One Summer in Italy Read online

  Copyright

  Published by Avon, an imprint of

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street,

  London, SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

  Copyright © Sue Moorcroft 2018

  Cover illustration © Carrie May 2018

  Cover design © Head Design 2018

  Sue Moorcroft asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008260040

  Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008260057

  Version: 2018-04-11

  Dedication

  For all my lovely readers.

  If you enjoy my books, you bring me joy.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Keep reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Sue Moorcroft

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  July

  ‘Don’t mope, Sofia. Non frignare.’

  Sofia jumped out of her reverie. She hadn’t realised her dad, Aldo, was awake. His eyes had been closed for ages, the steady hiss of oxygen a contrast to his ragged breathing.

  She edged her chair closer, glad to see a twinkle in Aldo’s dark eyes. ‘I’m not moping. I’m a bit worried about you, that’s all. We worry about each other, don’t we? That’s how it works.’

  He met her smile with one of his own. Aldo had a beautiful, mischievous smile, spoiled now by the odd colour of his lips as his heart failed. ‘I don’t mean now. I want you to promise you won’t mope when I’m not here.’ His voice still sang with the rhythms of Italy, but his English was fluent after living in the UK for more than thirty years. Sofia was so used to hearing both languages from him that she sometimes scarcely noticed which he was speaking. It had brought him comfort in these last few years to roll Italian lovingly around his mouth, as well as allowing her to practise her grasp of one half of her family’s mother tongue. Not that she’d met any of her family, on either side, apart from her parents.

  The smile she’d summoned up for him wavered.

  ‘Promise,’ he insisted gently.

  It was obviously so important to him that she nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘No. You must promise. You’ve given up so many years to being my carer. I don’t want you to be trapped in this house any more.’

  She swallowed the fruitless urge to demand that he live for ever. ‘OK. I promise.’ Leaving the house in Bedford, the only home she’d ever known, would be taken out of her hands anyway. She hadn’t stressed Aldo by telling him about the builder who’d inspected the big crack running up the dining-room wall and into Sofia’s bedroom above. The builder had recommended an engineer’s report. He thought the house had subsidence, and Sofia already knew that it needed a new roof and had woodworm. When Aldo’s health had taken this recent grave turn, she’d been nerving herself to reveal that they needed to put the house on the market in the hope that a developer would buy it as a project and she and Aldo would receive only a proportion of what they considered its worth. Money had become the least of her worries.

  He gave a slow, satisfied nod, his gaze unwavering. ‘And promise me you’ll get out and do all the things young single women do. Travel. You’ve always wanted to travel and instead you’ve stayed to help me. Go and have fun.’

  ‘Dad, I don’t want you to feel—’

  ‘I don’t feel anything you don’t want me to feel,’ he assured her with a dismissive wave. He made a mock reproving face. ‘But this is the dying wish of your papà. You must promise.’

  She’d often shared with him her fantasy of getting on the plane from Stansted Airport for breakfast and arriving at a pavement café in Italy in time for lunch, even before his health had made such an adventure impossible. Sofia grinned, though her eyes swam. Half her life he’d cared for her and half her life she’d cared for him, latterly in his hospital-style bed in the front room with the oxygen cylinders located behind it. ‘OK, if you’ll stoop to emotional blackmail, you old fox, I promise.’

  Aldo’s laugh creaked out into his oxygen mask, fogging it up. ‘Promise me you’ll visit Montelibertà. As you have no family in England I’d like you to see the town where I was born. Lay flowers for your grandparents.’ He sighed. His breathing hitched. Faltered. Began again.

  A tear leaked onto Sofia’s cheek but she fell back on black humour, their coping mechanism through all the operations and treatments that had bought them time. Till now. ‘Just how many dying wishes does one papà get?’

  His eyes closed but his smile flickered. ‘Molti, molti. I wish you could have met your Italian family.’

  Despite Aldo’s condition, Sofia’s interest stirred. He was always happy to talk about Italy but much less forthcoming on the subject of his family. ‘I wish that too. I wish I knew more about them,’ she said.

  Aldo’s forehead puckered. ‘It was all such a mess. I thought I was doing the right thing, coming here. But my parents … they were in the middle. There were many emotional letters and phone calls between us when you were young. “Come to England to visit us,” I said. But they would always reply, “Come home to visit us.” They were convinced we could patch things up if I went home. It would only make things worse. I told them, “How can I take Dawn and Sofia to Montelibertà? It will be so painful.”’

