He flashed her an easy smile.
‘Hi.’ She produced what she hoped was a suitably staff-to-guest smile back.
‘I didn’t get your name last time we spoke.’ He lifted an encouraging eyebrow.
‘Sofia.’ She imagined Aurora’s ears coming out of her head on stalks in an effort to listen across the reception area.
‘I’m Levi. I was just wondering …’ He hesitated.
Sofia held her breath, trying to decide how to side-step any further interest in her off-duty time. She was going to meet someone – which was true: Ernesto Milani. It was just such a waste! Biker Man Levi’s eyes were mesmeric and he looked to have a hell of a bod beneath his T-shirt.
‘… if Amy’s all right,’ he finished.
Sofia snapped back to reality. ‘You wondered whether Amy’s all right?’ she repeated, feeling slightly foolish for suspecting him of angling for a date.
He flushed at the surprise in her voice. ‘I haven’t seen her for a couple of days and, with what happened, I wondered if she’d lost her job after all. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you’re obviously friendly.’
Sofia summoned a smile. ‘She’s fine. It was just her turn for time off. Enjoy your day.’ She made a show of checking her watch, then stepped around him and out through the door, trying not to feel ruffled. But, really? Did Levi think a teenage girl like Amy would be interested in him? Levi looked well over thirty, and Sofia had thought Davide, in his late twenties, too old for Amy!
Resolutely, she put Biker Man and his smile out of her mind. She had to get into town and locate the church of Santa Lucia.
Via Virgilio was busy with cars, vans, the occasional lorry and a swarm of motorbikes and scooters. Sofia didn’t rush down the hill towards the centre. Apart from the sun already being a significant presence at just turned eleven o’clock there were enough pedestrians occupying the pavements to make hurrying an effort and she enjoyed gazing around at the buildings, stone or rendered and painted. She’d seen a little of the town in whatever part of each day she wasn’t on shift but it was surprising how much of the past two weeks had been taken up with settling in. Her first couple of days had passed in a whirl of unpacking, orientation, getting sorted with uniform and a hunt for toiletries at a nearby kiosk that seemed to sell everything. Sofia had also found herself helping Amy through orientation and uniform. Sofia had missed out on siblings and was enjoying the novelty of the big-sister role in which Amy seemed to have cast her.
But, right now, with two joyous days of freedom to enjoy in Montelibertà, she was seized by a ridiculous urge to jig around singing, ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m really here!’
Instead, she strolled decorously past shops that sold shiny ceramics decorated with splashy yellow sunflowers and succulent purple grapes. In between the shops came pavement cafés, their parasols the same shade of ivory as those at Il Giardino. On this upper part of the hill the commercial ventures were interspersed with houses and apartments, lavishly ornamented with window boxes in full flower and lavender tumbling from the tops of garden walls. She thought the scent of lavender would ever-onwards remind her of her feeling of euphoria.
Nearer the town centre the residences petered out and the road became lined with shops and eating places, until Via Virgilio widened into Piazza Roma. Here the buildings were three or even four storeys, painted in earthy tones from ivory to apricot and umber, creating shade for the people passing by or sitting on benches along the way. A giant cartwheel sat in the centre with an old water pump and a profusion of flowers. The cobbles were laid in fan shapes, old and uneven enough to bear witness to a million treading feet.
One building of honey-coloured stone had a sweeping ornamental arch built into it and when Sofia stopped gazing up at cornices, wrought iron and shutters long enough to walk through, she found herself in Piazza Santa Lucia, faced with the gracefully imposing building that was Santa Lucia church.
The Palladian front was rendered and painted palest lemon with white raised plasterwork surrounding the circular windows and forming mock columns and niches. Both of the huge carved wooden doors were closed but the door-within-a-door in the one on the left stood slightly open as if to reassure the parishioners that they could visit any time. The upper storey curved and narrowed until it met the triangular gable.
Her father had been raised a Catholic; her mother had not. Sofia hadn’t been baptised or even attended church very often, but she thought she’d be OK to enter as her shorts were bermudas and her top wasn’t low-cut. Following Aurora’s directions, she made her way around the outside of the church, where the walls were of unrendered stone, to a plain door.
After hovering a moment, she knocked and entered a tall, cool, silent foyer that smelt of dust and incense. The door snapped to behind her, shutting out the sunlight.
A man in his sixties emerged from a nearby doorway, his smile lifting the ends of his big grey moustache. His fulsome eyebrows grew as if they’d been blown up and back by a strong wind. ‘Are you Miss Sofia Bianchi? I am Ernesto Milani.’
As he spoke in English, Sofia followed suit, shaking his hand and thanking him for sparing her his time.
‘Please, come this way,’ he rumbled as he turned towards the room from which he’d emerged. ‘I have looked at the register since Aurora Morbidelli speaks to me on the telephone and have information for you.’ His English was accented and far from faultless but it flowed musically from beneath the moustache.
‘Thank you!’ Eagerly, Sofia followed him into a little office of glass-fronted cabinets and piles of papers. A window stood open to catch the breeze and a large book lay open on the table. Ernesto seated himself at one side and Sofia took the chair at right angles.
Ernesto fished a pair of glasses from his top pocket, put them on and regarded Sofia over their rim. ‘Our current records we make on the computer but in 1997 we still record the events of our church in this book.’ He looked at her for a few moments more, his eyes brown and knowledgeable, then he took his glasses off again.
Wondering if he was waiting for her full attention before he went on – she had been trying to decipher the register from the corner of one eye – Sofia nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘Forgive me, but I must ask.’ A smile tried again to shift the weight of his moustache. ‘You are the daughter of Aldo Agnello Bianchi, yes?’
Surprise made her sit back. ‘Yes. But it wasn’t my dad who died in Italy in 1997. It was my grandparents, Agnello and Maria.’
He sighed pensively. ‘We were friends, Aldo and me, at school here in Montelibertà. I knew your grandparents also. I played in their garden and your grandmother made us a delicious drink from lemons. The family had their house in Via Salvatore.’ He gestured vaguely behind him, as if pointing the street out. ‘I remember very well. The Bianchi family and the Milani family, they attend this church, so we know each other.’
It was several seconds before Sofia could find her voice. The grandparents she’d never met and that her father had rarely spoken of leaped into focus as real people. Unexpectedly, her throat grew tight. ‘I never knew them. They died when I was seven. This is the first time I’ve visited Italy.’ She couldn’t help adding, because she’d really like someone to put some meat on the bare bones of what Aldo had confided, ‘And they never visited us in England.’
But Ernesto didn’t offer insight. Instead, his eyes grew expectant.
