Chapter Five
In the sixteen years he’d lived in England, Leo had paid mainly flying visits to Como.
Now it was great to have time to wander the city, full of designer shops and elegant cafés but almost empty of traffic.
When he’d lived here, diving for your life from weaving scooters or tooting cars had been the norm.
Now, Como was peaceful but still vibrant.
This morning, his walk included a cold drink at a café near Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta – more often known simply as Duomo di Como – its green domes set back from the Gothic facade and spires.
While he enjoyed a glass of chinotto, a fizzy bitter orange, which he drank standing or al banco, he let his eyes wander over the little creatures carved into the cathedral’s stone.
He located his childhood favourites: two chubby little men almost squashed by their task of supporting columns around windows.
Opposite il Duomo stood a row of cream-coloured buildings with an abundance of heavy wrought-iron balconies and window boxes bright with red geraniums, dusty grey shutters at open windows.
As he watched, a gaggle of tourists emerged from behind the cathedral, clutching leaflets that looked as if they’d come from the nearby informazioni turistiche.
Leo noticed that his forearms and legs were darkening in the Italian sun and realised that the headaches that had dogged him over the final fretful months at the Black Falcon had faded in the past couple of weeks of leisure, when he’d taken ferry rides up the lake to Bellagio, Tremezzo, Menaggio and Varenna, places he’d once visited regularly.
He’d even enjoyed cleaning up the tiles in Villetta Nascosta, the slapdash grouting of which had so offended his mum.
A delivery van stopped near a stubby magazine kiosk, and a woman’s voice called to someone in the vehicle and laughed.
She sounded a little like Jade. The last time he’d seen her had been the evening before last at Anton’s Bistro, brave-faced but lacking the usual Jade Beretta smiles and energy.
His mind drifted back to long-ago nights.
The lovemaking. The lying awake, talking long into the night, even though they’d both needed to rise early for work.
Thinking of her all day until he could see her again.
Yet . . . he’d been blinkered. His uni years in Edinburgh had made him aware that there was more out there: pubs, nightclubs, and living far from his parents’ eyes.
Even the police sirens in the night, singing a different tune to their Italian counterparts, had made him feel part of something excitingly unfamiliar.
It had created his ambition to work in the UK, convinced he’d outgrown Como and his family’s hotel.
With shame, he remembered telling Jade they could get Mairead settled with someone else. Had he thought she was a dog to be rehomed? The hurt in Jade’s gold-flecked eyes had presaged the end to everything between them. Instant. No further debate.
That had made the job in Birmingham a still more obvious option – at least, to the unformed person he’d been then, who’d assumed what he’d had with Jade would be easily found with someone else, eventually.
Meantime, he’d been single. He’d been young.
Everybody knew you didn’t settle down with the first woman you fell for.
Leo had felt hot and prickly when Massi visited him to sample Birmingham’s nightlife and recounted a story of some tourist making a nuisance of himself around Jade.
But once Leo had known Jade had sent the man packing, he’d shrugged off the unwelcome feelings in favour of showing his brother a night of rowdy city-centre clubbing.
The following years had brought him workplace promotions, different hotels and hotel chains and eventually buying the Black Falcon . . . the dream-turned-nightmare.
But he was over that now and today was the day he’d mentally designated as the starting point for the rest of his life.
After finishing his drink, he paid his bill and strode past the cathedral and beyond the city walls, crossing the train line and then turning right up busy Viale Lecco.
The breeze smelled of restaurants and the jasmine weaving its waxy white flowers through the railings of an outside staircase.
Mountains stood sentry at the ends of streets, wearing hats of cloud that probably meant showers later.
The climate around the lakes was like that.
Soon he found what he was looking for: a stationer’s shop. When he entered, he saw a vaguely familiar figure with a toddler in a buggy.
‘Leo! Ciao,’ the woman exclaimed, with a flick of her blonde ponytail.
He retrieved her name from his memory bank of schoolfriends. ‘Lavinia? Come va?’ He smiled down into the buggy, where a mop-topped toddler clutched a toy giraffe. ‘Hello, little man.’
The tot beamed shyly.
Lavinia giggled. ‘This is Sergio. My youngest,’ she said proudly.
