of bed and found the courage to look at myself in the mirror. I looked terrible. I got into the shower. I stayed under the steaming water for a long time, hoping it would wash away all my sadness, my unhappy thoughts, my disappointment and deep pain. When I got out of the shower I glanced at the scales near the sink: my scales, always my great enemy! I decided to hurt myself even more with an act of masochism. I stepped up onto them, as if I were someone on death row… but surprise! I had lost two pounds. I couldn’t help but smile. Finally, good news. Two days of tears and fasting – except for a few tiny butter cookies – had been enough to lose two pounds. That was an aspect of suffering for love that I hadn’t considered.
I looked at myself in the mirror again. I had dark circles and bags under my eyes and my skin was ashen grey. My gaze looked dead. It wouldn’t be easy to forget and start over, but I could do it. I had pretended to be a strong woman for so long, now I had to be it for real.
I ran to the bedroom in my bathrobe and looked at the empty boxes for the move, piled up in a corner. I began to fill them furiously, without any plan, cramming in everything within reach.
I had decided to move to the big city for a man. Now that this man no longer existed (perhaps killed by a meteorite in his elegant apartment!), it was time to think of myself. I would move to Milan to begin a new life, by myself.
Two days later all my stuff was loaded into a van to transport everything to my new home.
Although my stomach was still in knots and I had lost my appetite, at least I had stopped checking my telephone every two minutes in the hope that he would come back – just like the perfect endings that happen only in the movies.
I kept telling myself that I could make it. So I arrived in Milan.
“You must go on with your life, Coco. You must get out and meet people.” Emma repeated, hoping I would move past my ‘post-broken-heart’ depression.
The first week in Milan I had millions of things to do, including some bureaucracy stuff. Then I emptied my boxes, filled bookshelves, cleaned the apartment and made many trips to the supermarket to buy dish soap, laundry soap, sponges, etc. I also had to run to Ikea to get some essential décor items I couldn’t live without: vanilla candles, a small PC desk, a painting of a cow, and some wine glasses. I spent all my evenings with Emma, sitting on my new couch and whining late into the night.
I still had some vacation days before starting my job at the new agency and I spent that time working at my apartment to make it a cozy safe haven. Above the bathroom shelf where I kept my box of pearl necklaces, I hung up copies of vintage Coco Chanel photographs. Once in a while I looked at those pictures, hoping she could give me some answers. But Chanel remained silent, staring at me in her wonderful and inseparable small black hat.
The biggest task had been to make a huge pile of all my shoes in their boxes. They took up half of my bedroom; they were like a great wall protecting me from the dangers of the world.
I kept myself busy trying not to think about him. I didn’t want to go out in the evenings because I was afraid to see him together with the woman he had chosen to love.
“Don’t be silly Coco,” Emma told me one day. “This city is huge. You live in different neighbourhoods. You don’t even hang out with same crowd – except for the few friends in common – and we’ve made them swear never mention his name!”
“And if by coincidence he should decide to take a walk near my house?”
“So will you die locked in this apartment just so as not to run into him?”
“That’s an idea!”
“You can’t keep living this way.”
“I’m afraid I’ll see him around every corner,” I admitted. “I can imagine seeing him in the subway and in every café where I order a cappuccino. It’s like walking in a minefield.”
“I would really like to help you. This has become an obsession,” Emma seemed worried.
“Before my heart was broken, I got along really well. I used to know exactly where I was heading and the quickest, easiest way to get there. I never got lost. Now I am zig-zagging all over the place with no self-confidence and uneasy steps. I walk along hugging the walls, ready to duck into a doorway, or hide behind a pole.”
“I hate seeing you like this!”
“The only thing that consoles me is the hope that he will lose all his hair, get a big gut and not be able to have children.”
“Well, hope is always a beginning,” Emma smiled.
“I want to find the strength to escape this nightmare.”
“Coco, you’ve got to take control of your life again.”
Emma was right. I was consumed with pain, thinking of what I had lost. I felt unable to get over this. I was still suffering a lot.
Beyond that, I didn’t know that many people in Milan and when you change cities to try to start over, you really need affection and human warmth around you. You are desperate to find real friends, nice colleagues, a loyal bar tender, an honest plumber… You feel happy just because the tobacconist around the corner says ‘hello’, or because the lady at the bakery has kept a warm baguette for you. You look for human beings among estheticians and hair dressers. There was a world out there that I needed and hadn’t met yet.
“Do you know what I miss most?” I told Emma.
“What?”
“Hugs. I want to embrace someone and be embraced. I need human contact. I need someone who gives me a sense of protection, telling me that everything will be all right.”
