Chapter 5
One peek into the bathroom on the ground floor was enough for Amy to see that it was going to need a complete makeover so that, too, was added to her list. Gavin was quick to point out the ramifications of this for them tonight.
‘Well, it’s pretty clear we aren’t staying here, are we? Where’s the nearest hotel?’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘And I can’t get any kind of Internet connection anywhere in here. Have we somehow travelled back in time to the eighties?’ His tone made clear his disapproval.
‘That restaurant in the square, didn’t it have Hotel on the sign? I’ll go and ask Signora Grande in a minute. She’ll know. If not, the coast’s only half an hour away or there’s Pisa itself. There must be loads of hotels in this area. It’s all right, Gav, you won’t have to sleep in a ditch.’
Directly opposite the bathroom was a door. It was locked, but the key was in the lock. Amy turned it and pulled the door open, revealing a steep, narrow staircase, no doubt leading down to the garage beneath the house. The light on the stair wasn’t working, so she waited at the top, holding the door open so as to give enough light for Gavin to make his way tentatively down to the bottom.
‘It’s all right.’ His voice floated back up as lights flickered on. ‘The lights down here are still working.’
Amy wedged the top door open with an old stool and went down. The fairly modern strip lights in the garage looked a little less dangerous than the ones upstairs and allowed them to take a good look around. The floor was bare earth and it occupied the same surface area as the floors above. It was more like a warehouse or a cellar than a garage. Along one wall were three absolutely huge wooden barrels mounted horizontally on concrete supports, each almost the size of a small van. Beyond them were various barely recognisable objects, some made of wood and some rusty metal. Presumably these had all been used for winemaking or farming. At the front of the building were the two solid wooden doors that gave access to the parking area by the main gates. The rest of the space to their right was a mass of clutter, with everything from antique agricultural machinery, including half a tractor with no wheels, to bales of equally ancient straw. The whole untidy mass appeared to be welded together under a dense canopy of dusty cobwebs.
A vast woodpile started beside the entrance doors and ran halfway along the side wall of the building, piled up to shoulder height all the way, and she wandered over to it.
‘Well, at least there’s no shortage of firewood.’ But if the fireplace upstairs was going to be the only source of heat, she knew it would be woefully inadequate when winter came. How had the mysterious Mr Slater managed?
Gavin threw in a caveat. ‘Just mind what you’re doing if you start lifting those logs, though. God knows what nasty bugs and spiders live in among them, let alone rats and mice.’
Amy’s mind had been working very much along the same lines. Strange, curved tracks in the earth floor made her wonder if there might even be snakes down there. She shuddered, suddenly quite keen to get back up to the house again.
‘I think I’ve seen enough for now.’ She turned back towards the stairs. ‘Shall we head back up?’
She noticed that he didn’t hang about either.
Back up on the ground floor, Gavin made a welcome discovery. In one of the kitchen cupboards there were a dozen unmarked bottles of red wine. In the cupboard directly above, he located a corkscrew. He picked up a bottle, pulled the cork and held it up hopefully.
‘Seen any glasses?’
The only glasses she could see on the worktop were covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs so she checked in a few cupboards and rapidly closed the doors again. She had limited experience of mice and rats but the host of droppings in there looked sinister.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing I feel like using. We’d probably catch bubonic plague.’
Undeterred, he wiped the neck of the bottle on his tissue and took a tentative sip. He had a bigger swig, grunted approvingly and then passed it across to her. She took a little taste and smiled at him.
‘Mmh, that’s really good. Did I tell you the notary said the guy who looks after the vines paid Mr Slater rent in kind – wine.’
‘Now you’re talking.’ Gavin grinned at her. ‘I wonder what the going rate in litres for all this land is. There are rows and rows of vines up there on the hillside. Quite a few bottles, I would imagine. And if it’s all as good as this, we can spend our holidays drunk as skunks all the time if we feel like it.’ From the expression on his face she could see that the place was beginning to redeem itself in his eyes.
Together they walked back out onto the gravel patio and sat down again on the old iron bench. Here they were shaded by the criss-crossed branches above. Down the hill to their right was a fine view over faded, red-tiled roofs, the ramparts of the castle, and onwards across the low hills that ultimately separated them from the Mediterranean in the far distance. To their left, the rows of vines on the hillside rose up with mathematical precision towards uncultivated land and rocky outcrops near the top. It was a stunning view and it was so quiet all she could hear was the buzzing of bees in the rosemary bushes.
