Chapter 32
The following morning, after a warm, restless night, I’m in the kitchen at Casa Luna, putting the coffee on before Giovanni arrives.
As soon as he’s here, I want to go straight up to La Tavola.
For some reason, I’m keen not to spend time alone with him.
Something inside me has shifted. I don’t know what it is, but a wall has crumbled and light is coming in: a possibility, a chink of a new life, the other side of the grief.
A possibility of finding comfort in Sebastian’s company maybe.
Back to where I was when life was mapped out. A safe and comfortable place to land.
I feed the kitten by the back door and stroke him as I breathe in the morning air, as welcome as the first cup of coffee.
‘ Buongiorno .’ I jump at the sound of his voice, which is ridiculous because I was expecting him and he’s letting himself in, as he has done every morning since he started putting Casa Luna back together for me.
What on earth is wrong with you? I ask myself.
But Marco is no longer in the house and I no longer feel like his widow.
I’m Thea, a single woman with children, and that’s a very different landscape, a shifting one, as the sun rises slower in the sky, the heat not so intense.
Summer will soon be retreating to make way for autumn.
Nothing stays the same for ever. Everything changes. Like the seasons, time moves on.
‘Okay, I have to go,’ I say, wiping the work surfaces needlessly – I’ve already done them half a dozen times. ‘I’m going up to La Tavola to check everything is cleared away and get ready for tonight.’
‘La Tavola will be fine. Everyone helped tidy up last night.’ Giovanni chuckles. ‘Have a coffee.’
‘No, really, I should go.’
‘Thea, I’m grateful to you for making this weekend happen, but I don’t want you to run yourself into the ground.’
He takes hold of my shoulders and my nerve endings are standing to attention, like sparklers that have just been lit. ‘You should take some time to enjoy what you’ve done.’
He’s right. I can’t go back to how I was when Marco and I had the restaurant, the pressure it put on us, and we put on ourselves. I can’t lose myself in the kitchen again. I can’t do that to the children.
‘Sit. Let me pour the coffee. I’ll join you outside.’
I do as I’m told.
‘The boys will be here soon,’ he says, carrying two cups of strong coffee to the little table outside where the garden is looking trimmed and ready for some love.
When we arrived, it was a jungle of long grass.
Now the grass is short, there’s the swing and the kitten is lazily swiping at a passing butterfly.
I breathe in deeply. There’s that feeling again, which has been constant since the day I got here.
It’s a cocktail of the earth warming up, the cobwebs glistening with dew, and the scent of coffee drifting on a passing breeze.
I hold my face to the sun and the breeze, loving what they bring to the party, the sun for its warmth, the breeze for the fragrances it carries, printing this place on my mind.
A memory of it. A memory of when life turned a corner for me.
I’m not going home the same Thea who came here, still with images of Marco everywhere.
I’m going home with Marco as part of my past, but with the possibility of a future, maybe with someone else in it.
Giovanni sits next to me at the table, gazing out over the rolling hills. ‘So, the cookery course is going well.’
‘Better than I could have expected, really,’ I say, breathing in the coffee. ‘And the house, will it be ready in time?’
He nods. ‘Don’t worry. A big push over this weekend and we’ll meet your deadline.’
‘Two years exactly,’ I say. ‘From the moment he bought it. Two years from when he died.’ There’s a pause when we’re both lost in our thoughts. It’s Giovanni who speaks first but doesn’t look at me.
‘So Sebastian. Seems like a nice man.’
‘He is.’
‘You worked together,’ he says, rather than asks.
I nod. ‘I didn’t realize he’d be coming when I booked the company in.’
‘You didn’t say that Sebastian was an ex …’
We’re staring straight ahead, looking out over the early morning mist rolling around the undulating fields and around the trees.
‘Yes. How did you …?’
‘Just got a feeling last night. Unfinished business.’ He sips his coffee, his leg slung casually over his knee. ‘And Nonna Teresa told me.’
‘Well, yes. We were together. But it didn’t work out. You know how it is.’
‘Yes. You could say that. Part of why I ended up out here. My … partner didn’t like the hours I worked.
She didn’t like the amount of time I spent at the restaurant.
In a way, she was jealous of the time I was there.
She didn’t understand how hard I was working to try to make it in that world.
Trying to climb the ladder, to get the chef’s attention.
People scrambled over each other to get his approval. ’
His fist, resting on the table next to his coffee cup, suddenly clenches.
