CROUCHED IN THE DITCH, out of sight of oncoming cars, David observed the two girls’ technique. Kate bent over to hook up the cuff of her jeans in a parody of the provocative hitch-hiker, then turned into the wind, so her dark hair blew off her face. Francesca stuck out her thumb and wiggled her hips at every passing car. Even though they were now on a quiet road David estimated it wouldn’t be long before they got a lift since either of them was guaranteed to stop any male motorist at a hundred yards.
David was hopeful that this weekend would see some progress with either Kate or Francesca. This villa they were going to sounded like the ideal place for things to get serious. He must be in love with both of them, because he didn’t care which one he ended up with, so long as he made it with one of them. A bird in the hand… as his granny used to say. He had an idea Francesca might spell trouble if they were to embark on a serious relationship, but what the hell, he was going back to England in a week or two, he’d probably never even see her again, and she was the most fascinating woman he’d met so far. And the way she’d been acting since they left Florence after lunch, well, it certainly didn’t fit with Ross’s verdict that she was frigid. Kate might be a better long-term prospect, since they had a lot in common and he could see her again when they got back to England, but right now, long-term prospects were not what was bothering him. Sexual frustration was. He wanted to get laid this weekend. He wanted it badly.
A car not much bigger than a garden wheelbarrow was trundling down the road towards them. Kate flaunted her ankle and Francesca whirled an imaginary hula hoop round her waist and the little car puttered to a halt. David remained crouched in the ditch while Francesca leaned over and talked to the driver, then, as she pulled open the door, he stood up and walked towards the car. The driver’s face, which was pink with lust at the prospect of two such good-looking women sharing his car with him, fell at the sight of David, five foot eleven and built like a centre forward, but he accepted him with good grace, only insisting that Kate sit beside him in the front.
David obligingly clambered into the back beside Francesca. The car had obviously been designed for pygmies and the rear seat was about the size of the average bathroom shelf. It meant he had to sit practically on top of Francesca, but she was giving the impression she liked being this close. Unfortunately he was too contorted to take advantage of the situation. His knees were grazing his chin. Still, it could have been worse. Their last lift had been in a pickup truck: while Kate and Francesca sat in the front with the driver, he’d been put in the back with two dogs and a can of kerosene, and a pile of logs that rolled onto his legs at every sharp corner.
‘What an amazing car,’ said Kate. ‘Makes a Morris Minor seem like a Rolls Royce.’
‘It’s a Fiat 500,’ said David. ‘A Topolino.’
The driver grinned and nodded.
‘It means “little mouse”,’ said Francesca.
Kate was delighted with the idea. ‘A little mouse of a car,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that brilliant? Do you think it gets put away in a matchbox at night? And if cars are phallic symbols, what does this one say about our driver?’
Francesca giggled. ‘Mario has one.’
‘Who’s Mario?’ asked David.
‘I like little mouse cars,’ said Kate.
‘Try sitting in the back, then,’ said David. Already he was so stiff he thought they might have to take the car apart around him, just to let him out.
‘Now what?’
‘We’ll never get a lift here.’
At Francesca’s instructions, the driver of the Topolino had deposited them on an empty stretch of road in the most sparsely inhabited countryside they’d yet seen. They had just driven over a small stone bridge which looked as though no one had used it for about two hundred years. Behind them a river flowed peaceably. Wooded hillsides rose steeply on either side. Not a house to be seen anywhere and no sound of cars or people. Somewhere far off, a donkey brayed.
Kate was bowled over by the scene. ‘I didn’t know they made bits of Italy like this,’ she said.
‘We’re here,’ said Francesca, hoisting up her rucksack.
‘Here? Where?’
‘You’ll see. Come on.’
Francesca started walking briskly down the road. Kate looked across at David and raised her eyebrows. He grinned back at her: like him, she must be feeling as if she’d been snatched up from their familiar world and plonked down in the middle of nowhere. With any luck it might bring them closer together. He looped his arm over her shoulders and together they followed Francesca along the road beside the river. After about a hundred yards, she turned off to the right, where a cement track led up the hillside at right angles to the road. She strode ahead for about a quarter of a mile, then waited for them to catch up where the track forked.
‘We’ll take this route,’ she said, indicating the left-hand path. ‘It’s slightly longer but you get the best view of the villa.’
Kate looked wistfully at the right-hand route. ‘Maybe we can do the view thing later?’
Francesca walked resolutely on. They followed. After about five minutes Kate said, ‘Why didn’t you get our mouse driver to bring us up here? He offered to take us to the door.’
‘It’s better to walk,’ said Francesca. And my uncle doesn’t like strange cars on his land.’
