‘I cannot believe you gave him a thumbs up!’
Out of everything I’d ever done, nothing had tickled Amy quite like this.
‘Double thumbs up,’ I corrected. ‘It was a double thumbs up.’
‘I’d take that if it were me,’ she said, heaving her first enormous suitcase off the luggage carousel at Malpensa airport, barely blinking at the fact it weighed almost as much as she did. Agent Veronica had assented to my bringing her to Milan as my assistant with only four ‘fuck you’s’ and one use of the ‘c’ word. It was as though she was starting to like me. ‘Charlie Wilder finally drops the L bomb and you give him the double thumbs up and say thank you. Thank you!’
‘I didn’t say “thank you”,’ I said, looking for my own sad little bag. A hasty patch-up job with duct tape meant it was very, very recognisable. ‘I said, “brilliant” and I haven’t heard from him since. Now, can we agree to never speak of it again?’
‘What did you expect him to do?’ she asked as she pulled up the suitcase handle and leaned forward, using it as a chin rest. ‘Propose? “Oh, I just told a girl I love her and she said ‘Brilliant’ so I should totes put a ring on it?”’
I thought about it for a second. ‘Yes.’
‘And you gave him a double thumbs up,’ Amy stretched her arms over her head and smiled. ‘Good job on getting the camera out of him first.’ The camera. He gave me a camera, told me loved me and I gave him the thumbs up. What a knobhead. ‘You can’t really be surprised that he’s pissed off, can you?’
I shrugged, eyeing my case as it rattled along the conveyor belt towards me. Half the size and a third the weight of Amy’s case; I couldn’t even begin to work out what she had brought with her.
‘No,’ I protested, grabbing my case and wrenching my still-sore shoulder as I pulled it from the belt. ‘Of course not. But I didn’t think he’d be so flippant about the whole thing.’
‘He isn’t being flippant.’ She pushed her hair out of her face and sighed. ‘He’s being hurt. This is what hurt looks like. Isn’t it obvious?’
Honestly, my hurting Charlie was an entirely new concept. I’d spent so long nursing my unrequited crush that the thought that I could actually damage his feelings was a bit of a mind-blower. But she was right.
We’d spoken on Saturday night when I called, determined to make things right between us before I left for Italy. Unlike a certain other man I would not name, Charlie answered his phone when I called it. But similarly to Mr Unmentionable, he wasn’t best pleased with me. I was met with a variety of one-word responses to my every question, and when I finally suggested we get together for dinner as I was leaving for Milan in the morning, he declined, citing prior plans for his mate’s birthday. Since I had been his social secretary forever, I knew it really was Robbo’s birthday, but I also knew when Charlie was pissed off. And above all else, I knew a man would never put the thirty-second birthday of a passing acquaintance above the opportunity for a shag. Not that I was planning to shag him, but clearly my track record of declining a sleepover wasn’t fantastic in these situations. After blowing me off, he switched to the pitch, telling me he was leaving for Portugal on Monday morning and that I should email him my stuff for the pitch so he could work everything up for Friday, then hung up. No ‘have fun’, no mention of us living together, no mention of his declaration of love, no mention of my appalling response to said declaration. He was all business.
As was quite obvious to everyone alive, I was not an expert in men but I was an expert in Charlie. He was clearly furious. The only time he’d been this cold to me in the last decade was when I accidentally washed a pair of his jeans that had tickets to the FA Cup final in the back pocket. That resulted in almost a week of stony silence but he soon came round when he needed help picking a birthday present for his then girlfriend. Suffering the indignity of trying on lingerie that was going to be worn by a woman who was sleeping with the man I believed was the only possible father to my future children felt like more than enough punishment for denying Charlie the opportunity to see Arsenal lose on penalties in extra time.
But knowing he was perfectly justified in his huff didn’t help me. It still felt overwhelming – starting a business, moving in together, the first ‘I Love You’ and a chicken cook-in sauce? Who did he think I was, Beyoncé? I was an organized person who liked a plan, and in my head I had always imagined these things happening in a timely, organized fashion. I’d waited ten years – why did they all have to appear at once?
