The Sunshine And Biscotti Club (21 page)

Libby
,

I am coming back. But my plane’s been cancelled. There’s been a massive dump of snow. The guys want to go back up, make the most of it. I’m sort of tempted. Otherwise I’ll just be waiting at the airport. I am coming back though, I promise. I am coming to get you! Just need to wait for the snow to melt. Nothing’s flying. It’s a relief not to be the one to blame, actually. Keep a biscotti back for me
.

J

Peter and Eve stayed out on the terrace even when it started to rain. Sheltered by the awning, they watched as the water dripped down from the canvas onto the patio.

‘Did you want to kiss him?’ Peter asked, after Giulia had brought them out fresh espressos and he’d been to the bathroom to get himself together.

‘Yes,’ Eve said, hands cupped around her coffee, wishing she had a jumper. ‘Initially, yes.’

‘But then?’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Then I realised he wasn’t you.’

Peter paused as he was about to lift his cup up, and looked at her.

‘Why didn’t you kiss your girl?’ Eve asked.

Peter gave a small shrug. ‘Same reason.’

‘What was that?’ she asked.

He looked confused. ‘That she wasn’t you, obviously.’

‘I just wanted you to say it.’

‘Oh god.’ He rolled his eyes and downed the espresso.

The rain got heavier still, hammering down on the awning. Miles appeared from the lemon grove wrapped in a towel and nodded a quick hello as he jogged through the pouring rain and into the hotel.

Eve looked at Peter’s hand on the table. His strong, long fingered, cool hand. It felt like years since she’d held it.

She looked at her own hand on the handle of her coffee cup, wondered if she could make it move telepathically, overcoming the fear of rejection that kept it firmly where it was. To make it creep over and link with his. She saw her little finger waggle, almost imperceptibly.

Then the gate to the lemon grove opened again.

‘Oh god, sorry.’ Jimmy paused, one foot on the terrace, a towel slung over his head to shelter him from the rain, no top on, bronzed chest, tattoos glistening.

Peter visibly shrank into himself, obscured his face by feigning an interest in the geraniums in the window boxes.

Jimmy stayed where he was, stalled in his tracks.

Eve closed her eyes for a second.

Jimmy took an embarrassed step forward. ‘Sorry, sorry, guys, I didn’t think you’d still be out here.’

Giulia appeared at the terrace doors. ‘You want drinks?’ she asked, grimacing at the rain as it poured off the side of the awning.

Peter nodded, clearly happy with the distraction, and said, ‘I’ll have a beer.’

‘I’ll have a gin and tonic,’ said Eve. It was almost eleven and the situation seemed to call for it.

Jimmy shook his head and slipped past them into the hotel.

‘Did you talk to him about us?’ Peter asked when he was gone.

Eve nodded.

‘What did he say?’

‘That we’d be happier if we moved back to the city.’

Peter snorted. ‘Doesn’t he live on a boat in the middle of nowhere?’

Giulia came out with the drinks and, after depositing them on the table, shivered and said, ‘You wouldn’t prefer inside?’

Eve shook her head.

Peter took a swig of his beer. ‘It’s not actually that bad advice. Moving back. I miss the city.’ He put the bottle down then ran his hands through his hair. ‘If I hadn’t done anything would anything have happened between the two of you? I mean, was it retaliation or would it have happened anyway?’

Eve thought about it for a while. ‘Possibly,’ she said in the end with an apologetic wince. ‘It may not have happened then. But I think maybe it needed to happen at some point.’

Peter’s face hardened. ‘You’ll have to explain that to me.’

‘I think maybe I had to do it. For old me. The one that got left behind. I think it’s always been a “what if”, you know? If I’d gone cycling would my life be different now? And I think what it’s shown me is that I don’t think it would be.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t have Noah and Maisey,’ Peter said.

‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Eve. ‘I think I would. I would have all this, as it is, because me and Jimmy, we were right for a bit of our lives—not all of them. I wanted something different. I wanted to find someone who was happy to love me. Who took pride in it. You just stood there and were like—I’m more than happy to love you.’

Peter frowned. ‘I wasn’t more than happy to. I wanted to.’

‘I know. You were a man.’

‘A man?’ Peter snorted into his beer.

Eve shrugged. ‘I just think we’ve lost sight of each other. I mean, I feel like I haven’t seen your face for ages.’

‘That’s because you’ve been away.’

