Chapter Eight #3
When he’d bought another couple of beers, he clinked her bottle with his. Mindful that his mum would be expecting a report, he asked, ‘How’s it going with the sisters? They seem OK.’
Jade’s gaze wandered along the row of optics behind the bar. ‘They are OK.’
He waited.
Her features drooped. ‘They don’t want to be bought out of Three Sisters.
They say Gran wanted them to have it, so .
. .’ She shrugged one shoulder, bare apart from those distracting straps.
‘And Rosalie pointed out that I’ll only be getting as much of the pensione as I am because Joey’s refused his right – and she’s correct.
If Three Sisters had been in England instead of in Italy, Gran could have left it however she chose.
But in Italy?’ She lifted her hands in defeat. ‘The law’s different.’
‘I’m sure it’s been a massive shock.’ He sipped from the cold beer bottle, noticing Jade’s warm, bare upper arm occasionally brushing his. It felt like a caress. ‘But you look to be getting on OK, generally.’
‘Yeah.’ But then she added a sigh. ‘Kind of. I feel weird about Rosalie.’
He appraised her from the corners of his eyes.
She sat comfortably, an elbow on the bar, her beer bottle loosely encircled by her fingers, her hair pouring down her back in the riotous curls common in Italy.
To most people, she’d look Italian and sound it until she spoke English. ‘In what way?’ he asked.
When she turned to look at him, her breasts pressed against the fabric of her dress.
‘Her experience of Joey is the opposite of mine and Erin’s.
She knew him. They lived together. He took her to school when she was small and bought her clothes, and—’ She rubbed her forehead as if it ached.
‘She loves him. Although she says she doesn’t know where he is, he’s real to her.
Not just a name and a few old photos. She talks about him fondly, with all his wandering from job to job and place to place, at ease in the world but unworldly.
It feels like a barrier. I haven’t discussed it with Erin, but I sense she finds it weird, too.
She only met him once when she was too young to remember, because her mum didn’t want Joey around.
Not sure how Erin feels about that now.’
Her air of vulnerability made him want to hug her.
Instead, he said, ‘It’s hard for me to imagine how you’re feeling.
’ He’d been lucky to be brought up by two parents who lived and loved together.
Jade had had no contact with her parents at all.
Not even a birthday present. ‘How do you think being in business with your sisters will go?’
She blew out a breath, misery entering her eyes. ‘I have to make it work out. We’re going to get Mary Smith to draw up an agreement. But it’s just . . .’ She used the side of her thumb to wipe under an eye, sniffed, then scrabbled in her bag for a tissue.
His heart shrank. He didn’t remember seeing Jade cry since school.
Not even when they’d had that conversation about working in England that had led to her promptly excising herself from his life.
He contented himself with briefly covering her hand, feeling skin like satin beneath his. ‘I hope it’ll be OK,’ he murmured.
She slipped her hand away to blow her nose and he instantly missed the contact.
‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘Because they’ll be able to outvote me, like Isabella and Teddy outvoted you.
Already, I mentioned that Gran and I had been putting funds aside to reroof, because we know – knew – old roofs need periodic inspection.
Erin said, “Let’s make sure that money needs to be spent before we spend it.
” She knows nothing, but she questioned my management.
I think she realised and then she laughed it off.
’ She blew her nose again, then sipped her beer.
‘They’re to come back when Mary’s got everything sorted.
We’ll all sign the agreement.’ Her face crumpled and her words began to disintegrate.
‘And I’m g-going to h-have to clear out Gran’s room for them for visits, because I can hardly put them in guestrooms and charge them, can I?
And they’ll h-have the right to look through Gran’s things and take what they want. ’
Her head fell forward and her shoulders heaved.
Helpless, because everything she said was true, but felt so unfair, Leo patted her back and let her cry, hating the tremors and sobs that racked her body.
Reaching along the bar for napkins, he pressed them into her hand.
‘Haven’t you felt able to sort out her things?
’ Though never having had to do it, he shrank from the task of going through the possessions of a lost loved one.
