“We’re walking!” I say triumphantly, pulling back from his embrace and heading off down the main road as Leo reluctantly follows, dragging his suitcase behind him.
“We’re walking this way!” I say, looking at the blue dot on my phone, doing a U-turn, and correcting course.
“We could be naked in a hotel,” he says, “right now.”
Thirty-seven minutes later, and we’re both hot, sweaty, and angry, and I’m feeling sheepish. The second basil farm does, thankfully, have a café, and I drop my bag on the ground, carefully placing the urn in its tote bag on one of the available chairs next to me.
“I’m sorry, okay? I fucked up. We should have just gone to the hotel and relaxed.”
“It’s fine,” he says grumpily.
“I made good progress on the writing for Sicily this morning,” I say, hoping to appease Leo as he drops the handle of his suitcase and sits down. “And I just wanted to start the final leg off by looking into the key ingredientfirst. I know when we get to Roger’s it’s going to be a bit of whirlwind.”
I grimace inwardly. Roger, I remember, is a big character, like my father. He likes to eat, he likes to drink, and my mother used to find his presence around my father stressful. If my mother was always a little highly strung, when Roger came to town her anxiety surged. As Dad and Roger drank, tales of their history would emerge: working on boats in the summer, jazz festivals in the south, Roger’s trips to London when I was just a baby. The stories were lively and hilarious, full of swear words and adult innuendo and talk about boozing and the stupid things young men did. Mumhatedit. I could barely follow it, but I loved to watch them laughing. It was always exciting when Roger came to stay.
“He needs to watch what he says in front of Olive,” she’d warned my father more than once.
“Yes, I’ve only met Roger once, but I suspect we’re not going to get much work done. He’s a man of pleasure,” says Leo, grabbing my hand to pull me down next to him.
“A coffee?” I propose. “And then we can go.”
“Coffee is good,” he says, grabbing the laminated menu from between the salt and pepper shakers. “Ice coffee, even. You?”
“Oh, the same,” I say, “a milky one, please.”
Leo stands up and heads to the counter, and while he’s gone I take a minute to pull up all the dishes I’ve found that are both native to the region and stuffed full of basil. Or at least feature it as akeyingredient.
Leo returns with a tray and two drinks, plus a huge two-liter bottle of water, of which we each guzzle half. “Right. I’ve spoken to the lady,” says Leo. “We can go through and look at the nursery and the large fields out the back. There isn’t much beyond that and a massive shop selling pesto, which is made elsewhere.”
“Well, great,” I say. “Sounds like we can make this error of mine very quick.”
My phone buzzes in my hand.
“One sec,” I say, standing up and walking slightly away from Leo so he cannot overhear our conversation.
“Hey, Olive,” Ginny says. “I heard you climbed the leaning tower of Pizza.”
“Pisa,” I correct.
“But was it a tower or...” She has to stop talking since she’s giggling uncontrollably.
“Jesus, Ginny,” I say, giggling too as I glance across at Leo. “He’s here, so I can’t really talk.”
“Fine,” she says. “Are you okay, though? Are you freaking out?”
“Yes. But he’s keeping my feet on the ground,” I say. “We’re just going to try to enjoy the trip and get the book done. We can face the question of Nicky’s when we get back to London.”
“But you want Leoandthe restaurant?” she asks, almost breathless.
“I think so,” I say, feeling my cheeks burn at the admission. “I think so.”
As I return to the table, Leo points at my ice coffee, which no longer has any ice in it, and then raises his eyebrows toward the empty chair. I sit obediently.
“Who was that?”
“Ginny,” I reply, sucking back on my straw. “She just wanted an update on...”
“Things,” he says, smirking. “Well, I’ve booked a car. I’ve also called Roger and told him we will be at the dock at eleven forty-five a.m. tomorrow, so we will arrive in time for lunch.”
