‘Wait a minute,’ Lara said, staring at Matteo and spreading her fingers wide on the tabletop for support. ‘Are you kidding me? Samuel killed his wife?’
‘No, no, no,’ Matteo said. ‘I did not mean that. I mean that everyone thinks he killed her.’
‘I don’t understand. What happened?’
Matteo took a deep breath and let it out slowly, accompanied by a small, anguished groan. He scratched at the back of his neck and then looked down at his shirt as if seeing it for the first time that day. He pinched the fabric and lifted it to his nose to sniff.
Lara giggled.
‘It is a long story,’ he said, dropping his shirt. ‘I think I need to shower first.’
‘Yes, of course.’
He stood and waved a hand at the fridge. ‘There’s cheese and grissini, olives too. Sun-dried tomatoes, zucchini, prosciutto. Help yourself, per favore. I don’t want you to waste away on me.’ He smiled at her then, and held her gaze until she melted into a buzzing, light-filled puddle.
‘Okay. Take your time,’ she said, holding up her glass of wine.
Matteo disappeared behind the sliding door and she heard the shower water running. Not long after that she heard him singing.
She wandered around his tiny cabin, peeking in his cupboards (well, she had to look for a serving platter, didn’t she?) and marvelling at how little he had in material stuff. In years gone by, she would have expected to see stacks of CDs and a music station, a television, a DVD player, a computer station and a telephone at least. But now, she realised, all these could be reduced to a pocket-sized phone and a laptop. Even books could be sucked into the technology, though she was still a staunch fan of the paper book and was glad to see Matteo was too. There wasn’t much else on his bookshelves other than a small figurine of the Pietà, Michelangelo’s famous statue of Mother Mary and her son Jesus, just taken down from the cross. It was an artwork she suspected would break even the hardest of hearts.
Samuel had Catholic artworks in the villa too. And in Rome, she’d seen a statue of the Virgin on almost every building corner, some with tiny gardens adorning her feet. Lara’s own family had no religion. Eliza had ditched her Protestant upbringing long ago, though she raised her two girls with at least a cultural appreciation of Christianity. Lara found herself loving how much this country loved Mary, the mother.
Behind her, the water turned off and she heard the shower screen slide open. Matteo was still singing and she realised that she hadn’t heard him stutter the whole time he’d been crooning in the shower. In fact, she hadn’t heard him stutter at all since they left the goats.
Or maybe he had but she’d simply stopped hearing it.
She drained the rest of her wine, enjoying feeling her limbs go just a little bit numb, her medication and lack of food increasing the effects of the alcohol.
‘Did you find the food?’ Matteo called from behind the door.
‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ Lara called back, rushing to the fridge and placing the goodies from inside on the bench. She pulled a large blue platter from under the sink. The bathroom door slid open with a whoosh and Lara turned to see Matteo, hair dripping, wearing nothing but a white towel around his hips, bright in contrast to his olive skin. His chest hair was wet too and a line of it trailed downwards to his belly button.
He grinned at her and it felt like a challenge.
She held her gaze steady. ‘I’ve nearly got everything ready.’
‘Molto bene,’ he said, coming over. He plucked an olive from its jar and popped it in his mouth. The scent of soap rose from his steaming body. He was so close to her that as he reached for a piece of prosciutto a drop of water fell from his bare shoulder and landed on her arm. She looked down at it, watching it run towards the ground.
She looked up at him, her face inches from his.
He winked, the devil, and smirked. ‘I just need to get some clothes,’ he said, moving past her, his damp towel bumping into her hip.
‘Okay,’ she said, turning to focus on the food in front of her, pulling a knife from a squeaky drawer and carefully cutting into the pecorino cheese. Holy shit, was what she’d really wanted to say. The man was gorgeous and she’d turned to liquid in seconds.
She could hear Matteo pulling clothes from drawers but refused to turn and watch him, instead delicately placing olives and cubes of feta and pecorino slivers and…whatever else was in front of her. She could barely pay attention.
He whistled as he walked back to the bathroom and put his clothes on.
Lara’s hands trembled as she carried the tray back to the little table and resumed her position on the seat with the window at her back. She’d had wine on an empty stomach; she needed food. She began shovelling grissini and cheese into her mouth.
Matteo returned dressed in navy linen pants and yet another simple but beautiful linen shirt. He really did scrub up well.
‘All better?’ she asked.
‘Yes, much. Sometimes I forget that I’m not meant to smell like a goat.’
‘I can tell you’re a great goat handler,’ she said. ‘They all love you.’