“I know, hugs can be more important than sex and money, more beautiful than a sunny day, even better than chocolate cream puffs! Come here. Let me give you a big hug.”
I leaned my head on Emma’s breast whispering: “Nothing is better than chocolate cream puffs.”
“Finally! That’s the right spirit, sweetie,” she said laughing and hugging me.
At the end of my first week in Milan, which felt like an eternity, I was standing on my tiny balcony watching people in the street, when suddenly I felt a large mass of hair brush against my legs. Terrified, I jumped. Then I looked down at my white terry slippers (stolen from a luxury hotel where I stayed on a business trip) and looked into the big yellow friendly eyes of a huge black cat! After recovering from the shock, I looked around trying to understand how it had got into my apartment.
I consider myself a rational person, but I have to admit that part of me can’t help being superstitious. I avoid anything new on a Tuesday or Friday. If I spill some salt on the table, I always throw a pinch of it over my shoulder. I never leave hats on the bed and, most of all, I don’t cross a street if I see a black cat. I am perfectly aware of the futility of all these little gestures, like reading your horoscope without believing in it. But I’ve always thought there is nothing to lose when you show some respect for bad luck.
Seeing a black cat on my balcony had agitated me. Before even trying to understand where it came from, I wanted to know if its appearance was a sign of luck or misfortune. They say black cats are bad luck on the street, but in the house they protect you from misfortune. I was deep in these thoughts, when that fat ball of fur jumped nimbly on the edge of my balcony, then after two soft steps, jumped on the balcony next to mine and disappeared behind the French door. It wasn’t a ghost that had arrived to destroy or to save me. It was simply my neighbour’s cat that had come to visit my apartment. I felt relieved. I decided that the feline’s visit gave me a good opportunity to finally introduce myself to the neighbour with whom I shared the hallway. I put on a pair of flats, (if Niccolò could see me! He used to say that a woman wearing flats is sexy like a horse with lipstick…) and I rang my neighbour’s door bell. I immediately heard a loud noise coming from inside, then a curse and a voice saying, “I’m coming, I’m coming!” A few moments later a guy, kind of short and chubby with a big dark beard and slightly bald, opened the door smiling.
“Hi! I am your new neighbour.”
“Hi, sorry for the mess. I was frying some peppers and I had to run to turn off the stove. I didn’t want the building to catch fire.”
“Well… so sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you. It’s just that your cat came to visit me.”
“Yes, I know. He is terribly curious. Hope he cause any disasters… Did you hear that, Caaaat!” he yelled, addressing the animal that I’d seen, now curled up on a sofa.
“Is that the name of your cat, Cat?”
“Well, sure, he’s a cat. I couldn’t call him Koala or Dog. Don’t you agree? Actually, all the fault is in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. You know it, right?”
“Of course! Who could forget Audrey’s little black dress! But sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Rebecca. Rebecca Bruni.”
“Nice to meet you. Claudio. Claudio Mastroianni.”
“Ah, Mastroianni, like the actor.”
“Yes! But unfortunately we are not relatives… and, as you can see, we don’t look alike.” He had a contagious laugh that immediately put me in a good mood.
“Please, come in. Can I at least offer you a coffee?”
“Sure. Thank you!”
“Please, don’t look at the mess. I didn’t expect visitors this afternoon.”
He invited me to sit in a pleasant little parlour, where everything seemed to be in perfect order, with many photographs on the walls and light curtains at the window.
“On the contrary it looks all perfect to me.” I said.
“My wise grandmother used to say, when you are messy inside, the outside world always seems too perfect!”
I liked this guy. Then I followed him to the kitchen, where we sat at the table talking about several things – my move to Milan from Venice, the job I hated, his passion for cooking and about his life as a free-lance journalist.
By this time I had repeated the story of the end of my relationship with Niccolò so many times and to so many friends that I was able to tell him it in only seventeen minutes.
Claudio listened to me with interest, while preparing the moka and placing little cups on the table.
“I adore people who prepare espresso with a stove-top coffee maker.” I said, watching him fill the filter with coffee. “There is something that moves me in the ritual of rinsing, filling it with water, pressing the coffee powder… and then that unmistakable sound of the liquid bubbling out.
“Oh, I love it too,” he said putting the moka on the burner. “I like waiting for the coffee to bubble. The sudden strong scent surprises me every time.”
Claudio poured the coffee, opened a window, and lit up a cigarette.
“I rarely smoke, but I want to dedicate this special cigarette to you Rebecca, to your broken heart and to your arrival in Milan.”
I smiled and felt relaxed in a way I hadn’t felt for long time. I asked him for a cigarette.
