Dolci di Love (8 page)

Then, poof, just as quickly, that would be gone and she'd be swallowed up again by what she didn't have.

‘Grace,' Lily repeated softly. ‘It's so long since I've said it out loud.'

At that, a plume of smoke erupted rudely out of the ancient oven and the elderly sisters both flew at it with flapping aprons, great clouds of flour mushrooming in front of them. Lily shook herself as if waking from a trance and the image of all those little pink all-in-ones that would never be worn flew off into the corners of the smoky room. She could not imagine why she had been burbling on like that. Just as well the old women couldn't understand a word of it.

‘Unless you need me to call the fire brigade,' she said, ‘I think I'll be on my way.' And while Luciana and Violetta were sidetracked trying to rescue their burning cookie logs, she slipped out of the room.

‘W
hat was she saying?' Luciana asked, waving smoke away from her face after Lily left the room.

‘There's trouble with
bambino
,' Violetta told her. ‘Not having them, that is. I don't know what happened but it's not ideal.'

‘So, she's been married before. Big deal. So has Alessandro. Better that way I always think. And speaking of thinking, it didn't occur to you to mention to Lily that you are perfectly fluent in her own language?'

‘Perfectly fluent? I don't think so.' Violetta had learned to speak a number of foreign languages in the early forties, but as no one expected her to, she often didn't let on that she could, and the sisters gathered some of their best information this way.

But in this instance, Luciana was possibly right. Violetta should have told Lily she understood what she was saying, but there hadn't been the opportunity to stop her. Or if there was, Violetta had missed it. Just another awkward misstep to put her off her stride! And Lily spilling her beans had made her even more confused than she already was.

‘Something is not right here,' she said, poking one of the burnt cookie trumpets with a finger. ‘Something is seriously not right.'

Luciana gave a little cough.

‘Something has seriously not been right for a while,' she agreed, poking at a second one. ‘And I'm glad you brought it up because I know you find it difficult, but we most certainly can't keep up this pretence. We can't ignore it any longer, Violetta. Fiorella is right about our teeth.'

There was an awkward silence.

‘Fiorella? Teeth? What on earth are you talking about?' Violetta asked.

‘I'm talking about the
cantucci
,' Luciana said. ‘Violetta, I think it's time. We can't keep pretending we're managing it.'

‘Ferrettis have been making
cantucci
in Montevedova since 1898,' Violetta insisted, shaking her head. ‘It's the best in Tuscany, everybody says so. Even the Pope. Three popes.'

‘Yes, everybody says it's the best but everybody buys the Borsolinis'. We need money, Violetta. We need to go to the doctor. You're getting greyer in the face with every passing day, my hips are killing me, and everyone we know needs dentures.'

‘There's nothing wrong with me,' Violetta said, that tightness in her chest turning something inexplicable inside her again. ‘And I'm not talking about the
cantucci.
I don't want to talk about that. I'm talking about the match, our
calzino
. There's something not right with this match. Alessandro is too much of a lost soul to end up with another lost soul and I think that's what this woman, this Lily, is. It's a worry to me.'

‘Never mind that.'

‘How can you say that, Luciana? We must mind it! The world needs love and lovers now more than it ever has. We're trying to do Santa Ana di Chisa's work with dwindling resources and—'

‘Violetta, you need to think of yourself, and of me. I'm talking about us. We need pills for our arthritis. My hands hurt all the time. We have no money.'

‘We have five hundred euros for the room.'

‘I know the League is your vocation but the
cantucci
provides us with a living, and we have to face the fact that it's getting too hard for us to turn it out. All we have left is our reputation and if we're not careful we're going to lose that too.'

At that moment, the widow Ciacci put her head in the side window—something she could only do by standing on her own kitchen chair out in the alleyway that led off the Corso.

‘I think it's time you got a smoke alarm,' she said, coughing. ‘Or an apprentice. Really, you'll burn to a crisp and then where will we be?'

‘In the safe hands of Fiorella Fiorucci no doubt,' Violetta said. ‘I'm surprised she isn't in here taking over our kitchen already. Too aggressive by far, if you ask me.'

‘Oh, but did you taste her
torta della nonna
?' the widow Ciacci enthused. ‘She mixes ricotta with the custard, I believe. And perhaps there's a bit of booze in there somewhere as well. And she can still bend enough to play
baci
! There's no one else left in the League who can do that.'

This was the last thing Violetta wanted to hear. ‘The reason for this unscheduled stopover?' she inquired.

