In spite of the clouds, it rained very little during the night and on Monday morning the sky was once again clear, the roads dry, and the temperature if anything even higher. It was a busy day, with a tricky bowel operation that took several hours. This was on an opera singer who was renowned internationally as much for his appetite for gourmet food as for his voice. She couldn’t help comparing him to her average patient in the Congo, reflecting that a love of exotic food was a luxury few, if any, could afford over there.
When she got home from work that evening, feeling quite weary as well as uncomfortably sticky and hot, she was cheered to find a gift on her doorstep. It was a healthy rose bush, covered with beautiful pink and white blooms, in a hefty terracotta pot and there was a note with it.
Hi Lucy. This is a present from Armando (and me). We both hope you like it. David.
She opened the door and carried the heavy pot through the kitchen and out to the spot beside the back door where she intended to plant it. The scent of the roses was intoxicating and she breathed deeply. Coming back inside, she poured herself a large glass of cold mineral water from the fridge and debated what to do to say thank you. She didn’t have David’s number, but she did have Armando’s. An idea came to her and she reached for her phone. Armando answered almost immediately.
‘Pronto.’
‘Hello, Armando, it’s Lucy from the cottage. I’ve just found the gorgeous rose you left me. It’s absolutely perfect. Thank you so much. I was wondering if you and your wife might like to come down here one evening for a glass of wine so I could say thank you properly. Hopefully you might be able to persuade David to come too. I’d like to thank him as well for his hospitality the other day. Please tell him there won’t be anybody else here. I’m free any evening this week. Tomorrow, maybe, or Wednesday? Whatever suits you.’
Armando reacted very positively and told her he would phone her back once he had spoken to his wife and to David. Barely a few minutes later, he called back to say that the three of them would be delighted to accept her kind invitation the day after tomorrow, Wednesday evening. They agreed upon six o’clock and Lucy had a last-minute thought. ‘Do, please, bring Boris. I met his mum and dad yesterday, and it’ll be good to see him again.’
On Wednesday afternoon on her way home from the clinic she dashed into the shop in Castelnuovo Superiore to stock up on food. She and Donatello, the shopkeeper, were good friends now and she bought more of his wonderful hand-carved ham, several different local cheeses, a lovely aromatic cantaloupe melon and a variety of crisps and crackers as well as some fennel-flavoured finocchiona and little wild boar salami. Back home she hastily toasted slices of bread, cut them into squares and covered them with cheese, pâté or sausage, before cutting the melon into cubes and threading these onto cocktail sticks together with rolled-up pieces of ham. She had put bottles of Roberto’s sparkling rosé in the fridge the previous night and hoped her guests would approve.
She just had time to run upstairs and take a quick shower before they were due to arrive. She resisted the temptation to put on the smart frock she had worn at Daniela’s wedding and went for her new white and pink dress instead. This was a bit short, but her legs were nice and brown by now after all her walks in the hills, so she felt confident she looked okay. Besides, she told herself, there was no point dolling herself up for David’s benefit. Yes, as she had told Daniela, she really did find him very attractive, but she knew there could be no future for her with a millionaire, let alone one who might also be philanderer.
Shortly after seven she heard a car outside and went out to greet them. It was a sleek black Mercedes with heavily tinted windows. Evidently this was the way David managed to get around and maintain his anonymity. It was the first time she had met Fioretta and she took an immediate liking to this motherly lady. Before she could greet anybody else, she was assaulted – in the friendliest possible way – by the happy Labrador and she had to crouch down and make a fuss of him. When she stood back up again, she beckoned them all inside and made a beeline for the sink to wash the dog off her hands.
‘Thank you so much for coming and thank you for the rose.’ She opened the back door and showed them where she was planning on planting it. Armando, ever-helpful, had an idea.
‘I’ve got some wire and some masonry nails back at the villa. If you like, I’ll come round one of these days and pin up a framework for you to train the rose against when it starts going up the wall.’
Lucy thanked him warmly and turned to David who had been standing back, letting Armando do the talking. She noticed a bottle in his hand.
‘Hi, David, you shouldn’t have.’
He handed her the bottle of champagne and she was delighted to see him smile. ‘Like I say, I’ve got cases of the stuff. You’re very welcome.’
As it was another warm, sunny evening without much wind, she took them up to the loggia. Ignoring Lucy’s protests, Fioretta picked up the biggest tray of food and carried it up the stairs, Armando took the rest and David brought the wine, leaving Lucy with just the glasses to carry. They settled down on her recently purchased chairs and David opened one of the bottles of Roberto’s sparkling rosé. Boris positioned himself at Lucy’s feet, his nose firmly pointed at the food on the table and did his best to look as if nobody ever fed him. Knowing Labradors of old, Lucy hardened her heart – at least for now.