  Sofia leaned forward intently, the blood thudding in her ears. ‘Why, Dad? Why wouldn’t you take Mum and me? Or me, after Mum died? What did you need to patch up? What were they in the middle of?’ Was Aldo at long last ready to tell her the story that had intrigued her, growing up, of how and why he’d abandoned his homeland? Till now he’d avoided revealing more than the bare facts: that he’d left his parents and brother behind in Italy thirty-two years ago to
marry Sofia’s mother, Dawn. His Italian family hadn’t been at the wedding. Dawn had died when Sofia was five, and his parents, in a road accident, two years later. He’d always parried Sofia’s eager quest for more information with It’s all too sad to talk about. I don’t want to make you sad. Then he’d stroke her hair and change the subject.

  Now Aldo opened his eyes and continued as if he hadn’t heard her questions. ‘Go to Montelibertà and drink Orvieto Classico as it’s meant to be drunk – designed for the Italian palate, not the British one.’ He paused. His breathing paused, too. Restarted. ‘If you see your Uncle Gianni, tell him I’m sorry.’

  She used the heels of her hands to wipe her tears away. It was frustrating that her father was dodging her questions once again, but he was so gravely ill now that it would be unkind to press him on why he wanted to apologise to the brother he’d been estranged from for decades. ‘I will.’ She took his hand.

  Aldo’s smile was so faint she almost missed it. ‘The last promise then. Be happy, Sofia. Be happy.’

  ‘I promise,’ she whispered.

  Chapter One

  The following year, as tourist season begins

  Promises #1, #2 and #3: Don’t Mope. Do all the things single women do. Visit Montelibertà.

  Sofia could see what Davide was up to. Threading between the black iron tables of Il Giardino he was deliberately brushing against Amy, apparently irresistibly drawn to her blonde-haired, blue-eyed prettiness.

  Like Sofia, Amy had only been working at the hotel Casa Felice for ten days. As Davide had been away on a course, this was the first time their duties had brought them all together yet Sofia had heard Davide ask Amy for a date within ten minutes of the start of the shift. Not visibly rebuffed by her gasp of dismay and embarrassed head-shake, he’d then proceeded to behave like a Jack Russell in heat.

  Sofia’s protective instincts were roused by her friend’s obvious distress. Amy was eighteen and this was her first summer job, for crying out loud! Davide was at least a decade her senior and the son of the owner. Sofia timed her next run to the kitchen hatch to coincide with Amy’s. ‘Are you OK?’ she whispered.

  Amy’s eyes sparkled with angry tears as she balanced two pâté boards and an order of truffles on her tray. ‘Davide’s being a creep.’

  ‘He certainly is. I’m just checking you’re aware he’s Benedetta’s son—’

  ‘Don’t care! I’m not putting up with him rubbing his yucky “bits” on my bum.’ Amy spun on her heel with a swish of her blonde ponytail and made for a table of three middle-aged Englishwomen who’d whiled away the wait for food with a couple of bottles of prosecco.

  Powerless to help, Sofia continued to run food and drink to her own tables, swinging fully laden trays up onto her flattened hand. It was hard work in the midday sun and the mercury was soaring even at the beginning of June. She watched her section, whipping out pen and pad to take orders then running the food and drink to the appropriate table. Quick, brisk, hurry. Smile, smile, smile. Take money. Clear tables; sanitise. Ignore burning feet and aching back …

  ‘YAH! Ungh!’

  Sofia halted, sanitising spray poised as her eyes hunted out the origin of the strangled cries. In front of the corner of the bar Davide was doubled over, eyes bulging.

  Nearby, a flushed Amy swung an empty tray. ‘Sorry. You startled me and my tray slipped.’ Then she loaded her next order of drinks and glided rapidly away without troubling to hide a triumphant grin.

  Sofia smiled back uneasily, not missing the malevolent glare Davide directed at Amy’s rear view. ‘Keep an eye on him now,’ Sofia murmured when she contrived to make their paths converge at the bar. ‘What did you do?’ She cast a glance at Davide, who’d managed to straighten up and was taking an order from an Italian family.

  ‘Hit him in the ’nads with my tray. He might keep them further away from me in future.’ But the first flush of victory was obviously fading and Amy was beginning to look apprehensive as she slid four coffees onto the tray-slash-weapon.

  Sofia wiped her hands on her apron and arranged her own tray so that it balanced before following in Amy’s wake. Amy was evidently given to impetuous action when threatened, but Sofia knew Davide’s type. He might not take long to strike back.

  Smiling through the familiar routine of ‘Whose is the Cappuccino? And the Americano?’ with her customers, Sofia watched with a sinking sense of inevitability as Davide slunk up behind Amy at the table of the prosecco ladies just as she began the rotation of the wrist that would arc a tray full of steaming coffee cups from her shoulder to the table.

  All it took was for Davide to shoot out a furtive arm.

  The tray flipped off Amy’s hand … slap into the lap of one of the customers.

  ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ The woman leaped to her feet, dragging steaming fabric away from her legs. ‘You stupid girl! My best white linen trousers! How could you be so clumsy?’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Amy, pale and shocked, glanced frantically behind her, obviously suspecting the tray had had some help in its flight. But Davide had lost no time in gliding away and was already watching from the shady doorway that led to reception.

  ‘Excuse me!’ Sofia plonked down the final Americano and raced between the craning guests, whipping off her apron. Reaching the unfortunate customer, she dunked the white cotton into the meltwater surrounding upended prosecco bottles in the ice bucket. ‘If you’d like to sit down I’ll put this over your legs in case you’ve been scalded. It’ll dilute the coffee, too. I know it’s not comfortable but I’m sure Casa Felice will pay for cleaning. Amy’s right to apologise, but I do think she was jostled.’

  ‘I was.’ Amy’s bottom lip began to quiver. ‘I’m very sorry – but the tray just seemed to leap off my hand.’

  ‘Oh, yes, trays are full of tricks like that,’ Mrs Coffee Trousers retorted. But then, seeing everyone staring at her, sat down and let Sofia lay the cold cloth across her thighs.

  ‘It’ll soon dry in this heat,’ remarked one of her companions from the comfortable position of not having been bathed in near-boiling liquid. She smiled at Amy. ‘Don’t you worry, darlin’. Worse things happen at sea.’

  Sofia was just about to suggest Amy return to the bar to ask for the coffee order to be repeated when Benedetta barrelled out through the double doors of the hotel with Davide a few steps behind. Sofia’s heart dropped. Benedetta Morbidelli, an impressive mix of immaculate and statuesque, owned all of hotel Casa Felice and its café, Il Giardino. By the look of Davide’s smirk, he’d lit his mother’s blue touch paper and was now intending to watch her explode.

  ‘Sacked! Go, you!’ Benedetta yelled at Amy, her dark ‘updo’ quivering as she made extravagant shooing motions with her hands.

  Amy’s lip quivered harder. ‘But it wasn’t my fault—’

  ‘Pack! Go!’ Benedetta thundered up to the table and gave Amy a little shove with her well-manicured fingertips.

  ‘But it wasn’t her fault,’ protested Sofia. She turned to give Davide a pointed stare, raising her voice over the sound of a motorbike arriving in the hotel car park beyond a row of flower tubs. ‘Someone knocked her.’

  ‘There was a young man nearby,’ said the same prosecco lady who’d tried to calm things before.

  ‘Go!’ Benedetta shouted in Amy’s face.

  Amy took a frightened step back, stuttering piteously. ‘I h-haven’t got anywhere to go. I’m supposed to stay here till S-September.’

  ‘Look! Look what you do to my customer!’ Benedetta lifted the wetted apron off the maltreated prosecco lady’s legs.

  Mrs Coffee Trousers was beginning to look discomfited. ‘You shouldn’t sack her. Even if she wasn’t jostled it was an accident and you’ve got no call to push her around, neither. You could get sued for that.’

  ‘I’ll pay for the cleaning,’ Amy quavered, before adding, wretchedly. ‘Once I’ve had some wages.’

  ‘Wages?’ Benedetta began shouting again at Amy, this time in Italian, that she wo
uld get no wages, she must go this very minute and pack her bags, then leave Casa Felice and never return.

  The English tourists were obviously not following shrieked Italian but they all blinked as Benedetta shoved Amy again, presumably to encourage her to her room to pack. Amy, not understanding, began to cry.

  Sofia lifted her voice. ‘Maybe we could discuss this indoors in private, Benedetta?’ When ignored, she repeated the suggestion in Italian.

  Benedetta turned her wrath down a notch, perhaps seeing in Sofia an experienced hand. ‘She’s too young for this job. I need to get someone new from the website,’ she explained in the same language.

  Sofia took a deep breath. ‘Actually, it was Davide. He made a nuisance of himself and when Amy put a stop to it he got his revenge by bumping her tray. I’m afraid I saw him do it.’

  Davide stopped smirking and began to protest ‘Eh, eh!’ as Italian-speaking customers turned to gaze reproachfully at him.

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ demanded Mrs Coffee Trousers.

  Sofia, despite a growing feeling that crossing the excitable Benedetta might result in her soon joining Amy in clearing her room, repeated her accusation in English. The English-speaking customers swivelled suspicious gazes towards Davide too.

  ‘No!’ remonstrated Benedetta with an air of injured reproach. ‘Not Davide.’

  Then a man appeared beside the group, raking back fair hair damp with perspiration. In his thirties, he carried a red crash helmet and a black biker jacket, his lower half encased in protective gear. ‘She’s right. I saw this waiter do it.’ He turned a fierce glare on Davide. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, getting this young girl in bother and then grinning about it.’