‘OK to go through?’ Erin’s polite enquiry was made redundant by trundling straight into Gran’s room.Erin and Rosalie’sroom.
‘Of course,’ she answered, equally politely and redundantly. After all, this was what her beloved grandmother had wanted.
Rosalie paused to hug her. Was that the first time...? ‘We totally whizzed through Security. Erin had prebooked the train on her app and we had an easy journey. Doesn’t the countryside look lush? When I visited Umbria, the grass was like straw by late summer.’
Jade returned the hug, awkwardly in view of Rosalie’s bright-purple backpack. ‘It’s normally green around the lakes, though we’ve had an unnaturally dry August.’ Diffidently she followed as Rosalie joined Erin in the bedroom, pristine and flooded with light.
Both women paused to survey the brand-new twin beds in snowy bedcovers beside Gran’s TV, pictures and ornaments. On each bed lay a key to the back door. Erin picked one up and sent Jade an uncertain look. ‘Thanks. Sorry if this is shit for you.’
Rosalie gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘Me, too.’
Jade summoned her smile. ‘We’ll all have to get used to things.’ She began to back from the room. ‘I’ll make drinks.’
In the kitchen, she’d just taken down the mugs when she received a text from Leo.
Are they there yet? Are you OK?
She replied:
Yes, and just about.
The three dots indicating that he was typing danced below her words and then disappeared. Instead, he rang, his voice deep. ‘Want to invite them out in a group tonight to ease you into having them around?’
She paused in lining up three red mugs on the bashed-up marble surface. ‘Maybe. It’s harder to feel awkward in company.’
He sounded pleased. ‘That’s great.’ Then he hesitated. ‘So, working on that basis, should we make it drinks at Bar Fiori andinvite Mum, Dad, Massi and Sofi? They should all meet at some time, shouldn’t they?’
‘Um...’ She took teabags from a cupboard while she considered. Without saying it, he was asking her to forgive his mum. Although she’d been leaning exactly that way, it did seem as if she was the one having to do all the accommodating this summer.
‘It was Mum’s suggestion,’ he said, perhaps reading her thoughts from afar. ‘She wants to apologise. She’s been bending my ear about it. “Should I text? Should I call round? Should I send flowers?”’
His high-pitched mimicking of his mother’s Scots accent made Jade joke, ‘An enormous bouquet, Swiss chocolates and dinner in St Moritz ought to do it.’ Then she sighed. ‘Sheenagh and I need to talk, but I think it would be better without an audience. Maybe I should spend the evening with Erin and Rosalie. It’s a weird time,’ she added, half-apologetically.
Then Rosalie and Erin burst into the room, saw she was on the phone and spun around to leave again, bouncing off each other in the doorway with a comical, ‘Oof!’, leaving Erin rubbing her forehead and Rosalie her chin.
‘It’s OK, I’m speaking to Leo.’ She didn’t want them to feel they had to scurry off. But she wondered whether, under their excitement, they were as nervous as she was.
In her ear, Leo echoed her earlier sigh. ‘You might be right. I’ll leave you with your sisters tonight. I’ll come in tomorrow morning to keep things ticking over while you go and do the legal stuff.’
It was what they’d already arranged, but there was still a wealth of gratitude in her voice when she said, ‘Thanks,caro. We’ll do the rest another time.’
After he’d rung off, Jade made tea – breakfast for her and Erin, with camomile for Rosalie – and placed the cups on thescarred kitchen table, where she’d shared so many meals with her grandmother. She blinked at the granddaughters Mairead had never known: one small, like Gran, though ambitious and polished rather than funny and quirky, and the other more Jade’s height, if slenderer, and always ready with a smile. Impulsively, Jade said, ‘I wish Gran was here to see us together.’
‘Yeah.’ Rosalie pulled a sad face. Then she gazed at the empty chair at the table as if someone was sitting there and raised her coffee cup. ‘To Gran.’
Erin echoed it wistfully. ‘To Gran, who Jade always makes sound so fun and lovely.’
A lump jumped into Jade’s throat. ‘She was. In a very... individual way.’
‘Ah.’ Rosalie’s eyes danced. ‘That’s where we get it from.’ Then she cocked a cheeky eyebrow in Jade’s direction. ‘Caromeans “dear” in Italian. Are you and Leo...?’
‘We’re seeing each other.’ Jade’s cheeks scorched.
Rosalie beamed. ‘Ooh! Knew it, last time we were here.’ She made sinuous motions with her fingers. ‘I could feel the sizzle.’
‘And also, I’d told you they were together in the past.’ Erin grinned. ‘Jade, you don’t have to babysit us tonight. We’ll be fine unpacking and stuff.’
‘And going out for pizza,’ Rosalie said. ‘You see Leo.’