As for David, hardening her heart wasn’t so easy. He was looking very appealing. He was wearing a light pink polo shirt that was just tight enough across his chest to reveal his muscular frame. His strong forearms – she had always had a thing about men’s forearms – were tanned and covered with light brown hair. There was something different about him and it took her a few moments to realise he had had a haircut. She had only ever seen him with fairly stylish, medium length hair before, but now it had been sheared to barely an inch. It looked good. In fact, he looked very good and she growled to herself.
It was a very pleasant evening. They all approved of Roberto’s wine and Armando told her he was also hoping to try his hand at making some sparkling wine along with regular white wine when next autumn came around. David also had some good news for her.
‘I heard back from my lawyer today. The notary says all the papers are in order so the sale of this place should go through later this week or early next week.’
Lucy beamed at him. ‘That’s great. I really love this house and the thought that I’m going to end up owning a historic piece of Tuscany is amazing.’ Given her doubts about the probity of some of the patients and the nature of the job at the clinic, whether or not she would still be working at the clinic in a few months’ time was a different matter entirely, but for now she did her best not to dwell on that.
In the course of the evening she was delighted to see David visibly relax and she couldn’t miss the affection he had for Armando and Fioretta. It emerged that Fioretta was responsible for his new haircut and Lucy complimented both of them. David’s Italian was unexpectedly fluent until he revealed that his grandparents had emigrated to the USA from Italy and he had been brought up speaking both languages in the house. The dog – once he had scrounged a couple of pieces of salami – behaved impeccably, and all in all it was a most enjoyable evening.
The not so nice part came right at the end.
As they were standing at the door, chatting and saying goodnight, a car pulled up behind David’s Mercedes. To Lucy’s horror, she saw that it was Tommy. She rushed over to try to head him off before he recognised David, but she felt pretty sure she saw what might have been a glimmer of recognition on his face, although she hoped that might have been for Armando and Fioretta.
‘Hi, Tommy, I wasn’t expecting to see you.’
‘Hi, Lucy.’ He leant towards her and kissed her on the cheeks before she could retreat. ‘It’s really good to see you too. I’ve just been having dinner with my aunt and uncle and I thought I’d pop up to see if you were feeling better.’ His eyes once more flicked across to figures by her doorway. ‘That’s not your boyfriend, is it?’ He didn’t give her time to deny the accusation. ‘Sorry to interrupt you if you’ve got company, but at least that shows you’re feeling all right again.’
‘Back to normal, thank you. Listen, I’m sorry to sound inhospitable’ – she wasn’t sorry in the slightest – ‘but I’d better get back to my guests.’ To her relief, he nodded.
‘Of course. Anyway, I’m glad you’re feeling fine again. Goodnight, Lucy.’ And to her extreme annoyance, he tried to kiss her again, although this time she managed to avoid his advances.
As his car drove off again, she went back to the others. ‘I’m really sorry about that. He’s someone I know. He works with a friend of mine. His turning up here tonight was completely unexpected.’ But of course she was in the presence of long-term Castelnuovo residents. Fioretta had already recognised Tommy.
‘We know Tommaso, don’t we, Armando?’
‘Yes, we’ve known him since he was a toddler. He’s a local boy, but you probably already know that.’
Lucy nodded. ‘We had dinner together at his aunt and uncle’s restaurant a week ago and he told me all about the village. He knows it well.’ As she spoke, she caught a glimpse of the expression on David’s face. If asked to define it, she would have struggled. It was part friendly, part interested, but also part jealous. Could that be? For a moment their eyes met and she realised she was actually blushing. Turning away hastily, she thanked Armando once again and then shook everybody’s hand before seeing them back into David’s car. As they drove off, she kicked the dust at her feet and snorted.
‘Bugger!’
What was for sure was that David was probably now convinced that she and Tommy were an item and, even worse, there was a very real possibility that Tommy, the journalist, had recognised her reclusive neighbour.
As she stood there she felt a drop of rain on her face, then another and another. As the drops turned into a sudden torrential downpour, accompanied by a clap of thunder that rattled the window panes, she hurried back inside. This dampener on what had been a lovely evening might be welcomed by the plants in her garden, but it rather summed up the way she felt. If she had been responsible – albeit inadvertently – for revealing David’s identity to the media, she knew she would feel awful.