Chapter 12
The following afternoon Amy collected Max the dog and set off to do a bit of exploring of the surrounding area. She folded the back seat of her little Fiat down and Max jumped in willingly. He was clearly very excited and it took a while before she managed to convince him to sit down and not stand behind her, nibbling her ears. She took the Volterra road and, as Adam had explained, barely a few hundred metres outside of town she came upon a fairly unsightly concrete water tower, and right after that she spotted his studio.
It had probably started life as a large winemaker’s cantina at the side of the road. It looked as if it had recently had a complete makeover and the repointed stonework and grey-blue windows and shutters were very smart. A sign on the fa?ade indicated that this was the home of APTV, Adam’s company. There was a car park alongside it with half a dozen cars in it, and this appeared to support his claim that she wouldn’t find herself all alone with an unknown man – whatever his sexual orientation. For now she just drove past, determined to give Max a good walk.
She followed the increasingly winding road until she emerged from the vineyards and olive groves into open fields and patches of dense woodland. Just before the top of a hill, she pulled over and parked at the side of the road. Outside it was still very warm but there was definitely more than a breath of air up here, which made the conditions more tolerable. She let Max out and they set off along a white gravel track – one of Tuscany’s famous strade bianche – which ran along the contour line around the hill, dipping in and out of thick woodland that provided welcome shade to both of them. It was quite an isolated place and if she hadn’t had her canine companion she probably wouldn’t have ventured here alone, but having Max to protect her – although he would probably have licked rather than bitten a would-be assailant – was more than reassuring.
She recognised chestnut trees, the ground below them littered with last year’s spiny pods, and stunted oaks, all interspersed with the iconic umbrella pines and cypress trees for which Tuscany is so famous. The shade of the forest provided welcome relief from the heat of the June sunshine. The views down the valley and across to the faint blue line of the distant coast were spectacular, although the heat haze prevented her from making out any details.
They gradually circled the hill, with Max covering two or three times the distance she did as he ran in and out of the trees, retrieving sticks. On the way back to the car she met another human being. Considering that the beaches were little more than half an hour away and no doubt heaving with people, it came almost as a shock to see somebody coming towards her. It was an elderly gentleman who was obviously feeling sociable, as he stopped to chat while Max wandered over to greet him, and he tipped his hat politely in Amy’s direction.
‘Good afternoon. It’s too hot for them now. You’ll need to come back early in the morning.’
Amy was momentarily stumped. What was he talking about? Then she spotted the small wicker basket in his gnarled old hand and it all became clear. He was a mushroom hunter. She thanked him for the advice and asked if she could take a look at what he had found.
‘Two small porcini and that’s it. It’s very early in the season but yesterday morning, quite unusually, I got almost a kilo. I put it down to all this climate change stuff. But I left it too late today.’
He proffered the basket and she peered down to find two beautiful porcini mushrooms, each the size of a baby’s fist. A wonderful aroma of the forest wafted up to her and she resolved to come back and try her hand at doing a bit of mushroom-hunting of her own one of these days.
At four o’clock on the dot, she and a calmer Max walked in through the glass doors at the entrance to Adam’s studio. A dark-haired woman was sitting behind a stylish curved counter over to one side. She looked up as Amy walked in, smiled as she saw the dog, and stood up.
‘Are you Amy? I’m Marta. Adam’s expecting you, but he didn’t tell me the name of your companion.’ She spoke Italian with a local accent.
‘His name’s Max but if you’d prefer, I can leave him in the car. We’ve just had a long walk. I’m sure he’ll sleep.’
‘Not at all. Adam loves animals and so do I.’
‘He’s very friendly and if you give him food he’ll be your friend for life.’
Marta emerged from behind her desk and proceeded to make a fuss of the Labrador before leading them along a terracotta-tiled corridor to a large room with a huge, glazed arch occupying most of one wall looking onto a rocky garden, built in a series of steps up the hillside. As he saw them, Adam jumped to his feet and came across to greet them. In return Amy felt a little shiver of attraction go through her, irrespective of what she had heard from the notary.
Marta made the introductions. ‘Here’s Amy, and her friend’s called Max.’
‘Hi, Amy and hi there, Max.’ Adam crouched down and stroked the dog’s ears before straightening up and waving Amy towards one of a pair of sofas by the window. She felt she had better explain.
‘He belongs to Signora Grande and I’ve started taking him for walks. You’re sure you don’t mind my bringing him?’
‘I’m delighted to see you both. Thanks for coming. What can I get you? Afternoon tea, seeing as you’re English, or coffee, or a glass of wine, maybe?’
‘To be honest we’ve just been for a walk so something cold would be good. Plain water’s fine.’
Adam glanced across at Marta. ‘Two mineral waters it is please, Marta, and a packet of biscuits for Max.’
‘Actually, if you’ve got a bowl or an old pot with some water that’s probably more what he needs.’
‘A bowl of water and some biscuits, please. We must look after our guests.’
He sat down opposite Amy and they chatted until Marta returned with the refreshments. Max slurped up the water willingly, making a right old mess of the terracotta floor as he did so, but Adam waved away her apologies. When Amy told him about her plans to upgrade Mr Slater’s house, he looked up with evident interest.
‘L’Ospedaletto’s a lovely old place, but it definitely needs modernising.’
