Chapter 43
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‘I know this won’t be arrivederci forever,’ Carlo chuckled, pulling Alessio’s bags from the boot of the car, which he’d double-parked behind a pair of carabinieri vehicles in front of Foggia’s train station. ‘The trouble with Impastino is that it gets under your skin. It’s hard to remove.’
‘Skin? Or nails?’ Alessio remarked playfully, picking at some flour which seemed permanently embedded under his fingernails.
Francesca, though relatively quiet on the drive from Impastino, managed a smile. ‘That can be your little reminder of us.’
‘It will take much more than a decent nail-scrubbing to forget you all.’ On that note, Alessio turned to Carlo and opened his arms. ‘Come on, get in here.’
At least a foot taller than Alessio, Carlo launched into a fierce man hug, lifting him off the ground. ‘Non te ne andare, Alessio!’ he wailed melodramatically, prompting Francesca to whip out her phone and catch the moment in a series of ridiculous long-limbed slapstick tableaux. ‘Mi mancherai!’
‘Oi!’ Alessio pulled his way free, laughing in turn. ‘How you’re single, mate, I’ll never understand!’
Francesca smiled. ‘Carlo is just waiting for his true love to come save him. Aren’t you?’
Carlo pinched his fingers and waggled them with Italian passion under Alessio’s nose. ‘I am waiting for a lovely Australian girl. When you get home, put in a good word for me. Tell them I cook, eh? Who wouldn’t love that, no?’
‘A tall Italian man who lives in a tiny southern Italian town by the sea, who can cook, has a wicked sense of humour, and the strength of ten burly men?’
‘Sì, perfetto. Let’s go with that.’ Carlo nodded furiously. ‘The ad practically writes itself.’
‘Grazie di tutto,’ Alessio said, and he knew from Carlo’s expression that he had struck a chord.
Carlo kissed and embraced Francesca, pulling her suitcase from the boot and lengthening the handle. ‘Arrivederci. Have fun in London. See you in a week.’ With a last wave, he hopped back in the car and slipped into the traffic flow without indicating.
Alessio and Francesca stood for a moment until Carlo’s rusting yellow Fiat Panda turned the corner.
Francesca cleared her throat and tried to keep her voice light. ‘To Bari airport?’ Her smile was laced with apprehension and a tinge of sadness.
Alessio looked down as her fingers joined his and held on tight.
The hands he had spent so much time studying, watching, trying to emulate as they created magic on those floury boards in the kitchen late at night.
The hands that pulled at his clothing, that trickled down the bare skin of his back while she writhed beneath him.
The hands that fed him the humblest yet most complex morsels, her fingers tenderly grazing his lips.
The hands that reached for him. That played with him.
Teased him . . . and that now sought comfort, betraying her fear that she was destined to lose him.
‘It’s time.’ He heard the words leave his mouth, almost disembodied, but they were whipped away on the morning breeze that danced past the singular sandstone facade of the station.
She gave a despondent nod. ‘At least we have the two-hour journey to the airport together.’
He gripped her hand a little tighter, and they went inside.
Francesca watched as her suitcase dropped then dipped from view on the conveyor belt behind the check-in steward’s desk. It all happened as if in slow motion.
The gentleman, wearing his navy three-piece corporate suit, smiled and slipped her boarding pass over the counter, gesturing in the direction of the security clearance area.
Despite how the air had thickened around them, Francesca knew that if she lingered too long it would only make things worse. Her path was now set, and she had committed to seeing it through.
As they walked towards the security gate, Francesca felt Alessio pull them to a stop. He twirled her around on the spot, as if she were a ballerina performing a pirouette.
‘I don’t know how I am going to cope with missing you.’ That was the first thing her clouded, emotional mind could muster.
He pulled her close and pressed a slow and tender kiss to her forehead. ‘Things will get easier. With time. You just never know what lies around the corner.’
Francesca rose on her toes to catch him in one more kiss, but she felt their parting rushing inexorably towards her.
Why couldn’t this summer just last . . . forever?
Francesca felt her cheeks warm and the skin under her eyes sting. ‘You do it, please. I can’t . . .’ Her teary gaze scanned his. She had nothing more to give.
He nodded then whispered, ‘Ciao, Francesca.’
‘Ciao, Ale . . .’
Turning, he walked back towards the check-in desks, pulling his suitcase behind him.
Francesca waited until he was out of sight before she let the tears fall. She felt hollow. Delicate. As if the gentlest breeze might reduce her to dust.