Eve sighed. ‘No, I don’t mean it like that. I mean like I’m always looking somewhere else—sorting the kids, checking you’re sorting the kids, checking my
emails—I want to look up more. At you. At everything. I want to know how you are and for you to know how I am.’

Peter looked at her and nodded.

Eve shrugged a shoulder as if she’d said her bit.

‘You know you wouldn’t have Noah and Maisey though, don’t you? You know how it works? That it would have had to have been those specific sperm and eggs on that specific day, and it’s pretty unlikely that it would have happened like that if you’d gone off cycling round the world. What? Don’t look at me like that. I’m just saying. I’m just checking that you don’t believe it’s like fate or anything like that.’

‘Oh god.’ Eve shook her head. ‘You’re totally ruining the moment.’

‘What, with sense?’

Out over the lake it started to thunder.

‘Yes,’ Eve said, exasperated.

Peter half-smiled around his beer. ‘Well, you wanted a man, Eve. That’s what you’re going to get. Strong, practical sense.’

Eve looked at the droplets of condensation on her gin and tonic, could feel the smile starting in her eyes, the bubble of comfortable happiness, the feeling that she could exhale again.

Libby was staring out of the window of the outhouse waiting for a lull in the rain so she could dash back to the hotel when Dex came running up the path from the forest. His hair was plastered to his head, his clothes soaked through. She pulled open the door for him and shouted, ‘You can come in here if you want.’

There was no telling him twice. Dex shot in, shaking the rain off, swearing about the weather. ‘Who comes to Italy for the rain? There I was having this really nice morning reading my book and then suddenly it’s pissing it down. What’s it playing at?’

Libby laughed. ‘Do you want a coffee?’

‘No, I want two fingers of brandy and an open fire,’ he said, pulling off his t-shirt and wringing it out into the sink. ‘Is that my jumper?’ he said, pointing to his workbench chair.

Libby, side-tracked for a second by the sight of Dex’s bare, tanned chest and the muscles that Eve had been admiring on the beach, took a moment to nod that it was.

‘Brilliant!’ he said, going over to pull on his sweater.

Libby stopped staring and poured cheap cooking brandy into two tumblers.

‘Ah, you’re an angel,’ he said as she handed him a glass, and sat down on Jimmy’s chair.

Dex knocked it back in one gulp and then went to get the bottle. ‘So, what are you doing hiding out in here? Looking, if I might say, a tad glum.’

Libby sighed a smile and handed Dex her phone so he could read the two emails from Jake.

‘Oh god, he is complete idiot,’ Dex said, handing her the phone back. ‘Only Jake would mess up coming to win you back and still manage to get something in about how great the snow is.’

Libby laughed. ‘I know.’

‘He’s just selfish, Libby. Always has been.’

She nodded.

‘What are you going to write back?’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

Dex frowned.

‘I’m going to ring him. I can’t do this over email any more. It’s ridiculous.’

Dex took a gulp of the brandy, involuntarily grimaced, and then said, ‘So what are you going to do—in the long term?’

She toyed with the glass in her hand, swirling the liquid as she shrugged, and said, ‘Be on my own for a bit.’

There was a pause. Dex nodded. The rain got heavier. Like ball bearings pelting the roof.

‘Well, if you ever decide it’s time for someone new,’ Dex said. ‘I am always available.’

Libby laughed; then looking at him properly realised he was serious.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Dex, with a resigned shake of his head. ‘I have loved you for years, Libby. Probably since you interviewed me for the room.’

Libby frowned. ‘No you haven’t.’ The brandy suddenly seemed really strong and the rain deafening.

Dex shrugged. ‘It’s OK though. I keep it tucked away in my pocket. I just thought I’d tell you because I’d be annoyed if I didn’t. Then I’ll put it back again,’ he said with the softest smile she’d ever seen on Dex’s face.

Libby didn’t know what to do.

But it was OK because Dex did it for her by saying, ‘Right, let’s top these up, shall we?’ and sloshing some more brandy into the glass. ‘You can tell me exactly what you’re going to say to Jake. Use me as practice.’

‘I’m not really sure what I’m going to say yet.’

‘What do you think you’re going to say?’

‘I don’t know. Something about how he can’t think he can just come back and think he can slot right in.’

‘Yes,’ Dex nodded. ‘Good start.’

‘This is weird.’