‘Not as much as they love the male goats.’ He noted her empty glass and turned to pull another bottle from the cupboard.
‘Oh, no more for me,’ Lara said. ‘I still need to drive home.’
‘Plenty of time,’ Matteo said, popping the cork and setting it aside to breathe.
Lara reached for more cheese instead.
‘Have you tried the prosciutto?’ he asked, sitting opposite her once more and swirling his wine in the huge glass.
‘It’s fantastic,’ Lara said.
Matteo rolled up three pieces at once and popped them into his mouth, licking his fingers.
‘You were telling me about Samuel and why everyone thinks he killed his wife.’
‘It is very sad,’ Matteo began, reaching for more prosciutto and cheese. There were artichokes on the plate too, Lara noticed. She didn’t even remember putting them there during the out-of-body experience of seeing Matteo nearly naked.
‘Assunta was such a beautiful woman,’ he said. ‘She was my great-aunt, and our whole family was very close. Always together. Always feasting. Assunta was a wonderful cook. She loved to make pasta herself. She thought it was an awful thing to buy it. She would make it fresh several times a week and invite everyone over on Sunday evenings. My grandparents, parents, all the extended family. I grew up running around the grounds of the villa with my brothers and cousins, all of us playing football.’
Soccer, Lara reminded herself.
‘These feasts, you have no idea. The food, incredibile. It would go on for hours. Mostly, as bambini we would all fall asleep somewhere in the house while the adults kept talking and laughing and drinking wine and limoncello. Assunta was a great actress. She would recite monologues from plays. And Gilberta—you met her—she would join her and they’d be a two-woman show. Assunta played the piano too. If the weather was bad we would all be inside on the ground floor, the fire going, everyone gathered around the piano while she played. Gilberta’s husband, Mario, he would sing opera. Gilberta would dance. My mother recited poetry.’
Lara tried to picture the stern woman she’d met reciting poetry.
‘Incredibile,’ Matteo said again. ‘And Assunta would make it all happen. She was, what is the phrase…over the top, you know?’
‘I think so.’
Matteo reached for the new bottle of wine. It didn’t seem the moment for Lara to decline so she let him refill hers too.
‘Everyone loved her. She would hug and kiss and hold hands with everyone. Especially with Samuel. They were great together. He was a different person then. He would sing too.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘Terrible singer.’
Lara smiled. ‘But he did it anyway.’
‘Yes, yes. Assunta made everyone bigger than they were.’
‘What a gift,’ she said, sad for the loss of such a light in the family.
‘But since her death, it has all stopped.’
Despite her best intentions, Lara took a sip of the wine in front of her. It seemed the thing to do, to toast Assunta’s memory. ‘What happened to her?’
‘The villa had a leak in the roof, above one of the bedrooms. It had been there for many months. Assunta kept asking Samuel to fix it. It had become a joke. She would tease him about it at the big dinners and everyone would laugh.’
Lara did some mental calculations. ‘How old was Samuel then?’
Matteo squinted and looked up at the ceiling, doing the same. ‘Must have been late sixties, I guess.’
‘Was he able to get up on the roof and fix the leak?’ she asked, feeling defensive on Samuel’s behalf.
‘Yes, yes. He was very fit. When he came to Italy he worked as a labourer for a long time. He had a lot of skills.’
‘But he wasn’t still working as a labourer then, surely?’
‘No, he taught English in private schools. He was still working at one when Assunta died.’
Lara took another sip. ‘So what happened?’
Matteo leaned back in his chair with his glass of wine and swallowed a large mouthful before he spoke. ‘There was a big storm. Lots and lots of rain. Samuel was late coming home from work. Assunta, sick of waiting for Samuel to fix the roof, decided she would do it herself. She was like that, you know. Fearless. So she went up there and slipped. She fell from the roof. Broke her neck. Samuel found her.’
Lara’s hand flew to her chest. ‘That’s so awful.’ She reached again for her glass. ‘Poor Samuel.’
Matteo nodded and also sipped more wine.
Lara frowned and tapped her glass with her finger. ‘So, why is the family ostracising Samuel exactly?’
‘They blame him,’ Matteo said. ‘Everyone knew Samuel should have fixed the roof. If he had, Assunta would never have gone up there. She’d still be with us, dancing, singing.’ He shrugged helplessly.
‘That seems a bit harsh. I mean, Assunta didn’t have to go up there. It was an accident. An awful, tragic accident, but I don’t see why an entire family would stop talking to him.’
