“It’s me,” I say, breathless. My hair is that young, wispy blond that fades as you grow, my skin milky and pink next to Dad’s deep tan. I’m wearing a little cotton sundress, white with red cherries.
“Itisyou,” says Rocco, coming back with two towering cones of ice cream. “Che bellissima bambina.”
I unpin the photo. “Can I make a copy?”
“Sì, sì,” he says. “Take it.”
I clutch the photo to my heart for a moment, then slip it into my handbag and take the cone from Rocco.
“He loved your name. Olive,” he says, smiling. “Era il destino.”
“It’s not really destiny if you chose the name yourself,” I say, laughing.
Rocco shakes his head. “Ah. Yes,” he replies. “My English. Sì, sì.”
“Olive,” says Leo, taking his cone from Rocco. “I’m going to head off and put my head down before dinner tonight.”
I nod, looking back at Rocco. “Do you mind if I hang out for a bit and watch you guys get the dinner service ready? I have some work to do.
“See you at five?” I say to Leo, who nods and disappears out the door.
I sit at a little table by the window and transfer the notes in my notebook to my laptop, readying myself to start writing the introduction. I watch as Isabella glides in to check that everything is running smoothly, look over the books, and correct the specials on the blackboard.
I notice so many similarities with how Nicky’s was run. It is so clear watching the way they move that Dad trained here and then tried to re-create Rocco’s in London. It had really worked for a while, until it didn’t. Where did Dad go wrong? Was Leo right? Was it simply that it needed to modernize? Why then does Rocco’s still work so well?
Rocco asks if I want to help shuck oysters, and I do. “You can’t get good oysters in London.”
I want to correct him, to tell him that Whitstable Bay is one of the great wild-oyster locations in Europe. But instead, I just smile.
There is something to the rhythm of this place that makes me terribly homesick for my childhood, watching the way Isabella and Rocco banter with each other as they work. They make it look easy.
The afternoon passes like the breeze, and suddenly it is time to go and get ready to meet Leo for dinner. As I pack my bag and say good-bye to Rocco, I realize I have butterflies in my stomach. And this time, it isn’t anxiety. It’s anticipation.
13
ISTOP AT Alittle boutique and pick up a new cocktail dress with a very low square neck and puffy sleeves. It’s black and very short, like halfway-down-my-thigh short. It’s kind of racy, especially with the heeled black espadrilles.
Sensible Olive is telling me to be chill. Put on the new green pants and the little white tank. But instead I’m wearing lacy knickers, styling my hair with soft curls, and applying a red lipstick.
I look in the mirror and tell myself I’m not dressing for Leo.Liar.
When I get downstairs, Leo glances up at me, and then back to his phone, but then his head snaps up again and, as I walk across the small lobby, his eyes drop slowly from my face down to my ankles.
He’s also dressed up, I note with some pleasure. He greets me as evenly as a bank manager about to consider an application for an overdraft, but I see the twitch in his jaw as we shake hands.
“Well,” he says, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. Very well, thank you,” I say.
He stands and fixes the cuffs on his loose charcoal shirt, grabs his wallet off the table, and slides it into the pocket of his khaki trousers. His movements are agonizingly slow, as though he’s in conversation with himself.
“It’s a beautiful evening,” he says as we head out of the hotel lobby and into the twilight. He stops walking and faces me, the sky that delicious golden just before the sun goes down, and it catches his skin and the slight flecks of dark caramel in his otherwise dark hair. Good god, he’s handsome.
“How far do you reckon you can walk in heels the height of a brandy snap?” he asks.
“I could wait tables in these babies,” I say defiantly.
Leo’s mouth moves to the side as he considers something. A witty comeback, perhaps? But as I turn to walk ahead, he grabs my arm and pulls me gently back toward him.