I am an avid non-smoker. I’ve never smoked. I have always considered it to be a really bad expensive habit. I hate the smell of cigarettes on hands, clothes and hair. But that moment seemed right to try something new. I lit up my cigarette and inhaled. Then I started to cough frantically. It was disgusting! All the solemnity and elegance that I tried to put into that cathartic gesture of my first cigarette was nullified by my convulsive coughing and my disgust.
Chaudio began laughing out loud. “You are really sexy,” he said, tears coming out of his eyes.
His laugh was infectious, so I put out my cigarette and started laughing too. I kept laughing, at myself, my desperation, my flight from Venice, the Cat, at the strange new situation I found myself in Milan and at everything I was experiencing.
As soon as we were able to stop laughing, Claudio told me: “Rebecca, don’t despair. You’ll see, Milan will give you beautiful surprises. This is the city filled with opportunities, new encounters and fun! You are a beautiful woman, intelligent, with a great sense of humour. I’m sure it won’t take long for you to forget the past and head into the future.”
Although these words were a little bit of a cliché, they made me feel better. That spontaneous compliment made me regain some of my lost self-confidence. After coffee, I kept talking about my story – all my stories – without stopping until dinner time. I felt as though a weight had been lifted from me.
I thanked him for the beautiful afternoon and returned to my nest. Claudio had an appointment that evening – a lucky visitor – she would be tasting his famous fried peppers.
In the following days I met Claudio several times. He had become my personal guide. He recommended the best supermarkets, interesting stores, nice little restaurants for dinner and the best bars for an aperitif.
A few days were left before I had to go back to work. My new friend had decided that I should learn everything about Milan as soon as possible. He had time for me, since he worked at home and could manage his time any way he wanted. I liked spending time with him. He made me feel cheerful and carefree. One evening I almost felt tempted to hug him, but then thought he might misinterpret my gesture.
Claudio had been dating one of his colleagues for a few months, but he felt that she wasn’t his soulmate. He was a hopeless romantic and wasn’t seduced by the promise of easy sex. In spite of his many disappointments in love, he kept hoping for a stroke of luck. “Mom always said that miracles happen every day!” he quoted Forrest Gump. In courtship we were similar; we both wanted to be admired and desired. We didn’t totally dislike occasional sex (honestly, one never dislikes it, if it happens with someone decent) yet we wanted sex with some spark of love and good chemistry.
“Perhaps our expectations are too high for two single thirty-somethings,” he said one evening at dinner.
Claudio was a year younger than me. He had lived in Milan for seven years and had experienced a number of brief relationships that ended badly.
“Maybe we just have bad luck.” I replied.
“I think there are a great number of ideal women in the world. I wonder why none of them want to be with me.”
I still often thought of Niccolò. Especially at night, before going to sleep, I couldn’t breathe and would burst into tears. I usually called Emma. Sometimes she was too busy with work to stop by and see me. We talked over the phone.
“How are you, Coco?”
“Still in pieces. I can’t stop thinking of Niccolò: our weekends together, his empty promises…”
“Please stop torturing yourself!”
“I can’t help it. I repeat by heart all our conversations, the texts he sent me. I wonder what would have happened if I had told him I was in love. Would it have changed anything?”
“I don’t think so, although this isn’t what you want to hear. People choose who they want to be with, Rebecca – they overcome fears, doubts and difficulties. If Niccolò had really wanted you, he would have chosen you. You were there for him. All he had to do was let you know.”
“True. He was looking for a different kind of woman than me – a sweet, naïve, pretty young thing who would make him feel stronger and more manly than I made him feel. And I hope that one day soon Anna’s butt will grow huge with cellulite!”
“You should hate him for his behaviour. Instead you seem to justify his actions, as if it were your fault, as if you weren’t good enough.”
“Yes, it’s horrible. Instead of being angry at him – which would make me feel much better – I’m angry with myself, because I couldn’t be the ideal woman for him, because I wasn’t able to give him what he was searching for, because I wasn’t good enough for him.”
“Stop it! You’re perfect the way you are. When we suffer for love, anger is a good sign of recovery – a first step towards being healed. Anger is healthy and human, like the wish for revenge. As soon as we can start to feel anger and resentment toward that person who’s broken our hearts, the sooner we can start to feel better and less desperate. We can stop beating ourselves up, and stop feeling guilty.”
“I can’t hate Niccolò. Not yet. I keep thinking that I could have changed things, that I should have tried to be different…”
“This is simply masochism Coco.”
“I know; I am in a self-deprecation phase. But I can’t wait for the day when I’ll feel good enough to cut up all his fine tailored shirts!”
