Chapter Six
Jade had spent all day taming butterflies in her stomach as she wondered how she’d greet her half-sisters. Finally she decided on finding reasons to be close to Reception, letting Yara check them in, then stepping in to spirit them off to their rooms.
What she’d been unprepared for was Erin, the first to arrive, looking like Gran in old photos – if Gran had ever been glossily groomed enough to wear white linen trousers.
Highlights suggested Erin’s hair was naturally a few shades darker than its current sable and her eyes were not unlike Jade’s – like whisky.
Apart from a jolt that this sibling thing was real, Jade felt newly aware that she hadn’t inherited Gran’s elfin lines and obedient, straight hair.
And, for a moment, she wanted to grab Erin’s lilac-coloured backpack, the swanky kind with compartments for everything including your high-end laptop, and hurl it back through the front door, crying, ‘You might look like her but she’s my gran, not yours!
And Pensione Three Sisters is mine too!’ But that would be outlandish. And untrue.
Gran would want me to be nice, she reminded herself, and summoned a curve to her lips. ‘Hi, I’m Jade. Yara will check you in.’
After eyeing Jade contemplatively, Erin answered in a soft Dundee accent.
‘Good to meet you.’ Going unerringly to the correct pocket of a crossbody bag that matched the swanky backpack, she extricated her passport and printed its number on the registration form Yara presented to her, oozing poise from the top of her precise bob to the soles of her white espadrilles.
When Yara produced the key to room 402, Jade plucked it from her fingers. ‘I’ll take it from here, Yara, thanks.’ Ignoring the younger woman’s surprise, she rounded the desk with a professional smile. ‘I’ll show you upstairs, Erin. Shall I carry one of your bags?’
Erin, looking perfectly comfortable with her backpack and her crossways bag, said easily, ‘I’m good, thanks.’
They were like two strangers . . . Jade hauled her thoughts to a halt.
They were two strangers. They just happened to share half their DNA.
Acutely aware of this small, composed woman’s footsteps behind her, Jade ascended the marble staircase.
As Pensione Three Sisters had no lift, at least one pink, bow-legged chair stood on each landing for guests who needed a break between flights, but Erin stepped lightly all the way to the top floor as if she spent an hour on a Stairmaster at the gym every day.
Jade unlocked the heavy wooden door of room 402 and then entered, dropping the key on the dressing table.
It winked brassily in a shaft of light from the window, its oval fob stamped with Pensione Three Sisters with the room number in the middle.
‘I thought you’d like a view of the lake,’ she said, as if it had been a deliberate act on her part rather than Erin and Rosalie’s bookings replacing cancellations for two of the nicest rooms. Each had a black wrought-iron balcony with a view over Piazza Cavour to the lake, twinkling under ragged clouds today as if someone had shredded a grey-and-white rug in the blue sky.
The floors were the same satiny, honey-coloured tiles as the rest of the building.
The feature wall behind Erin’s bed was papered in bold patterns of red, gold and Trafalgar blue, and the furniture was glossy walnut.
The bed’s headboard boasted a carving of bees around a single flower.
Erin took it all in. ‘Impressive.’ She turned to study Jade again, as if going through the same mental process of accepting their relationship as Jade had.
‘I guess you’re wondering why I’m here? Well .
. . it’s partly curiosity. It’s not every day that you discover half-siblings or that you’ve inherited a share in a small hotel.
But mainly because, in her letter, Gran asked me to visit as soon as I could. ’
Gran had left Erin a letter too? And Jade had been the only one to call Mairead Campbell ‘Gran’.
She felt a spear of something that felt suspiciously like jealousy.
Then remorse flooded in. The reason she’d been the only one was that Mairead’s own son had insisted she keep away from his other kids and Gran had had to silently nurse that weight in her heart.
‘She sent you a letter?’ she asked, fighting to keep her voice pleasant.
Erin nodded. She didn’t volunteer what Gran had written, but gave a small smile. ‘She left it with the solicitor. I never met Gran,’ she continued wistfully, before adding, ‘I’m sure you’re experiencing all kinds of emotions, but I’m not here to give you undue trouble.’
Jade hesitated. Undue trouble? Then some trouble might be inevitable?
Rather than interrogate that, she said, ‘I suppose you want to see everything – though I can’t show you occupied guestrooms, of course.
’ She swallowed to ease a suddenly dry throat.
‘When Rosalie Beretta arrives, we’ll be full for the weekend. ’
Erin nodded. Her hair bounced as if she were a model in a shampoo ad.