Kate stopped in the middle of the road. ‘You mean all this is his?’
Francesca nodded. ‘It’s all part of the estate.’
‘The whole mountain?’
‘Sure. It’s not a proper mountain, though. More a big hill. Well, several hills, actually.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Kate and David exchanged glances once more, then walked on in silence. Their footsteps crunched on the dry surface of the road. The air was country-sweet after the pollution of Florence. David tensed with anticipation. He’d been expecting a party in an empty house, that was all, but this place was special: he was entering a new and unknown world. A few birds were singing on the slopes of the hill. Now and then a turn in the road revealed a flash of the river ever further below them, then it was just trees again. Trees and stillness.
‘It’s like a whole different world,’ Kate said to David, echoing his thoughts.
Francesca had stopped at the sharpest point of a hairpin bend. ‘Now look,’ she told them.
David and Kate separated and went to stand on either side of her. Tilting back their heads, they saw a perfect white villa perched on top of a waterfall of rock. Above it were more trees, fingers of dark cypress and the shimmering grey-green leaves of holm oaks, and above those, a bare tooth of rock against the sky marked the summit.
‘Wow, it’s beautiful,’ said Kate.
‘Too much,’ said David. ‘Eighteenth century?’
Francesca didn’t answer. She was looking up at the villa with a strange expression, almost as though she was reluctant to go on. She moved towards David and slipped her arm through his. He noticed that her hand was shaking. ‘I never expected to come back,’ she said in a quiet voice.
Kate was staring up at the pale villa and hadn’t registered Francesca’s change. ‘Christ, if I had a house like this in my family I’d never leave!’
The pressure of Francesca’s hand on David’s arm increased. It was strange, but she seemed scared. He put his arm round her waist and said as reassuringly as he could, ‘This is a great place for a party.’
She looked at him. She really did have the most incredible eyes. And mouth, too, why hadn’t he noticed it before? ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should go back to Florence.’
‘Francesca!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘You can’t rat out on us now. Everyone’s coming.’
‘They might change their minds.’
‘Are you kidding? They’ve been looking forward to it all week!’
‘Oh well… So long as the others make it.’ Francesca still sounded doubtful. ‘And it’s only for one night, isn’t it?’
‘Sure.’
She turned to Kate and linked arms with her on her left. ‘That’s better,’ she said, and burst into exaggerated laughter. It sounded almost like the prelude to hysteria. ‘What do I have to worry about anyway? You two are my bodyguards, aren’t you? You can take care of me.’
‘Why do you need taking care of?’ asked Kate.
But David liked the idea. Two beautiful women and a weekend of freedom ahead. With luck, he might end up being able to make a choice. Suddenly he felt enormously strong, as if he could protect Francesca from whatever fears this house inspired. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and look after her for ever. ‘Don’t worry, Francesca, Kate and I will keep you safe.’
‘They thought we were lesbians!’ Anna shook her long hair off her face. ‘Three guys in an Alfa Romeo picked us up and wanted to take us for a drink, but Dido started stroking my knee and told them we were “special friends”—amiche speciali—so they left us alone.’
Dido grinned with satisfaction. Tall and short-haired, her neat face free of make-up, it was easy to see how the men had been fooled.
‘So what’s the problem now?’
Francesca and the others had arrived to find the two girls sitting beside each other with their packs on the steps of the villa, the front door locked shut.
‘They won’t let us in,’ said Dido. ‘Maybe they already heard about us being special friends.’
‘Huh,’ said Anna petulantly. ‘Some stupid cow who acts as if she owns the place refuses to unlock the door. We told her you were coming but she wouldn’t listen. What’s going on?’
Francesca showed no surprise. Detaching herself from David and Kate, she walked briskly up to the front door and knocked loudly, then shouted in fluent Italian. The door opened so quickly Kate guessed the woman must have been standing right behind it. Still issuing orders, Francesca turned to beckon the others to follow, then swept in. Kate watched fascinated. On the phone to her uncle, Francesca had adopted a little girl voice, but now, faced with an obstreperous servant, she was ordering her about to the manner born.
She followed Francesca up the steps and entered the cool darkness of the hall. A heated argument was taking place between Francesca and a short stout woman in a shapeless black dress. She had only five visible teeth, but those five were works of art, huge and separate and flashing quantities of gold. The old woman’s protests continued while the unwelcome guests trooped past her into the hall, but Francesca was adamant and was clearly getting the upper hand. Kate guessed the toothy housekeeper would fight a continuous verbal rearguard action, but would do as she was told.
Anna’s disappointment had turned to raptures the moment she saw the grandeur of the interior. ‘Wow, just wait till the others see this place! It’s incredible. Look at those pictures, and all the statues! I can’t believe it. This is the kind of villa Byron must have stayed in, or George Sand. Can’t you just imagine them? It’s the most fantastic place for a party I’ve ever seen.’
