Chapter Twenty
Jade was jolted awake by a crash of thunder, as if someone had tossed a wardrobe downstairs.
From beside her, Leo groaned, sliding his arm across her body. ‘Loud.’
Leo rolled to his feet, yawning, crossed to the blinds and peered into the garden. ‘Cavolo. The rain’s horizontal.’
She groaned. ‘I hope I can get a taxi to pick me up in front of the hotel.’
He frowned. ‘I need to buy a car.’
‘But you wouldn’t be able to park it here, near the villetta,’ she replied pragmatically, as she flew into the living space to find her footwear.
When Erin rang, Jade said, ‘I’m about to come back,’ hopping as she attempted to slide a bare foot into a sandal. Leo came up beside her, pulling on a T-shirt.
Erin cut in. ‘Something’s happening, Jade. There was a huge noise from the roof. Guests are running around and asking what’s going on. And I don’t know.’
Alarm raced through Jade. ‘What kind of noise from the roof?’
‘Like . . . someone’s up there throwing stuff around.’ Erin paused and another, fainter voice gasped something that Jade didn’t catch. Erin muttered, ‘Och, fuck.’ Then to Jade, ‘Rosalie says roof tiles are raining into the street.’
Horror clutched at Jade’s chest. ‘I’m on my way. Is water coming into any guestrooms?’
‘We’ll find out.’ Erin sounded breathless. ‘Some storm.’
The next half hour passed in a flurry of borrowing a waterproof jacket from Leo, which was a coat on her, and opening the door to discover that Villetta Nascosta’s protected position had disguised the storm’s glorious fury.
Lightning ripped through towering blue-black clouds while thunder roared like an ogre in pain.
Holding hands, Jade and Leo ran unsteadily down the path, blown around by gusts of wind that stole their breath, while rain stung unprotected skin.
Once inside the hotel Leo towed Jade into his brother’s office, uncaring of the water sluicing from him onto the tiles.
‘Glad you’re on duty already. Can I borrow your car?
Three Sisters is damaged and I need to get Jade home. ’
‘Merda.’ Massimo grabbed car keys from his top drawer and tossed them to his brother. ‘Will you be OK, Jade?’
Jade had to bite back tears, her teeth beginning to chatter. ‘I don’t know till I get there.’
Massimo’s car was parked in a utility yard at the side of the hotel and soon Leo was driving slowly along the lakeside, windscreen wipers whipping as rain hosed down only to bounce back from the road.
Boats rocked and pitched like broncos, the water boiling around them.
Disregarding the zona a traffico limitato regulations, he drove up to the pensione and parked on the pavement outside Anton’s Bistro, where chairs and tables would usually be put out each day.
Via Giovini, the road Three Sisters fronted, was littered with terracotta, as if someone had waved a wand over a carpet of autumn leaves and turned them to sharp, glistening, broken clay tiles.
Jade began to shake. ‘Thank goodness this happened so early in the day. Someone might have been killed.’ She fought the wind before she could open the car door and trod gingerly over the shards, careful of her bare, soaking feet in the scant protection of sandals.
Leo crunched along beside her. In Reception, Rosalie and Erin stood behind the front desk in a sea of anxious, pyjama-clad people.
Erin was speaking earnestly to one couple, while Rosalie chatted amiably with an elderly woman clutching a green handbag.
‘Excuse me. Scusi.’ Jade threaded her way between backs and shoulders.
Rosalie, in spotted pyjama shorts and a Pooh Bear camisole that showed all three of her tattoos, beamed, as if welcoming Jade to an exciting party.
Erin, in a red T-shirt nightie that brushed her knees, looked relieved.
Succinctly, she reported. ‘We’ve evacuated the top floor, but told guests on the other floors they can stay where they are for now.
There’s a bulge in the ceiling of 401, but no water coming through when we looked. ’
‘Thanks.’ Jade sent her a grateful smile. ‘No water dripping through light fittings either?’
Erin hesitated. ‘I didn’t check specifically.’
‘Same.’ Rosalie’s smile faded.
Leo loomed beside Jade. ‘I’ll look.’
‘No.’ Jade grabbed his arm, glad to have him and his experience at her side. ‘Please can you start a breakfast service? If the bakery delivery hasn’t arrived, there should at least be drinks, eggs, meat, cheese, fruit and toast.’
