Chapter Four #2
Leo turned back to Jade. To her relief, he didn’t comment on being mistaken for her brother. ‘Come out for pasta. It’ll make Mum feel better to know you’re not sitting home alone.’
Jade felt herself weaken. Every evening of the last couple of weeks she’d watched TV and tried not to stew about the pensione and Mairead’s will.
Reluctantly, she said, ‘OK, I’ll come.’ She glanced at her watch.
‘Are you going somewhere till seven-thirty?’ She ignored a twang from her conscience.
Mairead would have beckoned him through the apartment door to the cosy kitchen and given him a cool drink.
‘Give me a job,’ he suggested.
‘Don’t have any.’ It wasn’t even a fib. The small team at the pensione worked like a machine.
He rocked on his heels to peer through the doorway to the empty breakfast room, where chairs with scrolled wooden backs waited around square tables with pink cloths diagonally over white cloths.
One wall was painted the same pink, hung with heavy oil paintings; the other walls were white and lit with wall lamps. ‘OK if I sit in there?’
‘Sure.’ She turned to the computer on the reception desk, intending to find work to do rather than monitor the desk from the apartment and feel guilty that she’d left him out here.
Leo vanished into the breakfast room. It was unsettling to see him back at Three Sisters.
In the two years they’d been together he’d been a frequent visitor, always happy to help guests with suitcases so Jade would be free to spend time with him all the sooner.
She shoved that memory firmly back in the box labelled way in the past.
She noticed a new-booking notification via the Pensione Three Sisters’ website and clicked on it, pleased, because direct bookings were more profitable than those received through booking sites.
Better still, today was Wednesday and the booking was Friday to Monday, filling one of the rooms available after a late cancellation had incurred a fifty per cent fee.
To obtain a full price booking on top was a result.
Then the name leapt out at her. Erin Ferguson.
Her stomach lurched. Ferguson might be a common name in Scotland, but it would be an enormous coincidence for one Erin Ferguson to be in Gran’s will and a completely different one make this booking.
Jade’s breathing fluttered. She’d prepared herself for contact via Mary Smith, but not for this.
It was as if she’d known Jade was already making plans for Pensione Three Sisters and was hopping on a plane to check nothing untoward was happening.
Would she be difficult? Or friendly? Jade wasn’t certain which she’d prefer.
Her grandmother’s letter floated back to her .
. . I have a dear wish that you’ll form attachments to each other and not be alone, any of you.
A pity Gran had been upset by the prospect because, if Jade couldn’t have her dear grandmother, she’d be happier alone.
She wished Vittoria was here. Vittoria would have looped her arms around her and said sensible things, like, ‘I think I’d be filled with curiosity and want a peep too,’ or, ‘Perhaps she just wants to meet you. You’re her sister, you know.’
Jade would have insisted, ‘A half-sister,’ prompting Vittoria to pat her shoulder and say, ‘But still a sister.’
Jade’s eye fell on the space for notes to host. Erin had typed:
I thought we should meet. Best wishes, Erin Ferguson.
Somehow, this brisk brevity grounded her. They were adults. It would be weird to be face to face with a sibling she’d only now learnt about – it was weird just to know she existed – but no amount of wishing was going to rewrite history.
Joey’s chicks were coming home to roost.
She utilised the message function to reply.
Of course. Best wishes, Jade Beretta.
Erin must have still been online because a response zipped back.
I see there’s another room empty. Have emailed Mary Smith to ask her to pass a message to Rosalie Beretta asking if she wants to join us. Hope this is OK.
Crossly, Jade thought that if Erin had already emailed Mary, it was a bit late to ask if it was OK. She typed, I suppose so. Then she deleted the snappy comment and answered with a neutral OK.
Finally, at seven o’clock, she put out the sign that said in both Italian and English that Reception was closed and provided the emergency number. A quick peep told her that Leo still sat in the breakfast room, busy with his phone, so she slipped into the apartment to discard her black dress.
The bathroom was furnished with a big walk-in shower beside the cast-iron bath.
The shower had been easier for Gran and Jade liked it too.
The side jets made it possible to keep her hair dry atop her head while she washed with vanilla-scented soap.
She liked vanilla products. They felt creamy on her skin and the scent was a little like the pastries they served each day, familiar in a world where everything else had changed.
