‘She told me.’ He remembered her huge, apprehensive bronze-amber eyes. As children, they’d had a cat, Piccolino, with eyes like that. If you looked carefully, there were tiny green flecks among the gold. ‘Are they arriving today?’
Even through the door, he heard his mother sigh. ‘They are. I wish this damned cold would disappear, because she sounds as if she could do with a hug. Anyway, thanks for your help. See you when we’re better. Off you go now. Shoo.’
Grinning at being addressed as Piccolino once had been, he returned to the elevator, trying to imagine himself saying, ‘Mum sent me to give you a hug,’ and Jade stepping willingly into his embrace.
More likely she’d tell him where to go.
It took him fifteen minutes to toil back to Villa Panorama, the sun baking him through his T-shirt while the roads teemed with traffic and the pavements with people. The queue at the gelateria beside the marina snaked across the road and almost up to the nearest boat. It was a similar story at the funiculare as eager people awaited one of the two stepped carriages to convey them up the steep, shining silver rails to the village of Brunate. Finally entering Reception, Leo was glad to see Massimo’s office door was now open. His younger, ganglier brother was seated at his desk, apparently locked in contemplation of the wall, smiling dreamily.
Leo stepped into the room. ‘What’s the swoony face for? Soppy,’ he said, in case ‘swoony’ wasn’t in Massimo’s English vocabulary, not having spent the years in England that Leo had.
Massimo didn’t rise to the teasing, but grinned, his brown eyes still... well, swoony. ‘I was thinking.’ Then his mouth stretched into an even wider smile. He fell into Italian as he lowered his voice. ‘Shut the door.’
Leo did so with a shove of his foot, then plumped down into one of the pale-blue leatherette chairs. ‘What?’
It hadn’t seemed possible for Massimo to beam any more broadly, but somehow he managed it. ‘I’m going to be a father,’ he whispered. ‘Sofi’s ten weeks pregnant, so we’ve decided to tell our families. She’s gone to meet her mother for lunch now.’ He pulled a mock-fearful face. ‘But don’t tell Mum that I told you first or she’ll go crazy.’
Happiness surged through Leo and he leapt to his feet. ‘That’s brilliant! Awesome! Wow.’ He rounded the desk and pulled his brother up for a back-pounding hug. ‘How’s Sofi?’
‘Fine, except for horrible morning sickness, the poor woman. That’s why I was worried about you staying in the apartment when you called to say you were coming home.’ Massimo looked freshly apologetic. But there was also a hint of pride and wonder at such proof the pregnancy was real.
Leo suffered an unexpected pang that his little brother was moving on so purposefully and joyfully with his life when Leo’s had hit a brick wall he couldn’t yet see a way over or round. He covered the discomfort with effusive congratulations. ‘Happy days, Massi! Give Sofi my love.’ He hugged Massimo again and they chatted for a while before he left his brother to return to his duties. Now was not the moment to discuss Isabella and Teddy’s unexpected phone calls and how they’d made Leo feel.
‘Remember Mum and Papà don’t know yet,’ Massimo called after him.
‘I will,’ he said over his shoulder. Reception was busy and he had to thread his way between guests at the crossroads between the bar, the lounge, the front door and the gardens. Businesspeople in office wear who’d booked lunch or a conference room mingled with cheerful tourists in denim shorts and bright T-shirts. He meandered out to the back gardens, pausing to watch an older couple sharing coffee and anewspaper. He could see his parents like that in twenty years. And Massi and Sofi in fifty.
When he’d zigged and zagged up the path to Villetta Nascosta, rather than rediscovering his appetite for researching businesses for sale, he felt at a loose end. He was delighted for Massimo and Sofi – ofcoursehe was – but the past couple of hours had shown him that, having built a separate life for years, now he wanted someone to talk to, his family members were, for their various reasons, unavailable. It wasn’t deliberate or planned.
But it was lonely.
Chapter Six
Jade had spent all day taming butterflies in her stomach as she wondered how she’d greet her half-sisters. Finally she decided on finding reasons to be close to Reception, letting Yara check them in, then stepping in to spirit them off to their rooms.
