She locked her phone and slipped it in her bag, deciding to focus all her attention on kitchen prep. After all, Alessio had promised he’d stop by for lunch.
That meant everything had to be perfect.
diciassette
Alessio spent over an hour in the comune records room. It had that other-worldly smell of musty yellowing paper and antique wooden furniture.
Short-haired, narrow-nosed Elisa did her best to walk him briefly through the collection, indicating where he could find birth and death records, marriage data, migration papers, and everything in between. While her time with him was brief, she managed to impress on him the importance of one thing: wearing the protective cotton gloves.
Elisa spoke very little English, but with the assistance of Google, Alessio was able to get his bearings.
‘You stay when you like . . .’ Elisa smiled as she exited the room, heading back to the reception desk.
Alessio steepled his gloved hands at his chest in thanks. Then he turned, looking around him at the entire documented history of Impastino. But where to start? He opened the photos app on his phone and jumped to a special folder he had labelled, Nonna’s smile. In there he had saved a collection of some of the rare fleeting moments of his nonna’s happiness that someone had managed to capture on film. He’d photographed old developed photos from the eighties, nineties and 2000s, appreciating the changing senses of taste and fashion of those times.
But one thing remained the same – that Mona Lisa–like smile. Rare. Almost indecipherable. Usually Nonna Immacolata had been stony-faced, blank, or had avoided the camera’s lens altogether, rendering those smiles all the more precious. Something happened to you that made you like this. And I’m determined to work out what it was.
Alessio turned to the birth records section, noting the chronological labels marked on the spines of the disintegrating bound volumes. He felt both overwhelmed and uncomfortable, as if he were about to pry into someone’s personal belongings without their knowledge.
I have to start somewhere.
He grasped the 1925 volume and pulled. The weight of it – both physical and metaphysical – came crashing down on him like a tonne of bricks.
What if I find something I don’t want to find?
* * *
Simona’s final message continued to roll around Francesca’s mind for the remainder of the morning. She should not have been surprised by Simona’s ability to pick up on her lie. Simona simply knew her too well. Like a sister.
Simona was the calm to Francesca’s storm, and the reasoning logic to Francesca’s passion. Perhaps this was why they had always been so close: they were a supportive balance of opposites. That was certainly the reason it had taken only seconds for her to see through Francesca’s second-cousin charade.
But that morning, as Francesca stood beside Maria at the workbench juggling tasks – pitting olives, filleting sardines and churning out a mound of hand-made orecchiette – Simona’s probing question tickled her.
In so many ways, he IS the most perfect man.
With each roll of dough, each slice, each toss of the frying pan, Alessio came to mind. The delicious tattoos that wrapped around his forearms. Those hazel-brown eyes that somehow saw through her. His clean, fresh cologne; the scent memory of which she could replicate in her imagination, even beyond the heady ingredients in front of her.
This crush, or whatever it was, was intoxicating. It had been years since someone had captured her attention quite like this. But then again, she’d never met anyone quite like Alessio.
When they opened the doors at midday, the trattoria filled immediately. The peace of the morning gave way to the noisy, bustling busyness of service, and Francesca switched gears with well-practised ease.
‘Buongiorno!’ she greeted, arriving at the first table without immediately looking up from her order pad.
‘Buongiorno, signorina!’
The familiar-sounding reply pulled her eyes to the table. ‘Alessio! You came!’ Francesca’s stomach effervesced at the mere sight of him sitting there with her handwritten copy of the day’s menu in his hand.
‘I promised. And, I’m hungry.’
‘Ma certo! But first tell me . . .’ She lowered her voice a little and settled a gentle hand on his shoulder, finding only taut muscular definition under the warm cotton of his tee. ‘Did you find out anything about your nonna?’
He exhaled. ‘Nothing. Not a birth record. Not a marriage record. Nothing.’
‘Oh?’ Her focus clouded as she thought for a moment. ‘How strange! Not even a birth record? And the dates?’
‘I looked where I was told and even around the time of her so-called “birthday”. Because even she didn’t know for sure when it was. And twelve months either side.’
Not wanting to dishearten him she said, ‘Tranquillo. Something will come up. I am sure of it. In the meantime, I’ll get you some lunch.’ She moved around to stand behind him and traced her finger down the day’s set menu. ‘Today we are starting with melone and prosciutto. Then, orecchiette alle sarde. You know, sardines. I cooked them first on the grill over charcoal then finished them in a loose sauce of fresh tomatoes, white wine, capers and dried black olives. It all pairs very well with the orecchiette. For dolce, a simple mousse of whipped mascarpone and our cherries, and perhaps un caffè?’ She tapped her pen to her lips. ‘Va bene?’