‘This is good timing,’ I said, wiping away an errant tear that had crept out of nowhere before Amy saw. Stupid eyes. ‘This slows things down. We’ll both be so busy this week, we won’t have time to stew on stuff. And when I get back, it’ll all be OK.’
‘Totally healthy reaction,’ Amy said, shoving her passport in the back pocket of her hot-pink jeans. ‘You’re so on top of this.’
‘I’m a grown woman,’ I replied, pulling her passport out of her back pocket without her even noticing and placing it safely into into my travel wallet with my passport. ‘I can make my own decisions.’
My suitcase was light to the point of embarrassment, compared to Amy’s gargantuan twosome. All I had packed were comfy jeans, a few T-shirts and shirts and a couple of jumpers in case it got cold at night, even though I had been soundly assured by Agent Veronica that Milan in July would be ‘fucking roasting red hot like the seventh circle of hell’ and that she would rather hang herself by her own ovaries than ‘spend a second in that shithole’. It wasn’t all boring though; I had been to M&S and bought two new packs of pants especially for the trip. It hardly mattered what I wore on my nether regions, since Amy was the only person who was likely to see them and, given my natural tendency to be a never-nude, that tended to be unplanned and against my will anyway.
‘So,’ Amy waved at a driver holding a board showing my name and waited for me to find my feet, ‘what would you do if you turned around and Charlie was stood on one side of the airport and Nick was on the other?’
‘Turn back around and keep walking?’ I said, still breathless. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, they’re not are they?’ I hardly dared move.
‘Well, Charlie isn’t,’ she shrugged. ‘And since you apparently managed to spend a week in playing photographer without taking a single bloody shot of Mr Miller, I don’t know what he looks like, do I?’
‘If you’re going to tell me you haven’t googled him,’ I nodded at the driver as we trotted towards him, overly excited to see my own name badly written in wonky black marker, ‘I’m going to call you a liar.’
‘Do you have any idea how many Nick Millers there are in the world?’ Amy said. ‘Not including a character in a very popular sitcom?’
‘A few?’
Secretly, I was pleased that she’d had a hard time finding him. If Amy had got so much as a peek at Nick, we wouldn’t be in Milan right now. We’d be wherever in the world he might be so she could hunt him down and force us down the aisle with a shotgun.
‘You’re a pain in my arse, Brookes,’ she muttered. ‘I never tell you a story without visual aids.’
‘Yeah, and if you could stop texting me pictures of your one-night stands while they’re sleeping, that would be brilliant,’ I replied.
With a big wide smile, Amy turned and gave me a double thumbs up.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘That’s brilliant.’
‘Remind me again why I brought you with me?’ I asked my alleged best friend, fighting the urge to punch her in the face.
‘Because you love me,’ she said, weaving her arm through mine, as our driver piled our bags onto a trolley. ‘And you couldn’t possibly survive another adventure without me.’
‘Totally should have brought Paige,’ I mumbled to myself as we walked out of the air-conditioned airport into a heat that almost made me crumble to my denim-clad knees. So this was the seventh circle of ovary-hanging hell Veronica had talked about.
‘Warm out,’ Amy said, sliding on her sunglasses. ‘This is going to be fun.’
‘It’s going to be something,’ I replied, looking for my own sunglasses in my handbag and having a sudden flashback to leaving them on top of Amy’s dresser in the rush to get her out and into the taxi that had been waiting for us for twenty minutes. ‘It’s definitely going to be something.’
‘Oh my God!’
Amy hadn’t stopped talking since customs so it was a testament to just how impressive Bertie Bennett’s Italian home was that it had managed to shut her up so successfully. Even when I had explained that the clouds that looked so much like mountains were, in fact, mountains, she hadn’t stopped for breath so the look of dazed amazement that had come over her now was wonderful to behold for many reasons. From a best-friend perspective, I was happy to see her look so happy. From a human-being perspective, I could have cried with joy at the first moment of silence in over an hour.