As if his words brought her back to herself, she visibly pulled herself together like a puppet gathering its own strings. ‘Not yet. Sorry to blubber and blether, as Gran would have said.’ A last wipe of mascara and a sniffle, and she finished her beer in a long chug.
‘Another?’ he asked, reaching for his own cold bottle.
She shook her head. ‘I’ll go home.’
He thought how that home was changing around her. ‘I’ll walk you.’ At least that way he’d still have her company for a little while longer.
She didn’t argue, even when he lightly took her hand to help her off the bar stool and then didn’t let it go. It fitted into his, warm and familiar.
Outside, a dusky purple sky looked ready to welcome the night.
Soon they were crossing Piazza Volta, where black iron chairs and tables crowded outside eateries.
The four-storey pastel-coloured buildings that surrounded them were topped with sloping terracotta roofs, ornamented with shutters, plaster mouldings and painted patterns.
The warm air was redolent of food and happy chatter as they wandered back to Piazza Cavour, encountering mainly foot traffic between the occasional bus or taxi.
Outside Three Sisters, Jade finally withdrew her hand from his and dusted the palms together, as if physically brushing him off.
It made him feel like a bothersome fly. ‘Have you found a business to buy?’ She sounded as if she was retreating, redirecting him from the memory of her tears.
Her hair blew across her face as if reluctant to be hidden, and she pushed it back.
‘I’m looking at one in the UK and one in Italy.
’ He edged forward to allow a family with a buggy to pass.
The evening streets were busy, here, between two piazzas, yet he felt as if he and Jade floated in a bubble.
He didn’t want passing pedestrians to burst in and destroy their fragile connection.
‘And tending towards Italy.’ He heard surprise in his own voice as he realised it was true, so added a joke.
‘What if I return to England and find I’m wanted in connection with car thefts?
Teddy would probably be happy to fit me up for it.
’ He didn’t want to admit that bloody Teddy had had the freaking cheek to suggest he return to support Isabella while Teddy pissed off back to South Africa.
Not only did it enrage him – he didn’t want Jade to see him as someone so easily manipulated.
‘What sort of property?’ It was her turn to step aside, this time to allow through three laughing couples in a group. They looked to be in their sixties and two of the couples were holding hands, as his parents still did sometimes.
They were lucky. Here he was, a year from forty, newly single, his first love’s sadness seeping into his heart while her question reminded him that he should be concentrating on forging a brand-new life for himself.
‘To manage alone means twelve to sixteen bedrooms and a small staff, I think. Traditional rather than modern, but not in need of renovation, because I can’t afford to prat about for months with no revenue.
’ A man strode impatiently around them, snapping Italian angrily into his phone.
Instinctively, Leo raised an arm to prevent him from barging into Jade.
‘Breakfast only, probably, because a restaurant means work-intensive, long hours. A view,’ he added, because Villa Panorama enjoyed such a sublime one.
Jade frowned blackly at him. ‘You’ve just described Three Sisters! Perhaps you’re waiting for me to fall out with Rosalie and Erin, so they’ll want to sell. Then you’re going to offer?’
His mouth dropped open as he took in her stormy gaze.
The realisation that he had, indeed, described Pensione Three Sisters, tickled his sense of the ridiculous and he had to struggle not to laugh.
He lifted his hands placatingly. ‘Yes, it does fit my bill, but that’s a coincidence.
’ He couldn’t resist adding, ‘Unless you want to sell, of course . . .’
She snorted, taking a step nearer to the arch of the pensione. ‘Huh. Working with my sisters is becoming more attractive.’ But her eyes widened and her throat worked as if she was once again fighting tears.
All desire to laugh left him. He reached out to touch her arm, careful to keep space between their bodies, easing her close to the building out of the path of a group of young men pushing by. ‘Don’t be upset, tesoro.’
From her sudden pause, he realised that in the heat of the moment he’d called her ‘darling’ but couldn’t find a way to take it back. He just squeezed her arm and wished that whatever he’d made of her past, he could help with her future.