So Adam, too, had been inside Martin Slater’s house. ‘Yes, indeed. You knew him?’ Was there anybody in the town who hadn’t known the mysterious Mr Slater?
‘I knew him well. We were good friends. So how come you’re renovating Mart’s house?’
‘He left it to me in his will.’
‘So you must have known him well?’
Amy shook her head. ‘No, that’s the thing – I never met him. I have no idea why this man I’ve never even heard of should have decided to leave me this gorgeous house.’
‘That sounds strange. Are you sure you’ve no idea?’
Amy hesitated. The idea that she might be Martin Slater’s daughter was still little more than conjecture and she didn’t feel like sharing it for now, particularly with somebody she barely knew. However, what Adam said next shook her to the core.
‘You want to know what I think, Amy? I think he might have been your father.’
Amy was stunned. ‘Whatever makes you think that? Did he say something?’
‘Yes, in fact, he did.’ Amy sat up and took notice as he continued. ‘You see, he and I got to know each other pretty well. When I first arrived here four years ago, I only knew Danny. Then I met Mart and we just clicked. We were both sort of on our own over here, both outsiders, and we both used to live in Canada. I was born in Canada but I left Vancouver for the States when I was twenty-one and I lived in LA for ten years. I suppose that, and living here in Italy, has knocked the corners off my Canadian accent.’
Amy found herself wondering what he meant by ‘sort of on our own’. If he was living with Danny, why would he say that? Doing a quick bit of calculation, she tried to work out his age. He looked as though he was a bit older than Danny, maybe four or five years or so. He’d told her he’d been in Tuscany for four years so that would make him…
He must have read her mind because he helped her out. ‘I’m thirty-five.’ His smile broadened. ‘Which makes me a whole lot older than you, but, don’t worry, I’m not going to ask your age. We Canadians are brought up to be polite.’
She found herself smiling back at him. ‘I’ve just turned thirty-one but thank you for your tact.’
‘I had you pegged for twenty-five. Anyway, Mart and I used to play tennis together most weeks. The fact that we have floodlights on the courts was down to him. He was very generous. Even though he was twenty-five years older than me, he was red-hot, and he beat me more times than I beat him. By the way, the tennis club courts are on the far side of town if you ever want to play. I’d be delighted to give you a game.’
‘Thanks, but I haven’t played since school. So, go on. What did he say about me?’
‘It was only once. It was winter of last year, maybe eighteen months ago now, and he’d just been diagnosed with the degenerative heart condition that killed him. I took him out to dinner at the Vecchia Cantina – that’s a great little restaurant about ten k’s from here – and let him pour his heart out.’ His tone softened. ‘He didn’t have anybody, you see. I suppose I was just about his closest friend. It’s sad, really.’
Amy could feel the tears welling up for this unknown man, but she was powerless to do anything about them. She just nodded and Adam carried on.
‘When we came back to his place after the meal, he brought out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and we both drank far too much. That was the one and only time he ever mentioned he had a daughter, but he’d never seen her. I remember telling him he was crazy and he should try to make contact with what would have been a grown woman by that time, but he wouldn’t hear of it.’ He caught her eye. ‘That’s something else about us Canadians. To us – at least, most of us – a promise is a promise.’
‘A promise made to whom?’
‘To the mother of his child. I never got any more out of him but it sounded as though she’d made him swear to stay away from her and her child.’
Amy felt a tear run down her face and she didn’t reply for quite a while. The sofa beside her creaked and for a moment the thought crossed her mind that Adam might be coming to comfort her, but it was a more familiar and less fragrant body that tried to climb onto her lap. She looked down into a pair of worried brown eyes and couldn’t help smiling.
‘Thanks, Max, but it’s all right.’ She persuaded him to sit back down again and as he settled onto the floor at her feet she ran the back of her hand across her face and looked up at the Canadian. ‘Sorry about that, Adam. It’s sad to think of anybody having to go through the last months of a terminal diagnosis on their own. I’ve just been through pretty much the same thing with my mum, and hearing you talk about it brought it all back to me.’ She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her eyes. ‘Sorry about that. Maybe we should talk business.’
He must have seen that she needed to change the subject as he got up without a word and went back to his desk, returning with a sheaf of papers. He sat down alongside her and passed them across. Glad to have something else to take her mind off the possible significance of what he had just told her, she shuffled through the sheets. Most were on Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs headed paper, or from the tax authorities, and all were convoluted and verbose. After her experience over the past few days, she was no stranger to Italian bureaucracy, so after a minute or two she turned towards him to offer reassurance.
‘This is mostly just boilerplate stuff. If you can give me or email me copies of everything, I should be able to get through them pretty fast. I’ll fill in what I can and I’ll highlight where you need to add stuff. The good news is that I don’t see any threats to close you down or make you pay exorbitant sums of money so, like I say, it’s just a series of bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Nothing unusual there – we are in Italy after all, and they’re legendary for their bureaucracy. I’ll be happy to help you with it.’
An expression of considerable relief crossed his face and for a moment she got the impression he might even be about to lean over and kiss her. She caught her breath but, instead, he just gave her a broad smile.
‘That’s great to hear. Thank you so much. Give me your contact details and I’ll send it all across to you.’
On her way back home later on, her mind was filled with two main thoughts – could it be that Martin Slater had been her father, and how would she have reacted if Adam really had tried to kiss her?