‘No, no, keep going, it’s good.’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to say next, Dex. I want to tell him that I don’t think he should come back at all but I’m worried he’ll just jump in and bulldoze me with his way of doing things.’

Dex looked at her for a second then took another swig of brandy, leant forward and said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Libby, if I was you I’d say something like … I am worth ten thousand times more than this, Jake. I am somebody magnificent who should be cherished and loved and laughed along with and there are a million good people out there better for me than you.’ He paused, traced a line on the work surface with his finger, then looked up and added, ‘Jake belittled the value of something priceless that was entrusted into his care. And that’s unforgivable. You have to say to him that you want to be with someone who is certain with all their heart that you are enough.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s what I’d say anyway,’ he said with a smile and then drained his brandy.

Libby stared at him for a second, unable to reply, then had to look away because she could see in his eyes how much he wanted that someone to be him.

‘Jessica!’

She was standing on the boardwalk in the pouring rain, staring out at the lake. She’d decided not to go back to the hotel in case they were all together, chatting in the warmth of the bar, and she couldn’t face it just yet. This felt like a moment—one that perhaps she should mark with a baptism of torrential rain and lightning forking on the horizon.

‘Jessica!’ Bruno was walking towards her from the direction of the bar. ‘What are you doing standing in the rain?’

She narrowed her eyes to focus through the sheets of misty water. ‘Nothing. I’m fine, I’m just watching.’

‘You’re soaking.’

‘I know, I’m fine. It’s only water.’

He got closer, wiping the rain from his face and brushing it from his hair with his hand. ‘I like your style.’

She shrugged as carelessly as she could, quite pleased with what he would assume to be her
laissez faire
attitude to weather.

He stopped next to her; the sky rumbled with thunder, and they both looked out to the horizon where the forks of lightning were moving further away into the distance, the clouds still tumbling down with darkness.

‘You look very beautiful,’ he said, and she turned, realising his gaze had moved from the horizon to her profile, and did a little snort to say he was being preposterous.

He shrugged to say that she was wrong and he was right, then he leant forward and kissed her.

Jessica took a step back, startled. ‘No, no, no, you can’t do that. You can’t just walk up to someone and just kiss them. I might not want you to kiss me.’

‘We’ve kissed before.’

‘Yes, I know, but I might not want to kiss now,’ she said, caught off guard.

He chuckled. ‘But you do.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked, disbelieving.

‘Because I see you. I see it in you. It’s obvious.’ His mouth lifted up into a cocky grin as he took a step back, clasping his hands behind his back.

She shook her head. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said, ignoring the fact it had actually been quite exciting to be kissed so passionately in a rain storm on holiday. ‘And,’ she went on, ‘a terrible answer. Feminists
could write whole theses on why that’s such a terrible, presumptuous answer.’

Bruno ran his hand through his hair to shake off some more of the rain and then said, ‘Are you a feminist?’ over another shudder of thunder.

‘Yes.’

‘As am I,’ he said.

Jessica rolled her eyes, ‘Oh please.’

‘Of course I am,’ he said. ‘I believe one hundred per cent that we are all equal. Why not? Where would the fun be otherwise?’

She had to wipe her eyes to see him properly, could feel the water beading on her face and eyelashes and turning her hair to long corkscrew curls.

‘Jessica, I wholeheartedly want you to ravish me,’ he said, spreading his arms wide, eyes dancing behind sheets of rain.

She bit down on a traitorous smile at the sight of him. ‘You are unbelievable.’

‘Come,’ he beckoned, ‘come with me to the beach. It’s the perfect weather for sex.’

‘What?’ Jessica choked.

‘Come on. You are thinking too much.’

She paused. He was right. She was massively overthinking. She had never had sex on a beach and her hesitation made it obvious.

Bruno frowned. ‘It’s the beach,’ he said. ‘Surely everyone has had sex on a beach?’

She shook her head. What if someone saw? She glanced around at the deserted rain-soaked landscape.

‘Ha.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Even better. Come, let me relieve you of this sad injustice.’

She stood where she was, thinking about it. How did he do this? How did he make her feel like she had a little bird trapped inside her, fluttering, excited to be finally set free?

‘OK,’ she said, surprising both of them. ‘But that’s all this is. You know that? Yes. Just a holiday fling. No more.’

He shrugged as if it was of no consequence to him either way. ‘If that feels better for you,’ he said.

Jessica nodded, then, checking behind her to make sure no one was watching, stalked past him towards a gap in the rocks.