Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
Ivy woke up in a panic, not knowing where she was.
Her vision was worse than usual, and she knew that was because yesterday had been a lot.
A lot more than she was used to at least. It came back to her in flashes and all jumbled in order.
The judge, Antonio at the library, Ms Quell, Anita crying, a scribbled note to her flatmate.
And two glasses of wine on an empty stomach.
She groaned as she turned on her side and, squinting at the clock, realised that it was seven-thirty in the morning. All she had eaten since the sandwich she’d hastily swallowed between the court and the library yesterday was a flapjack she’d found in her bag last night.
She would have asked Agata after Ms Quell left, and Antonio had locked himself in his office, but she’d not been able to find the housekeeper.
And with no clue where the light switch was, Ivy had made it up here last night, frustrated and embarrassed that she’d had to feel around the walls like a woman with no sight.
Which wasn’t true. She was a woman with three-quarters of her sight, so she could stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with things.
The problem was that she didn’t know what ‘things’ she was supposed to be getting on with here in Antonio’s Tuscan villa.
She threw back the covers and wandered over to the windows, pulling back the largest curtains she’d ever seen to gasp at the sight through the window.
Pressing one hand to her chest and squinting through her good eye, the sun stretched lazy morning rays over rows and rows of grape vines, before rolling green hills reached a small town over in the distance.
She could just make out the terracotta roofs and tall church towers.
She grabbed her camera from her bag and held it up in front of the window. Even when she was alone, it felt more natural to hold the viewfinder up and for her to be able to see the world entirely as she wanted it to be.
The sight in her good eye was still excellent.
But the damage done by the first retinal detachment from the trauma of the accident had been compounded by a second detachment.
She’d been lucky in that a visiting specialist from Greece had treated her and performed miracles according to the medical community.
Her case was now taught at hospitals around the world, and she was at least—in some part—thankful that some good had come out of the shocking bicycle accident that had left her reeling when it had dramatically changed her life as she knew it.
And while there was still a possibility that her brain would eventually adjust to the differences in the information that each eye provided, for three years she had lived in a world that had one strong image, superimposed by a second, shadow image just a few millimetres out, and that was unlikely to change now.
There were times when it was harder than others, but none were as awful as the moment that the darkness had slowly come down over one eye as the second detachment had occurred.
The inching black had struck a fear so severe into her heart that she still felt the echoes of it even now.
But she knew better than to give in to that fear.
It had claimed nearly a year of her life following the accident, and she wouldn’t let it claim any more.
She made her way to an en suite bathroom so beautiful she thought she could live in it, showered, and dried off with the fluffiest of towels as she reconciled the incongruity of seeing her toothbrush and paste in such splendour.
She ran her fingers through her hair, relishing the heat of Italy that made it possible to dry it naturally.
She pulled on a fresh change of clothes and went in search of food.
Ivy followed the stairs back down to the large beautiful kitchen. In the morning light she was able to see it much better than she had yesterday, when they’d simply passed through it on the way to the garden.
She found Agata bustling around the pristine space.
‘Cosa le porto, signora?’
Ivy was about to answer when Agata’s offer to get her something was translated into English from behind her. She turned to find Antonio, clean-shaven, hair as damp as her own, looking fresh and crisp and all the things that she didn’t quite feel.
In a blue shirt and tan linen trousers, he was almost enough to make her forget Agata’s question.
‘I’ll have a herbal tea if you have one? Or mint? I noticed there was some in your garden last night,’ she said, turning to Agata. ‘That would be lovely, but I can make it?’
Agata fussed and shook off her offer, and Ivy realised that Agata spoke at least as much English as Ivy spoke Italian.
‘Grazie,’ Ivy said with a smile as the housekeeper disappeared into the garden.
She braced herself before turning back to Antonio.
Really, the sight of him had blown apart her defences and she needed to gather them before facing him again.
Her dreams last night had been intense, and erotic and full of him, and she simply wasn’t used to it.
He had filled her nights in the months following their marriage, but time had dulled them to occasional harmless occurrences. But being back in his presence…
He held a small espresso cup in his hand, his gaze assessing on hers.
