‘Buonasera, Paolina. I’m Leo.’ Needing to be introduced to staff at the family hotel only served to make him newly aware of the sixteen years he’d been away. When he’d left for that first job in England, Paolina, with her smiling eyes and tidy hair, would have been a toddler.
While everybody read the menu, Paolina brought glasses and condensation-cloaked water bottles. Then Massimo received atext that made him frown and rise to his feet. ‘I’m needed at front desk.’
Leo almost enquired why, but remembered in time that he didn’t work here. After his brother’s initial hesitation over Leo’s return, he must be careful not to overstep.
It was only a few minutes before Massimo returned and Ferdinando peered over his black-rimmed reading glasses enquiringly. ‘OK?’
‘It was Jade Beretta.’ Massimo still frowned.
Leo paused his conversation with Sofi about her job in childcare.
‘Jade?’ Sheenagh’s forehead furrowed. ‘Does she want changes in tomorrow’s arrangements?’
‘No.’ Massimo resumed his seat. ‘But she’s anxious because everywhere she’s been today people have said they’ll attend the funeral. She thinks we’ll be too nice to tell her if Mairead didn’t pay us enough upfront.’
‘Did you explain that Mairead insisted on reassessing the bloody funeral tea every year? It’spaidfor. There will probably be a refund.’ Sheenagh’s frown only deepened.
‘I explained.’ One side of Massimo’s mouth quirked up. ‘Then she worried that there wouldn’t be enough Ledaig, her gran’s favourite whisky. I reminded her Mairead lefteight bottleswith us years ago.’ Although the name of the whisky was spelt L-e-d-a-i-g, he gave it its proper, gallic, pronunciation of ‘Letchik’.
Sheenagh sighed. ‘Obsessing over details is probably her way of coping. Poor love.’ She turned to Leo. ‘You’ll be coming to the funeral?’
Despite the questioning intonation of the sentence, Leo felt his mother expected him to say ‘yes’. Still, he replied dubiously. ‘Jade didn’t seem overly happy to see me.’ And she was entitled to nurse negative feelings.
Ferdinando’s grey brows beetled. ‘Jade was once your girlfriend and Mairead always made you welcome in her home. You should mourn.’
Sheenagh took her husband’s hand. ‘But Mairead said we’re to celebrate.’
Ferdinando grunted. ‘No visitation, no vigil, no mass. You Scotswomen are zany.’ But he smiled at the ‘zany’ Scotswoman who’d been his wife for nearly forty years.
‘Well,’ Leo said slowly. ‘I don’t want Jade to think I’m lacking respect. Mairead was great even if she didn’t stop referring to me as “wee Leo” until I was twenty-two.’ It was one of a hundred good memories. And good memories of Mairead led inexorably to good memories of Jade, of which there were many. In fact, the only bad memory was the betrayal in her eyes when he’d made such a mess of inviting her to share his life.
Next morning, Leo surveyed his wardrobe. As a hotelier he had several dark suits, but it took a minute to find his black tie, which he’d packed inside a shoe for some reason. Then he wandered out of Villetta Nascosta’s garden through the gate and into the garden for guests – which was at the side of the hotel but almost hidden from the road by being above it, and disguised by yew, palm and cypress – feeling incongruous as he passed tourists lazing on loungers. In the glossy reception area, Sheenagh’s eyebrows flew up in aghast crescents when she saw him. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Mairead wanted everyone to wear colours.’ She pointed to her own yellow suit, which set off her sandy hair. ‘Mairead loved colour.’
Ferdinando grumbled. ‘Colours at a funeral. It is disrespectful.’ His drab olive-green suit with a white shirt and black tie only just qualified as ‘colour’.
So Leo puffed back up the sloping path to Villetta Nascosta to scramble out of his black jacket and into a petrol-blue blazerbefore returning to Lounge Panorama to help Massimo arrange dark-red chairs at right angles to the glass doors overlooking the gardens. ‘And one of these to each chair.’ Massimo passed him a stack of yellow booklets,Celebration of Lifeprinted in flowing purple script above a photo of a laughing Mairead. She was raising a glass of wine on which sunlight had bestowed a perfect starburst.
Leo lingered over the photo. ‘That’s exactly how I remember her.’ It prodded a soft spot in his heart.
An hour later, almost every chair was occupied by someone there to remember Mairead. Leo recognised people from school and others from the hoteliers’ community. Many studied Mairead’s photo and smiled. He sat a few rows back, beside his parents, and watched Jade enter. Face pale, her corkscrew curls were piled atop her head and her summer dress was sky blue. Her shoes were purple. The woman beside her wore a green dress and yellow shoes, and Leo recognised her as Vittoria, Jade’s friend who’d worked at Pensione Three Sisters. Sheenagh and Ferdinando went forward to give Jade long, hard hugs that spoke not just of commiseration, but of love and friendship. Mindful that she’d rebuffed his affectionate gesture of outstretched hands yesterday, Leo remained seated.
Before taking her chair, Jade glanced around the gracious room and for an instant he was skewered by her gold-speckled gaze. Images of their joint history cycled through his mind. Family friends. Schoolfriends. Sharing the distinction of speaking English fluently, but with the lilt of their mothers’ home country of Scotland. Returning from uni, very pleased with his First, intending to stay in Como only a year or two to gain management experience at Villa Panorama. Falling for Jade as if someone had dug a pit at her feet because, in his absence, she’d become stunning. Her body had seemed to call to him.Look at me. I am curvy. My skin is silk.
And when he’d tried to compliment her and Mairead on their full reservation book, she’d exhibited her good sense. ‘Guests like big beds, hot showers, quality surroundings and excellent breakfasts. That’s what makes the stars pop up on review sites.’ Then he’d referred to the boldly patterned feature walls of the pensione as boutique, and she’d reminded him of her dry wit. ‘I might not have a degree, but I can choose wallpaper and glue it.’
Consequently, he’d suggested brightly papered alcoves at Villa Panorama to his parents. Smiling slightly, he remembered Sheenagh’s beaming response. ‘Jade’s done out Three Sisters like that. You should ask her advice.’ It had given them the perfect excuse to spend time together, even if it was with magazines and sketchbooks across their laps.
Within weeks, they’d become lovers.
He felt himself stir at the memory, even as Jade turned away to face an arrangement of sunflowers and a woman in a dress strewn with poppies, who proved to be the celebrant.
Though he listened to the invitation to celebrate the life of lovely, lively Mairead Campbell, the Scotswoman who’d adopted Italy as her country, a bad memory followed the good: Jade’s stark expression of sorrow laced with determination. ‘I’m not going, Leo... I’m not abandoning Gran.’
Blind ambition had made him still take that post in the Birmingham events centre. After the first months of missing Jade, he’d faced the fact that she wasn’t coming after him and he’d asked out other girls. Over the years, as he’d moved on to posts in Manchester, Brighton, Cornwall and London, he’d had a couple of relationships. Then had come Isabella, who’d dazzled him with her beautiful exterior, business brain and ambition. They’d made their plans and everything had been great... until it was awful.
Dazedly, he realised the company was rising to its feet as organ music played ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the Scottish song of endingsand beginnings. Sheenagh and a few other Brits sang lustily. He managed the chorus, learnt at long-ago Hogmanay celebrations.
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
