Chapter 1
Amore and Other Disasters
Chapter One
"Jesus" Lucia Fitzroy muttered as she stared at the stack of plastic chairs that appeared to have been welded together by some sadistic janitor with a grudge against adult education. "Why do I do this to myself?"
The fluorescent light above her head buzzed with the particular enthusiasm of electrical equipment that had given up on life decades ago.
There was the faint smell of cabbage in the air.
She gave the chairs another violent tug, managing to separate two of them with a screech that could have summoned the dead.
Her right leg chose that moment to remind her that October dampness and old injuries were not a compatible combination. The familiar ache shot up from her ankle to her knee, and she had to grip the edge of a desk to steady herself.
"Fantastico," she said to the empty classroom. "Just bloody fantastic."
The Hartleyford Primary School classroom looked exactly like what it was: a space that had been designed for eight-year-olds and was now being pressed into service for adults who should know better.
Alphabet posters competed for wall space with pictures of smiling vegetables, and someone had stuck motivational quotes in Comic Sans font around the room with the sort of aggressive cheerfulness that made Lucia want to set things on fire.
She limped over to the teacher's desk and dumped her leather satchel on top of it with a satisfying thud. Inside were the tools of her trade: dog-eared Italian textbooks, a stack of worksheets that had been photocopied so many times they were faded to gray, and a bottle of aspirin that she kept for emergencies. Given that she was about to spend ten weeks teaching bored housewives and retirees who probably thought Italy was just pasta and gondolas, she suspected she'd be seeing a lot of that aspirin bottle. She’d contemplated replacing it with a gin bottle, but even she wasn’t that far gone yet.
She was only supposed to be making sure that the classroom had everything it needed, putting her stuff in the small cubbyhole that was reserved for her.
But after a day at home sitting at her desk working on a translation of a legal case so boring she’d wanted to drill her eyes out, getting properly out of the house was somewhat nice.
The door burst open with enough force to rattle the windows.
"Lucy!" Allegra practically skipped into the room, dark hair bouncing, clutching a manila folder.
"Lucia," she corrected automatically, though twenty-nine years of experience told her it was a complete waste of breath. Her sister wasn’t going to call her by her given name no matter how hard she tried.
"Oh, I'm so excited about this term," Allegra announced. She was incapable of entering a room at any volume below 'enthusiastic toddler.' "I think you're going to love this group."
Lucia raised an eyebrow and continued arranging chairs, trying out a different formation than usual. "Love them. Right. Because that's exactly what I'm here for, forming deep emotional connections with people who think learning Italian means memorizing the words to 'That's Amore.'"
"Don't be such a grump," Allegra said, settling herself on one of the plastic chairs with the sort of careful precision that suggested she knew exactly how unstable they were. "You might actually enjoy yourself this time."
"I doubt that very much." Lucia limped back to the desk and opened the register. "How many victims do we have?"
"Students, Lucy. They're called students. And we have four signed up already, with room for one more if anyone else decides to join."
"Four brave souls willing to sacrifice their Monday evenings to the cause of cultural education," Lucia said dryly. "How noble of them."
Allegra shot her a warning look. "Be nice. These people are paying good money to learn, and they deserve a teacher who doesn't look like she's attending her own funeral."
"I'll try to contain my overwhelming enthusiasm," Lucia said, picking up a whiteboard marker and testing it on the back of her hand.
Dead, naturally. She tried the next one.
Also dead. "Honestly, Allegra, how am I supposed to teach anything when half the equipment in this place is from the Stone Age? "
"You'll manage," Allegra said brightly. "You always do. Besides, it's not about the equipment, is it? It's about sharing your passion for Italian culture."
"My passion," Lucia repeated, finally finding a marker that produced actual ink. "Right."
There was a time when she had been passionate about teaching. When she'd genuinely enjoyed watching the light of understanding dawn in students' eyes as they grasped a particularly tricky grammatical concept, or when they'd successfully rolled their Rs for the first time.
Now she taught because she needed the money, and she tried very hard not to think about anything else.
"So who are my eager pupils this term?" she asked, uncapping the working marker and writing 'Italiano - Livello Uno' on the whiteboard in letters that looked appropriately stern, just as a test.
Allegra consulted her folder. "Well, there's Mrs. Linwood from the village. Trish. You know her, she organized that charity quiz night where she accused the vicar of cheating because he knew too much about biblical geography."
"Ah yes," Lucia said. "The woman who thinks volume equals authority. Delightful."
"She's very spirited," Allegra said diplomatically.
"That's one word for it." Lucia capped the marker and turned to face her sister properly. "Who else?"
"Kassie Yates from the post office. Lovely girl, very quiet. I think she's genuinely keen to learn."
"Quiet students are the best students," Lucia said approvingly. "They listen instead of talking. Miraculous concept."
"Then there's Wilfred Nelson, the old postman. He's seventy-three but sharp as a tack. Very proper, military background."
"A disciplined student. There might be hope yet."
"Oh, and Callan Forest, who owns that new gym on the High Street." Allegra's expression became carefully neutral. "Very… fitness-focused."