Once out of the shower and dried, she dressed in white trousers and a loose aqua-coloured top that went with her skin, remembering Gran saying, ‘Olive skin? What nonsense. Olives are green or black, and you’re golden brown.
’ Gran’s pinky-white wrinkly skin had turned waxy white while she’d been in hospital.
But Jade shoved that memory away, preferring to remember the rosy-cheeked and twinkly-eyed Gran who’d helped her choose pretty wallpaper or elegant lampshades for the guestrooms.
After applying tinted moisturiser and mascara, Jade let down her hair, finger-combing the waves before sweeping it up again, using the same plain clasp she’d worn all day but letting a few ringlets fall free.
She stepped into flat black sandals and checked the finished effect in a long mirror.
She might have lost a few pounds lately, but would never be classed as anything but sturdy.
She remembered her ex, Edoardo, watching her help a woman with a large suitcase, crying, ‘You’re not a woman – you’re a horse!
’ He’d thought it funny, but it had made Jade feel ungainly.
Leo had never made her feel that way, but he was bigger than Edoardo so maybe he didn’t notice.
Edoardo had never been such a good fit with her .
. . but Edoardo had been in Como while Leo had been far away, living his life in England.
She looked her reflection in the eye. ‘Why the hell are you letting yourself in for dinner with Leo?’
OK, Sheenagh had apparently ordained it, but Jade could have called her with a straightforward, ‘Very kind of you, but I need space. Call Leo off.’ They’d have laughed over her bluntness. They were such long-standing friends that Jade could even have added, ‘My head’s all over the place.’
She checked the time. Two minutes to seven-thirty.
Despite her misgivings, she stuffed her phone and key into a small white bag and strode from the apartment, across the lobby to the breakfast room, where Leo sat reading something on his phone. ‘Ready?’ she asked coolly.
He rose with no sign of noticing or resenting her lack of enthusiasm. ‘And hungry. Let’s go.’
They stepped outside where the soft air felt warmer than her blood, the sky the pale blue of early evening.
When they took the few steps around the corner, the seating outside Anton’s Bistro welcomed them, black tables topped by square parasols and spindly wrought-iron planters frothing with orange gerbera.
At the only table marked Riservato she selected a chair bathed by the evening sun.
Most of her long day had been spent indoors.
Relaxing with a sigh, she gazed across Piazza Cavour, busy with people out enjoying a cooler part of the day and pretty with shrubs and trees, wondering who would want to leave Como if they could live here.
Then she glanced at the tall man seated opposite her, his dark hair stirring in the breeze, and she had her answer. Leo.
Before he could feel her gaze, she turned to wave at Hector who ran the bistro with his wife, Mia.
Hector’s grizzled hair was brushed straight back from his forehead and his grey moustache turned up at the ends, as if from his habitual smiles.
Slipping swiftly between tables towards them, he called, ‘Come stai?’ and winked at Jade as he provided menus with a flourish.
For him to bustle up so promptly, he was probably curious about seeing her with a man as she hadn’t dated since Edoardo.
She smiled back. ‘Molto bene, grazie. E tu?’
After Jade and Hector had assured each other that they were in good health, he nodded politely to Leo, though still with evident curiosity. ‘Buonasera.’ He took their drinks order.
After he’d left, it was as if their table had entered a bubble of silence whereas all the other tables were enveloped in chatter and laughter, mainly in Italian and English, though she also detected German.
As she already knew she’d order pizza marinara, with which the chef, Emma, had a magic touch, Jade watched the passing people in all manner of clothes and robes, hats and head coverings, and with every shade of skin.
Locals tended to hurry in purposeful straight lines and, if they were using a phone, it was clamped to an ear while they gesticulated with their spare hand.
Tourists meandered, using their phones to take selfies or photos of the tall, balconied buildings in their muted cream, yellow or pink.
Although the lake itself couldn’t be seen from their seats, the mountains were already turning hazy as daylight waned.
Jade sipped the rosé she’d ordered, fresh and clean on her tongue. To break the silence, she put on Gran’s voice. ‘I’ve sworn off whisky for a wee while.’
Leo glanced up from the menu, printed on plain white card with Anton’s Bistro in black script across the top, amusement jumping into his eyes. ‘What happens in the top floor of Villa Panorama, stays at Villa Panorama.’