Chapter Eighteen
The next Monday morning, Jade was nervous all over again.
This time, it was because Erin and Rosalie were due to arrive in the late afternoon so they could all visit the notaio, Mary Smith, on Tuesday, yet another step in the road towards a future Jade couldn’t have foreseen six months ago.
Darling Gran was gone. Stalwarts of the pensione Vittoria and Carlotta too, in different ways: Vittoria now choosing between two apartments in Milan and Carlotta plunging into a new life in Ludovica’s mamma’s silk shop, where pocket squares cost sixty euros and intricately patterned dresses many hundreds.
In place of her dear, familiar loved ones had appeared two sisters and a mother.
At least Geneva was proving to be quietly industrious.
Each day she appeared punctually, listened to what was required and did it.
She was nothing like the wild, heedless, unreliable and selfish woman Jade might have expected.
Today was Yara’s day off, so Jade was at the beck and call of Reception.
As she answered guest enquiries, phone calls and emails, part of her mind was preoccupied with the pensione’s staffing situation.
In the past few days, having sifted through multiple applications, she’d interviewed a guy called Luigi in his fifties and a woman called Nina in her thirties. Today she’d email job offers to both.
Should she also offer Geneva a permanent position? Her head said, ‘Yes,’ her gut said, ‘No,’ and her heart said, ‘Please don’t ask me. I don’t know what I feel.’
Leo would only say, ‘I haven’t seen her put a foot wrong.’ Helpfully unhelpful.
When Leo’s shout echoed down the stairwell, ‘Jade!’, accompanied by the sound of flying footsteps, she glanced up with curiosity rather than alarm because his voice rang with excitement. Still, she wasn’t about to holler back to him. He seemed to be pounding in her direction anyway.
He catapulted down the final few marble steps, hair flying, eyes shining.
‘I’ve had a call from the bank!’ With swift strides, he rounded the reception desk and swung her clean off her feet.
‘After what they call “developments” they’re about to retrieve my funds from the receiving bank.
Whoo!’ With a quick glance to check they were alone, he planted several smacking kisses on her lips.
Laughing into his sparkling eyes, she struggled to be set down, her lips tingling. ‘That’s fantastic! Wow. You must be so relieved. Was it the result of Teddy’s arrest? Was it his account the money went to?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I asked, but they say they’re unable to share that information with me.
Frustrating, but the bank and the police seem to be working together so I guess I can leave them to it.
The call arrived when I was fed up, cleaning the room of two men who are not model guests.
’ Bringing out a restaurant receipt with a flourish, he exhibited a note scrawled on the back.
Dear cleaners
Sorry about the mess. We had a party.
‘The room’s full of empty bottles and condom wrappers.
They left a twenty-euro tip too. Now I can let Geneva have it all.
’ His eyes widened. ‘Especially as I’ve left her to deal with it alone.
Merda.’ One final kiss and he flew back upstairs like a kid on his birthday, leaving Jade smiling as she returned to work.
Leo had confided what sort of sum had vanished from his accounts and it would have been an eye-watering amount to lose.
No doubt his turn in fortunes meant she’d soon be without his helping hands, but that was her problem, not his.
He’d been on tenterhooks for the bank’s call since Isabella had told him her dad had been arrested.
Again, the question of what to do about Geneva floated across her mind, conspicuously unaccompanied by answers.
It was early afternoon before she managed a late lunch in the quiet, well-worn, well-loved apartment kitchen.
Geneva and Leo had whizzed through the rooms today.
Probably, Leo was desperate to discuss his amazing news with his family.
His family. Her stomach rolled uncomfortably.
You couldn’t get much closer family than a mother, but she and Sheenagh hadn’t communicated since their cross words almost a week ago.
Apart from the long history between Gran and Sheenagh, and also Jade and Sheenagh, if Jade wanted to continue to ‘see’ Leo – even if it never progressed further than seeing each other naked – then they owed it to him to clear the air.
It wasn’t that Jade was averse to making the first move.
She just didn’t see how she could until she’d decided what to do about Geneva.
At least the crack in her relationship with Sheenagh wasn’t mirrored by a crack in her relationship with Leo.
He’d stayed last night and waking up with him had been .
. . joyous. When her alarm had heralded the day with a noisy DAT DAH DAT DAH, she’d watched him blink awake, search for his phone, realise the noise came from hers, fall back onto the bed, then regard her from sleepy eyes.
And smile a hot, slow smile that qualified as a smoulder.
