Chapter Twenty #2
She reported first to the polizia locale, hoping they’d put their recommendation behind a swift erection of scaffold to assess the roof.
Of course, hers was not the only call the polizia locale had to answer, she was told.
The spectre of having to close the pensione rose up before her.
Ignoring it, she thought hard. Her usual first call for extra help at the pensione would have been to Vittoria, but she was in Milan.
Carlotta might come . . . but she now had a business of her own to run. Jade phoned Yara.
‘What a storm.’ Yara sounded awed.
Quickly, Jade explained the roof crisis. ‘Are you coming in?’
Yara sounded astounded. ‘In this? It could be dangerous.’
Jade sighed. ‘OK. It’s not compulsory.’ But this was just a storm, in a region known for storms, not a hurricane. And Jade had just travelled through it herself.
After a hesitation, she tried Geneva, repeating her explanations. ‘Any chance you could come in to help? I think we’ll have to run refreshments for guests all day. I might need to get hold of biscuits and prepacked salads. Guests will begin asking when they can retrieve clothes or medication.’
‘Sì.’ Geneva sounded alarmed. ‘Everyone is OK?’
‘Everyone. Grazie mille,’ Jade added, warmed that Geneva wasn’t letting her down.
Ending the call and turning to the computer, she confirmed that she had one empty room to move a set of top-floor guests into.
Maybe the most elderly? She picked up the telephone and called Massimo.
‘Do you have three vacant rooms, by any chance? I need to rehouse guests from the top floor. It might become more if I get shut down.’ She tried to sound calm, though her brain was wailing, Shut down?
Shut down? Shut DOWN? ‘We can sort out the financial side later, obviously. Right now, I’m in crisis mode. ’
‘Un momento. Let me check.’ An interval of rustling and clicking, then Massimo’s reassuring voice said, ‘Yes, we can do it. Standard?’
‘Yes, please.’ The insurance company wouldn’t pay for swanky suites and Villa Panorama’s standard rooms were gorgeous. ‘I’ll lay on taxis later to get the guests and their belongings over.’ Next, she moved on to the insurance company. It always paid to keep them fully informed.
Soon Geneva arrived, removed what appeared to be a man’s waterproof above her rainboots, and immediately got busy with food and drink.
‘Grazie mille,’ Jade said, in a whisper, and was rewarded by a smile that made Geneva’s eyes sparkle.
The polizia locale closed Via Giovini until the debris could be cleared.
Mario’s crew, thankfully, arrived in the late morning as the storm was crashing away up the lake, and quickly swept the street of razor-sharp shards.
Middle-aged Mario and his two babe-magnet sons then climbed from the upper landing into the roof void, wielding inspection lamps, while Jade hovered, squinting into the attic through the hatch and feeling helpless.
Once Mario decreed that guests could briefly access their rooms, Rosalie and Erin escorted people to and fro, allowing them to dress and throw their belongings in suitcases to be transported to their new quarters.
Massimo called to provide room numbers. Sheenagh arrived to see if she could help and was put to work by Leo, mopping Reception of muddy boot prints to provide a veneer of normality.
Finally, Mario and his boys shuffled down the ladder onto the landing, dustier than when they’d gone up.
‘Not too bad,’ Mario told Jade, though his frown was worrying.
‘If we can get permission to build the scaffolding when the storm dissipates, we can secure any loose tiles and assess materials needed. Now, from the inside, we can rainproof. It’s wind damage, but your whole roof needs inspecting. ’
‘I know.’ Jade tried not to feel despondent. ‘Gran and I were planning to do it later this year.’
Mario nodded understandingly. ‘Well, it will be done now.’
After a lot of banging and shouting, Mario and co.
managed to cover the hole largely from the inside – probably breaking a few rules with forays onto a wet, unscaffolded roof.
The bright-blue tarpaulin they secured to chimney stacks and roof timbers made poor Pensione Three Sisters look like a gracious old lady in a cheap plastic headscarf.
Leo took multiple photographs for the insurance company, and Rosalie and Erin escorted three lots of guests and their possessions to Villa Panorama.
One enormous bright spot in a dark, shitty day occurred when Jade stumbled over Leo on the first-floor landing, his fists raised to the ceiling in a silent cheer, eyes scrunched tightly closed. ‘What?’ she demanded, diverted even from her anxieties by his glow of sheer, blissful joy.
