Dolci di Love (19 page)

‘Well, I hate you!' she cried. ‘You've ruined everything. I hate you! I wish you were dead, Daniel. I wish you were dead!' She flew at him then, beating at his chest, wishing she had the strength to hurt him as much as he had hurt her, deliberately or otherwise. It didn't matter, the pain was still the same.

Daniel caught her flailing wrists, held them still, then slowly lowered them. He had tears in his eyes.

‘If it makes you feel better, a lot of the time, I wish I was dead too,' he said.

Lily pulled her wrists away from him.

The hiss of a nearby cappuccino machine threaded up the alley between them. A pigeon flapped above their heads. A clump of chattering boys on a group outing passed the gap in the alley that opened on to the Via del Corso.

Then there was silence.

‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you now?' Lily asked him.

He reached for her again, stricken, but she stepped away.

They both saw Francesca skip past the alley at the same time.

‘You go,' Lily said. ‘She's your daughter.'

T
he widows were crowded around the table in their underground HQ staring at Lily and Francesca's heart-shaped
cantucci
.

‘Well, are we going to stand here gawking or are we going to eat them?' Fiorella asked, her mouth watering.

‘They're not the right shape,' one widow said.

‘They're not the right colour,' added another.

‘They're not made by Violetta and Luciana,' pointed out a third.

‘Oh, please,' Fiorella scoffed. ‘This
cantucci
looks good, it smells great, and we know for a fact it was baked this morning, not some time in the 1970s, so what are we waiting for?'

Her age-spotted hand reached toward the fluted bowl she'd brought down the stairs, hovered briefly—mostly for dramatic effect—and clamped down finally on a heart-shaped
cantucci
.

‘Santa Ana di Chisa! It's sensational,' she said after devouring it in one gulp like a fairy-tale wolf. ‘I think the shape makes a difference. Sweet and spicy all at the same time. Could be dipped in
vin santo
—well, couldn't everything?—but could be eaten just the way it is. Like
cantucci
but with extra
amore
.
Amorucci
! Come on, you scaredy-cats. What are you waiting for?'

It didn't take much more encouragement for the other widows to dig in, and the general impression was that the heart shape indeed made the cookies taste even better, and that Lily and Eugenia's little girl—what a strange combination that was!—had brought Ferretti
cantucci
back from the dead, or at least the inedible.

Their licking of lips and picking crumbs out of cleavages was interrupted, however, by the widow Del Grasso staggering into the room, entirely hot and bothered and wheezing so hard she could hardly speak.

‘Lily…the piazza…that little girl…oooooh,
cantucci
.' She shoved a heart-shaped cookie into her mouth and chomped cheerfully, trying to get hold of her breath again. ‘It's
delizioso
.'

‘It's
amorucci
,' said one widow. ‘It's new.'

‘What were you saying about Lily?' asked another.

‘Yes, oh, just one more
amorucci
and then, mmm, yum…much to tell. Oh, those cherries! Anyway, well, I was following them across the piazza and they were mooching along happy as larks, but then something happened, something strange, something that made me think that this love match with Alessandro is perhaps not working out quite the way it should be.'

‘Oh, really?' Fiorella asked. ‘And why is that?'

‘Well, it's to do with the little girl, Francesca. Or more to the point, her father,' the widow Del Grasso said. ‘You know, the American, the wine guy who comes and goes.'

‘Ye-e-e-s,' they all said.

‘Well, Lily saw him,' she said.

‘Ye-e-e-s,' they all said.

‘And I saw her see him.

‘Ye-e-e-s,' they all said.

‘And, she, well, there's no other way to put it, but I'm afraid to tell you that she went quite weak at the knees.'

The widows had worked out years before that this wasn't just an expression, women often did go weak at the knees—but only for their true
amore
.

‘She went weak at the knees for the American wine guy?' the widow Benedicti asked. ‘Well, that can't be right.'

‘I intervened, of course, just like Violetta would want me to,' the widow Del Grasso said. ‘I happened to have a bag of marbles on me that I'd confiscated from my neighbour's grandson for feeding them to his dog—the results of that, let me tell you, are not to be stepped on—and so I let the marbles go on the ground beneath Lily's feet.'

‘Good thinking,' agreed the widows.

‘She soon got control of her knees again so I followed them. Well, I followed all of her—thank Santa Ana di Chisa for my sister-in-law's spare spectacles—but then I lost her, but then I found her again. I found both of them. They were up the alley just past your place, Mazzetti, and they were having a blazing row.'

