Summer at the Lake (52 page)

After a monumental amount of urging on Floriana’s part, she managed to persuade Ann to have a long relaxing soak in the bath with a glass of wine, and with her sister out of the way – more crucially out of earshot – she phoned Mum and Dad. No way was she going to harbour Ann without letting them know where she was. Which, she knew, in turn, would mean they would probably tell Paul. And because she hadn’t made an actual promise to Ann not to speak to them, she didn’t feel too guilty over what she was doing.

That’s what she told herself as she listened to the ringing tone in her ear while she waited for Mum or Dad to pick up at their end. But the longer the call went unanswered, the less sure she felt about speaking to them. How would she feel if the boot was on the other foot and she’d asked Ann to keep something quiet?

She ended the call and immediately rang another number.

But there was no answer from Adam either. There’d been nothing from him since yesterday. Hoping his father was OK, Floriana wished she could be with him at this difficult time, but in all likelihood she would be the last thing on his mind right now.

Maybe she would never be truly on his mind ever again. Almost certainly he had convinced himself she was too tangled up with Seb for him to want to risk a relationship with her. And who could blame him for reaching that conclusion?

Carissima Esme
,

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed reading your letter and how it made me wish I could be there with you so that I could meet Euridice and acquaint myself better with your friend Floriana and get to know Adam. You are truly fortunate to have two such wonderful young people in your life.

I have so little to share with you in comparison. But this one thing I will share this with you – in the belief that it will make you smile. Crina, the Moldavian woman who keeps my apartment from falling into a state of chaos, has declared that I have a secret lover! She says that this is as obvious to her as the sun shining through the clouds, as she has never seen me looking so happy. I have told her that I am far too old to have a lover, but she just wags her finger and says her grandfather back at home in Chisinau married for the third time last year and he is ninety-one and that it is not too late for me to contemplate marriage. I fear her head is full of romantic thinking right now for she is very much in love with a young man from Mestre on the mainland.

One thing Crina has right, you have brought the sunshine into my life. As I sit here at my desk looking down onto the small square where a neighbour’s little girl is chasing the pigeons, I want to thank you for bringing back so many happy memories for me. How clearly I can picture you when I first met you and then again later at the lake when you nursed me with such tender care.

Our time together was brief, but I never forgot you. Occasionally, a fragment of memory would pop into my mind and I would wonder where you were and how your life had turned out. Now when I look back I feel as if we were connected by an invisible thread and that we were destined to meet again, and that there is more of our story to come.

But for now I must finish and go to the bank before it closes for lunch, as well as post this letter. Write to me again and soon! I want to know what happens next between your young friends, Adam and Floriana.

Un abbraccio,

Marco.

PS When time is so short, email would be so much easier and quicker for us . . .

Esme took off her spectacles. ‘And what do you make of that?’ she asked Euridice who was on the floor at her feet and washing herself with concentrated effort, paying particular attention to her ears.

‘What?’ Esme asked, when the cat ignored her. ‘You’re not interested in Marco’s letter? Or are you still sulking because I left you in Joe and Buddy’s care? Is that it? Well, I suppose it’s true, cats do have long memories.’

Just as Marco and I do, she thought with a wry smile. She really hadn’t bargained on him remembering things as well as she had. In that respect she had wildly underestimated him. It made her consider the possibility that she might be wrong to withhold the one thing that could very well be the invisible thread between them: the child they had created and lost.

There is more of our story to come
. . . Yes, Marco, there is.

But for now there was Adam and Floriana’s story that was far more pressing.

It was self-centred of her, but Esme was saddened not to have seen more of her young friends in the two weeks since arriving home from Italy. But what else could she expect when Adam was dividing his time between work and the John Radcliffe where, as far as Esme knew, and following surgery, his father was making steady progress. Meanwhile, not only was Oxford teeming with visitors and keeping Floriana busy from morning till night, but she’d had her own family problems to deal with, namely her sister who had only recently been persuaded to return home to her husband and children. With so much going on in their lives, it was only natural they hadn’t had the time to visit her as they did before. What upset her more was the fear that they hadn’t had time for each other either, which probably meant matters had not been resolved between them.