‘Do you want to see round?’ asked Francesca, as they dumped their packs in the hall. She still seemed to be finding it hard to realize that her uncle’s house was of interest to anyone.
They responded eagerly and she gave them a tour of the main rooms on the ground floor. ‘Wow!’ ‘Too much!’ ‘This place is fantastic!’ Her tour was punctuated with shouts of amazement. But in spite of their enthusiasm, there was something about the house that made it less than ideal as a party venue. It was too big, too imposing, too impersonal. All the rooms had titles that derived from their style rather than their function: the fresco room, the gilt room, the panelled room. The bedrooms were off-limits; on this point the housekeeper wouldn’t budge. If Francesca wanted her to open up the first floor, then she’d have to get authority from her uncle. Francesca looked surly, and told them they’d have to use the downstairs rooms.
As the others arrived in dribs and drabs through the late afternoon, the villa seemed to swallow the numbers up. Jenny had hitched with Larry, who’d tried to engage an elderly banker who gave them a lift in a discussion about Pirandello and Marcuse. Aiden was hitching alone and still hadn’t turned up. Maybe when he arrived with his guitar the atmosphere would improve. Kate was feeling almost homesick for their crowded Florentine existence. This was a house that needed a hundred guests to make it festive, not the dozen or so who managed to hitch there from Florence. It was chilly, with that chill deep in the walls of a house that hasn’t been lived in for some time; the lighting was wrong and they hadn’t brought enough music. They set up the record player in a room where the walls were covered with frescoes of robust goddesses tossing garlands and silk scarves at each other. Francesca prised some bottles of wine from the clutches of the housekeeper, the inappropriately named Angelica, but there wasn’t much food around and no one had thought to bring any.
‘I can walk to the nearest village and get some bread and stuff,’ said David. But Francesca said the nearest village was five miles away and the shops would all be shut by now.
‘Why don’t you go and get something from your uncle?’ asked Anna. She’d already told Kate that she’d fallen in love with the place and wanted to see everything. ‘I’ll come with you if you like.’
‘No,’ said Francesca flatly.
‘Aren’t you going to see him at all?’ asked Kate. She remembered how anxious Mario had been that she pay a last visit to her dying uncle. She felt uneasy. Being the guest of an unknown host made her feel like a trespasser.
‘I might go up there tomorrow.’ Francesca was sounding like a surly little girl again. ‘It depends how I feel.’
‘How far is it to his place?’ asked Kate.
‘La Rocca? About ten minutes’ walk, further up the mountain.’
Anna was in raptures. ‘Imagine having a house like this and not even living in it.’
‘He used to.’ Francesca spoke dismissively, as if everybody’s uncle had two houses to choose from. ‘But it got too cold for him in the winter so he did up La Rocca as a place to hibernate. Then one spring he didn’t bother to move back. And now he’s dying. He won’t come here again.’ She looked thoughtful, before adding, ‘We’re safe now.’
What an odd way to talk about your uncle, thought Kate. She tried to catch David’s eye, but he was asking Francesca if she wanted to dance. He put his arm round her shoulder. Bob Dylan was croaking away on the turntable, not the best of music to dance to, but Francesca moved into his arms and he curled his body round her protectively. Kate felt obscurely annoyed.
An antique clanging through the whole house alerted them to a new arrival. ‘Oh good,’ said Francesca, breaking off from her dance. ‘That must be Aiden or Hugo.’
They were the only two who hadn’t arrived yet. Aiden looked so strange he was probably having a hard time getting lifts, and Hugo had been unable to get the day off from his work at the consulate so had to leave later than the others.
It wasn’t either Aiden or Hugo.
Kate felt a rush of pleasure when Mario stepped into the room. He was wearing jeans and a dark sweater: for the first time she realized he was really quite handsome.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Francesca.
‘You invited me,’ he said with a smile. ‘Have you forgotten?’
‘Who is this?’ David asked Kate.
‘Oh, just a friend of Francesca’s.’
‘Do you know him?’
Kate hesitated. ‘Not really,’ she said. And thought to herself, but I wouldn’t mind getting to know him better.
‘You can tell he’s never shovelled muck out of cellars or lobbed talcum powder at ancient walls,’ said David grouchily.
Kate was surprised. David normally liked people unless there was a good reason not to. ‘Are you jealous, by any chance?’ she asked.
‘What the hell would I be jealous of?’ he asked.
Why has he come, wondered Kate. Was it to keep an eye on Francesca? Or was it Kate herself he really wanted to see?