‘And the burn on your hand?’ I ask.
He rubs it with the other as if back there, in the moment. ‘A new boy’s initiation. Kitchen life can be brutal.’
I turn to him. ‘That’s awful!’
‘It is. And then you find yourself doing anything to stand up to these guys, get one over, be better. You eat sitting on the floor. Sleep hardly at all, live off cigarettes and anything else you can get your hands on to keep going, stay awake, alert.’
‘And your partner?’
He shakes his head. ‘I decided I’d had enough of kitchens, living with the other kitchen rats. It was no life. So I gave notice and went home early to find her in bed with someone else. A kitchen colleague of mine. He was on a day off.’
‘I … I’m sorry.’ That’s all I can think to say, unable to imagine the betrayal.
‘And then I needed to get out, get away. I packed a bag and hit the road, working for various builders on the way to make money. It was like cooking. Following instructions. Measuring, mixing, spreading. I caught on quickly. One job led to another … until I found myself making my way through Europe and landed here. I didn’t plan it.
I didn’t want to go back to Rome where my family were from.
No one was left there. By the time I got here, I had no idea who I was or where I was going.
I was in the middle of a thick fog. But, gradually, I found the sort of peace I needed.
The nonna s fed me, and sat with me when I needed it.
That was when I decided to stay and repay them.
Once the mist lifted, I saw it wasn’t food I’d fallen out of love with but kitchen life.
Fine dining. Food is much more than something pretty on the plate. ’
‘It is,’ I agree. ‘It’s somewhere safe,’ I find myself saying.
‘It was the glue that held Marco and me together, but things started to unravel when the bills went up. Then Marco died and meals were the last thing on my mind. Just making the business wash its face was all that mattered. Until I couldn’t any more.
But, here, the glue has started to stick us together again as a family. ’
He nods and we look out, the church bells ringing.
‘I should get off,’ I say. ‘We need to go to market to buy the pizza topping ingredients for tonight. I have the minibus coming.’
We stand up close to each other, as if a bit of the wall between us has been chipped away. And then he says, ‘Is Sebastian going?’
‘To the market? I think so. Why?’
He smiles. ‘Just …’ He pauses.
‘What?’
‘Have a nice time. Enjoy it. You deserve it.’
I stop in my tracks. Was he going to say something else? Or does he mean it? As if he’s read my mind, he says, ‘Take some time to soak up the sun and catch up. We’re nearly done here,’ he says. ‘We should be finished. You can just put your finishing touches on it.’
‘Giovanni … I …’ He turns to me. Why do I feel the atmosphere between us has changed? Something has shifted: where my wall has crumbled, he’s building his up again.
There’s a knock at the door, and Alessandro arrives with Enrico. They let themselves in.
‘ Buongiorno, Thea,’ Alessandro smiles.
‘ Buongiorno, Alessandro.’ I smile back.
‘You’re going to the market?’ he asks politely.
‘Yes. And tonight there will be pizza!’
‘I love pizza!’
‘Then I will make sure you have one all to yourself,’ I say.
‘ Grazie mille! ’ and he sets to work, whistling.
‘He’ll like that,’ says Giovanni. ‘He and his brother are doing really well. It’s just them and their nonna . It’s good for him to have fun and not feel responsible for her all the time. For Enrico too … It’s good he can spend time feeling like a young man, not a parent and carer.’
La Tavola is about so much more than just food on a plate.
I head for the door, then turn back to Giovanni. He looks up at me at the same time.
‘See you tonight for pizza!’ He grins. ‘Hopefully the house will be done by the time you get back. You’ll be ready to sell.’
‘ Grazie ,’ I say, and there’s a pause. I pick up my basket and turn to leave.
‘Thea,’ he says, ‘I should be saying thank you to you. You have saved La Tavola.’
‘For now,’ I say.
‘Yes, for now. And that is all we have. The here and now. And we should grab those chances when they come along.’ I wonder if he’s talking about La Tavola or possibly Sebastian.
I stare at him, as if something has been lost between us.
‘Come on, children,’ I call upstairs. ‘Time to go to the market.’
The market, although quite a drive away along narrow country roads, bumpy and uneven, is everything I hoped it would be.
As a group we wander the streets, perusing the stalls in the slightly less punishing heat.
It’s bearable, like a warm bath that you want to wallow in.