Mairead’s hair had behaved like that before age had leached the colour and moisture from it, and Jade wondered if Erin would someday end up with hair that sprang in all directions in a wayward dandelion clock.
Perhaps she’d favour clothes that blazed with colour by then, too.
‘I suppose I do want to see what’s what.
But I’m more interested in you. We’re . .
.’ For the first time she looked unsure.
Neither of them supplied an ending to the sentence. Sisters. Half-sisters. From the same father.
‘Can we get a wee coffee somewhere?’ Erin glanced out at the piazza and sun-dappled lake and mountain greenery through the balcony doors, as if eager to feel the heat on her face or enjoy the shade of a parasol at one of the crowded pavement cafés. She looked like a macchiato-and-biscotti person.
Jade checked her watch. ‘It’s past four-thirty.
I’m afraid that from five till seven I’ll need to be near the reception desk.
’ Catching a glimpse of vulnerability on Erin’s face at her brusqueness, she was immediately ashamed, knowing that Mairead wouldn’t recognise this stilted, unwelcoming Jade.
‘But we could drink a cup in the kitchen, if you don’t mind that I might have to break off to deal with guests. ’
‘That would be great. I prefer tea, to be honest. It’s just what you say, isn’t it? “Get a coffee”? And sorry I spoke without considering your working hours.’ Erin shrugged out of her backpack, transferred a bright red phone from her crossways bag to one pocket and the room key to the other.
‘I like tea, too,’ Jade admitted, as she led the way from the pretty room.
Once they’d negotiated the many steps back down to Reception, Jade was surprised to find Vittoria chatting to Yara, despite having left at two o’clock.
She’d known Erin and Rosalie would be arriving today, and Jade wondered whether her friend had returned to be on hand should support be needed.
Warmed by the notion, she made introductions.
‘Vittoria, this is Erin Ferguson. Erin, Vittoria’s my right-hand woman. And you’ve met Yara already.’
Yara smiled. ‘Hello.’ As Jade hadn’t confided in Yara, their relationship being friendly employer-employee rather than proper friends, it wasn’t surprising that she showed no signs of knowing who Erin was. Vittoria, though she spoke good English, chose to greet Erin with, ‘Buonasera. Come stai?’
‘I can only reply “Solo Inglese”.’ Erin’s eyes gleamed as if she got that Vittoria was speaking Italian to show Erin that she was out of place. ‘Learning Italian’s on my to-do list.’
Then, at the clatter of luggage wheels on the tiles, everybody turned towards the glass doors.
A young, slender woman with a fair, streaky ponytail halted as if unnerved to encounter four pairs of eyes.
She stood her small, pink suitcase upright.
‘Hi. Rosalie Beretta.’ Her accent was unmistakably English.
For a beat, Jade just looked, noting the dark eyebrows like Jade’s own, but the hollow cheeks that added an air of fragility.
At least she wasn’t a pixie like Gran and Erin.
She was as tall as Jade, though willowy.
Her purple summer trousers were baggy and her top was short enough to show a pierced navel.
A tattoo of a swallow in flight decorated the side of her neck and several rings glinted on her hands – including her left thumb.
If Erin was polished, Rosalie was . . . not.
Gran would probably have approved of her as ‘hippy’ or ‘boho’.
Jade stepped forward. ‘Welcome to Pensione Three Sisters. I’m Jade Beretta. And this is Erin, Vittoria and Yara.’
‘Hi.’ Erin glanced from Rosalie to Jade and back again, perhaps processing her own thoughts about the differing appearances of the three women Joey Beretta had fathered.
Jade found herself speaking stiltedly, like a novice actor told to improvise. ‘Yara will check you in. Erin and I were about to have a look round and then coffee in the apartment. Now you can join us.’
‘Beretta?’ Yara asked, sounding interested at Rosalie sharing Jade’s surname. Obviously she hadn’t glanced at the names of today’s arrivals and, belatedly, Jade realised that it would probably have been better if Yara had known what was going on.
Rosalie stepped closer. ‘Yes. I’m here till Monday.’
Casting Jade an inquisitive look, Yara began typing quickly at the computer keyboard. Their system was available both in Italian and English. Yara often chose English, as Gran used to. If Vittoria or Carlotta stepped in, they used Italian. Jade used whichever language it happened to be on.
While everyone else waited in silence, Rosalie completed the formalities. Then she turned large, light-brown eyes on the others, her gaze flicking from Jade to Erin, her expression friendly, yet reserved.