‘Not just Floella. Also my wife.’
A wife. Of course. There’d been no reason to believe he was single. Just the feel of his arm against hers, the warm scent of his amber cologne, the softness of his brown eyes – they’d all conspired to send her daft imagination running off. What a fool! But perhaps she shouldn’t be too hard on herself. It wasn’t every day she met a handsome, charming man in the most romantic city in the world.
‘My ex-wife nowadays,’ he added.
Natalie bit down on a smile. ‘Your ex was in television?’ She tried to sound casual.
‘Yes. A producer onInternational Food Challenge, one of Floella’s first shows. Flo introduced us; that is how we met.’
‘She was English?’
‘No, Italian, from Vicenza, an hour’s drive from here. It is ironic that it took a Londoner to bring us together.’
‘Fate.’
‘Yes, I suppose.’ She could not read his tone.
‘But you’re no longer together.’
‘No,’ he said shortly. Why had she asked? Wasn’t ‘ex-wife’ enough for her?
They kept walking in silence, cutting through narrow streets and across smallcampi.
‘Stefania loved her job,’ he said at last. ‘I knew it was her passion but I did not realise what she would sacrifice to get on. That it was more important, bigger than anything else, bigger than us. I hoped we would stop renting and buy a place, have a family perhaps, but there was always one more project first. Every time, just one more. But reality shows were just a stepping stone to greater things. She is a film producer now; she lives in California.’
‘You didn’t want to go with her?’
‘I did not fit into her new world… so she said. But enough about that. It is all in the past. And now we find our nextbacaro.’
‘If it’s half as good as the last place…’
‘Il Turacciolo has the best calamari but this little place behind the fish market has the bestpolpette– what you call meatballs. We will have to cross over the canal. This way…’
He weaved a practised path through the tourists massing on the Rialto Bridge, across the now deserted fish market, and steered her towards a green awning.
‘This looks a cute place.’
‘I hope you are ready for more wine, morecicchetti?’
‘Yes, please.’ She slipped into a seat at the table Eraldo had found, content to let him take charge of the ordering once more. Twoombreof wine appeared, red this time.
‘After we stop here, we will go to another place just a few metres away and finally, we cannot finish the night without a visit to my favourite of all.’
‘I’m glad these glasses of wine are so tiny. I hadn’t realised we were having a sort of Venetian pub crawl.’
‘Ah, the great British pub crawl: you need a lot of stamina for that! I remember the first time I went with my new friends from Goldsmiths. I had never even had an English pint before, only the little bottles of beer we have in Italy. And each pub we went to, we had to drink another.Mamma mia, so much beer and nothing to eat but these strange little snacks, pork scratchings. I thought this beer, it must be not so strong but the next morning, well! I felt as though the night before, I must have been banging my head against a big wall. Some of my friends, the next day, it was like they had drunk nothing at all. Ah, it was fun… but you know, I prefer to go out to have some nice, small things to eat and a little wine like this.Cin cin!’ He clinked his glass against hers.
‘Cin cin!’
Natalie bit into a crostino topped with something creamy and white – a taste strangely familiar. It was thebaccalàmantecatoMiss Morrison had made her try all those years ago. ‘Mmm… this is better than a cider and a packet of crisps any day.’
‘I am glad you approve.’
Natalie returned his smile. The evening was exceeding all her expectations. She could kid herself it was the tastycicchettithat lit up her tastebuds like an explosion of tiny fireworks on her tongue or the colour and chatter of the diners but she knew it was Eraldo’s company that was making the evening so special. She found it hard not to smile each time his nose gave a little twitch of pleasure as he sampled another snack. And it wasn’t just his good looks that entranced her; it was the gratifying way he listened – truly listened – when she spoke and even seemed to find her feeble attempts at humour amusing, rewarding her with a smile that flashed even white teeth and lit up those dark, dark eyes.
It was so rare to find a man who found her assignments for Flo-Go Productions so enthralling but she soon switched the subject. She was far more interested in finding out more about the man sitting in front of her than discussing any new show Floella might have in the offing.
‘Do you remember the first watch you worked on?’ she asked.