Hair a bird’s nest, stubble bristling, cheek creased from her cotton pillows, he’d looked as if finding her beside him was like receiving a wonderful gift. Her heart had melted.
She didn’t dare peep too far into their future, but was glad that the hotel in Riva del Garda was now on someone else’s shopping list. He hadn’t said any more about the apartments here in Como yet, but then he’d only just heard that his bank account was to be refilled.
After lunch, she took a last look inside Gran’s old room to make sure all was ready for Rosalie and Erin, heart clenching at seeing twin beds instead of Gran’s double.
She was snatching a break with her feet up on the sofa and a book in her hand when the reception bell sang out, ding-di-ding-ding, swiftly followed by knock-knock, knock-knock on the apartment door, and two muffled but half-familiar voices lifted in friendly chatter.
It was 3.35 p.m., an hour before she’d anticipated Erin and Rosalie, and her first reaction was resentment that they’d cut into her reading time.
Still, by not utilising the door code, they were providing warning that the apartment’s silence and privacy was about to be breached.
She levered herself up and discarded her book before padding to the door. Forcing a smile, she threw it open. Erin beamed, her geometric bob like silk. Beside her, Rosalie made a goofy face, her metallic-turquoise eyeliner ending in little curlicues beside her eyes. ‘Buongiorno,’ they chorused.
Unexpectedly, Jade found her manufactured smile turning into a genuine one. ‘Buongiorno.’ She stepped back to allow them to roll in their luggage – proper suitcases, she couldn’t help but notice, reflecting their longer stay this time.
‘OK to go through?’ Erin’s polite enquiry was made redundant by trundling straight into Gran’s room. Erin and Rosalie’s room.
‘Of course,’ she answered, equally politely and redundantly. After all, this was what her beloved grandmother had wanted.
Rosalie paused to hug her. Was that the first time . . . ? ‘We totally whizzed through Security. Erin had prebooked the train on her app and we had an easy journey. Doesn’t the countryside look lush? When I visited Umbria, the grass was like straw by late summer.’
Jade returned the hug, awkwardly in view of Rosalie’s bright-purple backpack. ‘It’s normally green around the lakes, though we’ve had an unnaturally dry August.’ Diffidently she followed as Rosalie joined Erin in the bedroom, pristine and flooded with light.
Both women paused to survey the brand-new twin beds in snowy bedcovers beside Gran’s TV, pictures and ornaments. On each bed lay a key to the back door. Erin picked one up and sent Jade an uncertain look. ‘Thanks. Sorry if this is shit for you.’
Rosalie gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘Me, too.’
Jade summoned her smile. ‘We’ll all have to get used to things.’ She began to back from the room. ‘I’ll make drinks.’
In the kitchen, she’d just taken down the mugs when she received a text from Leo.
Are they there yet? Are you OK?
She replied:
Yes, and just about.
The three dots indicating that he was typing danced below her words and then disappeared. Instead, he rang, his voice deep. ‘Want to invite them out in a group tonight to ease you into having them around?’
She paused in lining up three red mugs on the bashed-up marble surface. ‘Maybe. It’s harder to feel awkward in company.’
He sounded pleased. ‘That’s great.’ Then he hesitated. ‘So, working on that basis, should we make it drinks at Bar Fiori and invite Mum, Dad, Massi and Sofi? They should all meet at some time, shouldn’t they?’
‘Um . . .’ She took teabags from a cupboard while she considered. Without saying it, he was asking her to forgive his mum. Although she’d been leaning exactly that way, it did seem as if she was the one having to do all the accommodating this summer.
‘It was Mum’s suggestion,’ he said, perhaps reading her thoughts from afar. ‘She wants to apologise. She’s been bending my ear about it. “Should I text? Should I call round? Should I send flowers?” ’
His high-pitched mimicking of his mother’s Scots accent made Jade joke, ‘An enormous bouquet, Swiss chocolates and dinner in St Moritz ought to do it.’ Then she sighed.
‘Sheenagh and I need to talk, but I think it would be better without an audience. Maybe I should spend the evening with Erin and Rosalie. It’s a weird time,’ she added, half-apologetically.
Then Rosalie and Erin burst into the room, saw she was on the phone and spun around to leave again, bouncing off each other in the doorway with a comical, ‘Oof!’, leaving Erin rubbing her forehead and Rosalie her chin.
‘It’s OK, I’m speaking to Leo.’ She didn’t want them to feel they had to scurry off. But she wondered whether, under their excitement, they were as nervous as she was.