When we finally strolled back to Luca’s office, Tommaso was already leaning up against his car, a compact vintage Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint that didn’t suit the big bear-like man at all. At our approach, his perpetual scowl deepened. Like Papa Bear finding his porridge bowl empty.
‘I take it your errands didn’t go well?’ I asked brightly. ‘Or is that scowl permanent?’
He huffed out his breath as he pushed away from the car. ‘I was waiting. I feel like some part of me will always be waiting for you. Like if I’m old and blue-haired, and I turn a corner in Istanbul, and there you are, I won’t be surprised.’
Luca’s confusion was comical, but that wasn’t the reason I laughed. The laughter bubbled up, a sudden and unfamiliar sensation, and Luca’s confusion turned to concern.
‘You’re quoting Buffy at me?’ I managed.
Though Tommaso’s expression didn’t change at all, I caught the flash of amusement in his eyes, gone so quickly I’d have missed it if I blinked. ‘Strictly speaking, I’m quoting Willow. I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten.’
Luca looked even more lost, and I smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s from a TV show we used to watch, about vampires.’
Luca pulled a face, as if he couldn’t imagine anything worse than vampires. Tommaso took the shopping bags and placed them in the tiny boot of his car.
‘Thank you for showing me around,’ I said politely to Luca, burningly aware of Tommaso listening to every word.
‘It was my pleasure.’ Luca raised my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to my knuckles in an old-fashioned gesture that made my legs go weak again. I really should channel Buffy and behave more like a kickass vampire slayer than a silly schoolgirl.
Tommaso held the car door open for me, and I had to resist behaving even more childishly and sticking my tongue out at him. Really, could he be any more obvious trying to hurry me away from Luca? What was the man so afraid of?
But Luca took no notice of Tommaso’s rudeness. With a cheerful wave, he headed into his office building, and Tommaso climbed into the car beside me. The interior suddenly felt three times smaller with him in it.
As he eased out into the street and down the hill, taking the winding corners a little too fast for my comfort, I faced him. If there’d been any space in the small car, I would have set my arms on my hips. ‘You don’t have to act like a dog with a bone. It was just lunch, not a conspiracy to steal away your precious vineyard.’
‘It’s not the vineyard I’m worried about.’ Tommaso’s voice was almost a growl. ‘Don’t put too much faith in Luciano Fioravanti.’
‘John must have trusted him since he chose Luca as his executor. Or are you suggesting my father wasn’t a particularly good judge of character?’
Tommaso pressed his lips together. ‘Luca might have to abide by a code of ethics as a lawyer, but he’s still a lawyer, and he’s still a Fioravanti.’
What did that mean? I crossed my arms over my chest and turned away to look out the window. Tommaso was just jealous because Luca was everything he wasn’t: personable, charming, easy-going.
The roar of the 1960s engine was hardly conducive to conversation, or at least that was my excuse for maintaining radio silence the rest of the way back to the castello. That and Tommaso’s grim expression.
He parked in the back yard, carried my bags of groceries into the kitchen, then took off along the dusty drive that circled behind the house.
‘And goodbye to you too,’ I shouted after the little blue car as it shot off towards the wine cellar in a cloud of dust.
With a sigh, I returned to the kitchen and looked around. If I was going to be staying here a while longer, I needed a usable kitchen – a clean kitchen, with uncluttered surfaces and clean utensils – so I set to work, starting with the walls, the windows, the floor. It was well into the afternoon before I moved onto the pots and pans hanging from racks on the walls.
I left the ancient wood stove for last. On hands and knees, I scrubbed away years of accumulated grime, unable to suppress a pang for the beautiful, modern cooker in the house I shared with Cleo and Moira, another of our uni friends.
It took a couple of hours of elbow grease to get the stove clean, but beneath the layers of dirt, it was a thing of beauty, its green and ivory porcelain undamaged. It would make some antique dealer very happy.
The hard labour, while not as therapeutic as yoga or meditation, or whatever other faddy hobby Cleo had in mind for me, at least kept my thoughts occupied, and by the time the shadows through the tall windows started lengthening, the kitchen looked almost cheerful.
In the overgrown patch behind the house that had once been Elisa’s herb garden, I rescued some terracotta pots, re-planted into them a few of the smaller rosemary, basil and arugula plants which hadn’t yet grown woody, and set them on the kitchen window so their aroma could fill the room. I found a bright blue and yellow cloth that might once have been a rug, and once I’d beaten the dust from it, and washed it, it made the perfect tablecloth to brighten up the room.
The kitchen might not pass a food hygiene inspection, but it was liveable. And I’d hardly thought about work all day. Well, okay, two or three times, but considering my Saturdays were usually spent at the office, that was an achievement worth celebrating.
Not that there was anyone to celebrate with. I sat alone at the kitchen table to eat a simple dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and tea, and wondered where Cleo and Moira were right now. Down at the pub? Out at the movies? On dates?
The castello was deathly quiet once again, and I hadn’t heard the car return. Tommaso couldn’t still be working at the cellar, could he?
I was tempted to knock on the cottage door to see if he was in, just to have company, but then I remembered his forbidding expression. An empty and echoing castello was infinitely preferable to re-opening hostilities.
It was only as I lazed in the big, ugly avocado-coloured plastic bath tub, up to my chin in water which had gurgled so slowly out of the pipes I’d managed to make another cup of tea while waiting for the tub to fill, that I allowed myself to remember the Tommy I’d known and played with so long ago.
Like me, he’d been a serious child, shy, and too much on his own, yet he’d smiled a lot too. He’d had a dry sense of humour, and we’d laughed a lot together. Not only had he been a Buffy fan, but he’d collected trivia, which probably made him a nerd back in school, just like me. He’d been Xander to my Willow. These days, though, he was more like the brooding vampire Angel. Did that make me Buffy? I didn’t feel particularly kickass right now.
Somehow the two pictures, the one of the laughing boy and the other of the grim man, would not fit together. What had happened to replace his laughter with that furrowed brow and brooding expression? And was my old friend still buried beneath all those layers, or was he gone forever?
Siccome la casa brucia, riscaldiamoci
