"Is…?" Darcy began. "Is Marco here? Si!" As the sous chef disappeared, Darcy leant briefly against the lintel to counter the rush of relief.
Within seconds, he was in the doorway, filling the frame with his body, wiping his hands on a tea towel. Immediately, she felt that her lips were the biggest and most prominent thing on her face. "Hi," she said primly.
"How are you?" he asked, looking at her anxiously.
"Come and sit down." As he led her to a table, seemingly careful not to touch her arm, Darcy sensed a restraint about Marco that had not been there before.
Had she but known it, Marco's reserve sprang from a desperate urge not to put a foot wrong. He had not slept from the moment their last meeting ended. There had been a closeness then that surely he had not imagined. And yet days had passed since, without any sight of her. He had heard the film had been called off and the actors leaving; such a seismic event in the hospitality trade didn't take long to penetrate Rocolo. He had been full of fear that Darcy had gone too.
As he looked at her helplessly, Darcy stepped forward and smiled. "I want to ask you something."
Hs heart raced. "Anything!" he declared, waving his hands and putting into the gesture all the feeling he could not express in words.
"You told me once that your restaurant philosophy is all about giving your staff time to have a real life. They don't work long hours, they get paid properly…"
He frowned. Why was she interviewing him about his management techniques? "Ye-es…" he said cautiously. "Yes, that's right."
Darcy smoothed a hair behind her ear.
"Well, I was wondering," Darcy smiled, showing white teeth in pink gums. She looked about sixteen, with those freckles and candid coffee bean–eyes, he thought.
Her heart hammered. She took a deep breath and squeezed her hands together. "I was wondering…whether you might have a job for a friend of mine."
"A friend…of yours?"
At the beginning of the sentence he had, with a leap of the heart, started to form the thought that she was asking for a job for herself. Apparently not.
"Yes. A homeless woman. One who's never cooked very much before."
He shrugged.
Darcy's heart sank. "So you don't employ homeless women who can't cook?"
"I have no problem with a homeless woman," he replied. "That is fine. Anyone can make a mistake, huh?"
His eyes seemed to Darcy to be boring into her with particular meaning.
"Presuming she is willing, clean, hardworking, and of good character…" He looked enquiringly at Darcy. She nodded hard.
"If she is, then I am sure I can help find her somewhere to live. I know a lot of people in this town, after all." He waved a hand expansively around. "There are flats, rooms in people's houses. We can sort something out."
Darcy felt jittery with joy. He had passed the test beautifully.
"However"—Marco pressed a finger to his full, wide lips—"it is more of a problem that she can't cook."
"Is it?" Darcy managed from a suddenly dry throat.
"Mmm. Most people applying for jobs in restaurants can cook already." He shook his shaggy head. "No, that is a real problem. A big, big problem."
"But…" Darcy objected. "But…if she is really passionate about food? Really, really wants to learn?"
He shrugged his big shoulders. "That would help. In some ways, of course, that is the most important thing."
"So keen to learn that she would be happy to peel vegetables, sweep up, do anything. And you wouldn't have to pay her much either, not at first."
Marco looked at her and smiled. "Not until she became a Michelin-starred chef, eh?"
Darcy blushed. "That's right."
"She sounds good," Marco said, nodding. "Yes, I'd like to meet this homeless woman. What's her name?"
He felt a pair of slender arms round his neck. "As if you didn't know," giggled Darcy into his neck.
Marco bent to kiss her, a long, lingering kiss to which Darcy responded with an ardour that meant neither of them were any longer in any doubt about anything. The sun finally broke the clouds and flooded the square in dazzling sunshine.
"Oh, Marco," Darcy, her eyes closed, murmured into the salty, soapy, warm-skin scent of his hair and neck. "I love you."
"And I you." He pulled her tighter, even though it wasn't really possible.
She breathed, as best she could, a deep, happy sigh. "I can hardly believe it," she told him happily, his curls tickling her lips as she spoke. "My life's been such bollocks until now. Without meaning, without direction, and now it's suddenly as if, I don't know, the clouds have parted or something, and it's all so clear." She raised her head and beamed at him. "There's so much I can learn from you. You can show me so much…you're such an artist, such a man…"
To her surprise, instead of looking delighted at this outburst, the round brown eyes, so melting a second ago, now fixed on her in concern. A chill feeling now swept through Darcy; had she said something wrong? "What's the matter?" she stammered, her throat clenched with fear.
Marco's brow lowered. He stared intensely from below it at Darcy.
"What have I said?" she burst out in panic. Her last words jangled hysterically through her mind, like a runaway train. But they had been all praise and love, surely?
Marco took a deep, slow breath and gently put her from him. The air was warm, but, released unwillingly from the tight, hot circle of his strong arms, Darcy felt cold. She stared at him, eyes pingponging frantically about his face, feeling her knees start to tremble.
"If we are to be together," Marco now informed her in a slow, grave voice, his eyes steady and never leaving hers, "there is something you must know about me. Something that might change your entire view of me."
Chapter Fifty-eight
Hot and cold waves of panic were coursing through her body. Was he about to reveal the existence of a wife? An entire other family? A penchant for cross-dressing? She gazed at him helplessly.
"I have a weakness," Marco admitted, now looking at the cobbled floor.
Nausea was pushing in her throat. Her palms and forehead felt clammy. Weakness?
Her thoughts raced. Drugs? Alcohol? Was he gay? Oh, it was so unfair. She had been so happy, so excited, so hopeful; finally her life had had a direction. And now all was to be shattered.
He was walking away from her now, towards the restaurant. "Come with me," he called, without turning round. As if in a dream she followed, stumbling, one leg planting itself shakily before the other, her eyes fixed on the broad white back before her, topped by its ball of dark curls. The sounds around her—the passersby in the street behind, singing birds, her own panicked breathing—swelled in her ears with cataclysmic, hyper-real volume.