As the car pulled off the road and a pair of huge iron gates swung open to allow us inside, I pressed my fingertips against the window of the car. When I’d arrived at Bertie Bennett’s house in Hawaii, I thought I had accidentally wandered into heaven. The wonderful modernist architecture, the sea, the sand, the way the air smelled so sweet and welcoming. But this was something else; this was like something I had only seen in fairytales. One moment we were on a perfectly normal-looking city street while Amy regaled the driver with tales of her latest urinary tract infection and the next we were sitting in complete silence and rolling into the courtyard of the most beautiful, stately building I had ever seen.
When I was sixteen, my entire class had gone on a school trip to London and I distinctly remembered being more than a little bit disappointed by Buckingham Palace. Not that it wasn’t impressive; but my imagination had been ruined by too many Disney movies, so it had too many corners and not enough turrets for my liking. But this place? Al’s Milan pied-à-terre made Buck House look like a two-up, two-down council house.
It wasn’t that it was enormous or sprawling or set in acres of artfully landscaped grounds, it was just impossibly beautiful. The house was elegant and simple with so many big, sparkling windows I couldn’t even count them all. Everything was symmetrical, which brought out the ecstatic OCD in me and I kept looking up to the top floor, expecting to see a princess combing out her hair on one of the balconies. Passing through the gate, the car came to a halt in the courtyard, a stone fountain bubbling away in the centre, more archways leading off to small but perfectly formed manicured lawns, decorated with trees and plants. Gorgeous to look at, but just like his super-modern home in Hawaii, entirely inviting. Nothing about this storybook palace said ‘do not touch’; it was far more ‘feel free to take off your shoes and run around barefoot and would you like a bottle of wine and a straw while you’re doing that?’
A white-glove-wearing footman opened the passenger door and I climbed out of the car, eyes still skyward, taking in each of the three levels of Al’s second home. Unlike Hawaii, there was endless activity behind each of the arched windows. I could see people rushing around from one room to the next, curtains pulled back and windows thrown open. Clearly, someone was in a rush to get ready for something.
‘Tess?’ Amy peered at me over the top of the car, wavering on her tiptoes. ‘Are we in the right place?’
‘I don’t know about you,’ I replied, watching the huge wooden double door creak open to reveal a familiar face. ‘But I’m pretty bloody sure that I am.’
‘My darling!’ A short, handsome man with coffee-coloured skin and impeccably parted jet-black hair rushed across the courtyard, barrelling past assorted staff members who were trying to go about their business, and scooped me up in an impressive hug. Mostly impressive because I was at least five inches taller than him. ‘Aloha!’
‘Kekipi!’ I hoped he wouldn’t find the fact I still had my feet on the ground as awkward as I did. ‘Aloha.’
Nestling his head into my boobs, he looked up at me and grinned. Apparently he did not find it awkward at all. ‘Now are we Tess or Vanessa today?’
‘Tess,’ I said quickly. ‘Today, tomorrow and until the end of the world.’
‘That could be tomorrow if things don’t calm down in there.’ He gestured back towards the house before turning his attention to Amy.
My bestie was vibrating with barely restrained giddiness and not for the first time since I’d invited her along on this trip, I wondered whether introducing the two of them was, in fact, an incredibly bad idea.
‘You must be Amy the Assistant.’ He decided to forego the formalities of introductions and planted two big kisses on Amy’s cheeks. ‘I like you already, you make me look tall.’
The first time I met Kekipi, it had been in an entirely official capacity and even though the pretence of professionalism fell by the wayside relatively quickly, something was definitely different this time. Gone was the black uniform he had sported as the estate manager of Bertie Bennett’s Hawaiian hideout, and in its place was a bright aqua-blue trousers and hot-pink shirt combo. In fact, Kekipi’s shirt coordinated with Amy’s jeans so well, you would have been forgiven for thinking they had planned their outfits together. Which I imagined would be happening daily from tomorrow morning.
‘We’re so glad you decided to come,’ Kekipi said, waving for two men in light grey trousers and white shirts, apparently the official ensembles of the Milanese Bennett household, to whisk our suitcases out of sight. ‘It’s been a very dramatic week. Senior and Junior have not been getting along at all and Senior is having what can only be described as one of his “artistic” moments.’
‘Is that good?’ I asked, following him into the entranceway of the house. Kekipi pursed his lips and shook his head.
