Chapter Twelve
‘Who’s up for trying some of this ice cream, then?’ I asked, looking up at the gelateria Gino had recommended.
As the others were umming and aahing about whether it was too early for ice cream and exactly how many calories might be in a tub of it, Aidan appeared in the doorway.
He clearly hadn’t hung around (the story of his life) and was already holding a waffle cone with copious amounts of pale yellow ice cream piled on top.
Our eyes met for a second before he checked himself, realised he was staring directly at public enemy number one and snapped his head in Sophia’s direction.
He obviously couldn’t even stand looking at me.
Which I still didn’t get, because I hadn’t done anything to him. I hadn’t left him.
I remembered reading something about narcissists – about them being easily ‘wounded’ if you dented their ego.
But how had I done that? And he’d never shown any narcissistic traits before, although maybe they were too well-hidden for me to have picked up on them, caught up as I was in believing that I’d just met the love of my life and that we were about to run off into the sunset together.
How pathetic I’d been. As if I was the sort of person who would ever get the fairy-tale ending.
‘Oooh. Which flavour did you go for, Aidan?’ asked Sophia, using the gelato as an excuse to sidle up to him.
I wondered for a second whether she was his type.
I didn’t think so, but then how would I know?
What I thought I’d known about him – the sort of person he’d seemed in the weeks we’d spent together – had turned out to be completely false.
Because the Aidan I’d thought I’d known would never have dropped me like that without a word.
We’d shared parts of ourselves with each other in the time we’d spent together, with the promise of more to come.
And I supposed that what he’d kept hidden was the part of him that wasn’t as sure about me as he’d made out he was.
‘It’s called Santa Fina Cream,’ said Aidan, taking a mouthful. ‘Oh my God,’ he exclaimed, genuinely impressed. ‘You all have to get some.’
I hung back moodily, torn between wanting an ice cream and not wanting to give him the satisfaction of thinking I was only getting one because he’d recommended it.
As though I needed his permission! And also annoyed because it was beautiful here, in this terracotta-hued cobbled square, and he was ruining it for me.
‘Oh go on then, Peter, let’s get a cone to share,’ said Rosamund with excitement.
We were back at the van for 9.40 sharp, mainly because Gino had put the fear of God into us about being late.
Except for Aidan, that was, who was nowhere to be seen.
I’d spotted him two or three times after stopping at the gelateria: once as he wandered down a narrow street flanked by gothic stone buildings with arches and little shutters and pretty red herringbone paving stones and once when Sophia and I walked a little further up the hill than everyone else because we wanted to take some photos (or some video footage, in my case, just to appease Tim).
While I was shooting a pan shot of the tumbling rooftops of San Gimignano with the olive trees and the green hills beyond, I could see him in the bottom left of the shot, a little lower down, like a silhouette against the blue sky.
‘Is he staying at our hotel, then?’ Sophia had asked conspiratorially, nodding her head towards him.
‘Not sure,’ I’d said, keeping it as vague as I could.
My only hope was that he’d be leaving in the morning. Work trips were usually short and sweet, weren’t they? He’d be on a tight schedule.
I put my seat belt on, hoping Gino wouldn’t notice we were missing one passenger. It was bad of me, I knew, but I was sure Aidan could find his own way back to Florence. He could expense it, couldn’t he?
‘Where’s that other man? The journalist?’ piped up Rosamund as Gino tried to close the van door without Aidan in it.
Damn.
‘He is not here at 9.40, so he misses the van. I am not supposed to park here. If I stay longer, I get a ticket,’ said Gino, looking all stressed out again.
Well done, Aidan. Gino would be speeding again, now, wouldn’t he, wanting to make up for the thirty seconds lost hanging around here.
‘But we can’t just leave him,’ said Sophia, sounding put out.
She definitely fancied him.
Gino started huffing and puffing and pacing around. And then my phone pinged and I saw that Nick had finally texted.
So sorry!! We walked too far and couldn’t get back in time. Trying to organise a taxi out to you now.
I sighed, firing off a text.
hurry!
At least he was making some effort to get here, but if he hadn’t even left Florence, he was barely going to have any time.
I was most certainly going to have to kick off the wine-tasting proceedings alone.
I wondered how much you actually drank at these things.
Was it a mouthful or a whole glass of each?