‘About what?'

‘Well, I don't know exactly because they were screaming bloody murder in English, but I did pick up one word I know.'

‘Ye-e-e-s?' the widows said again.

‘Husband,' pronounced the widow Del Grasso with a big smile. ‘I think the American wine guy is Lily's husband.'

There followed a stunned silence.

‘How could Violetta have got it so wrong?' the widow Mazzetti finally asked.

‘We've fluffed before, but never this badly,' added the widow Ciacci.

‘What have I been trying to tell you all this time?' the widow Ercolani exclaimed. ‘Violetta is far too over-the-hill for this kind of carry-on.'

‘I most certainly am not,' announced Violetta, surprising them from behind. ‘I turn my back for one minute and you leave the door unlocked? Who was the last one in?'

‘That would be me,' confessed Fiorella, even though the widow Del Grasso was entirely to blame. “Born in an igloo,' my
nonna
used to say. I didn't even know what an igloo was till I was forty-seven. They're made of ice, you know. They don't have doors.'

Violetta's mood darkened just at the sight of her. ‘You know, ever since you arrived here there has been nothing but—'

‘Never mind that,' the widow Mazzetti interjected. ‘You've got it all wrong about Alessandro.'

‘His heart! Our poor darling's heart!'

‘Broken again, because of us.'

‘Shattered, just like that.'

‘Stamped on for a second time.'

‘So, how's your sister?' asked Fiorella, surprising Violetta by taking a different tack.

‘Good,' answered Violetta. ‘She's upstairs. Intact but a little wobbly on her feet. Listen, about Alessandro, it's not as bad as you think.'

And then she noticed it: the most wonderful smell. It filled her nostrils and she pointed her little snout in the air and sniffed and sniffed and sniffed. Orange blossom! Today of all days!

‘In fact, it's even better than that,' she exclaimed with the nearest thing to glee she could manage.

Fiorella Fiorucci, who was really very sharp, saw her sniffing and started to get a bad feeling.

‘The truth is, I got it wrong, indeed I did, but not completely. It is not Alessandro who is our
calzino rotto
at all, it is Lily.'

The widows broke out into a babble of disagreement. Alessandro was a village son, his heart was broken, and it was he who needed mending, not some foreigner in a sordid love triangle.

‘I'm right, I know I'm right,' said Violetta. ‘You have to trust me but to prove it, as if I need proof, now that everything has become quite clear, or perhaps that is why it has, there's orange blossom in the air. I can smell it as plain as if it were sitting right in front of me.'

‘That's funny,' said the widow Mazzetti. ‘So can I.'

‘Me too,' agreed Del Grasso.

‘Me three,' said Ciacci.

‘Well, I'm not surprised,' said the widow Ercolani, holding up the air freshener someone had bought and put on the mantelpiece above the hearth. ‘It
was
sitting right in front of you. There's practically an orange blossom factory underneath your shop, Violetta. This is what you've been smelling all these years. Air freshener.'

L
ily stood in the alleyway not knowing what to do with the unhappiness roaring inside her. She didn't want to go back to the
pasticceria
, she didn't want to go to Poliziano, she didn't want to go anywhere—she didn't want to be anywhere.

She headed down the Corso, clinging to the walls of the leaning buildings, replaying the horrible fight with Daniel. She should have stayed in New York. She was better off not knowing, not hearing, not seeing.

She should have put the stupid picture back in the shoe and just gone on with her old life; that's what she should have done.

‘
Buonosera
, Lily,' Mario called out from behind his glistening ice creams as she passed the
gelateria
. ‘Come in for a gelato! I have your triple chocolate here waiting for you!' She waved back but sped up as if she were expected somewhere else.

Farther down the hill, Alberto beckoned to her over a customer's shoulder, then hurried out to his doorway. ‘A glass of wine, Lily? A prosecco?' She managed a tortured smile but could feel the tears this squeezed into the corners of her eyes as she hurried past.

‘
Fragoli?
' the stout old woman in the
alimentare
near the half-renovated church offered her, stepping into her path bearing a tub of strawberries. ‘Fresh.
Oggi
.'

Lily shook her head and kept scurrying, slamming to a standstill only when she bumped slap-bang into a middle-aged man dressed in expensive but crumpled linen. He had stopped in the middle of the Corso to scrutinise a tourist map with his wife.

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' Lily said, checking to make sure he was all right.