They sat down side by side and drank some more wine. A few moments later, they heard movement in the branches of an ancient fig tree and to Amy’s delight she spotted not one, but two, gorgeous little red squirrels chasing each other about and, by the look of it, having great fun in the process. She sat and gazed at them in wonder while Gavin drank in the view – and the red wine. He took another couple of mouthfuls and offered her the bottle. She took it distractedly and sipped, lost in her thoughts, until he brought her back to the present.
‘It’s almost five. We need to sort out somewhere to stay for the night.’ There was a brief pause before he added, almost casually, ‘You know I said I’d stay till Sunday? Well, it turns out I need to get back tomorrow after all. That call I made earlier: the Taiwanese are keen to proceed with the purchase of a hefty chunk of Knightsbridge and I need to be there to seal the deal.’
Amy felt a wave of disappointment and immediately found herself analysing it. It didn’t take her long to recognise that her disappointment wasn’t so much the prospect of being separated from him, as the thought that if she were to accompany him to London tomorrow, it would separate her from this lovely place. She made a quick decision.
‘Of course, your job has to come first, I understand. But I think I’ll stay on for a few days more. After all, everybody’s been telling me I’m supposed to be taking a break. Are you sure you won’t be lonely by yourself?’ That, she knew, was a rhetorical question. If she knew Gavin – and she did – he wouldn’t be on his own for long.
He nodded. ‘I’ll be fine. What about you? Are you sure you want to stay here all on your own?’
‘A bit of peace and quiet will do me good. Besides, I need to concentrate on finding a plumber to sort out the kitchen, bathroom and central heating – the stuff on my list, remember? That’ll give me something to do.’
‘So what’s the plan? Are you thinking of keeping it as a holiday home? That would be a very expensive luxury, particularly considering that you normally only manage to get away for a week or two every year.’
‘That’s the old me, Gav. I’ll tell you this: that fainting thing last week frightened the life out of me, and I know I need to start taking things easy – or at least easier.’
He looked sceptical. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it. That’s just the way you’re built and it’s the way the job is. I wouldn’t mind betting you’ll be back to your old frenetic self within a matter of weeks.’
She shook her head. ‘The specialist at the hospital didn’t mince her words. What’s the point of working myself into an early grave?’ Lucy had said the exact same thing as well. ‘No job’s worth a heart attack.’
He still wasn’t convinced. ‘So you’re telling me that you’d be quite happy to let slimy Christian take over your job while you do something more menial?’ He caught her eye. ‘Pull the other one.’
She wasn’t convinced either, but she put on a brave face. ‘I’ll sort myself out, don’t you worry. And as for it being too expensive to keep this place, I’ve just been left three quarters of a million pounds, remember. Add that to the money I’ve saved over the last five or six years of healthy bonuses and I could probably survive quite happily for the next ten years, or even twenty, without doing any work at all.’
‘But you’d be bored stiff and you know it. If I were you, I’d put this place on the market and use all that money to buy us a decent flat in London.’
She didn’t answer immediately. This was just about the first time she had ever heard him refer directly to them moving in together. Her continuing doubts about the longevity of their relationship threatened to surface but she didn’t want to get into that now. The time for the two of them to talk seriously about the future was rapidly approaching but, for now, she intended to follow the doctor’s advice and avoid any extra stress. In consequence, she opted for prevarication.
‘Well, either way, I need to get the plumbing sorted out. I’ll get onto that over the next few days and, when it’s all been done, I’ll make a decision.’
She took a final mouthful of wine and stood up. It was a delightful afternoon, and the temperature here in the shade of the trees just perfect. Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking and she wondered if it might be Max, the black Labrador. She glanced around the garden, which she felt sure could become spectacular with a bit of time, care and effort, and the house itself was to die for. She had never owned her own home before and this was so far beyond her wildest expectations, it was hard to believe it was truly hers. It was a dream of a place: stylish, ancient, and redolent with character, even if it was clear it was going to need a good bit of work. The fact that it had been owned by the mysterious Mr Slater added to its fascination. Hopefully, if she asked around over the next few days and searched through all the papers upstairs in his study, she might be able to find out more about this man and just why he’d seen fit to leave her his house. She looked across at Gavin, who was ensuring that none of the remaining wine went to waste.
‘Come on, let’s go and check out the hotel.’