Emma laughed. How would I survive without her?
In the meantime, I began to like Milan. I was used to the beauty and poetry of Venice. At first in Milan, it felt strange to not see the same architectural wonders, the many little corners that seemed created to be part of a painting, and the beautiful, breath taking sunsets on the Grand Canal. Yet Milan made me feel at home.
“You seldom feel out of place here, foreign and lost.” Claudio was saying, while we drank coffee in a little downtown bar. “Milan is a city that welcomes everybody, that gives everybody a chance. It has a democratic attitude. It’s not beautiful like Paris, doesn’t have the charm of Rome, it’s not even close to the energy of New York, but it’s a city that takes care of you. It doesn’t reject you and you always can find a little corner where you feel protected.”
“It’s true,” I admitted, stirring brown sugar in my coffee, “I noticed that Milan is a city of details. Perhaps you don’t see its beauty as a whole, but it has corners, streets, gardens, sometime just a wall, that has a special charm. At times it’s messy and chaotic, but always practical and inviting.”
“It’s a city to discover,” my new friend said, drinking his coffee in just one swallow, “like a secretive woman, you need time to understand and learn how to love her.”
I explored my neighbourhood of Porta Romana for a few days and began to feel at home. I found my favourite supermarket, the café that made the best cappuccino and delicious pastries, the newspaper stand where I bought my fashion magazines, and a flower shop where I bought cheerful yellow daisies.
On Friday, I visited the weekly neighbourhood open-air market. I bought fresh fruit and vegetables, also a couple of inexpensive pretty dresses – a little too small for me, but I still hoped to lose weight. I had lost another four pounds and – if I was to continue to wallow in my suffering, I could reach my ideal weight.
It’s funny how we spend our life struggling with weight, fighting the scales, and then when a simple little love gone wrong happens, it does the trick in a few weeks. The symbol for love should be the stomach, not the heart! I had also stopped counting calories every time I ordered a drink and – since Milan is known for its happy hour – I had many. At the end of a day drinking two glasses of white wine and eating some focaccia filled me with euphoria. I finally felt happy.
A few days before starting my new job, I stopped by the office to get my contract. The agency’s headquarters were in an imposing building in Viale Zara. After signing a lot of papers, I walked back to the elevator, looking down at my contract. It wasn’t a brilliant idea: after a few steps I stumbled into a small table, lost my balance, and ended up falling into the arms of someone coming down the hall. I looked up to see who had saved me from crashing to the floor. He was a tall, blond guy with the bluest of blue eyes, blue like the colour of the sea. (Sorry, but I can’t help the cliché!)
“Are you ok?” he asked, helping me to regain my balance.
“Yes, I’m fine… So sorry… Thank you!” I felt my cheeks going red.
“It was a pleasure. It doesn’t happen every day that women fall into my arms!”
I felt ashamed. I was such a clumsy fool. He stared at me with a gorgeous smile and I just wanted to disappear at that very moment.
“Thanks again for your help…” I picked my hat up off the floor and quickly pushed the elevator button.
“If you need to stumble again in the future, I hope to be around to catch you…” He had a very charming foreign accent.
I gave him a quick embarrassed smile, before rushing into the elevator.
*
My last weekend of freedom – I had to go back to work on Monday – I decided to make myself beautiful: I needed a lot of work!
I was going to start a new life; I wanted to be a gorgeous babe. Men would stop dead in their tracks to check me out. Men… I was deluding myself again. In reality I knew that the only man that I wanted to impress was Niccolò. I dreamed of taking his breath away – my beauty would devastate him!
First stop: Hair Salon
“You must do something with your hair,” Emma had told me, recommending a prestigious, elegant and expensive salon in the centre of Milan.
“I have always worn it this way, long, down to my shoulders. I like it. Also, long hair makes us look like submissive saints – Mary Magdalene! Men seem to be attracted to that.”
“It’s like a mating call from the Stone Age. To get her to obey, the caveman clubs his woman over the head and drags her easily by her long hair into his cave. Don’t you think it’s time for a change? New life, new haircut.”
I listened to Emma and had my hair cut. My boring, long brunette mane was transformed into a sassy bob.”
“Here you are! You look great!” Emma was enthusiastic.
“Are you sure?”
“Stop being insecure… You look gorgeous. Finally!”
“What was wrong with the old Rebecca?”
“Hum… She spent a lot of time weeping over an idiot, for example.”
“Touché!” I laughed.
Emma was a straightforward person, and she was right, I felt reborn with my new haircut.
