First thing the next morning, Lara sent Matteo a text message, knowing he’d be up at dawn too, to explain that she hadn’t been able to sleep and needed to be home for Samuel, thanking him for a wonderful evening and bravely saying she hoped she would see him in the near future.
His reply was instant—Please come back soon—and it was all she could do not to squeal and happy dance around her room.
To her surprise, when she went downstairs, Samuel was already up at the barn and feeding the goats. It was just six a.m., exactly when she needed to start work. He looked up at her as she made her way over. Meg was tugging at some hay in his hand and Willow was gobbling something out of a bucket, her tail wagging furiously.
‘Good morning,’ he said, his voice fatherly, his eyebrows high and questioning, as if he’d been up waiting for her to come home last night.
‘Guten morgen,’ she sang, waving at him. ‘Oh, sorry, wrong language.’ She dissolved into nervous giggling, her head still way up in the clouds, thinking of Matteo. Her skin flushed under Samuel’s twinkling gaze.
Lara went to the gate and scratched Meg behind the ears while the goat chewed at the hay, breathing in her beautiful smell. She was going to try to explain everything—she could only too clearly imagine what he was thinking—but decided to hum mysteriously for a moment.
‘Well,’ she said, feeling she’d stretched the silence as far as she could. ‘I better get the pails to start the milking.’ She smiled sweetly at Samuel. His lips twitched, and his hand gripped tightly on his walking stick on the uneven ground.
Lara turned to leave, then stopped. With determination, she covered the few strides between her and Samuel and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Thanks for my job,’ she said, her hand resting on his bony shoulder. ‘I love it here.’
Then she turned and left to get the pails, singing loudly into the cool, gentle dawn light.
If she was totally honest, not everything about type II bipolar disorder was awful. The upside? The absolute power that came with the mania swings. It was as though she was transformed into a sleek, strong superhero figure, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Wonder Woman—nothing could touch her. She could fly through the air and take down a monster with her fingernail alone. True, her medications usually kept the sharp highs and lows at bay, but they each still sneaked in from time to time.
Now, here in Tuscany, a bridled mania on her heels, she could smell the lavender that grew in the rockeries around the villa before she even got out of bed. The red geraniums that sprawled over terracotta pots were so bright they almost hurt her eyes. Food became six-dimensional in her mouth and blew her senses with its taste, smell and texture. She imagined these highs might be akin to taking some kind of illicit drug, though as she’d never experimented with those kinds of drugs she could only assume. She could work or study all day and all night. She composed poetry in her head. The world was full of love and joy. When in the company of others, she made them laugh with her witty banter and enthusiastic conversation.
There was also the liberating feeling of disinhibition, and with Matteo on her mind, she began to fantasise. What might it be like to be with him? It wasn’t just his physical attributes that commanded her attention, it was his soft manner with the goats and his gallant care for his great-uncle. She wanted to lose herself with him, lose her old self, shrug off the old dead skin. It was something she hadn’t even realised she wanted—needed—until now.
No one had touched her in that way since Dave. She didn’t want to go through life with those being the last physical memories she had.
So here she was, with her confidence soaring and Matteo so close, someone she intuitively trusted and who seemed to want her too.
She was still thinking of Matteo as she took Henrik a coffee. He was digging holes for fence posts so he could keep the chickens and the goats away from his newly terraced earth.
‘Here, look at your pants,’ she said, putting his coffee down on the soil a bit too hard, some sloshing over the side. She pointed to his falling-down trousers.
Henrik straightened, sweating and puffing, wiping his forearm across his face, and glanced down. Lara wondered if he was wearing underwear. It seemed like there was nothing under there but acres of tanned skin.
‘Would you like some help?’ she asked, taking a step forward to pull them up for him.
Henrik’s eyes widened in surprise as he stepped backwards. ‘No, it’s fine.’
Truly, it was nothing more than she would have done for Daisy or Hudson. They were just trousers, for goodness’ sake. But she held up her hands in apology and stepped back, picking up his coffee once more, feeling her face warm.
She handed him the cup and glanced at his rippling abs. He was a pleasure to look at. And she felt things, things she really hadn’t felt much of in the past six years. Matteo had awakened those feelings and she happily let them burn like a cleansing fire.
‘Thank you,’ he said, eyeing her cautiously.
Henrik was silent for some time, staring at her over the handle of his spade. A long strand of blond hair hung loose and it was all she could do to stop herself from reaching up and brushing it from his cheek. She’d bet his hair was soft and well-conditioned.
‘See you later on for lunch,’ she said, and forced herself to leave before she did something she’d regret.
She decided to clean the villa’s walls to rid herself of excess energy. They clearly hadn’t been done for some time, with dirt, dust and scuff marks on the paint and small spider webs in between the exposed bricks. She tied a red and white scarf around her head and got to work.