Spinning, he pulled her into his arms and swung her into the air, ending with a smacking kiss as he returned her to her feet. ‘My money’s back in my UK accounts! Every penny. Woohoo! I’m going to transfer it straight over to my euro account, whatever the frickin’ exchange rate.’
‘Oh, Leo!’ Jade returned his smacking kiss, her eyes burning with the only happy tears she was likely to shed that day. ‘è fantastico!’
‘Sì, sì, Sì.’ He crushed her to him as he danced her round, and she felt his ecstatic relief in the chaotic thumping of his heart against hers. But only moments after arranging the transfer of funds, he was back at Jade’s side.
They were emptying a top-floor linen closet when Massimo and Ferdinando arrived to offer help. Massimo hugged Jade hard. ‘Just let us know if you need more rooms.’
‘I probably will need to lay my top-floor bookings off to you for several weeks,’ Jade admitted ruefully.
Massimo nodded. ‘We have capacity, with children back at school throughout Europe.’ They talked logistics and financials, then Ferdinando, unexpectedly demonstrative, took Jade’s face in his veined hands, his grey eyebrows beetling above anxious brown eyes.
‘Thanks to God that nobody was hurt. Grazie a Dio.’
‘Grazie a Dio,’ she repeated solemnly, knowing that she at least wouldn’t have been hurt, as she’d been tucked up in bed with Leo as the roof tiles had made their bid for freedom.
She dared a glance Leo’s way, but all his attention was on Massimo, who’d taken him aside and was speaking earnestly.
Leo’s eyebrows were so far up his forehead that they appeared glued to his hairline.
Jade had little time to wonder what had prompted such astonishment. It was late afternoon before she could pause to realise that everything was being taken care of apart from herself. She glanced down at last night’s clothes, which had dried on her.
But, as she was about to retreat to the apartment, she was intercepted by a male guest. She recognised him as one of the partying men who’d left a twenty-euro tip for the cleaners in embarrassment over the state of the room.
As he was staying on the second floor, Jade was ready to reassure him that he was perfectly safe and that the roof had survived a preliminary inspection.
But his expression was almost as stormy as the weather. ‘I’m Harry Markham from Huddersfield, room 203. I left a hundred and thirty euros in a drawer, and it’s gone. It were separate to our other money because it’s our taxi fare back to the airport.’ His face was as red as a tomato.
Her smile vanished, dismay trickling down her spine. She really didn’t need a complaint right now, but it had to be dealt with like everything else. ‘Let’s go into the office.’ There, she asked questions and made notes. ‘So you didn’t use the free room safe?’ she asked.
Without answering that point, he said over and again, ‘The money were separate, so we didn’t spend it on booze.’ And, ‘Of course I’ve asked my mates – the one I’m sharing with and the two next door. They know nowt about it.’
All she could do, with a rapidly sinking heart and gritty, weary eyes, was promise to investigate. He accepted this reluctantly. ‘I won’t let it drop. I know the money were there.’
After he’d left, a quick check confirmed that Leo and Geneva had done the room for the days in question.
Nobody else could have, really, in view of Vittoria and Carlotta jumping ship.
With a jolt, like stepping into an empty lift shaft, she recalled Leo racing downstairs in his elation that the bank had called to say his funds were retrievable .
. . and him racing back up when he realised that he’d left Geneva alone, joking that she could have the twenty-euro tip.
Into her mind snaked the memory of Geneva admitting she’d lost her last job over a guest complaint. She’d been evasive about it, and Jade’s knowledge of Geneva was so recent and scant that it was hard to prevent her heart from sinking.
She tracked down Leo moving mattresses and small furnishings out of the top rooms in case of crashing ceilings and, tentatively, recounted the complaint. He frowned, blowing his hair from his eyes. ‘Nothing to do with me, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ she agreed hastily. Then, although she already knew the answer, made the enquiry she knew she had to make. ‘Do you . . . ever leave Geneva alone in the guestrooms?’
‘No, you asked me not—’ Then horror swept across his face. ‘Oh. That day, when I got the call from the bank . . .’
Her eyes closed against this fresh disaster. ‘Dammit.’