Lucy Foley - The Invitation - Escape with this epic, page-turning summer holiday read

‘Bring us some of that gnocchi ,’ she tells him. ‘The one that Alessandro makes for me.’

The man nods, and disappears.

‘So,’ she says. ‘To business.’

‘Of course.’

‘My film, The Sea Captain , is being released this spring.’

‘Congratulations – I heard that you had funding for it. I didn’t realize it was finished.’

‘Thank you.’

The gnocchi arrives now. Hal has only eaten the dish alla Romana – doughy shapes submerged in sauce and baked. These are delicate morsels, scattered with oil and thin leaves of shaved truffle. They are delicious – and Hal notices that the Contessa, despite her extreme slenderness, is enjoying them with the same relish as he.

‘Who directed the film?’ Hal asks.

The Contessa smiles. ‘Giacomo Gaspari.’

‘Goodness.’ Hal is impressed. ‘It must be something.’

She nods and says, without preamble, ‘It is. Quite brilliant – which I can say, because I’m not the one responsible for that. It will be screening at the festival, at Cannes.’

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘I hoped that you might come with us.’

‘To Cannes?’

‘Yes – but on the journey there, too. I’ve planned a trip first. A tour, along the coast where it was filmed, to publicize it. And to make the people of Liguria feel that they are involved, that it is their film. It is what they do in Hollywood: why should we not do it here?’ She smiles at Hal. ‘I thought you could cover it.’

‘For The Tiber ?’

‘No,’ the Contessa says, with a note of triumph. ‘For Tempo .’

Tempo is in the big league – Italy’s answer to the American Life . ‘But how? I don’t know anyone there.’

‘Ah, but I do. They asked me if I knew of a writer who would do it – and I suggested you.’

Hal can’t help asking. ‘Why?’

‘I like the way you write.’ Seeing his expression, she smiles. ‘I told you I would not forget. Luckily, the editor at Tempo agrees with me that you are the right man for the job.’

‘When?’

‘The film festival is next month. But you would be needed for the two weeks before it, too.’

‘Well,’ Hal says, trying to process it all. ‘I suppose it depends …’

‘On the fee? I’m afraid the one they’ve offered is rather small.’ She names the sum: it is still far more than The Tiber pay for an article. ‘But I thought I would help. Because you would be doing me a personal favour, too.’ She takes a fountain pen from her reticule and scribbles on the menu. She turns it towards him, and says, with genuine regret, ‘I’m sorry it can’t be higher. I have a budget, you know …’

Hal stares at it, absorbing the significance of the extra nought. With it, he could travel to one of the wild, liminal places he has been thinking of: certainly North Africa, Australia even.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I could do it for that.’ To do anything other than accept, considering the sum in question, would be idiocy.

‘Excellent. I will put you in touch with the man I spoke to there.’ She takes up her fountain pen again, and passes the menu back to him. There written next to the primi piatti , is an address: Il Palazzo Mezzaluna, vicino a Tellaro, Liguria . He has not been to Liguria: has only a vague idea of brightly coloured houses beside an equally luminous sea – glimpsed, perhaps, on a postcard.

‘You will need to be there,’ she says, ‘in three weeks’ time.’

‘I shall,’ he says, quickly. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

The smile she gives him is enigmatic. He feels a sudden trepidation. He has learned to distrust things that seem too good to be true.

His first impressions of Liguria are snatched through a smeared train window. These are visions at once exotic and banal: washing strewn from the windows of red-tiled, green-shuttered houses, road intersections revealing a chaos of vehicles. Palm trees, tawdry-looking railway hotels. The occasional teal promise of the sea. The sea. At the first glimpse of it he finds himself gripping the seat rest, hard. Sometimes it has this effect on him.

This whole mission still has about it an air of unreality. If he hadn’t had that slightly stilted meeting with the editor at Tempo – who seemed as bemused as he did as to why he had been chosen – he might have reason to believe it was all the Contessa’s little joke.

‘Keep it light,’ the man had said. ‘What do the stars eat and drink, what do they wear? What is Giulietta Castiglione reading, ah, what does Earl Morgan do to relax? Stories of cocktails in Portofino, of sun on private beaches. Of … of a sea the colour of the sapphires our leading lady wears to supper.’ Hal had tried not to smile. ‘Nothing too worthy. Our readers want escapism. Niente di troppo difficile. Capisci? ’

‘ Si ,’ Hal had said. ‘I understand.’

La Spezia is no great beauty, though there is a muscular impressiveness to the place, the harbour flanked with merchant vessels and passenger ferries. Not so long ago there would have been warships marshalled here. To Hal they are almost conspicuous in their absence. The enemy’s own destroyers and submarines, sliding beneath the surface black and deadly.

He catches the passenger ferry, and realizes that it is the first time he has been afloat in years. Again, he reminds himself, it is all different. The tilt and shift of the boat much more pronounced; so close to the water that he can feel the salt spray on his cheek. He concentrates on the sights. Here, finally, is the fabled beauty: the land rising smokily beyond the coast, the clouds banked white behind. A castle, rose-gold in the afternoon sun.

He looks at his fellow travellers. Poverty still pinches some faces tight, clothes are a decade or more out of date. Marshall Aid, it seems, has not lessened the struggle by much for them. In the relative prosperity of the capital it is easy to forget – to feel, sometimes, like a poor relation.

At Lerici, a little way down the coast, all the passengers disembark. Hal hasn’t yet worked out this part of the journey, but according to the map the place should be only a few miles by water. Hal goes to the skipper, who lounges against the stern with a cigarette and scowls at him through the smoke.

‘Il Palazzo Mezzaluna?’

The man takes a lazy drag, squinting as though he hasn’t understood. Hal repeats himself. As comprehension dawns, his question is met with a short, derisive bark of a laugh, a shake of the head.

‘No,’ the man says. ‘It isn’t on my route. It is a private residence.’

‘Yes,’ Hal says. ‘But for a little extra?’

‘No, signor. I am finished for the day.’ But as Hal turns to leave him he shouts something, gesturing to several small crafts heaped with fishing gear. A group of sunburned men sit near them, sharing an impromptu picnic of bread and shellfish, shucking them with their knives and sucking the morsels from the shells.

Hal approaches them and asks his question. One of the men shrugs and stands, brushing breadcrumbs from himself. He leads the way over to his boat and moves a few items around – nets, a can of oil, a box of bait and a rod – to make room for Hal and his bag. Hal clambers in, aware of the ambivalent gaze of the men who remain, eating their oysters. What do they make of him, this Englishman in his tired suit, climbing in beside the fishing tackle?

The man starts his engine and they putter out of the harbour, pitching dangerously as they cross the wake of a larger boat. Then back out into the navy blue of the open sea, rounding the nub of the headland. The little boat speeds across the water, sending up a fine salt spray. After only fifteen minutes or so the man points to the shore.