‘I am prepared to admit that I might have made an error in judgement last night.’
Ivy pinned her lips between her teeth, hoping he couldn’t see her smile. It must be hard for a man like Antonio to admit a mistake. That he did proved that the man she had once known—albeit briefly—was still in there.
‘I can see now that I was wrong to think this would go away easily, and I have a new plan.’
Ivy nodded, almost entirely sure that she wasn’t going to like where this was going.
‘You have an appointment this afternoon in Siena.’
She nodded again, wondering why he was telling her about his meeting in Siena if—
‘Wait… me ?’
‘Sì.’ He nodded.
‘ You got things wrong and I’m the one with the appointment?’ she asked, not to be obtuse, but because she was very confused.
‘Ivy,’ he said as if with the greatest of patience. ‘If we are going to prove that we gave this a ‘go’, then we are going to need to be seen ‘giving this a go’. We will start with dinner tonight. We will do some sightseeing tomorrow and later in the week we will be attending a gallery opening.’
‘A gallery opening,’ Ivy repeated, her lips numb.
She blinked and pressed a thumb to a temple that had started aching with each step of his plan. Starting with her appointment.
‘What’s in Siena?’
Precisely one hour later, Ivy was thrust through the glass doors of one of Italy’s most exclusive salons, feeling more nervous than she had done before her last ophthalmologist’s appointment.
She looked about her at the empty salon, wondering if the driver had brought her to the right place.
A statuesque man emerged from the back with a disarming smile that put Ivy instantly at ease. ‘Ms McKellen?’ he asked.
‘ Buongiorno ,’ she said by way of greeting.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ the stylist continued in English.
She looked about her again. ‘I’m sorry, are you closed? I can come back when it’s better for you?’ she offered, and the man looked at her, confused.
‘Closed? No, this is all for you,’ he said with a dramatic sweep of his arms to encompass the entire beautiful salon. ‘ Venga , venga ,’ he called, and from behind him emerged what looked to Ivy like a small army.
She took a step back, a little overwhelmed by it all, and couldn’t help but wonder whether Antonio had arranged this for privacy or efficiency.
It was most likely to be the latter, but Ivy couldn’t help the small wish that burst into being that for once someone might have wanted to do something like this for her . As a treat. As something special.
‘Signor Gallo told us to take extra special care of you, and that is exactly what we’re going to do,’ the man promised, clearly not realising that ‘Signor Gallo’ had failed to bother to tell her what ‘special care’ actually meant.
Ivy had presumed a haircut—which she was, admittedly, in need of—but when a diminutive woman pulled out a clothes rack, Ivy’s pulse jerked again in panic.
Gavvi, as he finally introduced himself, ushered her into a chair in front of a mirror, where she was poked and prodded, assessed, and found wanting. After an intense three minutes of a stream of Italian she only caught single words from, Gavvi clapped his hands once.
‘Are we in agreement?’
Ivy shook her head in denial—she hadn’t agreed to anything yet!—but no one was actually looking at her.
A glass of sparkling wine was thrust into her hand.
‘è champagne, non prosecco,’ one of Gavvi’s assistants explained with a sniff of disparagement as the others complained about the English drowning themselves in buckets of the inferior sparkling wine.
It was so inconceivably extravagant that Ivy couldn’t help the quiet giggle that emerged from her mouth.
The moment she did, one assistant gasped and the other pointed.
‘I knew it!’ Gavvi exclaimed. ‘A true beauty is somewhere in there, beneath the drab,’ he said, delicately brushing imaginary lint from the perfectly fine grey long-sleeved top she was wearing. ‘Even if it does make your eyes look like silver,’ he whispered in her ear.
Ivy couldn’t help but smile at the compliment, wondering how much extra Antonio had paid for her to be charmed.
Maybe she simply could enjoy this? After all, it wasn’t as if she got to do this every day, or maybe even ever again.
And as another assistant removed the cloth covering another clothing rack and she saw bursts of colour that she would never dare to wear in England, she took a deep breath. She could do this. And she would.