enviously, and coaxed Claire Foster to go out for a meal with them.
And when Claire protested she was too tired after a day of caring for her bedridden mother, Rosa, dressed to the nines, went off in her Alfa Romeo and bought fish and chips they ate straight from the packages at the kitchen table, the three of them giggling together like schoolgirls.
Before long all three of them were on close terms. Childhood friends had married and moved away, and Harriet’s college friends were London based and she rarely saw any of them other than at a party or a wedding. Rosa filled a void Harriet hadn’t even realised was there until the night of the reunion. And it was a relief to confess her worries to someone sympathetic. Claire Foster was on a hospital waiting list for a minor operation, and the rambling old family house was in desperate need of repairs Harriet’s earnings as a translator couldn’t begin to cover.
‘Mother’s forced to sell the house,’ said Harriet one evening, over a meal in a wine bar.
‘What a hassle for her, especially if she’s not feeling well,’ said Rosa, frowning. ‘Does she mind?’
‘Yes. Desperately. It’s been the family home for generations. She adores it.’ Harriet leaned forward suddenly. ‘Those men over there, staring at us. Do you know them?’
Rosa favoured the riveted males with a basilisk stare, then turned back to Harriet, winking. ‘Just a couple of Romeos turned on by the resemblance.’
‘I doubt it,’ retorted Harriet. ‘We’re hardly a perfect match—me in my office gear, and you in those jeans. How you can breathe beats me, let alone sit down.’
‘It’s the cut, darling, they cost a fortune.’ Rosa flushed suddenly. ‘Sorry—tact was never my strong point.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Harriet, unperturbed.
Rosa looked at her steadily. ‘Actually, Harriet, I do. I worry a lot.’
‘About Pascal?’
‘All the time,’ admitted Rosa, sighing. ‘But in this instance I mean Claire, and you. What happens to your grandmother if you get a smaller place?’
‘She comes with us. At the moment she’s got selfcontained quarters upstairs, and we use the rest. But the idea of three of us cooped up together in some poky flat gives me nightmares!’ Harriet shrugged, depressed. ‘For some reason I’ve never been a favourite with Grandma. Kitty was her pet. But I’ve always felt unhappy—and guilty—because I find it so hard to love my grandmother, or even like her. Frankly, Rosa, she’s a difficult lady. Which is nothing to do with age—she always was. And now she’s bedridden and in pain quite a lot, poor dear, her fuse is even shorter.’
‘I suppose she hates the thought of a nursing home?’
‘Mother won’t hear of it.’
‘Your mother’s a saint!’ said Rosa emphatically.
‘More than you know. Heaven knows how she had patience with me when I was a teenager.’
‘I was no angel myself,’ said Rosa soberly. ‘But what was your problem?’
Harriet pulled a face. ‘It makes me embarrassed to think of it now. I’ve never told anyone—not even Guy.’
‘Who’s Guy?’ pounced Rosa.
‘Ex-boyfriend.’
‘Why ex?’
‘He’s Deputy Head at the school I taught at in Birmingham. When I left at the end of my first year to help Mother he objected, said I should put him first.’
‘So exit Guy! Any regrets?’
Harriet shrugged. ‘I missed him at first. Or maybe I just missed the social side and so on.’
‘Was he good at the ‘so on’?’ asked Rosa, smiling wickedly.
Harriet grinned back. ‘None of your business.’
‘Which means he wasn’t.’
‘If anyone was lacking in that department it was me, Rosa.’
‘No way,’ said Rosa emphatically, her big eyes sparkling. ‘Definitely Guy’s fault if he couldn’t ring your bell. Anyway, what were you going to tell me that you couldn’t tell him?’
Harriet pulled a face. ‘In my teens I got this bee in my bonnet, a fantasy about being adopted. I developed a real attitude—made my parents’ life a misery.’
Harriet’s youthful angst had been aggravated by her sister’s teasing. Their father, Alan Foster, had been large and fair, like a throwback to some Viking invader—and Kitty was his image—while their tall, willowy mother had the chestnut hair and pale complexion of her own father.
‘And then there was me,’ said Harriet. ‘Black hair and eyes, olive skin, and a head shorter than anyone else in the family. And at the mercy of teenage hormones. Kitty used to tease so much that I was a changeling, I began to believe it.’
‘But you weren’t adopted, surely!’
‘No, of course I wasn’t.’ Harriet grinned sheepishly. ‘Quite apart from the gruesome birth details Mother gave me when I was older, I’ve got a perfectly valid birth certificate confirming my pedigree. My looks are just some peculiar freak of genetics.’
Rosa was quiet for a moment. ‘Talking of Kitty,’ she said slowly, ‘I know it’s none of my business, but couldn’t she help a bit, financially?’
‘Not a chance. Kit’s husband started up his own business recently, they’ve got a hefty bank loan, and she’s pregnant, which means giving up her own job.’ Harriet changed the subject swiftly. ‘Anyway, enough of that. Tell me about Pascal. Still no news of him?’
Which was the question which had landed her where she was right now, thought Harriet despairingly, as her destination loomed nearer. Pascal Tavernier, it became plain as the weeks went by with no word, had left Rosa flat, without even the grace to tell her to her face.
‘Since that last phone call, saying he was off to the Middle East, I haven’t heard a word,’ said Rosa unsteadily. ‘And this morning, to cap it all, I got a letter from my grandmother, asking me to Tuscany for her eightieth birthday. I used to spend my summer holidays there at one time, but I haven’t been back for years.’
‘Why not?’ asked Harriet curiously.
Rosa sighed. ‘I was in my “rebel without a cause” stage, and Nonna’s an autocrat of the first water. I behaved badly, did something she couldn’t forgive. So I was expelled from Eden. Told to go home and stay there until I’d repented of my sins.’
‘What did you do, for heaven’s sake?’
Rosa was silent for a moment. ‘I fibbed a bit,’ she said at last, ‘about Pascal being my first real love. At one time I had a terrific crush on my cousin, Leo. You know I’m half Welsh, half Italian. Leo’s the Italian connection, a Fortinari, like my mother. He runs the family vineyards.’
