Chapter Nineteen
The sign above the door said ‘Casa Macellare’ and the smell coming from behind it was a wonderful mix of garlic, hot charcoal and a spice she thought was cinnamon – or maybe nutmeg; Olivia always got those two confused.
Leo was right. This place, to a first glance, was a butcher’s: white walls, sawdusty floor, spotlessly clean glass counters and display cases showcasing different cuts of meat – but the wonderful smell was coming from an ashy hole in the brick wall behind the servers and, beyond it, Olivia could glimpse a cavernous fire pit and chefs in thick aprons and woolly hats turning thick discs of meat with flashing silver tongs.
‘It’s very rustic in here,’ Leo explained. ‘Just choose your cut of meat and wait for the magic to happen.’
They both chose a rump steak. The steaks were expertly wrapped in paper and pushed through the hole in the wall to the waiting chefs who slapped them in their palms before unwrapping them and tonging them deep into the smouldering ash.
‘Come on!’ Leo said, and he led her past one of the glass counters and along a narrow passageway at the back, which opened on to a tiny courtyard.
Three long wooden benches hosted people in big coats huddled over steaming plates of food, tumblers of red wine at their fists.
There was a workbench at the end, set with a large bowl of crusty rolls, a dish of red cabbage and a pyramid of wrapped cutlery.
They dropped into seats at the end of one of the benches and ordered beer and wine from a simple handwritten menu.
They helped themselves to salad and rolls at the workbench.
Then, after ten minutes, two of the chefs lumbered out of the back of the restaurant and dropped discs of blackened meat on to their plates.
‘Oh, you’re right, delicious!’ Olivia exclaimed, after taking a few mouthfuls.
‘One of the best-kept secrets in Venice,’ Leo boasted.
They ate and drank, and Olivia took it all in, this scene.
The locals, tucking robustly into their lunch.
The fire and coarse heat from the kitchen.
The hulking chefs. The rough wood of the benches.
Yet, something about this place was almost romantic, she thought, a place to hunker and whisper secrets over steam and smoke.
Olivia wasn’t entirely sure what she and Leo were doing.
How strange it was, she thought, to be in Venice with him, moving benches, and visiting her godmother and going to lunch.
For them to be together, but not be together.
For her heart to lurch every time she looked at him, but her head determined to remain sensible and unscathed.
‘Have you brought women here before?’ she asked him, attempting to sound casual. ‘Girlfriends?’ Fiancées . . .
‘Here? No.’ Leo laughed. ‘Last time I came here, I brought Rowan.’
‘Your hotshot agent?’ Leo nodded. ‘How is he?’
‘He’s great.’
‘Because of you.’
Leo laughed again. ‘He does have other authors on his books.’
‘But you’re the most successful.’
‘Arguably. Aren’t you Alice’s most successful?’
‘Arguably,’ she echoed with a smile. The mood had definitely lightened. She felt relieved to be out of the hospice. ‘So, thank you for coming with me today. Both to the house and to see Gillian.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘You were great with her.’
‘Was I?’
‘You always seem to know the right thing to say. Unlike me.’ She suddenly wanted to change her own subject.
‘So, no girlfriends?’ she asked, immediately wishing she had chosen something else.
Why had she brought that up again? Was she so relieved to be out of the hospice she was now self-sabotaging?
‘I’m holding out,’ said Leo. ‘I don’t want to make any more mistakes.
’ They watched as the hulking chef lobbed another piece of meat on to another customer’s waiting plate.
‘Well, my engagement obviously didn’t work out, and I want to be really sure, if there is a next time.
’ She studied him, trying not to give herself away, more words from that night spitting out of her brain, just as they had catapulted from her mouth back then. ‘You have to be sure, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry the engagement didn’t work out.’ She had read an interview with Leo a year or so ago when he’d said he was currently single. She remembered feeling surprised, and something close to relief, though this news was nothing to do with her.
‘You knew?’
‘I read something. And you do have to be sure. James proposed to me,’ she said. It felt strange saying his name again to Leo.
‘He did?’
She nodded. ‘I turned him down.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Because I didn’t love him enough.’
‘Oh.’ Leo studied her. ‘Well, you really have to love someone enough to marry them,’ he said, and fragments of a lost conversation jabbed at her.
‘I know. And I didn’t. You saw him once,’ she added tentatively. ‘We never spoke about it.’
‘No.’
After they’d been together about six months, James came straight from work to meet her and Annabel at the end of a book event at Waterstones Piccadilly – for David Nicholls – most of which they’d spent hiding in a corner as Leo was there, too, with his agent.