What she’d been unprepared for was Erin, the first to arrive, looking like Gran in old photos – if Gran had ever been glossily groomed enough to wear white linen trousers. Highlights suggested Erin’s hair was naturally a few shades darker than its current sable and her eyes were not unlike Jade’s – like whisky. Apart from a jolt that this sibling thing wasreal, Jade felt newly aware that she hadn’t inherited Gran’s elfin lines and obedient, straight hair. And, for a moment, she wanted to grab Erin’s lilac-coloured backpack, the swanky kind with compartments for everything including your high-end laptop, and hurl it back through the front door, crying, ‘You might look like her but she’s my gran, not yours! And Pensione Three Sisters is mine too!’ But that would be outlandish. And untrue.
Gran would want me to be nice, she reminded herself, and summoned a curve to her lips. ‘Hi, I’m Jade. Yara will check you in.’
After eyeing Jade contemplatively, Erin answered in a soft Dundee accent. ‘Good to meet you.’ Going unerringly to thecorrect pocket of a crossbody bag that matched the swanky backpack, she extricated her passport and printed its number on the registration form Yara presented to her, oozing poise from the top of her precise bob to the soles of her white espadrilles.
When Yara produced the key to room 402, Jade plucked it from her fingers. ‘I’ll take it from here, Yara, thanks.’ Ignoring the younger woman’s surprise, she rounded the desk with a professional smile. ‘I’ll show you upstairs, Erin. Shall I carry one of your bags?’
Erin, looking perfectly comfortable with her backpack and her crossways bag, said easily, ‘I’m good, thanks.’
They were like two strangers... Jade hauled her thoughts to a halt. Theyweretwo strangers. They just happened to share half their DNA. Acutely aware of this small, composed woman’s footsteps behind her, Jade ascended the marble staircase. As Pensione Three Sisters had no lift, at least one pink, bow-legged chair stood on each landing for guests who needed a break between flights, but Erin stepped lightly all the way to the top floor as if she spent an hour on a Stairmaster at the gym every day.
Jade unlocked the heavy wooden door of room 402 and then entered, dropping the key on the dressing table. It winked brassily in a shaft of light from the window, its oval fob stamped withPensione Three Sisterswith the room number in the middle. ‘I thought you’d like a view of the lake,’ she said, as if it had been a deliberate act on her part rather than Erin and Rosalie’s bookings replacing cancellations for two of the nicest rooms. Each had a black wrought-iron balcony with a view over Piazza Cavour to the lake, twinkling under ragged clouds today as if someone had shredded a grey-and-white rug in the blue sky. The floors were the same satiny, honey-coloured tiles as the rest of the building. The feature wall behind Erin’s bed was papered in bold patterns of red, gold and Trafalgar blue, andthe furniture was glossy walnut. The bed’s headboard boasted a carving of bees around a single flower.
Erin took it all in. ‘Impressive.’ She turned to study Jade again, as if going through the same mental process of accepting their relationship as Jade had. ‘I guess you’re wondering why I’m here? Well... it’s partly curiosity. It’s not every day that you discover half-siblings or that you’ve inherited a share in a small hotel. But mainly because, in her letter, Gran asked me to visit as soon as I could.’
Gran had left Erin a letter too?AndJadehad been the only one to call Mairead Campbell ‘Gran’. She felt a spear of something that felt suspiciously like jealousy. Then remorse flooded in. The reason she’d been the only one was that Mairead’s own son had insisted she keep away from his other kids and Gran had had to silently nurse that weight in her heart. ‘She sent you a letter?’ she asked, fighting to keep her voice pleasant.
Erin nodded. She didn’t volunteer what Gran had written, but gave a small smile. ‘She left it with the solicitor. I never met Gran,’ she continued wistfully, before adding, ‘I’m sure you’re experiencing all kinds of emotions, but I’m not here to give you undue trouble.’
Jade hesitated.Unduetrouble? Thensometrouble might be inevitable? Rather than interrogate that, she said, ‘I suppose you want to see everything – though I can’t show you occupied guestrooms, of course.’ She swallowed to ease a suddenly dry throat. ‘When Rosalie Beretta arrives, we’ll be full for the weekend.’
Erin nodded. Her hair bounced as if she were a model in a shampoo ad. Mairead’s hair had behaved like that before age had leached the colour and moisture from it, and Jade wondered if Erin would someday end up with hair that sprang in all directions in a wayward dandelion clock. Perhaps she’d favourclothes that blazed with colour by then, too. ‘I suppose I do want to see what’s what. But I’m more interested in you. We’re...’ For the first time she looked unsure.
