Chapter Thirty-Five
Olivia was alone. After their kiss, its interruption, a gathering of themselves she didn’t particularly want but Leo seemed set on, they walked back from the restaurant quietly, and she and Leo had said their goodnights on the staircase.
He had been friendly, almost businesslike, after the tumult of their evening: ‘See you in the morning. We’ll go to the Archiginnasio, maybe the La Piazzola market.
’ She had nodded her agreement as he had left her.
She was stunned, overwhelmed, undone. She could never catch him, she thought.
He was a moth in a moonlit sky and she had no net sturdy enough.
Why had he kissed her? Why had he kissed her like that? It wasn’t fair.
She answered the phone.
‘Hi, Gillian. Everything OK?’
‘Yes, hello. Yes, everything’s fine.’ That rushed, breathless voice came down the line again. ‘Well, actually, there’s a problem. I need to go into the Guggenheim today. A minor crisis with the new exhibit.’
‘Oh, really? All day?’
‘Yes, with a late finish, I should imagine. Unavoidable, I’m afraid . . .’
‘Is there no one else who can deal with it?’
‘Not really. They need me. Does that work for you? To come tomorrow instead?’
‘I suppose so. I was—’
‘Great! See you tomorrow, then. Come anytime. You know where the key is . . .’ And the line went dead, and Gillian was gone.
Olivia got up, showered and dressed. She met Leo in the tiny breakfast room downstairs where they ordered custard-filled pastries and strong coffee.
He was buoyant this morning, in sightseeing mode, talking on and on about the places they would visit, like they were a couple of interrailers. She found a moment to interject.
‘My godmother called me,’ she said. ‘I’m going to Venice tomorrow now, not today, so can you please drop me at the station after breakfast? I’ll get the train to Padua and have an evening there.’
‘You don’t want to sightsee with me this morning?’ Leo looked disappointed, but no more than she was. That meal, that night, and now it was all over – again. ‘Are you sure you want to take off? I was enjoying spending time with you. I don’t want to let you go yet.’
But you’ve let me go so many times before, she thought. You let me go last night. What’s different about now?
‘I think it’s for the best. That I go. It’ll save you driving me to Venice this afternoon. You have Isaac’s thing tonight, after all. It will give you more time. So, if you could drop me at the station . . .’
‘Right. Well, maybe . . .’ Leo hesitated. Rubbed at his nose with his thumb. ‘Maybe you could come with me to the meal at Santa Luce tonight and I’ll drive you to Venice in the morning?’
She stared at him. She had no idea what he wanted from her, no idea why he wouldn’t just let her go.
‘Do you really want me to? I mean, would you want another night?’ Of separate beds, of nothing but her escalating yearning for him? Her confusion?
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Olivia again thought she caught a flicker of reservation flit across his eyes.
‘Do! Come with me! There’s going to be a great al fresco ten-course tasting menu, and lots of rich idiots will be turning up .
. . We can manage Isaac,’ he added, like Isaac was a bull who might not be tethered to its post when they got there.
‘Well, if there’s going to be rich idiots .
. .’ she said. She didn’t know. She didn’t know if she wanted to go with him.
She didn’t know if her heart could take more glorious Italian hours with him, or if he would come to regret pitching one too many spontaneous invitations her way.
But she didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want to say goodbye when there could be more of him, more of Italy with him, more chances for electricity and danger and love.
‘OK,’ she said finally, for she was a fool, and fools make the worst of bad decisions, all the time. ‘If you’re sure, I’ll come with you.’
‘Great,’ said Leo merrily, and, giving her a wink, he tucked back into his pastry.
‘My godmother refuses to use maps. She would always say road signs and instinct are quite sufficient,’ said Olivia. They were in the Spider on their way to Santa Luce, near Pisa. She had a huge paper map spreadeagled across her lap, and one of Leo’s knees.
‘And was she right?’
‘Mostly, not.’ Olivia giggled, letting a funny memory of Gillian and Charlie come to her.
She and Charlie and Gillian had driven to Hastings once, in Gillian’s Mini, for a small holiday.
They had stayed in a guesthouse with a grumpy landlady near the front, had eaten fish and chips sitting on the sea wall, had played the penny arcades.
And it had taken them way longer to get there and back than it should have done.
‘Dad would yell stuff like “Turn now, Gillian, Now!”’ Olivia continued to tell Leo.