Did you swill it around in your mouth and then spit it out afterwards?
How many wines would we try? And would I feel drunk by the end of it?
The way my day was going, I sort of hoped I would, even if I wasn’t usually a fan of daytime drinking.
‘Nick’s on his way,’ I called over my shoulder.
‘Yes, he texted me a little while ago,’ piped up Sophia.
Had he really contacted her before he messaged me?
‘Daisy dragged him to some trendy café on the other side of Florence and then, surprise, surprise, they couldn’t make it back in time,’ explained Sophia to a confused-looking Peter.
‘How ridiculous,’ he said.
‘Quite,’ said Sophia.
‘Never mind. He’ll be here at some point,’ reassured Rosamund.
I’d noticed how much she defended Nick. They were closer than I’d thought.
Which perhaps made it even odder that he hadn’t thought to introduce me to her before.
I had an uneasy feeling, which was possibly my own paranoia, but it felt real.
I couldn’t get rid of the thought that maybe he was embarrassed by me.
That if he waited until we were engaged, there’d be nothing she could do about it.
And even if she did want to put him off, it would be too late.
Although, of course, engagements were broken. All the time.
As I chucked my phone into my bag and looked up, I spotted Aidan legging it through the city gates. Great. Two minutes later and Gino would have been wheel-spinning away from the kerb without him.
‘There he is!’ called out Sophia.
Gino spun around, hands on hips, ready to unleash. After a brief (but amusingly harsh) scolding from Gino, Aidan leapt into the van.
‘Sorry, everyone,’ he said, ignoring me, as usual.
‘We thought you’d deserted us,’ simpered Sophia, leaning forward to touch him lightly on the shoulder.
Judging by the way Sophia looked momentarily thrown, I presumed he’d given her one of his dazzling smiles.
I didn’t know whether it made me feel better or worse that he had that effect on other people, too.
I supposed that, in a way, I’d imagined us having this secret connection.
That it had only been me who found him devastatingly attractive.
I’d thought about it quite a lot, and at the time we were dating, it had made me feel less insecure about whether I was special enough to keep his attention.
Which ultimately I hadn’t been, of course.
Aidan sat down, fumbling with his seat belt. ‘I confess, I had to go back for another ice cream,’ he said.
Everyone except me laughed.
‘Which flavour this time?’ asked Rosamund.
‘Grand Marnier Cream,’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Oooh, delicious,’ purred Sophia practically in my ear.
He’d had a bottle of Grand Marnier in his drinks cabinet.
When we’d been together, he’d lived in a one-bedroom flat in Putney and I’d been there maybe eight or nine times.
We’d had a shot of it in our coffee one night after dinner.
I could still remember the taste of it, how I’d laughed and told him it had gone straight to my head and he’d joked that that wasn’t a bad thing.
I wondered if he remembered that, too. If, subconsciously, he’d chosen his gelato flavour because of that night.
Or whether Grand Marnier was something he shared with all the women in his life, of which I could only imagine there must be many.
He was a player, I supposed. And more fool me for falling for his charm in the first place.
We drove for a bit, thankfully at a slightly less frantic speed, curving into the heart of the countryside until Gino pulled up at a huge white villa swathed with pink bougainvillea.
‘OK,’ said Gino, turning into the driveway. ‘Here we are at our first vineyard: Tenuta Torciano. This is a high-class vineyard. They sell their wines to big restaurants all over the world. They have lots of staff and lots of land.’
‘This sounds like our sort of place, Rosamund,’ I heard Peter say in the back.
‘You have one hour and thirty minutes here,’ announced Gino, letting us out. ‘Not a minute more and not a minute less, otherwise you will not properly enjoy the other vineyard. OK?’
‘Yep,’ I said, jumping out after Aidan.
I looked up at the sky, breathing in the floral scent in the air.
Birds were chirruping but other than that, there were no sounds at all out here in the Chianti hills.
No cars, no honking horns. Just silence and fields and an elderly woman working on the farm opposite, picking grapes from her vines.
‘Follow me,’ said Gino, leading us through a pretty garden and into a conservatory with purple wisteria draped all over the ceiling, and tables laid out with tablecloths and glasses. It was like a scene from a no-expense-spared wedding in a country hotel.
‘This is very nice,’ said Rosamund, touching her hair.