‘Thank heaven, you speak English,' smiled the wife, trying to pull her suitcase out of the way of other pedestrians. ‘Perhaps you can help us.'

The husband wiped his sweating brow with a spotted handkerchief. ‘You wouldn't happen to know where we would find the Hotel Adesso, would you?'

‘Actually, I would,' Lily replied, surprised that her voice sounded normal. ‘You've a way to go, I'm afraid, but it gets shadier once you turn off to the left at the top of the hill. Then there's about another ten-minute walk and it's on your right.'

‘There you are, darling,' the wife beamed. ‘I told you someone would stop and help.'

‘Thank you,' her husband said. ‘It's been quite a day.'

‘But it's beautiful here, isn't it?' said the wife, her face a picture of blissful vacationing. ‘We thought Florence was to die for, but this place just takes the cake. It's precious! Just precious!'

The husband smiled at her, then reached out and touched her shoulder, as if just to thank her for being so thrilled. She smiled back up at him and it was so tender a moment that Lily looked away, a lump in her throat.

They thanked her, then struggled onward and upward, leaving her standing there, looking after them. The sun was shining, hitting the faded shutters and windowpanes on one side of the street, throwing a darker shade of Tuscan stone on the buildings opposite.

Everyone around her seemed to be laughing, even the geraniums in a pot on the windowsill beside her seemed suddenly impossibly
perky. Some smoky jazz tune wafted in the air from a third-storey window above. Through a peekaboo slice in the buildings, she could see distant trees being tickled by the gentle breeze that danced across the valley. Coffee was being roasted nearby, a couple of lovestruck teenagers murmured sweet nothings to each other as they sat on the steps of the church, their arms and legs entwined like tree roots.

How could the sun shine and the flowers bloom when the lovestruck man her own arms and legs had once been entwined around had turned out to be little more than an illusion—smoke and mirrors?

It should be raining.

It was Lily's turn now to get jostled by a bustling pedestrian whose unintentional shove spun her round almost full circle until she found herself almost in the arms of the person doing the shoving.

It was Alessandro. Despite reports to the contrary, Montevedova really was a town where you bumped into everyone you knew.

‘I am so sorry for meeting you like this,' Alessandro said, a wide grin splitting his handsome face, ‘but I am also very happy for meeting you like this.' He paused, his smile fading. ‘But are you all right, Lily? You look lost.'

‘I guess you could say I'm not having the best of days,' she said.

‘Me too,' agreed Alessandro. ‘My housekeeper has sent me on another strange goose chase. I have been waiting for a bottle of liqueur to arrive at the wine shop for nearly two hours now, but I give up. It's such a beautiful day—too good to waste.'

Actually, she was glad she had bumped into him too. He was a breath of fresh air just when she needed one.

‘Have you had lunch?' Alessandro asked, at which Lily shook her head.

‘Would you care to join me?'

‘In Montevedova?'

‘Anywhere you like,' Alessandro smiled.

‘Anywhere that isn't Montevedova,' Lily answered.

‘I know just the place. It's something a little different from here and I think you'll like it.'

‘
Fragoli?
' The woman in the doorway of the
alimentare
called after them as they headed out through the ancient city portal toward the parking area. ‘
Fragoli?
'

The ‘something a little different' proved to be something quite breathtaking: a nearby town called Bagno Vignoni where the
piazza grande
was not a cobbled square, but an ancient water bath contained by a stone perimeter around which the rest of the tiny village nestled.

Alessandro chose a table at the café closest to the water and Lily sat down beside him, gazing across the mirror-still surface through the gaps in the houses that surrounded it to yet another ridiculously comely, perfectly symmetrical hilltop town perched on the horizon in the distance.

‘This is just the most beautiful spot,' she said.

‘It is,' agreed Alessandro. ‘I used to come here often with my wife.'

He smelled delicious, she could not help but notice, sort of fresh, like limes, or something more exotic—passion fruit perhaps.

‘I'm so sorry, Alessandro,' she said. ‘About your wife. You must miss her very much.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I do.'

‘Do you want to talk about it?' she asked.

‘It does not make for good conversation.'

‘Well, I'm not much in the mood for good conversation, if that makes any difference.'

The waitress came and took Alessandro's order, a Campari, and Lily paused—fearful of ending up with her bra sticking out of her sleeve a second time—but then ordered the same.

‘When did she pass away?' she asked when once again it was just the two of them.