They exchanged further pleasantries, then Lavinia took her purchases to the counter, leaving Leo to browse the shelves, musing that the likelihood of his becoming a parent had diminished with the end of his relationship with Isabella.
He turned his attention to selecting pens and pencils, ruled and unruled pads, a stapler and highlighters.
Word and Excel had their place in his work processes, but he got something extra from scribbling on paper.
As if he was taking a tiny step on an epic journey and was impatient to embark, he hurried back to Villa Panorama, crossing the glossy vestibule, passing Massimo’s closed office door, following a broad, well-lit passageway past Lounge Panorama.
Outdoors, he strode between guests at tables or in gazebos, drinking coffee and reading.
At the black iron gate, he tapped in the access code before climbing the steep cobbled path with its three elbow-bends to cute Villetta Nascosta.
He’d left the shutters closed and now he let himself into a pleasingly cool interior, laying out his purchases on the breakfast bar alongside his laptop.
The open door provided a breath of air and a view outside to the terrace surrounded by grass and shrubs, as if the city didn’t exist.
Turning to his ruled pad, he began an ideas storm.
UK?? he jotted down. Have lived and worked in England for most of working life.
He wasn’t certain whether that was a minus or a plus, but he was no longer that young adult who hadn’t resisted the call of his British genes.
He added: Now no ties to UK other than a few friends.
And his mate Bryce was the only one he heard from outside an occasional browse around Facebook.
Underneath he wrote: Outside UK????? Warmer weather? Perhaps closer to home. He paused to acknowledge that, for the first time in years, he was thinking of Como as home.
Business or leisure? Country, coast/lake or city? He tapped his pen on the white breakfast bar, then concluded, no restriction, and circled it.
He picked up his phone to check the exchange rate between the British pound and the euro, as he did most days.
After banking the proceeds of his share of the Black Falcon, he had nearly half a million pounds and was waiting for a good time to convert it.
What he read made him decide to hang on and hope for a more favourable rate.
Then he googled Hotels for sale UK, prompting five hundred and forty-seven results. He adjusted the filters to reflect his likely budget, and it dropped to three hundred and one. He commenced scrolling.
Ullapool offered a highly rated hotel on the NC500, the five-hundred-mile-plus tourist route looping north Scotland.
A guesthouse in Sidmouth he dismissed as not central enough. A boutique hotel in Blackpool was too small. A guesthouse in Cumbria priced for a quick sale might mean reduced due to lack of interest.
A hotel in West Sussex looked like a small castle. The price, however, was large. On a fresh page, he wrote: Finance?
Nine-bed in Belfast, grey stone with gables.
Pretty, he thought approvingly. Restaurant and bar.
He hesitated. Too work intensive? He needed to be realistic about what he could manage with staff rather than partners or co-directors.
Stunning views. Not his idea of stunning, not over that little slip of countryside.
Villa Panorama’s views of the lake, the mountains, the city of narrow streets and terracotta roofs . . . They were stunning.
Next, he googled hotels for sale in Italy and, after adjusting the filters, brought the hits down to under fifty.
Straightaway, a hotel in Como caught his eye and clicking on it proved irresistible.
It was a kilometre from the lake and on a steep hillside.
In need of renovation. Ah. That was why a forty-room hotel built in a traditional style was within his budget.
He couldn’t fail to notice the regeneration taking place in Como, both business and residential, but it didn’t suit his plan to join it.
Florence, ten rooms. That was more like it.
Boutique hotel near Turin. Within his budget, but small.
Adding to his ever-lengthening notes, Leo found himself refining his parameters until he established the kind of property where he could get to know the staff and see what he could improve.
When his phone rang, he answered without looking at the screen. ‘Pronto.’
It was a surprise when Teddy’s voice boomed in his ear.
He always sounded slightly plummy, as if he wanted people to think he’d been educated at a private school.
Although Teddy’s upbringing between the UK and South Africa was misty, Leo considered the accent fake.
‘Leonardo, there have been a plethora of thefts at the Black Falcon.’ Teddy sounded impatient.
‘Oh?’ Wondering why Isabella’s father was sharing the information, Leo dropped his pen and frowned out of the open door to where a petite brown sparrow swayed on the end of a branch like a child on a swing.