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What remained of that fateful lunch was a table of three untouched plates, and one that had literally been wiped clean with a crust of bread.
As soon as Edoardo had left, Lucia set to work. It was as if a fire had been lit under her. With determination, she began rummaging through cabinets, pulling papers from files, drawing together all potential avenues for extra or overlooked income. She gathered a pile of documents and scribbled some notes on a Post-it, and left it all on her nightstand. It was a small step, but it gave her some feeling of control until she could resume her research after lessons were over for the day.
Mariella offered to clean up after lunch, leaving Lucia and Francesco to prepare for the students’ arrival at two.
Fridays were special days at La Scuola Rosa, as they set aside the usual Monday to Thursday, 9 am to 1 pm program. The day began with Mariella, Francesco and Lucia sharing lunch and this was always followed by a planning meeting for the week ahead. The students arrived at 2 pm, and classes ran to 7 pm, at which point the weekly aperitivo gathering – drinks and nibbles – kicked off.
The learning program at La Scuola Rosa was focused on building communicative skills rather than being based on a set timeline with a textbook. It meant that students, once placed at the appropriate level, could slip in seamlessly, allowing them to join for just a week, or up to months at a time. Most came for the pleasure of learning the language and exploring Venice, but for others, the language served a purpose for their work or family life.
Fridays also signalled the end of many of the students’ study journeys. The usual cheek kisses and selfies were mixed with sadness and farewells from those returning to the reality of life. Social media account handles were shared, email addresses exchanged, and tears occasionally shed as many classmates prepared for their final day of lessons.
Given the events over lunch which had sapped so much of their usual preparation time, Lucia and Francesco had to work fast. Lucia rushed around photocopying maps and public transport tickets she had already planned to use to improvise student-led role-plays. Francesco gathered all the available cookbooks from the shelves on the bottom floor, with the intention of exploring giving commands with the imperativo form with his group. Then together they grabbed a class set of menus from local restaurants and the box of restaurant props and paraphernalia for Mariella to use with her students, including the posters on wine from the Veneto region.
By the time 2 pm arrived, despite their racing hearts and worried minds, the trio were as ready as possible for the afternoon’s lessons and aperitivo party.
Before opening the door, Lucia turned and faced the pair. ‘ Grazie for your support today.’ Some of the colour had returned to her cheeks, but her smile was still very strained. ‘We will come up with a plan, I’m sure of it. We’ll think of some way to get the money.’ Francesco swallowed, and Lucia noted how his eyes scoured the floorboards underfoot. ‘Checco,’ she started, taking him by the hand. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you or Mariella. If it all goes wrong, if we can’t get the money and Gatti—’
Francesco squeezed her hand in return. ‘Lucia, we are in this together.’
Mariella took in a deep breath and nodded her agreement. ‘ Allora, le lezioni ?’
‘ Sì ,’ Lucia confirmed. ‘We have a school to run.’ She shook out her limbs and opened the door, and what met them on Calle del Leone was a sea of hugs and an abundance of cheek kisses from their enthusiastic learners.
As appearances went, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Lucia, flanked by her most trusted and beloved, smiled and greeted each of their thirty-odd students by name. No one could have known that their stomachs were churning and their chests laden with worry. For the future of the school. For their jobs. And, for Venice.
One by one the students piled in and made their way to their respective learning areas. They had been grouped by language skill level by Stefano, a long-term associate teacher who joined them on Mondays to organise the new arrivals, and who often covered classes last minute when needed. The beginners, Le Gondole , went slow and steady with Mariella downstairs. I Vaporetti , the intermediates, were most numerous, and were always upstairs with Lucia, requiring the entire second floor by virtue of their numbers. Meanwhile, the advanced students, I Motoscafi , a typically small and intimate group, flew through content at a purposefully quicker pace with Francesco by the arched canal-facing windows on the ground floor.
‘Will you be alright?’ Francesco caught Lucia’s arm as she walked past him, following the swarm of students heading to the staircase. ‘We can join your group upstairs if it’s all too much. A team-teaching session?’
‘ Grazie , but I’ll be fine,’ she said, giving him a solemn yet steadfast smile. ‘And I’ll make sure you are too.’ Her eyes travelled to the framed photo of her parents hanging on the wall behind the mahogany welcome desk. Umberto and Elena had been captured arm in arm in front of the intense pink blossoms of the bougainvillea in full bloom creeping its way up the facade by the school’s front door, planted with Lucia’s help when she was a child. The plant in the picture was significantly smaller than its current size, decades on.
She turned to face the view of Calle del Leone, her lips pursed.
‘ Cosa pensi ?’ Francesco asked, sensing that Lucia had become tangled in an unhelpful web of memories.
‘Time is passing,’ she said. ‘I’ve never noticed how quickly.’
‘It does that,’ he said, collecting a pen from the welcome desk and tucking it behind his right ear.
‘No. I mean it’s really passing. Some things are changing. Other things are stuck—’
Casting his eye across to the group of students with Mariella, and those awaiting him by the windows, Francesco interjected, ‘What won’t change for now is the timetable.’ He flicked his chin in the direction of the clock on the wall. ‘And our lessons should have started two minutes ago. Philosophy and its cousin, Existential Crisis, will have to wait.’
Lucia couldn’t help but smile. She steeled herself, gathered Foscari in her arms, and recollected her focus. ‘You’re right. Onward.’
The students had long since left the aperitivo gathering and Mariella had been shooed home to the Cannaregio sestiere at a reasonable hour, thankful for the ten-minute walk to clear her head.
This left Lucia and Francesco with the post- aperitivo tidy-up.
Just as they were finishing, Lucia, whose final job was to draw the front window’s velvet curtains, paused, just as she had done that morning. She stepped outside and her eyes locked on La Commedia.