It was later in the day, as she was putting away the shopping she’d just fetched from Buddy Joe’s, that she had a surprise and very welcome visitor: Adam.

‘If you’ve got a moment, I wondered if I could have a word with you before going to see my father,’ he said.

‘It’s about Floriana,’ he explained, when she’d ushered him through to the garden and he was settled in a chair with Euridice on his lap. ‘Have you spoken to her recently?’

‘No more than a few words. Like you, she’s had her hands rather full of late. Is there something specific you want to know?’ Esme asked. As if she couldn’t guess.

‘Floriana and Seb,’ he said bluntly. ‘What’s the situation there now?’

Esme waved a wasp away that was making a nuisance of itself around her. ‘Shouldn’t you be asking Floriana that?’

‘I . . . we haven’t spoken since . . . well, not since Venice.’

‘Not even on the phone?’

‘Just a couple of texts when the two of you arrived back.’

It was exactly as Esme had feared. ‘I know you’ve been preoccupied with your father, Adam, but are you sure you haven’t been avoiding Floriana?’

He shifted his position, stirring Euridice to rise up and paddle his lap with her paws to get comfortable again. ‘Actually, I was under the impression that she was avoiding me. Has she spoken to you about Seb?’

The wasp was back again. This time Esme ignored it. ‘What is it you’re really asking me? Is it – do I think she’s still in love with him?’

‘In a nutshell, yes. Before Seb’s aborted wedding she told me she wasn’t in love with him, but perhaps that’s changed since, well, since circumstances have changed. It would be understandable if it had.’

‘And would you suddenly decide you loved Jesse again if she reappeared and claimed she’d made a mistake?’ Esme asked.

He drew his brows together. ‘No, not now. It’s too late.’

‘Then give Floriana the credit for being in exactly the same position: Seb left it too late to say he loved her. But one thing you have to accept, she cares deeply about him and probably always will. Do you know about the letter he wrote to her when we returned to the lake from Venice?’

Adam shook his head. ‘What letter?’

Exasperated that two such intelligent people could let things slide so easily, Esme decided to fill Adam in.

‘But why didn’t she tell me this?’ Adam said when she’d finished.

‘Perhaps your behaviour gave her the impression you were no longer interested. Or worse, she suspected that jealousy had got the better of you. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that jealousy is one of the most destructive of emotions and can wreck the best of relationships, which means you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that Floriana won’t want to cut Seb out of her life entirely.’

‘I wouldn’t expect her to.’

‘Easy to say, but only you will know if you really mean it. But if I may offer you some advice, Adam, Floriana needs to be as sure about your feelings for her as you need to feel about hers for you.’

Adam knew Esme was right, jealousy and pride had kept him from speaking to Floriana, and the longer the silence had gone on between them, the more he convinced himself that he had lost out to Seb, and the more resigned he became.

But then last night, after spending the evening with Joyce at his father’s bedside, and witnessing the depth of affection and closeness between them, he had been struck by how lucky they both were to have found happiness second time around. It had made him really think about Floriana and how much he missed her. He missed the brightness she’d brought into his life, the way she could always do or say something to surprise or challenge him. It had prompted him to take the radical step of telling his father and Joyce about her.

‘Stop buggering around and do something about it,’ his father had said, not mincing his words, ‘that’s my best advice. If you care about the girl and think there’s a chance you can make a go of things, then seize the day. After all, what else would I say lying here having just escaped death by the skin of my teeth? Cliché or not, Adam, we only get one life, so make the most of it.’

His father’s words had nudged at him throughout today and eventually made him seek Esme’s advice before approaching Floriana directly.