I’d met Al’s son, Artie, in Hawaii and he was a curious man to say the least. There was a lot of tension between them, and while I loved Al with a fierce and fiery passion reserved for the very best grandpa substitutes the world had to offer, clearly something was up between father and son. Plus, Artie had a handlebar moustache, and given that he did not work at a circus, that made me immediately suspicious.
‘While I am pleased to see him so active after such a long time,’ he replied with an arched eyebrow, ‘he needs to calm down a little. He isn’t as young as he used to be and Mr Bennett the younger isn’t nearly as tolerant of his father’s whims as we might all like.’
‘Where is Al?’ I asked, trying not to trip over my feet as I tiptoed across the beautiful, intricately tiled floors, my shoulders unrolling as the air conditioning washed over me. ‘Is he here?’
‘We arrived yesterday,’ Kekipi confirmed. ‘He’s in his room, working, working, working. He’ll be at dinner later.’
When I finally forced my eyes off the floor, I saw that there were flowers everywhere. Every surface held vases upon vases of beautiful, freshly cut blooms, all of them in shades of white and peach.
‘Are these for me?’ Amy asked, plucking a white rose from a vase and placing it behind her ear. Reaching out to grab the banister of an elaborate, twisting staircase, I fought off a flashback. Nick, a single flower, the waterfall … ‘You shouldn’t have.’
‘I didn’t,’ Kekipi said with unmistakable disdain. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I know the value of a good floral arrangement but this is all Domenico’s doing.’
‘Domenico?’ I asked.
‘Miss Brookes.’
A tall, slender man descended the staircase in the requisite grey trousers, a matching jacket and added slim black tie. How he was wearing a suit and tie in this weather was beyond me – I was sweating so much I looked as though I had entered a wet T-shirt competition. But while he looked every inch the perfect butler, his stiff demeanour felt at odds with the make-yourself-at-home atmosphere of Al’s palazzo.
‘Domenico,’ Kekipi said with a flourish. ‘The estate manager here in Milan.’
‘He’s the Italian you?’ I asked, wiping my hand on the back of my jeans and achieving nothing more than making a sticky situation stickier.
‘Please,’ Kekipi sniffed. ‘I’ve never been so offended.’
‘Miss Brookes.’ The tall man greeted me with three air kisses, very carefully avoiding touching any part of my actual being. Not that I blamed him but it did make things feel ever so slightly awkward. ‘I am Domenico, Mr Bennett’s number two here at the Palazzo Della Stelline; we are so pleased that you have arrived.’
He turned to Amy and gave her a small bow, no kisses.
‘And you are Miss Brooke’s assistant?’
She looked at me, looked back at him and shrugged. ‘I suppose I am.’
Uh-oh. Clearly not impressed.
‘Excellent. I have rooms prepared for both of you in Mr Bennett’s most beautiful guest apartments. I would be very happy to show them to you if you would be so kind as to follow me.’ Domenico gestured up the stairs with an elaborate flourish of his arm and a far-too-wide smile. I’d seen waxworks show more authenticity.
‘I’ll take the ladies to their rooms,’ Kekipi said, knocking Domenico’s hand to his side and sweeping his hair from his forehead. ‘What time is dinner?’
‘Mr Bennett has suggested the ladies dine with him in the grand salon at seven,’ he replied, bowing his head graciously. ‘If you require anything at all before that time, please do let me know. Pressing 1 on the phone in your room will connect you directly to housekeeping and they will be happy to help you with whatever you might need.’
Kekipi stood on the first step of the staircase behind his Italian counterpart and clutched the wooden banister, eyes narrowed, knuckles white. He was seething.
‘And we will dine downstairs.’ Domenico turned to give Kekipi the full weight of his stare. Even though he was standing on the stairs, Kekipi was still the shorter of the two but height difference wasn’t going to be enough to win this battle. ‘Afterwards.’
‘OK, Mr Downton,’ he said, hand on hip. ‘Maybe Artie likes to keep things upstairs downstairs but I’ll be eating with Mr Bennett and the ladies in the dining room at seven. And I’m lactose intolerant, so keep that in mind while you’re preparing your feast. Ladies.’ He snapped his fingers and pointed up the stairs. ‘Follow me.’