Outside, attached to the bricks next to the huge double wooden doors into what would have been the receiving room, Lara found a diamond-shaped metal plate. Giardino dei Fiori—garden of flowers. She rubbed at it carefully, wondering who had named the house and what her intention had been for this land. For surely it had been a woman who’d named it, giving the sign a four-petalled flower, in the shape of a cross, with a circle at the centre.
There were flowers on the property now. Small white bursts from oregano, basil and parsley joined the lavender and geraniums and the wildflowers that grew in the lawn. She turned to survey the vista of greenish-blue hills strung with vineyards or dissected patchwork fields of crops. She tried to imagine a time when flowers might have filled every inch of the view. What a magnificent sight it would have been.
Samuel interrupted her after lunch as she hoisted up a bucket of grimy water to toss out onto the aloe vera plants. ‘The walls look good,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’ Lara had been working very hard. She gestured to the name plate on the wall. ‘Who named the property?’
Samuel stroked his whiskery chin, something she hadn’t seen before; he was usually clean-shaven. ‘The villa was built by Assunta’s ancestors Sara and Guido Falco in the sixteen hundreds. They were from Venice originally, having made their wealth in investments in glass and jewellery workshops. But Sara was unhappy in Venice so they moved here. I believe she named the property.’
‘Lucky her.’
They stood side by side in silence for a moment, considering the metal plate. Samuel looked as though he was about to say more on the subject, but then seemed to change his mind. ‘You know, you can take a break from all this work. It’s a very big house. It could take days to clean it all.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me; I’ve got plenty of energy,’ she said, shifting her bucket of water from one hand to the other. And she did. Her body felt like a well-oiled machine. This was another thing she loved about mania: the lack of pain. No headaches. No exhausted or strained muscles. No sore feet. She’d once fallen down the front steps of Eliza’s house while in an upward swing and not realised she’d torn a ligament in her knee until several days later, when the high fell away and the pain unleashed its fury.
‘Trust me, it’s better I just keep going,’ she said, flashing him a reassuring smile. ‘Use me while you can.’ Samuel nodded, seemingly somewhat relieved that he’d tried to help but it was unnecessary.
It wasn’t as though she didn’t know she was having a mini manic episode. Quite the opposite. Lara knew it and she loved it. She was well-practised at self-monitoring as best she could, and at channel-ling her energies into positive pursuits such as exercise or cleaning or cooking. But it still felt great. So much of her life had been spent not feeling good at all—in fact, feeling terrible—that she couldn’t help but love these times. It was almost like a reward for getting through the lows. She felt she could conquer the world if someone would only give her half a chance; she’d sort out all those warring nations in a jiffy. She didn’t know how long this would last, but she was going to love it while it did. Usually, it was a few days. Sometimes a couple of weeks.
Of course, there was the small voice in the back of her head telling her she’d regret it tomorrow when it all came crashing down. It was a bloody smug voice, that one, like having a boring accountant sitting on her shoulder while she was on a shopping spree. A complete party-pooper.
There were so many voices. So many opinions. Some were her own. Some were other people’s. Some…well, she didn’t know whose they were.
‘The medications aren’t enough on their own. You still need to work to keep the swinging moods at bay,’ Constance had told her. She was a petite, fairy-like psychiatrist with long white hair and wrinkles that showed years of laughter. Her easy good humour gave the impression that she really had mastered her mind in her lifetime. ‘People with chronic illnesses that affect their body need to exercise and eat right every day to keep themselves at their best. You need to do the same for your mind. Meditation is your medication,’ she was fond of saying.
Mindfulness was the key to everything, according to Constance. Being present, keeping your mind solely on the task in front of you, living in the moment rather than the past or the future, keeping gratitude diaries, meditating morning and evening. And yes, in Lara’s case, medication as well. ‘They are two halves of the one orange,’ she would say.
Now Lara wondered, as she went to the outside tap to fill her bucket with water yet again, if she should contact Constance to check if her medications were still adequate. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been here before. This feeling wasn’t new, just unexpected. It was probably brought on by these insanely beautiful surroundings and maybe a blossoming relationship with Matteo. And she was beginning to realise that being away from the family home, away from Sunny and Eliza, was allowing her to find confidence in herself. She was caring for Samuel and getting about by herself. She was doing it, this thing, this life thing that others seemed to do so easily. Maybe she wasn’t manic at all. Maybe this was what it felt like to be normal.
She lifted her face to the blue sky while the fresh water tumbled into her bucket, enjoying the feel of the sunlight on her closed eyelids, and the warm breeze caressing her arms.
Matteo.
A flood of pure lust washed through her and she dropped her head back, exposing her throat to the sun’s touch. There may have been a sensible voice telling her to slow down, but the desire to replace Dave’s imprint was much stronger. She needed to move on.
Matteo.
Lara opened her eyes and turned off the tap. She gazed over the hazy valley, then acted before she could change her mind.
She tapped out a message.
Can I come tomorrow? X
His reply came within seconds.
Yes please.
Everything was changing.