‘Which she completely ignored, and then when we arrived somewhere three hours late, she blamed his “poor navigational skills” for putting her off!’
Leo laughed. He didn’t offer an anecdote of his own featuring Isaac and Caroline, but Olivia remembered the one from last night.
The canal. The crying little boy. And still Leo didn’t truly acknowledge what a bully that man had been to him.
‘Anyway,’ she added, letting the happy memory of Charlie and Gillian melt away. ‘Let’s hope this one can help us.’
She traced her finger over the road she thought they were on. Obviously, there was no satnav in this vintage car, no internet connection for their phones; they’d already pitched up to two farms and an empty cattle-shed.
‘Oh! I think it’s a right turn just up here,’ she said.
‘Sure?’
‘Not sure. But let’s give it a go.’
Leo had been a little quiet on the journey.
Olivia wondered if he regretted asking her along.
After breakfast, they had put his sightseeing plan into action, walking the cobbled streets of Piazza Maggiore, visiting Archiginnasio and the market at La Piazzola.
She wouldn’t put any pressure on tonight, she thought.
Or herself. No expectations. She would treat this last night as frivolous, Italian fun – outdoor dining, lavender fields (for she had already imagined them as a backdrop for the farmhouse that Leo had told her was called La Clementina), and a soft, glorious Tuscan sunset.
She even had on a dress to match the aesthetic – a floaty white thing with lace panels.
They would be friends. They would have one last, confusing, platonic night together.
Tomorrow could be held at arm’s length. Tomorrow was a painting she didn’t want to imagine herself brushed into, not yet.
She didn’t want that at all. She didn’t want to be just friends, in a white dress. She wanted him. But would she be brave enough to tell him that?
Leo turned into a single-lane road, almost a track.
They rumbled along it for a while, shrugging hopefully at each other, then there was a sharp bend to the right and there, etched into the side of an undulating slope, was the most beautiful stone farmhouse – the colour of speckled oatmeal, with duck-egg blue dollhouse shutters at its doors and windows, a flat terracotta roof and, laid out behind it, the long accordion keys of rolling lavender fields.
‘It’s beautiful!’ she exclaimed, giving herself a delighted ‘tick’ for the lavender.
‘Isn’t it just?’ Leo manoeuvred the Spider up the track narrowing by the second. ‘I’d seen a photo, but it hardly did it justice.’
They parked on a patch of pearly gravel at the side of the farmhouse, next to a red Mazda and a mint-green Fiat 500, and stepped out to take in the hot and sweet air, the hazy horizon, and the greedy hum of plump bees in the distant lavender.
They walked around the far corner of the building and saw on the gently sloping lawn behind, before it gave way to violet stripes, one very long, unmade trestle table and three stacks of charming farmhouse chairs.
‘This will be wonderful,’ Olivia said, impressed.
‘Thank you for bringing me.’ They wandered a way down the lawn, took in the view in its full magnificence.
It was romantic, she thought. It was so bloody romantic.
The farmhouse, the rolling fields of lavender.
How could they just be friends? How could she deny how she was feeling?
‘My pleasure,’ Leo replied. He was so handsome. He was so close. He was a man who had shown her all sides of himself.
It rose up within her, her confession. It had to come out. All her resolve and her best-laid plans for this day disappeared on the fragrant air. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘What is it?’ He glanced at her, concerned, his hazel eyes iridescent and questioning.
She gulped. ‘Something that’s bothering me. Quite a lot, actually.’
She had to say it. She had to tell him. She couldn’t help it.
‘What is it? You’re worrying me.’
‘I’m getting feelings for you,’ she said, the words tumbling out of her. ‘I’m sorry, but I am. I just needed to say it out loud. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’ He went to touch her arm, his eyes full of warmth, of the beautiful countryside, of the realisation she must have made a terrible mistake; she took a step backwards.
‘But I am, because it shouldn’t be happening. I just needed to tell you. I . . . I don’t know what—’
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s not!’ she cried. ‘I’ve just been feeling worse and worse since I’ve been on the road with you!
You kiss me, three times, then it’s been separate rooms. You confide in me, some of your deepest childhood memories, then it’s goodnight on the staircase.
You’ve made me fall back almost in love with you and it’s not fair!
’ She was nearly crying, against the majesty of the backdrop and the beauty of him.
He stepped towards her. ‘Don’t hug me!’ she cried.
‘Don’t you dare hug me or I really don’t stand a chance! ’