‘Tess, he’s fabulous,’ Amy whispered. ‘He’s the most best gay man I’ve ever met. And I’ve met all the gay men, fabulous or otherwise.’
‘I think he might actually be the best man, gay or otherwise,’ I replied. ‘Just wait until you get him to do karaoke. He’s a God.’
‘Thank you so much, Domenico,’ I said, repeatedly dipping in mini bows as we scooted around him and up the stairs after Kekipi. ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine. But thank you. And for dinner. Thanks.’
‘Stop thanking him,’ Kekipi yelled without looking back. ‘It’s his job.’
‘Thank you,’ I mouthed.
‘Prego,’ Domenico said with a small smile. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘So what was that all about?’ Amy asked as she and Kekipi bounced up a second staircase and along the hallway on the third floor. ‘You two don’t get on, I take it?’
‘I’ve been with Al for a very long time,’ Kekipi explained, linking arms with Amy as they trotted on in front of me. I dawdled behind, running my fingertips along the heavy patterned silk that lined the walls.
‘When the Bennetts purchased this palazzo in the late seventies, it was Jane, Mrs Bennett’s, passion project. She renovated the entire place, designed the gardens, the colour schemes. She spent years pulling together the furniture …’ His voice grew soft with recollection as we turned a corner into an identical hallway. It was like being lost in a beautiful hall of mirrors.
‘But when Jane became sick, Al wanted to keep her in New York, near the best doctors, and eventually, they retreated to Hawaii almost altogether. Since he lost Jane, Al has barely left the island. He spends a little time in New York when he must and I always travel with him to ensure he is well looked after in a manner he finds comfortable but Mr Bennett Junior, for the last fifteen or so years, has spent the majority of the year here in Milan, tending to the business. He hired Domenico.’
‘So this is Al’s son’s house?’ Amy asked as Kekipi came to a halt at the end of the hallway in front of a pair of white double doors. ‘And Domenico is his guy?’
‘The house still belongs to Al,’ Kekipi clarified, pulling a key out of his pocket. ‘But without Jane, he hasn’t seemed interested in visiting for a very long time. Domenico does a very good job of looking after the house while we are away and he takes excellent care of Mr Bennett Junior but we have differing management styles. As I said, Al and I have worked together for a very long time, we have been through so much. Domenico thinks he’s top dog because he manages a palazzo. He thinks I’m some simple islander who is only good for organizing a luau and mixing drinks.’
‘You are very good at both of those things,’ I said. ‘But you know you’re more than that. Don’t rise to it.’
‘So wise for one so young,’ he sighed. ‘I knew I liked you.’
‘How come Al wanted to come back now?’ Amy asked. ‘What’s happening here that has convinced him to leave Hawaii? Because I’m totally happy to get on a plane to Hawaii and help out over there if he changes his mind.’
Kekipi gave us both a small smile and slipped the key into the elaborate gold lock on the door before him.
‘I imagine all will be revealed at dinner,’ he said, turning the key and pushing open the door. ‘Or at least, all that Al is ready to tell us. Are you ready to see your rooms, ladies?’
‘Oh. My. God!’
It was the second time in the same hour that the building had silenced Amy. I was really starting to like this place. Following her into the bedroom – and only jumping very slightly at Kekipi’s friendly slap on my arse – I understood what had got her so excited. Our ‘rooms’ were incredible. The ceilings were twice as high as mine at home and huge, airy windows opened out onto the street below, standing watch over the park across the way. Just like the house in Hawaii, most of the furniture was white and overstuffed but in every corner, I spotted a different antique – a beautiful wooden writing desk, an elegant mirror, a painting that clearly hadn’t come from Ikea; Jane Bennett’s signature style was everywhere I looked. But where were the beds?
‘Tess, I have you in this room,’ Kekipi said, opening a second set of double doors on his left. Oh. The beds were in the bedrooms. Of course. My room was dominated by a beautiful wooden four-poster bed, draped in the softest-looking white linens, and over by the window was another beautiful-looking antique desk, topped by a brand-new shiny Mac. ‘I had them install whatever photography software it didn’t have,’ Kekipi said, waving at the computer. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not you would have everything you needed.’