Rosalie shook her head. ‘No bakery delivery.’
‘OK.’ Leo sped through the breakfast room towards the kitchen.
‘OK, everyone.’ Jade raised her voice and the guests paused their muttering, parking anxious or baleful expressions to listen.
She began in English, repeating herself at intervals in Italian.
‘I’m very sorry that the pensione has sustained roof damage.
Thanks for cooperating in evacuating your rooms as a precaution until I can get a professional assessment.
We’re about to offer early breakfast to make you more comfortable.
Sorry if it’s not quite as usual, but delivery services will be under pressure in such a severe storm. ’
Guests nodded, though some reluctantly, as if Jade ought to have foreseen the furore unleashed from the sky and erected a giant umbrella over the premises. As they filed towards the breakfast tables, Jade turned to Erin. ‘Was it a lightning strike, do you think? Or the wind?’
Erin ran her fingers through a bob that, for once, stuck out at angles.
‘I haven’t seen smoke or smelled burning.
There was no big crack! I’d guess it was the wind, and that what I took for thunder might have been tiles beginning to slide.
Rosalie and I were awake, because of the racket.
We ran up to the top floor. The guests up there were milling about and wittering, so we brought them down out of harm’s way. ’
Jade was suddenly appreciative of Erin’s comms skills, which allowed her to express herself clearly and quickly, and the managing disposition that prompted her to take effective action.
She might not be as relaxed and cheerful as Rosalie, but she was all-gold at heart.
‘Thanks. I’ll go up and see. Can you help Leo with breakfast, please?
And tell guests who can’t access their rooms where the staff loo is.
Rosalie, can you do Reception? I’m not sure Yara will make it today.
I expect other guests will come down looking for information.
Reassure them that although the roof’s sustained storm damage, it’s only affecting floor four for now. ’
‘Will do.’ Rosalie kept station at the desk while Erin vanished into the breakfast room, where guests huddled around the tables at their impromptu pyjama-party. Leo was already provisioning the buffet.
Jade snatched up the master keys and, discarding her soaking sandals at the foot of the marble stairs, puffed and panted all the way to the fourth floor, thunder shaking the walls and lightning illuminating the landings.
In room 401, she eyed the bulging ceiling with horror.
At any moment, it might crack and admit the monstrous storm!
By climbing on the dressing-table chair, she was able to touch the bulge with tentative fingers and was relieved to find it didn’t feel damp, or cold, and there was no water stain.
Maybe it had been caused by falling debris, but that placed it below the hole in the roof where rain must be hammering in.
Feeling sick, she jumped down and quickly checked the other top-floor rooms, where two of the ceilings had cracked and moisture was already seeping through.
Grimacing, she raced back downstairs. In the breakfast room, the guests who were down so far had settled to their ad hoc breakfast so she popped into the kitchen. ‘All OK?’
Erin was working the coffee machine. Leo was backing through the delivery door under a stack of covered trays. ‘All OK,’ they said in unison.
‘Bakery order’s here,’ Leo added. ‘I’ll get stuff straight out.’
‘Great.’ Too distracted even to appreciate how everyone was co-operating, Jade fetched a pair of boots from the apartment, yanked up the hood of her borrowed hiking jacket, and once again braved the howling wind and driving rain.
Picking her way over the splintered roof tiles to the opposite pavement, she squinted up at the roof, wishing she had a floodlight, the angry, inky clouds being the enemy of daylight.
Once she’d sheltered her eyes from the rain, however, she realised no floodlight was necessary.
It looked as if someone had taken a giant bite from the roof.
A patch of tiles had given up their hold on the timbers and had crashed to the ground or still teetered worryingly in the cast-iron gutter.
‘Shit,’ she muttered. If the top floor wasn’t flooded yet, it soon could be.
She took what photos she could in the murky light and pelting rain.
Then she returned to the welcoming shelter of Pensione Three Sisters and ducked into the office.
There, she hung up Leo’s jacket and called her contractor, Mario, to explain. His papà had been a friend of Nonno’s and he’d always looked after Gran and Jade’s property-maintenance needs promptly. He inhaled worriedly. ‘I’ll come and look. But we’ll need scaffold and that means permission.’
‘OK. I’ll contact the authorities,’ she said bleakly. ‘They’ll want the debris in the street cleared for buses to get through.’