We choose cold meats, mozzarella from a local farmer, who tells us where his farm is and the process for making the cheese, bags of olives and glistening anchovies.
With the shopping for the pizzas in bulging bags, we go our separate ways to look around the clothes stalls and kitchenware.
Tablecloths hang and ripple in the lightest of breezes.
Handbags, scarves and brightly coloured underwear are piled next to overalls, and a shoe stall is heaped with stilettos and slippers.
‘This has been wonderful,’ says Sebastian, walking next to me as the children hurry off in search of gelati .
‘It’s certainly seems to be turning out how I wanted it to. I’m glad I could set this up before I leave.’
‘Will that be soon?’ he asks.
I find myself sighing. ‘Not long. The house is ready to go on the market. I needed to get it sorted and ready to sell. And I need to be back for the children to start school again.’
‘I was thinking, Theally … Is there a chance we could meet up when you’re home?’
‘I …’ Part of me is terrified, but another is excited. A future, moving forwards. Suddenly life seems full of possibilities, maybe even love, and a shiver runs up and down my spine. ‘Maybe that would be nice,’ I say, doing exactly what Giovanni told me to do, relaxing and enjoying this time.
‘Just take it gently, do some of the things we used to enjoy doing together? We could go back to that pub on the Thames, near Richmond.’
‘Where we got stranded in the beer garden when the water flooded it?’
‘And we had to wait it out until it receded …’
We laugh.
‘Or fish and chips at the coast.’
‘There’s a water theme here.’
‘Actually, I’m thinking of moving there.’
‘Where?’
‘West Wales, where we spent Christmas in the cottage.’
‘When the heating wouldn’t work and we just had the wood-burner to keep us warm.’
‘Yes, by the sea. I loved it there.’
‘It was beautiful, if cold! But if you’re thinking of moving there, does that mean …?’
He nods. ‘I’m leaving the company. I’ve done my time.
I’ve put enough away. I want a new beginning while there’s still time.
It was thinking about you that showed me what I wanted, when I read about your idea for the cooking school here.
I know that marrying Elizabeth, after you and I finished, was a mistake.
But I tried to make it work. Somehow, though, however hard I tried, I was never going to be good enough.
You were brave enough to realize what you wanted …
and what you didn’t.’ He looks at me with a sad expression, like the young man he was back then.
Just thinner hair and lines, as we pass a couple of noisy market-sellers, shouting over each other to catch buyers’ attention.
I did know. I knew as soon as I met Marco that life was never going to be the same. It was a roller-coaster of a ride. But now?
‘How about coffee?’ I point to an outdoor table and chairs. The children are nearby with their gelati , and a couple of students pull up seats beside them.
‘This might seem like I’m taking a leaf out of your book, grabbing life when I can, but … I wondered if there might be another chance for you and me, and the children too, of course.’
At the next table, the children are playing Rock, Scissors, Paper with Walt and Glenda, who has let her hair down, quite literally, and is wearing a baggy shirt that may or may not be one of Walt’s.
‘It’s … certainly something to think about.’ I can’t give an answer there and then. ‘I don’t know how I’d feel about that yet.’
‘Of course not. Sorry, just got caught up in the heat of it all, so to speak.’ He takes off his hat and wipes his brow. ‘Silly of me, rushing in like that. I wanted to be impulsive. Go for what you want!’
‘And we should. If I’ve learnt nothing else over the past couple of years, it’s that there are no certainties in life. We have to go with what will make us happy in the here and now. Forget coffee. Let’s have something stronger!’
Once again I think of Giovanni, encouraging me to enjoy myself.
And I am. I could do this more often, I think, sipping the Aperol Spritz I’ve ordered, while Sebastian has a beer.
I’ve come a long way in the last year or so and I’m finally climbing out of a black hole into the sunshine and it feels very good – very good indeed.
‘Really, I didn’t mean to rush at that. I feel clumsy, just wanted to grab the moment.’
‘I know. And thank you.’
‘Just think about it,’ he says gently. ‘It could be a very happy solution for both of us.’
And isn’t that what I want, what I’ve wanted all this time, just to be happy and content again? For life’s roller-coaster to slow down and turn into a scenic train ride, rocking through pleasing countryside?
‘Just think about it. I’ll say no more.’
‘I will, Seb,’ I say, and sip my drink, wishing I could stay in this moment, enjoying the what-if. What if I did?