I crouched down to peel off my Primark ballet flats and let my feet sink into the plush carpeting. It was like walking on a polar bear. Not that I had ever walked on a polar bear.
‘And Amy, you are across the salon.’ He gestured towards the other set of double doors on the opposite side of the room. Amy ran across and threw the doors open, squealing in incomprehensible delight. ‘As Domenico mentioned, you only need to press 1 to reach the housekeeper should you need anything at all, and I’m on 219 if there is anything only I can help you with.’
‘What’s the karaoke scene like around here?’ I asked, ignoring Amy’s screeches.
‘Abysmal,’ he sniffed. ‘But we’ll make our own fun. Besides, you’ve got tales to tell me before we start singing songs. Unless you’re going to begin with the Ballad of Mr Miller?’
‘Unlikely,’ I said with a wan smile. ‘But I could give you a catchy disco number called “my best friend told me he loved me but I didn’t say it back and now I’m dead confused”.’
‘Most of Beyoncé’s songs have one-word titles now but I’m sure we can work with it,’ he said. ‘That’s definitely a story that needs a cocktail. Meet me downstairs in a little while? An adult beverage after dinner, perhaps?’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ I agreed. ‘And you can tell me more stories about Domenico because I know you have them.’
‘Quite.’ Kekipi kissed both my cheeks with two very noisy, very non-Domenico smacks, handed me two suite keys, one for me, one for Amy, and closed the salon doors behind him.
‘Tess, get in here!’ Amy bellowed from her room. ‘Come and look at my bath! It’s massive! I can swim in it! Can we swim in it?’
‘I’m not coming in if you’re naked.’ I hesitated in the doorway, waiting for confirmation that she was still at least semi-dressed. ‘We’ve talked about this.’
‘I’m not in there yet, knobber.’
And she wasn’t. She was bouncing on her bed, trying to touch the canopy with her fingertips.
‘I feel like I’m in Beauty and the Beast,’ she breathed, dropping onto her arse and falling backwards to spread eagle across the enormous mattress. ‘Do you think they’ll adopt me?’
‘Maybe you could marry Artie,’ I suggested.
Amy shot upright, eyes wide open.
‘Is he single? Is he straight? Actually, that doesn’t matter – is he single?’
‘I will be in my room, working,’ I said, ignoring the question. Sometimes it was all you could do. ‘Try to stay out of trouble.’
‘You don’t need me to help?’ she asked, looking a little crestfallen. ‘Because I’m totally ready to assist the shit out of you.’
‘Go for a swim in your bath,’ I said, heading back into my own room. ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’
Closing the door, I took in a very deep breath and let it out as slowly as I could. Across the room, a huge mirror showed me a picture of a girl who looked just like me, only not quite. I smiled and she smiled back but it wasn’t the confident, self-assured look I was hoping to project. I hoped that would come in time. I was calm. I had this.
Pulling my phone out of my handbag and setting up the charger by my bedside, I checked quickly to make sure Charlie hadn’t tried to call. Of course, he hadn’t. When I thought about the look on his face after I gave him a bloody thumbs up, I felt sick. He had every right to be furious with me. By the time I saw him again, he would understand and I would be over the shock of the whole thing. After all, I did love Charlie. I’d loved Charlie before he had loved me, I was so in love with him that I couldn’t remember what it felt like not to be in love with him. So why couldn’t I say it back?
Once my workstation and bedside table were all set up, I threw my suitcase onto the bed. Compared to Amy’s bags, it felt completely empty. It was only when I unzipped it, I realized it felt like it was completely empty because, aside from two packs of Marks & Spencer’s knickers, it was completely empty.
‘Amy!’ I was shouting. I knew I was shouting but I could not stop myself from shouting. I stared at the bare black lining of the suitcase. ‘Where the fuck are all my fucking clothes?’
‘Calm down, potty mouth,’ she trotted into my room, calmly dragging one of her enormous cases behind her. ‘Don’t be angry with me but I had a look at what you’d packed while you were in the shower this morning and honestly, I didn’t think you were doing yourself any favours, so I packed another case for you. Ta-da! And you’re welcome.’
I stood, I stared, I did not speak.