‘You don’t understand Italians.’ Matteo laughed emptily. ‘Haven’t you seen The Godfather? Family is everything. And Samuel was an outsider who had captured the heart of the young Assunta and married into the family and inherited her family’s villa. To her sisters and nieces and nephews and all the rest, Samuel had stolen her from the family. She’d had to fight her own parents very hard to be with Samuel. They didn’t trust the Englishman. Anyone who was foreign wasn’t to be trusted. He was despised and then only accepted when it became obvious Assunta loved him and he wasn’t going anywhere. And then they had children, so he had to be part of the family—the christenings, the birthdays, the Holy Communions, Sunday masses, Sunday feasts. Christmas. Easter. Holy days. But once he’d broken their trust and allowed their precious Assunta to die, that was it. He was cut off. Blacklisted. Finito.’
‘Poor Samuel,’ Lara said again. ‘No wonder he is so…’ She was going to say ‘grumpy’, but changed her mind. She had much more sympathy for him now. ‘He’s so alone.’
Matteo’s glass was emptying quickly, she noticed. She glanced at her own, trying to estimate how many standard drinks she’d had. A couple of glasses? She wiggled her leg a bit and noted the heavy weight in it. She pushed the wine away.
‘What about his children and grandchildren? Were they still here in Italy at the time Assunta died?’
‘Antonio had already gone to America, but the rest, yes.’ Matteo continued. ‘Then Lily got the scholarship not long after and things were so difficult with the families, and maybe it was too painful to stay here without Assunta. I think they thought it was best to leave. They believed Samuel would follow.’
‘But he didn’t.’
‘He is stubborn.’
‘But you come to see him,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Matteo inhaled, his lovely chest expanding beneath the light linen of his shirt. ‘I didn’t think it was fair,’ he said. ‘And I guess I know a little bit what it is like to be an outcast, to have people snigger behind your back, to have them not hear what you say.’
His eyes met hers and she felt a wave of deep, long-held sadness come from him. Instinctively she took his hand in hers. It was warm and sturdy and she had to fight the urge to bring it to her cheek and rest it there.
He looked down at her hand, then wound his fingers through hers. He locked his eyes on hers and suddenly the cabin felt very small. She stood, releasing her hand. ‘Water,’ she squeaked, and cleared her throat. ‘Would you like some water?’
She moved towards the kitchen sink but he snatched back her hand, simultaneously standing and pulling her towards him so that they were standing face to face, her hand in his and her heart galloping within her breast. His free hand cupped the back of her head, his thumb rubbing gently behind her ear.
She looked down at the floor. ‘Matteo,’ she breathed, not daring to look at him; she’d be drawn into those eyes and lost for good. ‘I’ve had too much to drink and I don’t think I can drive home, not yet anyway.’
He leaned forward and rested his forehead on hers. She could smell the wine on his breath. ‘Stay here,’ he whispered.
Inside her, a triton wrestled wild horses. Here was a lovely, gentle man, who wanted her right now. And she was free here in Italy to do things she normally wouldn’t even consider. But she couldn’t lose her heart, or her mind.
‘I will sleep on the floor,’ Matteo said, and lifted his head.
She raised her eyes in surprise. ‘What?’
He grinned at her and stepped back, then brought her hand to his lips and pressed them gently to her knuckles. ‘Bella Lara. I will sleep on the floor and you can have the whole bed to yourself.’
‘No, you can’t. I just need to wait a few hours, I think, until I’m ready to drive. I can rest in the car. You can’t sleep on the floor, that’s crazy.’
To her great disappointment, he let go of her hand, and her skin cooled too quickly. He went to the bed and tossed off a pillow, tucking it into a slot beside the door. Then he got down on the ground and lay with his hands behind his head on the pillow, grinning at her. ‘I’m a goat herder, remember? During kidding season I sleep on the barn floor sometimes. Believe me, this is much more comfortable. The goats? They kick like mules.’
Lara burst out laughing with relief and joy.
‘Besides, I am an easy sleeper. No fuss.’
Gosh, how appealing.
‘Do you snore?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I will let you know,’ he said, folding his hands on his chest and closing his eyes.
After Lara accepted that this was the plan and it was going to happen—she was going to sleep next to Matteo, kind of—he got up off the floor and they talked and ate some more and washed the platter and glasses together and then, finally, they said goodnight and turned off the lights.
Lara lay awake in his bed, listening to him breathing, feeling happier than she had in a long, long time. But there was no way she’d be able to sleep. Every nerve in her body was awake. She waited a few hours, till she felt the effects of the alcohol subside, then tiptoed out of the cabin and drove home to the villa.