‘Do you remember the fritole ?’ she asked Francesco over her shoulder as he joined her on the calle . ‘They were . . . mmm . They were the best this side of Venice.’
‘Crunchy. Sweet.’
‘But soft in the middle.’
‘Lots of sugar.’
‘No one made fritole like the ones at La Commedia.’ She sighed.
‘It was the cicchetti selection for me, but only when that chef – what was his name? The one with the big, round—’
‘Danilo?’
‘Danilo!’ Francesco wrapped an arm around her shoulder. ‘That man knew his way to my cicchetti heart.’
‘You never used to pay for them! You’d steal them from the platters on the counter when the bar staff were busy serving drinks.’
‘That may have been true then. I pay for my dependence now.’ He laughed. ‘Besides, I was a child! That’s what children do.’
Lucia’s mind wrapped around memories of her shared youth and decades of friendship with Francesco. ‘Seems like only yesterday.’
‘Were we ever only eight years old?’
‘ Dio , where has my life gone? All’improvviso !’ Lucia could feel the tension in her shoulders.
Wanting to lighten the mood, Francesco said, ‘You’ve aged like the underbelly of a retired gondola. I, on the other hand . . .’ He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead melodramatically. ‘I haven’t aged a day.’
Lucia scoffed and gave him a sarcastic sideways shove.
The double-storey building across Calle del Leone boasted large windows either side of the front entrance. The windows had been lined with newspaper when the restaurant closed fifteen years ago, and with time the paper had yellowed and the ink had faded to shadows – much like the memories of the stories that had once patchworked the glass. It pained Lucia to recall how the scene used to look, when the windows were open and inviting, revealing a full dining hall of Venetians. The wooden double doors, painted forest green and sporting a tarnished lion’s head knocker, had been locked for longer than Lucia could bear. The smaller windows on the upper level had been left newspaper-free, with the internal window dressings simply pulled closed by the Rigon family who had once called it home.
Lucia’s thoughts returned to the surveillance scandal that had erupted the week of the tenth anniversary of her parents’ death. La Commedia had always been such a safe space for her, and for her family, but that had been tainted by the press and used against her.
‘I can’t believe I never saw the journalists’ cameras, Checco.’ Her eyes were fixed on the windows of the upper floor. ‘I still feel so stupid not to have noticed. The building had been vacant for five years at that point . . . And the way the curtains must have changed positions throughout the day. They were watching my every move. Plotting that sick and twisted story about my “tormented childhood”. Ugh!’
‘You couldn’t have known, Lucia. That level of cunning “journalism” . . .’ His hands formed a perfectly sarcastic pair of air quotes. ‘ Not knowing is exactly what they wanted from you.’
She sighed. ‘And they got another story for their trouble. Just when I thought I had been able to move on from all that mess and lead my own life. What’s next, eh ? This disastro with Vittorio Gatti.’ She scowled. ‘If he’d never run the restaurant to ruin, if he’d never closed it down, then it wouldn’t have been left here abandoned. I despise him.’
Turning her by the shoulder, Francesco gestured back inside her school. ‘ This is all you need to worry about now. That history across the calle is none of your business. Channel your energy here. Into all this. Saving this .’
‘ Hai ragione . Like always.’ Just then, a flash of lightning and a loud crack of thunder split the air. Lucia glanced up at someone’s laundry, forgotten on the washing lines zigzagging between the buildings above, which was beginning to flap and jerk in the rising wind. She checked her watch. ‘Right on time. They said a storm would arrive around now.’
Francesco looked down at his jumper and Lucia knew he was thinking of his cold commute home to Mes. ‘ Vado .’
‘I bet you wish you had your coat now.’
‘I’m tough.’
‘Do you want to stay?’
‘I’ll be fine. My new pothos needs watering.’
Lucia rolled her eyes. ‘What’s his name?’
‘You know I don’t name my plant babies, Lucia.’
Lucia’s eye-roll morphed into a fond head shake. ‘You know exactly what I mean.’
Francesco’s cheeks flushed a little. ‘I never kiss and tell.’ He placed a kiss on each of her cheeks. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’
‘Checco, tomorrow is Saturday. The weekend is your time.’
‘ No . I’ll come for a few hours in the morning to help you go through the school’s finances and paperwork for the sale. You don’t need to do that alone.’
‘Are you sure? Really? It can wait until Monday.’
His lips puckered momentarily. ‘It really can’t. The ninety days have started.’
‘ Uffa !’ She felt dread closing in on her again.
‘We’ll work out the ownership issue, Lucia.’ He tapped the school’s front door. ‘The universe will make everything fall into place. Buonanotte .’
Waving him off for the night, she muttered to herself, ‘The universe has never been there when I needed it. Why should it suddenly show up now?’ She exhaled and leaned back against the doorframe.
It had been a day of great disss and loss of control; two things Lucia had always struggled with. She felt as if her heart had been gripped by a fist that would not let go, and her eyes were hot and stinging from the hours of feigning calm and content with her students. All she could do for now was breathe and control what she could control, which, admittedly, was very little.
A gentle mist of drizzle had begun to baptise Venice, and she welcomed its presence. Despite her worries, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the refreshing tickle against her skin. It was cooling and settling, and she drew in a long breath.
A second clap of thunder drew her eyes to the sky.
A storm was always bad news for Venice – a bad omen, a signal of shifting tides and rising troubles. She wanted no part of it.
Just as she was about to surrender herself to the thought of bed, Lucia took one last look at the derelict palazzo across the calle and saw something that made her breath hitch and her hair stand on end.
On the upper level of La Commedia, muffled by the curtained glass, a light flicked on.