‘Two years ago,' Alessandro answered. ‘Just a little more than two years ago.' He was staring across the bath water, the nail of one thumb scratching at the knuckle of the other. ‘Something wrong with her heart that we did not know about. She was driving to Pienza and…' he broke off, shaking his head. ‘It was very sudden. She would not have suffered. This is what they tell me. She would not have suffered.'

The wife, Lily thought, had the better part of the deal by far. It was her surviving husband who was doing the suffering.

‘Had you been married a long time?'

‘Almost twenty-five years. We were at school together, university together, we travelled together, we did everything together.'

‘She liked to travel?'

‘Yes.' He smiled, the reminder of happier times pushing away the loss of her. ‘We both did. Around Italy at first: Sicily, Puglia, Umbria, Venezia. She loved Venezia.'

‘Venezia?'

‘Venice.'

‘Oh, so the gondola…?'

‘Yes, a special memory. The day I asked Elisabeta to marry me.'

‘Romantic.'

‘Yes.'

His mood seemed to darken.

‘I'm sure you will find romance again,' Lily suggested, as softly as she could.

He looked at her. ‘I want to, but this is hard. I don't know what to do without her, how to be without her. I wish she was here. I wish that a lot. Just that she was here and that it could be the way it was before.'

‘I'm sure she knew how much you loved her,' Lily said. A man who felt like Alessandro did about his wife must have been telling her so every minute.

‘That is nice for you to say but I am not sure that she did,' Alessandro said. ‘We were not the sort to tell each other all the time, “Oh, I love you, I adore you, I couldn't live without you,” because I assume she knows this. But now I wish we had spoken of it more often because this is the truth.'

‘I'm sure she still would have known.'

‘If I had my time again, if she had her time again, I would tell her every day so that if she was suddenly taken away from me, she would be certain—' he turned away, his pride keeping him from showing Lily his tears.

It was then she knew she was going to sleep with him.

She suspected she had known it when she first saw him through her wet window on the road leading into Montevedova, the rain splattering his white linen against his olive skin.

She was heartbroken in Tuscany, after all, confused about everything except this sad, kind, lonely person whom destiny seemed determined to push into her arms. He smelled good and she wanted to make him feel better. She could do that.

She invited herself back to his villa and he accepted the invitation.

It had nothing to do with Daniel, she told herself, with what he had done to her, with what had transpired earlier in the day. It had to do with Alessandro. Sad, sexy Alessandro and the way he made her feel like she had something he wanted, he needed.

The barn doors were open when they pulled up outside his villa and she could see the gondola sitting there, shipwrecked in Tuscany. Her heart ached for the memories it held.

Inside the villa she excused herself to put on fresh lipstick, check her hair (Eugenia had actually done a good job), and spray a little
perfume on her wrists. It had been a long, long time since she had seduced anyone, but she figured men hadn't changed that much in the past twenty years. And she had felt whatever was between her and Alessandro as plainly as if she could see it. Chemistry, possibility, heat; it was all there.

The moment she walked into the kitchen where he was making coffee, Lily realised seduction was not going to be necessary. Alessandro was feeling all the same things, she was sure of it. The look in his eyes when he saw her, the slight tingle in the warm summer air, the little soupçon of electricity that flickered and sparked between them; she and Alessandro were going to fall together as easily as she and Daniel had fallen apart.

She relaxed. Everything was going to be just fine.

He took their coffees into the living room and put some music on—opera, something Lily had heard before but couldn't name. He opened the doors out to the pool and the valley beyond, then stood there with his back to her as the sheer linen drapes on either side fluttered in the breeze.

Finally, he turned, smiled his mournful smile, and Lily simply moved to him, dreamlike, could not keep herself from doing so. It seemed inevitable.

Her arms ached to hold him, to push away his grief. She knew what it felt like, how lonely it was, how deep the hole inside could get when it had been emptied so thoroughly and nothing else seemed to fill it.

She turned her face up to his and kissed him, tasting the salt on his lips, feeling the shudder that ran through his body at her touch.

If he was surprised at her boldness, he didn't show it. He dropped deep into that kiss and Lily dropped with him.

He pulled her closer, one hand on the back of her head, the other on her hip, and kissed her neck, her ear, the collarbone he had admired the first day he met her.

She threw her head back as she felt some of the pain melt out of him, heard a little groan of ecstasy, moved closer, her hips fused to his, an insatiable hunger burning its way from her toes all the way up through her body to her lips.

When they again found Alessandro's, waiting, desperate for more, Lily tasted salt once more, but this time, it was different. These tears, she realised, were her own.