Olivia had clocked her ex-friend early on, and had made an excellent stab at avoiding him, but as everyone had filed out, he and Rowan had been behind them.
‘You were disdainful about his gilet.’
‘I was not!’
He had been. Olivia had overheard Leo muttering something to Rowan about Olivia’s ‘finance bro’ and commenting that James’ gilet made him look like a jockey. She was telling it as though it had been a light-hearted encounter, but it had not.
‘You didn’t like it that you were no longer top dog in my life.’
‘Top dog? I wasn’t in your life at all.’ They looked at each other. ‘Anyway, this is the kind of thing I talk about with my therapist.’
‘Top dogs? Gilets?’ She was being far too light-hearted now.
‘No. Loving people enough.’
‘Is it?’ She tried to sound objective. Not entirely interested. And also not guilty that it may have been her who had led him to the therapist’s door in the first place.
‘And other things. Settling down. Babies . . .’ he whispered – his eyes wide – and her heart gave a lurch.
She wondered exactly what else he’d been talking about in therapy, how many times he had lain on the couch and for how long, and if he was heading back there again after this trip, but she didn’t dare enquire.
Instead, she asked, ‘You’re ready to have a baby now?’
‘Yes. Are you?’
‘Well, truthfully, yes, I am.’ Maybe this was too much truth. She had not said this out loud to anyone before. It was the kind of thing one might reveal to their own therapist. ‘But I think it might be too late.’
‘You still have time.’
‘I’m thirty-nine,’ she responded. ‘So only just.’
His eyes were unblinking. The irises magnetic. She had once thought she’d seen the future in the kaleidoscope of his hazel eyes, but that future had passed them by. Olivia lowered hers to her plate, a suddenly and particularly interesting piece of walnut in her red cabbage.
‘Mum has left Isaac.’
‘She has?’ Olivia was astonished. ‘I haven’t seen anything about that. In the papers or anywhere.’
‘It’s very recent. They’re keeping it hush-hush. Isaac is furious.’
Olivia chose her words with care. ‘I hope Caroline finds happiness,’ she said. ‘I hope she finds . . . better.’
‘She’s happy,’ Leo said. ‘She feels free. Of him. She’s told me so. Oh, another change,’ he threw in, ‘I no longer listen to Phil Collins.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ she replied. ‘I no longer lint-roller people.’ Leo smiled. ‘And with Isaac . . .’ Olivia swallowed; she could barely look at him for worry and for guilt. ‘Tell me, are you able to—’
‘Hello, Leo Greene.’
Olivia immediately recognised the woman standing at their table. It was Slip Dress, from yesterday morning’s panel at Palazzo Tesoro. She was wearing a glamorous fur-trimmed hooded coat, her hair in a chignon, those cats’ eyes glinting.
‘Oh, hello,’ said Leo. ‘Nice to see you again.’
The woman’s mouth curled into a gratified smile.
She placed one hand up to her cheek, blood-red nails on bronzer.
‘I’m here for lunch with a friend,’ she said in her rich Italian accent.
She flicked her head to the end of one of the other benches, where a woman, turning up the collar of her jacket, gave them a timid little wave.
‘I wanted to come over and ask you out for a drink tonight, if you’re free?
Unless you have to be with the other authors always . . .’
She flashed Olivia a condescending smile. Olivia granted her a tight one in return. She set her knife and fork neatly down on her plate.
‘Ah, well, that’s lovely. Thank you very much for the invitation. But I’m afraid I do have to be with the other authors while I’m in Venice,’ said Leo beguilingly. ‘At all times, so I won’t be available.’
‘You are not free tonight?’ The woman glanced back over to her friend, fanning her fingers from her cheek in a small gesture of bewilderment.
‘No, I’m afraid I’m not,’ Leo said pleasantly.
‘That is a shame,’ said the woman with a seductive scowl. ‘We could have had a nice time. I would have taken you to one of the best places in Venice.’
Your apartment? Olivia thought, and a bolt of unwanted jealousy reared up, threatening to throw her out of the saddle she’d been precariously perched on since day one of the book festival.
‘Never mind,’ said Leo chirpily. ‘Thanks again for asking.’
The woman pouted, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, and walked back to her friend.
‘Wow.’ Olivia tilted her head at him and picked up her fork. ‘You should have said yes. She’s very attractive.’ Jealousy – she thought – another reaction to Leo she had to dampen. This trip to Venice was proving to be very hard work.
‘I didn’t want to. I make it a practice not to date my readers.’
Olivia scoffed. ‘Very funny!’
‘What?’ He held up his palms in protestation.
‘You’ve never dated a reader?’