Second Stop: Beauty Salon
They made me a new woman! It’s been ages since I’ve had such smooth and luminous skin. And I almost had forgotten how it felt to have no hair on my legs.
“You look so much better, Madame…” the young esthetician told me looking at me with great pride.
“Rebecca is back!” I said to her smiling, as I left the salon.
Saturday evening, I was ready to deal with Milan by night. Claudio had promised to take me to the Navigli neighbourhood to have drinks. I wanted to have a relaxed, fun night, and empty my mind.
I chose my shoes carefully: a pair of jewelled sandals that I matched with an elegant, short, dark brown dress. I love sheath dresses; I couldn’t live without them: so feminine and transgressive at the same time. Everyone remembers the indispensable little black dress, thanks to Audrey Hepburn and her character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But what most don’t know is the story behind it. Coco Chanel created it many years before the film. She was a revolutionary in fashion as well as being a strong, courageous woman. Imagine being raised in an orphanage and going on to become the most stylish and elegant fashion icon of all time! She freed women from their tortuous girdles and gave them elegant trousers. For this I owe her my gratitude! Although she became a powerful and successful woman, she did have a very troubled love life. I felt like her – an eternal Mademoiselle. Damn love!
When Claudio knocked on my door to pick me up, he was surprised, “Coco, if you continue like this, you’ll make me lose my head!” We laughed and began to walk towards the Navigli in the sunset. I really loved Milan.
When we arrived on the bank of the canal, we sat at a table in an old tavern and ordered a bottle of Gewurztraminer. We wanted to enjoy the evening, to celebrate our friendship, the freedom of being young and single, and the luck to have met each other.
Relaxed and cheerful, we were toasting to life with our third glass, when I noticed someone familiar on the other side of the canal. I stared and for a moment I couldn’t breathe.
Standing there in front of a pub was Niccolò: his tailored shirt with rolled up sleeves, relaxed, charming and smiling like usual.
Claudio noticed I was distracted and asked me about it.
“There is Niccolò!” I whispered, as if he could hear me from across the canal. I tried to hide behind my handbag on the table.
“What?” Claudio asked.
“There is Niccolò!!” I repeated, in the middle of a panic attack.
He looked toward the other side. “Not too bad…” he added.
“Don’t stare at him! And thank you! You don’t need to remind me how beautiful he is.”
“Sorry. I was just trying to tell you that you have good taste…”
“What should I do now? I don’t know what to do!”
“Well, go over and say hello. You look beautiful tonight. You’ll make him die.”
“Do you think so? Oh my god! I really don’t know what to do. It’s a nightmare beyond my imagination. But maybe you’re right. I should go over there, tell him how badly he behaved and show that I’m perfectly fine without him. Because I look good, right?”
Claudio smiled at me and I felt brave. After all I had spent 400 euros on my re-styling and couldn’t miss this chance to show Niccolò how beautiful I was. I wanted to impress him – actually I wanted to make him die!
I stood up unsteadily, then recovered my balance and, thanks to the wine I had drunk, I felt like the most beautiful woman on the canal bank. I slowly climbed the steps and began to walk across the bridge. When I was half way there, I saw a figure approaching Niccolò.
It was Anna! She wore an off-white dress that made her look slender and feminine. The wind blew through her long hair. Niccolò placed his hand gently on her neck, pulled her closer and kissed her passionately.
Seeing them together for the first time unleashed my fury. It was an emotion that had taken a long time to come, but now here it was: I was crazed with anger. Suddenly I realized how much of my precious time I wasted, crying over this asshole. In only two weeks he had made an idyllic life for himself! This man had replaced me with another woman without suffering one bit! He had used me to feel more manly. I hated him. I detested him. Shaking with fury and unsteady on my feet, I thought I might throw up.
I decided to turn back and return to the table. I didn’t want to waste any more time on that shallow idiot. I tried to walk back across the bridge as fast as I could, but one of my heels broke and I fell to the ground with a crash The tumble was so violent and the thud so loud that people turned to look at me. A clumsy version of myself. Well, for sure I was noticed that evening, even though not exactly for my brilliant looks!
I prayed to god that Niccolò hadn’t seen me and that embarrassing scene, but when I turned to look in his direction, I saw that he had stepped away from Anna and was walking towards me.
I just wanted to run as far away from him as possible. Limping on my broken jewelled sandals I ran across the bridge, down the stairs, and fled through the crowd hoping to hide. Poor Claudio followed me, yelling: “Slow down Rebecca! I’m risking a heart attack!”
The day of my comeback had ended in disaster. In addition, I had destroyed my favourite sandals. It was all fault of that bastard of Niccolò!
Not sure I loved Milan any more.