The way her sister said 'fitness-focused' made it sound like a polite euphemism for 'complete tosser.' Lucia had a sudden vision of some muscle-bound idiot flexing at inappropriate moments and trying to chat up everyone in the class.
"Fitness-focused," she repeated slowly. "I see. Let me guess, he thinks learning Italian will help him pick up women on holiday in Rome?"
"I couldn't possibly speculate about his motivations," Allegra said primly, though her expression suggested that Lucia's speculation was probably spot-on.
Allegra stood up and smoothed down her skirt. "Right, well, I'd better let you finish up here. The students will be here at seven sharp on Monday."
"I can hardly wait," Lucia said with about as much enthusiasm as someone being told they needed root canal surgery.
"Try to smile occasionally," Allegra said, heading for the door. "It won't actually kill you, you know."
"Won't it? Are you absolutely certain? Because I'd hate to die of uncharacteristic cheerfulness and leave you short a teacher."
Allegra paused in the doorway and turned back with the sort of expression that meant she was about to say something sisterly and annoying.
"You know, Lucy, it wouldn't kill you to actually enjoy your job occasionally.
These people aren't your enemies. And there’s nothing wrong with being a teacher. I should know."
"Not my enemies?" Lucia asked. "Have you met people? They're exhausting. They ask stupid questions and expect to be fluent after three lessons and think that speaking louder somehow makes them more Italian. And it’s alright for you, you’re a head teacher, a big boss, you’re not down in the trenches. "
"I spent last Friday scrubbing sick out of the upper infants’ reading carpet, so I’m as much in the trenches as you. And some of those students might surprise you."
"They never surprise me," Lucia said firmly. "They're always exactly as disappointing as I expect them to be."
Allegra shook her head and disappeared into the corridor, leaving Lucia alone with her squeaky chairs and her steadily darkening mood.
She finished setting up the classroom with the mechanical efficiency of someone who had done this far too many times. Italian flag pinned to her section of the wall at a precise angle, books stowed in her cubby hole, emergency whiteboard markers tagged with her name. All present and correct.
By the time she was finished, the rain had started properly, drumming against the windows with the persistence of someone demanding to be let in. Her leg was aching in earnest now, the injury singing its familiar song of meteorological prediction.
She gathered her things and switched off the lights, then made her way through the empty school corridors toward the car park.
The car park was nearly deserted, just her ancient Fiat and the caretaker's Ford that looked like it was being held together through prayer and stubbornness.
Allegra must have gone already. She unlocked her car and slid carefully into the driver's seat, adjusting her position to take the weight off her bad leg.
Hartleyford at night was the sort of place where the most exciting thing that could happen was someone's bin blowing over in the wind. Street lamps cast pools of orange light on empty pavements, and most houses had their curtains drawn against the weather, warm light spilling from windows.
She was driving down Elm Street when she noticed the chaos outside one of the larger houses.
A removal van was parked at an angle that suggested either terrible spatial awareness or complete disregard for traffic laws, and boxes were scattered across the front garden like someone had detonated a cardboard bomb.
"Someone's having a worse day than me," she said aloud, slowing down to navigate around the van.
A blonde woman was standing in the middle of the disaster, apparently having an animated conversation with two removal men who looked like they were seriously questioning their career choices.
She was gesticulating wildly, definitely a hand-talker, and even through the rain and closed windows, Lucia could hear her voice rising and falling with dramatic emphasis.
As Lucia drove past, the woman looked up and caught her eye through the rain-streaked windscreen.
Instead of looking embarrassed about the chaos, she smiled and gave a cheerful wave, as if having one's entire life scattered across a waterlogged garden was exactly how she'd planned to spend her evening.
Lucia didn't wave back. She pressed the accelerator and continued toward home.
"Another idiot that thinks village life will be charming," she muttered. "They never last six months. She’ll be sick of the sea salt rusting her car before long." She turned into her own driveway.
The converted garage that was home was tucked away behind the main house, giving her just enough privacy to pretend she was an independent adult rather than a thirty-four-year-old woman living in her sister's backyard like some sort of educated vagrant.
She made a dash for her front door through the rain, keys already in hand. Once inside, she kicked off her wet shoes and headed straight for the kitchen, where a bottle of Chianti was waiting.
The wine went down smooth and warm, chasing away the chill of the evening and the prospect of Monday's fresh educational disasters. She sighed. Her small flat was exactly the way she liked it: quiet, organized, and free of people who expected her to be charming.
She settled onto her sofa with her wine and reached for the remote, mentally preparing for an evening of Italian cinema that would remind her there was still beauty in the world, even if she had to find it through subtitles.
As she scrolled through her options, she found herself thinking about Monday night's class. Four students so far. A noisy woman who organized charity events, a muscle-bound gym owner, a seventy-three-year-old ex-postman, a silent girl from the post office. What a stunningly average group.
She selected a film and took another sip of wine.
"Ten weeks," she said to herself firmly. "Ten weeks, and then I can go back to normal work and not have to talk to anyone except Allegra for another term."
Outside, the rain continued to fall, and somewhere in the village, a blonde woman was probably still trying to convince removal men that her houseplant really did need to come inside before it drowned, completely unaware that in a few days, she would make a decision that would change two lives forever.