She watched as he went through the door. Whatever he was about to reveal was to be revealed in the restaurant. Bodies in the freezer? What horrors—and Darcy had no doubt now that they were horrors—was she about to be told?
Darcy, following the tall-white-clad figure through the tables, had only the vaguest impression of what was around her. Tables, chairs, white walls. She banged painfully into the corner of a table; the sharp edge bit into her thigh and would no doubt cause a bruise. Darting through the boiling sea of impressions that constituted Darcy's thoughts came the memory of Sam. Her one-time model agent had been full of instructions about avoiding leg injuries and always, but always, putting on mosquito lotion as careers were ruined by bites in the wrong places. How happily, Darcy remembered, she had received the news that her own career was ruined by a combination of overeating on her own part and bad driving on Christian's.
Parting company with Sam had been such an intense relief, but would she now, Darcy wondered miserably, have to pick up the acting and modelling baton again?
Marco had disappeared through a door in the side of the room now, and Darcy followed him to find a small stone stairwell. At the top, she emerged, still in a dreamlike state, into a small, hot, noisy room full of shiny things, noisy chatter, and people in white; the kitchen, she slowly realised. The cacophonous noise now stopped as suddenly as if someone had turned it off. Darcy passed through the people, the shiny surfaces, the bowls and glinting knifes, in silence.
Marco had vanished again; through a shadowy doorway at the end, Darcy now saw as she reached it. She could see his white form moving about among the gloom inside. She stepped in after it, knowing with a clammy, immense sensation that whatever took place here, in this small, dark room, would affect her forever.
He was slapping about on the walls. She could make out dim shelves, full of bags of things. It smelt of flour. There were savoury tangs with sweet undercurrents. It did not seem especially sinister; it looked, in fact, like the kitchen storeroom.
"Here's the light." He snapped it on. Yellow brilliance flooded her eyes, and she blinked, looking at bags of pasta and flour with ornate labels. Jars and bottles of olive oil gleamed like jewels; with odd detachment, she admired the range of colours from yellow topaz to emerald. She shook her head slightly as she looked at him, her mind now utterly empty. All she could do was look.
He was bending now. His hand seemed to have closed over something on the bottom shelf. "What I am about to show you," he said softly into the wall in a tense monotone, "might change everything. And if it does, I promise you I will understand. I must warn you now that not many women would be able to understand. Italian women especially."
"Right," croaked Darcy, whose very feet were now fizzing with tension. Her back ached suddenly, unbearably.
"But you seem to see me as some sort of hero, and I have to show you that I am just a man, and weaker than most…"
"Show me," Darcy croaked, feeling that, however awful whatever he was about to show her was, it could not possibly be more awful than the suspense. She tensed herself, cringing slightly with narrowed eyes, ready to be shattered, ready for her fragile dream, so frail and recent of construct, to fall finally, conclusively apart.
He turned. He held something in both his hands. Her breath caught in her throat. He opened his hands. Standing on his palm was a tin of spaghetti.
She frowned and blinked, not understanding. "What's in there?" Crazy thoughts whirled in her brain. Was he a drug smuggler? Did he use tins as a cover?
He proffered the spaghetti. "Spaghetti. Spaghetti's in there." He spoke in a broken voice; his eyes, as he looked at her, were doleful and full of shame. "Can you still love me?" he asked, his voice now a whisper.
"Love you…?" She whirled her head from side to side. "I don't understand…what's spaghetti got to do with it…"
"I am an Italian man. A chef…"
Understanding burst in on her as brightly as the light had just done. Following close on its heels was a gigantic wave of relief. This was his weakness. She remembered, in a series of flashes, the small blonde girl asking for tinned spaghetti outside the restaurant. He had been so understanding…this was why. No wonder he had met her demands with such little fuss. The laughter came from somewhere around her navel, rose, inflated, and burst hysterically out.
"…have always loved it," Marco was saying sorrowfully. "I can't help it. Sometimes, after a hard night in the kitchen, it's all I want to eat. Of course, I know it's gunk; it's nothing like real, proper, Italian pasta. God knows what grade of flour it's made with, and it's never al dente. And that slimy sauce, but somehow it works, and I love it. I know I shouldn't. And it doesn't mean that I don't love the food I cook, the real Italian food I believe in, with every nerve in my body." A flash of pride illumined his features before the hangdog expression returned. "If the news got out, I'd be ruined. My brigade…"—he shook his curly head in the direction of the kitchen—"they know, of course. They had to know. And there are others…"
"Others?" Darcy was trying to control her mirth now. It was obviously an extremely serious matter for Marco.
"There's a whole society of us. In Italy. We're called the Societa Fapirollo, and we meet in secret every month. We have to. Italians are very proud of their pasta…you can imagine…and me a chef as well…" He stopped, as she was laughing again, a helpless hiccupping mirth.
"You don't mind?" There was wonder in his voice. "You can live with that, with knowing my secret? You don't blame me? Can you love me?"
Can! Darcy, forcing away her smile, sternly held his gaze. She had considered teasing him, pretending she did care, as retaliation for the agonies he had caused her. But his worried gaze and his crumpled, puppy face melted her heart. She pressed herself into him, shaking her head and smiling. "You know, I think I just…can."
About the Author
Wendy Holden was a journalist for
the
Sunday Times
,
Tatler
, and the
Mail
on Sunday
before becoming a full-time
author. She has now published nine
novels, all being top ten bestsellers in the
UK, and she is married with two young
children. Her novels include
Farm Fatale
,
Bad Heir Day
,
Simply Divine
,
Gossip
Hound
,
The Wives of Bath
,
The School for
Husbands
,
Azur Like It
, and
Filthy Rich.