Now, after visiting his father, he was on his way home, his mind made up to speak to Floriana. He would see her tonight; it was time to get this sorted. He would lay out his cards, tell her he loved her, and if she rejected him, so be it. At least he would know. At least he would know he had tried. The challenge would be to convince her – and maybe himself – that Seb was no longer an issue for him. As Esme had rightly said, a relationship between them would be doomed if Floriana was constantly worrying that he was jealous of her oldest friend.

He parked outside his house on Latimer Street and walked the short distance to Church Close. There were no lights on at Floriana’s, but then it wasn’t fully dark yet.

After he’d rung the doorbell three times and looked discreetly through the front window, he had to accept he’d had a wasted journey. Disappointed, he turned around to go home. The sensible thing would have been to text or even ring Floriana to check she would be in, but he’d been led by the desire to act on impulse – something she would doubtless have smiled at. ‘Ooh, spontaneity, Mr Strong,’ he imagined her saying, ‘whatever next?’ He had a sudden mental image of the snowball fight she had instigated on this very spot last December. Then a more recent image came to him, of her in the garden at Villa Sofia gathering rose petals and flinging them in the air above her head. Both recollections made him smile.

He was halfway home when he saw Floriana coming towards him on her bicycle. She was wearing a long white cotton skirt that was sliding up and down her bare legs with each rotation of the pedals, and with one hand casually resting on the handlebar, she held a strawberry ice lolly in the other.

Seeing him, she came to a stop alongside and hopped off the bike. ‘Hi,’ he said, resisting the urge to remind her that she ought to wear a cycling helmet, as he and Esme had repeatedly nagged her, ‘I’ve just been to see you.’

‘That’s funny,’ she said without missing a beat, ‘because I’ve just been to see you. I left a note for you.’

Her lips were faintly stained from the lolly and had the unexpected effect of making him want to kiss her, to run his tongue lightly over her lips to taste the— He stopped himself short and swallowed. ‘What does it say?’ he asked.

‘Oh, this and that. How’s your father?’

‘Beginning to grumble about being bored and wanting to get home, which we’re taking as an encouraging sign. So this note, should I rush back to read it?’

She licked the side of her hand where the lolly had dribbled and left a strawberry coloured trail. ‘No hurry.’

A white van drove by, its windows down, loud indistinguishable music blaring. When it had driven past, he said, ‘Esme tells me your sister’s gone home to her husband.’

‘Yes, she went two days ago. I think I’ve just about recovered from the trauma.’

‘Was it really as bad as that?’

She gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘Off-the-scale bad.’

OK, he thought, that’s the niceties covered, time now to give it his best shot. ‘It seems ages since we last spoke,’ he said. ‘I’ve missed you.’

Her eyes settled softly on his. ‘I’ve missed you too, but I didn’t like to bother you, what with your dad and all.’

Do
not
, Adam warned himself, on pain of death, ask if that was the only reason she hadn’t been in touch. ‘Was that the only reason you didn’t get in touch?’ he asked.
Oh, perfect, mouth clearly disengaged from brain!

Her gaze strengthened on his. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want to speak to me.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘You know why.’

She was right. Of course she was. Only an idiot would ask such a dumb question. ‘Can we talk now?’ he said. ‘I mean, can we talk properly? And somewhere else,’ he added as a car drove slowly by, its driver staring at them as though they had no right to be there. ‘Somewhere more private. Like my place, for instance. Although it’s a bit of a tip still. We could go to yours, if you’d prefer.’

She sucked hard on the last remains of the fast melting lolly, then looked over his shoulder, up the road towards her house, then back towards his, before glancing down at the pavement. ‘This is our very own personal equator, isn’t it?’ she said, drawing a line across the pavement with her foot. ‘We’re standing exactly equidistant from my house to yours. You choose what we do.’

Knowing what she was really asking of him and knowing also that he had never been more sure of anything in his life, he said, ‘Come home with me.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Yes. One hundred per cent sure.’

She smiled. It was like an explosion of sunshine bursting between them. He put a hand to her cheek and kissed her, and kept on kissing her, all the doubts and uncertainty of the last two weeks swept away in an instant. And yes, her lips tasted of strawberries, sweet and luscious.