‘I know you were all about monochrome non-statements in the office,’ she went on, dropping into a cross-legged pile in front of her suitcase and reaching around, giving it a huge hug as she fiddled with the zip, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth in her best Miley impression. ‘But we’re in Milan now, Tess. This is fashion, right? I talked to Paige when we were at the shoot the other day and she was telling me how Milan has all the amazing, out-there couture and that it’s like, the most fashion-forward city and then I looked in your case and it was just a bit sad.’
‘So you thought I could make a fashion-forward statement by going out in my pants?’ I picked up one of the five packs and threw it at her as hard as I could. Which sadly wasn’t nearly hard enough.
‘You’ve got to have pants,’ she replied, throwing them right back. ‘I’m not completely mental.’
‘And what about my bras? And my pyjamas? And all my fucking clothes, Amy?’ I was not calm. I did not have this. More importantly, I did not have any clothes. ‘Oh my God, Amy, oh my God.’
‘You’re wearing a bra.’
‘Women need more than one bra,’ I shouted.
‘That’s crazy,’ she replied, shuffling her own, perfectly formed, bra-less A-cup boobs inside her T-shirt and pushing up the lid of her case to reveal a rainbow fancydress box of nightmares. ‘I told you; I packed a case for you from my stuff. This is going to be loads of fun. Take you out of your comfort zone a bit.’
‘It might have escaped your notice but I’m already outside my comfort zone!’ I was shouting again. ‘I’m in Milan. And since when were you an expert in haute couture?’
She pouted. ‘Did someone in this room not have an interview at Topshop two days ago?’
‘Oh, that’s it, I’m going to kill you!’ I raised my hands and let them clap back against my sides before I could actually attack. It would be a crime to get blood on this gorgeous carpet. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this to me.’
‘I’m going to go back to my room and let you look through this stuff.’ Amy shuffled onto her feet and folded her arms in front of her. ‘You can thank me when you’ve calmed down. Oh, and so you know, I did pack your sad toiletry bag in there so you know, you’re welcome.’
All I could think was that Amy was very lucky that my shoulder was still sore from falling out of a window or she would have been waking up at the bottom of a river, inside her bloody suitcase. This was ridiculous. I pawed through her outfit selections, trying not to cry. There wasn’t a single thing in here that I would ever, ever choose to put on my body, even if it had fitted me, which next to none of it would. Amy had once described traditional clothes sizing as ‘fascist’ and refused to be boxed into a number or a letter ‘dictated by the man’ but that was a very easy stance to take when you were a size six and had what could be loosely defined as an eclectic fashion sense.
At five ten with a little waist, big arse and giant boobs, I tended to have a bit more respect for the difference between a size six and a size sixteen. Unless I was planning to wear a hessian sack, I couldn’t just throw something on and belt it in the middle. Mounds of glitter, neon, sequins, feathers, leather and pleather oozed out of the suitcase like the magic porridge pot but I might as well have been sitting here with a bag full of Christmas crackers. I couldn’t wear any of these clothes; Al and Kekipi would think I’d lost my mind. I also couldn’t wear any of these clothes if I wanted to keep my midriff and the bottom third of my arse cheeks covered. Oh, and wait for it, right at the bottom was the bloody neon unicorn T-shirt. Of course. I pulled it out and looked at the gurning quadruped, my bottom lip quivering.
‘Better wash this out,’ I said, peeling off my white V-neck and closing the suitcase, blinking back tears. ‘Every night for the next week.’
Brilliant. My first week as a professional fashion photographer and everyone was going to think my fashion icons were either Ian McShane in Lovejoy or a poorly dressed drag queen. It was the stuff dreams were made of.
Incapable of even looking at Amy without being moved to violence, I avoided her for the rest of the afternoon. Wearing my jeans and her friendly, ill-fitting unicorn T-shirt, I decided to spend my time getting to grips with my new camera in the gardens instead. Al’s Italian home-away-from-home was truly wonderful. When I marched out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind me, I was certain nothing short of ritual sacrifice would calm me down but as soon as I was outside, in the courtyard, I felt better. For a moment, I wondered if I’d finally had that aneurysm I’d been worrying about and if this was actually heaven – but it couldn’t be. Surely, if there was a benevolent God, he wouldn’t make anyone spend eternity in this T-shirt?
