Lucy Gordon - From Florence With Love

The same something that had made Massimo go pale at the airport, as he’d knelt on the tarmac at her side? The same something that had made him stand, rigid with tension, staring grimly at a poster when he thought she was asleep in the room at the hospital?

She pushed back her chair and hopped over to the sink, where Carlotta was scrubbing furiously at a pot. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t eat. Carlotta, what did I say?’ she asked under her breath, and those old, wise eyes that had seen so much met hers, and she shook her head, twisting her hands in the dishcloth and biting her lips.

She put the pot on the draining board, and Lydia automatically picked up a tea towel and dried it, her hip propped against the edge of the sink unit as she balanced on her good leg. Another pot followed, and another, and finally Carlotta stopped scouring the pots as if they were lined with demons and her hands came to rest.

She hobbled over to the children, cleared up their plates, gave them pudding and then gathered them up like a mother hen.

‘Wait here. Eat. He will come back.’

They left her there in the kitchen, their footsteps echoing along a corridor and up stairs, and Lydia sank down at the table and stared blankly at the far wall, going over and over her words in her head and getting nowhere.

Carlotta appeared again and put Francesca’s supper in a microwave.

‘Is she coming down again? I want to apologise for upsetting her.’

‘No. Is all right, signorina . Her pàpa look after her.’ And lifting the plate out of the microwave, she carried it out of the room on a tray, leaving Lydia alone again.

She poked at her food, but it was cold now, the beans congealing in the sauce, and she ripped up a bit of bread and dabbed it absently in the stew. What had she said, that had caused such distress?

She had no idea, but she couldn’t leave the kitchen without finding out, and there was still a pile of washing up to do. She didn’t know where anything lived, but the table was big enough to put it all on, and there was a dishwasher sitting there empty.

Well, if she could do nothing else while she waited, she could do that, she told herself, and pushing up her sleeves, she hopped over to the dishwasher and set about clearing up the kitchen.

He had to go down to her—to explain, or apologise properly, at the very least.

His stomach growled, but he ignored it. He couldn’t eat, not while his daughter was just settling into sleep at last, her sobs fading quietly away into the night.

He closed his eyes. Talking to Lydia, dredging it all up again, was the last thing he wanted to do, the very last, but he had no choice. Leaning over Francesca, he pressed a kiss lightly against her cheek, and straightened. She was sleeping peacefully now; he could leave her.

Leave her, and go and find Lydia, if she hadn’t had the sense to pack up her things and leave. It seemed unlikely, but he couldn’t blame her.

He found her in the kitchen, sitting with Carlotta over a cup of coffee, the kitchen sparkling. He stared at them, then at the kitchen. Carlotta had been upstairs until a short while ago, settling the others, and the kitchen had been in chaos, so how?

‘She’s OK now,’ he said in Italian. ‘Why don’t you go to bed, Carlotta? You look exhausted and Roberto’s worried about you.’

She nodded and got slowly to her feet, then rested her hand on Lydia’s shoulder and patted it before leaving her side. ‘I am tired,’ she said to him in Italian, ‘but you need to speak to Lydia. I couldn’t leave her. She’s a good girl, Massimo. Look at my kitchen! A good, kind girl, and she’s unhappy. Worried.’

He sighed. ‘I know. Did you explain?’

‘No. It’s not my place, but be gentle with her—and yourself.’ And with that pointed remark, she left them alone together.

Lydia looked up at him and searched his eyes. ‘What did she say to you?’

He gave her a fleeting smile. ‘She told me you were a good, kind girl. And she told me to be gentle with you.’

Her eyes filled, and she looked away. ‘I don’t know what I said, but I’m so, so sorry.’

His conscience pricked him. He should have warned her. He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

‘No. I should be apologising, not you. Forgive us, we aren’t normally this rude to visitors. Francesca was upset.’

‘I know that. Obviously I made it happen. What I don’t know is why,’ she said, looking up at him again with griefstricken eyes.

He reached for a mug, changed his mind and poured himself a glass of wine. ‘Can I tempt you?’

‘Is it one of yours?’

‘No. It’s a neighbour’s, but it’s good. We could take it outside. I don’t know if it’s wise, though, with your head injury.’

‘I’ll take the risk,’ she said. ‘And then will you tell me what I said?’

‘You know what you said. What you don’t know is what it meant,’ he said enigmatically, and picking up both glasses of wine, he headed for the door, glancing back over his shoulder at her. ‘Can you manage, or should I carry you?’

Carry her? With her face pressed up against that taunting aftershave, and the feel of his strong, muscled arms around her legs? ‘I can manage,’ she said hastily, and pushing back her chair, she got to her feet and limped after him out into the still, quiet night.

She could hear the soft chirr of insects, the sound of a motorbike somewhere in the valley below, and then she saw a single headlight slicing through the night, weaving and turning as it followed the snaking road along the valley bottom and disappeared.

He led her to a bench at the edge of the terrace. The ground fell away below them so it felt as if they were perched on the edge of the world, and when she was seated he handed her the glass and sat beside her, his elbows propped on his knees, his own glass dangling from his fingers as he stared out over the velvet blackness.

For a while neither of them said anything, but then the tension got to her and she broke the silence.

‘Please tell me.’

He sucked in his breath, looking down, staring into his glass as he slowly swirled the wine before lifting it to his lips.

‘Massimo?’ she prompted, and he turned his head and met her eyes. Even in the moonlight, she could see the pain etched into his face, and her heart began to thud slowly.

‘Angelina died of a brain haemorrhage following a fall,’ he began, his voice expressionless. ‘Nothing serious, nothing much at all, just a bit of a bump. She’d fallen down the stairs and hit her head on the wall. We all thought she was all right, but she had a bit of a headache later in the day, and we went to bed early. I woke in the night and she was missing, and I found her in the kitchen, slumped over the table, and one side of her face had collapsed.’

Lydia closed her eyes and swallowed hard as the nausea threatened to choke her. What had she done ? Not just by saying what she had at the table—the same table? But by bringing this on all of them, on Claire, on him, on the children—most especially little Francesca, her eyes wide with pain and shock, fleeing from the table. The image would stay with her forever.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said gently. ‘You weren’t to know. I probably should have told you—warned you not to talk about it in that way, and why. I let you walk right into it.’

She turned back to him, searching his face in the shadows. She’d known something was wrong when he was bending over her on the tarmac, and again later, staring at the poster. And yet he’d said nothing.

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I knew something was wrong, something else, something more. Luca seemed much more worried than my condition warranted, even I knew that, and he kept looking at you anxiously. I thought he was worried about me, but then I realised it was you he was worried about. I just didn’t know why. You should have told me.’