Eventually a uniformed member of the cleaning staff pulled Francesca back to the present. ‘Miss, are you ok?’ The woman was watching her with concern.
In the movies the line to follow would always be, ‘Yes.’ But Francesca had no desire to play along. There was no romanticising the moment. The summer she’d wished could be rendered endless, and not just in her heart, had come to a close.
She turned and said, ‘Thank you, but no, I’m not,’ before continuing through the double doors marked Partenze.
An hour into the flight, Francesca found herself fighting three things: her hair, which sprang from her head defiantly, refusing to surrender to the headrest; sleep, in which she might have found some respite; and her emotions, which threatened to overwhelm her every time her mind flicked back to Alessio.
But eventually, the white noise of the cabin, coloured by the mechanical clanking of the plane’s engine, recycled air spurting from the overhead outlets and the intermittent grumbling of an infant further up the cabin, lulled her into a doze.
She felt completely drained, as if her entire being had been sapped of its brightness and energy.
She couldn’t tell how long had passed when a gentle hand tapped her shoulder. ‘Miss, would you like some morning tea?’
Francesca blinked her eyes open to find a petite red-headed woman with a refined British accent smiling down at her. ‘Uhm . . .’ Francesca’s voice cracked. ‘No, thank you.’
But just as she was about to close her eyes again, the flight attendant pressed, ‘Are you sure? I make a tremendous cuppa. One I feel you might find hard to resist.’
This was odd. Her curiosity piqued, Francesca glanced at the woman again, who was now proffering a steaming-hot drink. ‘Really, I—’ But the gleam in the flight attendant’s beaming smile had suddenly changed. It was joyous, brighter than before.
Francesca’s groggy eyes suddenly narrowed in on the cup she was holding.
What?!
She squinted then opened her eyes as wide as she could.
Her cup!
The tazza della pasta!
With shaking hands she accepted the cup and studied it. The same decorative trim. The chip on the handle. The chip on the lip’s edge. It was perhaps the most familiar object in her life. And the most precious.
A delicious calming relief washed through Francesca’s limbs, spreading out from her heart. It trickled through her legs, along her arms, down to the tips of her fingers which cradled that warm little cup.
Francesca pivoted to face the flight attendant. ‘Where is he?’
The woman’s smile now reached the corners of her eyes, and she winked before continuing nonchalantly down the cabin’s corridor with her tea trolley.
Francesca leaned into the aisle to follow the flight attendant’s progress. Then, as she turned to look the other way, he was suddenly there.
‘As if I wasn’t going to come along to watch you in all your pasta glory.’
‘Ale . . .’ Her free hand clasped her hot cheek in disbelief. ‘But, what . . .? How did y—?’
‘I was always on this flight. Paid the guy at the gate fifty euros to ensure I could be the last to board.’
An incredulous burst of laughter erupted from her lips. ‘You did that?’
‘I’m practically a local now. Right? I can play the whole Italian bureaucracy-corruption game.’ He kneeled down next to her in the narrow aisle.
‘Alessio . . .’ Her eyes settled on the little cup of tea sitting in her lap. ‘Ale, none of the last three months really makes any sense. This. Us. None of it.’
‘It shouldn’t. And yet, it makes the most sense of anything I’ve known, lived, seen, felt . . . and I don’t want it to end.’
‘Neither do I.’ Francesca reached across and caught the back of Alessio’s neck, pulling him in for a kiss. As they parted, her attention returned to the little cup. ‘This means the world to me. Onestamente.’
‘I know it does.’ He took her hand and brushed his lips tenderly across the back of it. ‘And you know what, I realised something about this little cup.’
Francesca smiled, leaning in again. In a whisper, she breathed, ‘Tell me.’
‘Your perfect measure. The only way to make pasta . . .’
She rolled her eyes playfully. ‘Eh, sì, “Signor One hundred grams”, needs to measure everything.’
Alessio pressed a low laugh into the back of her hand. ‘The cup, when full, holds exactly one hundred grams. That’s it. To the gram.’ He made a chef’s kiss gesture with his right hand.
‘What?’
‘It does. I measured it one night.’ He took the cup from her lap and took a sip of tea. ‘And it can also hold a very good cuppa.’
‘Allora, whose victory is it? Yours or mine? Is the cup correct, or the amount it holds?’
Tapping his fingers thoughtfully against the cup, he said, ‘It’s our victory. Together.’
Francesca’s expression bloomed with delight. ‘It’s as if it were always meant to be.’
‘It’s pasta-tively destiny.’