Stepping into the sunshine and looking back on the building’s façade made me feel like a princess. And not the real-life Kate Middleton variety; no, the legit, wide-eyed, long-shiny-hair-and-a-waist-too-slim-to-contain-all-the-necessary-vital-organs Disney variety. Actually, maybe they were the same, it was very hard to tell. The gardens were made up of small squares of courtyard, some laid with flagstones and decorated with fountains and urns filled with beautiful trees and plants and others were laid with lush grass and had vines running all over the walls that surrounded them. Almost all of them had narrow arcades running down the sides, with endless repeated archways supporting the palazzo above and providing shady spaces to hide from the sun.
My favourite was the smallest of all the spaces I discovered. Unlike the rest of the gardens that flowed into each other, this one was hidden behind a wooden door and a sandy yellow wall. Inside it looked as though no one had been in here for centuries, even though, from the look of the shiny sprinkler system and ashtray with two dead cigarette butts, clearly someone had. But still, even if there had been other visitors, I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Secret Garden, one of my favourite books when I was little. I loved reading about Mary and Colin and Dickon, working away in their own private hideaway, bringing the garden back to life.
Sometimes, when my parents were arguing or my sisters were being less than sisterly, I would go to the bottom of our garden and climb over my dad’s wheelbarrow and the old pots of paint he still hadn’t taken to the tip, and pretend that the little square of scrub between the shed and the hedge was my very own secret garden. It was a perfect plan until our neighbour busted me ‘borrowing’ a couple of pansies from his back garden and grassed me up to my mum. But now my mum was far away and there was no one to drag me inside and make me scrub my hands until the dirt had washed away from under my fingernails and the skin was red and raw. I snapped away, working out the setting on my new camera, fiddling with the flash, the exposure, trying to get used to the bright summer light. Even though Hawaii had its share of sunshine, it hadn’t seemed as harsh as it did here in Milan. At least here in my garden, there was enough shade to stop me from burning off every layer of skin. Note to self: buy sunscreen. Along with sunglasses and an entirely new wardrobe.
Glancing upwards, I noticed a balcony at the end of the building on the third floor. My room was at the end of the building on the third floor. With all the nonsense over my case, I hadn’t even looked out of my own window. Retracing my steps through the courtyards, I finally found my way back to the main entrance of the house and bolted back up the stairs and down the hallway to my suite. Panting more than I would have liked, I ran over to my window and pulled aside the curtains, blinking down into the sunshine. There it was, my secret garden, right outside my bedroom. Only it seemed it wasn’t just my secret any more. There was a man sitting at the small, wrought-iron table in the corner, flicking his cigarette into the ashtray I had found.
I slipped back behind my curtains, not hiding but not wanting to be seen. Had he been outside my garden the whole time? Had he heard me singing ‘A Whole New World’ considerably louder than I would have if I’d known there was another human within fifty feet? Something in my stomach tightened as he rested his cigarette in the ashtray and stretched his arms up high, linking his hands behind his ashy blond head.
It couldn’t be.
‘Get your shit together, Tess,’ I told myself, forcing my shaking hands to steady themselves, and held my camera up to my face. ‘And now open your eyes, you daft cow.’
I prised my left eye open and forced myself to look through the viewfinder, trembling as I zoomed in. The focus blurred in and out, settling into sharp reality just as the man in the garden looked up towards my window. Pressing my back against my bedroom wall, I breathed in and closed my eyes. That was how you made yourself invisible, wasn’t it? I heard my pulse pounding in my ears, the blood rushing around my body so fast and making me so dizzy that I couldn’t trust my legs. I grabbed at the camera strap around my neck, pawing desperately. I threw it onto the bed and bolted into the bathroom just in time. My knees gave way and I fell in front of the toilet, just in time to be so incredibly sick.
Panting heavily and wiping my clammy forehead with the back of my hand, I tried to turn and wedge myself in between the toilet and the corner bath. Well, I thought, still shaking and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Surely it couldn’t be the first time a girl had thrown up at the mere sight of Nick Miller?