‘Two things: one, the widow Benedicti has faxed through Alessandro's schedule for the week so we can orchestrate some connections and the other, there's a kid in your
pasticceria
talking to Grace Kelly. It's that strange little girl from the other side of the piazza who's always getting in fights and breaking things.'

A
fter her escape from the kitchen, Lily took a moment in the bakeshop to collect herself, leaning on the marble counter and considering the contents of the closest
cantucci
bowl.

Those poor old women. What were they thinking? That the two of them had ever produced enough cookies to operate a business was astounding. That they were still trying to do so was something else.

She picked a piece of
cantucci
out of the bowl, blew off the dust and held it up to the golden light filtering through from the Corso. The cookie was still hard, no matter what its age, and would look tantalising enough, she thought, to a person of a sweet-toothed persuasion. The hazelnuts seemed robust and there was even a slight gloss to them. She sniffed the cookie and was surprised by a fresh scent, a bit like the seashore but with a lingering spiciness. She turned it again in the light. For a confection that was well past its best, it was holding up remarkably well.

Outside, the sleepy morning quiet was rudely interrupted by a disturbance that grew louder as its vortex neared the store. Through the dirty window Lily saw a blur of bright colours whiz by, a whirling collection of arms, legs, shrieks, and mirth. The door flew open, the bell clanged, the cacophony filled the tiny room, the door closed, the
shrill young voices dissolved, and through the backlit dust that spun in a frenzy before falling like a glittering gold show curtain to the floor, emerged a small dark angel.

The dust settled. The
cantucci
fell from Lily's fingers back into the bowl with a solid
clack
.

The small dark angel was the little girl from the photo in Daniel's golf shoe.

She was a year or two older, perhaps, and wearing a set of costume party wings on her back, but otherwise she looked exactly the same.

Lily had known the moment she saw the photo that the children were Daniel's, but to see this child in the flesh? She even had his legs, long and slim but splaying out slightly from the hips. Her chin was his, her open face. Daniel had been a good-looking kid and this girl, his
daughter,
had inherited his looks, although she was dark where he was fair. Her eyes were green though, just like Daniel's. She wasn't cute, not in the childish adorable sense, but she was truly arresting in a way that would last forever, unlike cute, which came and went.

The wings were made of pale yellow gauze fitted around wire frames and strapped to her shoulders like a backpack. She was puffing as if she had been running.

She did not turn back to see if the cyclone of arms and legs was coming into the store with her. She stood her ground, looking at Lily.

‘Who are you?' she asked, in very good English. Her beautiful face was alive and inquisitive. She had confidence in herself. Confidence and beauty: the perfect combination.

Oh, I want one, Lily's biological clock chimed ineptly. I want one, I want one, I want one.

She opened her mouth to speak, but her longing choked her as it occurred that the child might be aware of her, might know that her
father had a wife called Lily—some ugly evil creature ruining his life on the other side of the world.

Something not unlike the flickering embers of someone else's anger licked at her then. Would the Daniel she knew and loved paint her this way? Was it possible he actually saw her like that?

‘I'm Lillian Watson,' she said, pulling the name she was born with out of her pocket like a crumpled sunhat, surprised that her voice sounded so solid when the rest of her felt like it could disappear into a whorl of golden dust. ‘And who might you be?'

‘I'm Francesca,' the girl answered with a heartbreaking smile, sidling sideways up to the counter. ‘What's wrong with you?'

Lily was taken aback. She brushed at her cheeks to make sure no tears had escaped, pushed back her hair, forced a smile.

‘What's wrong with me? Well, nothing that I can think of. Why do you ask?'

‘Usually when people come to stay with the Ferretti sisters they have something wrong with them.' Francesca said. ‘But they don't usually work in the store. Or help with the
cantucci
. Are you going to help with the
cantucci
? I think it would be good if you did.'

‘Oh, well, I'm not really staying here,' Lily said. ‘Not for long anyway and I'm certainly not likely to be helping with the
cantucci
. That's this biscotti, right?'

‘Biscotti is all cookies,
cantucci
is what we make here in Tuscany and the Ferrettis make the best.'

‘But does anyone buy it?'

Francesca shrugged. ‘I don't think they're allowed. The Ferrettis don't usually let people in the store. They are too mean. Except if there's something wrong with you. I only came in because I saw it was you.'

‘Me?' A flush of panic.

‘You, not them. They can be scary and they have hands like, like,
allora
, like Captain Hook.' She lifted up fingers just like Daniel's,
long with knobby knuckles, and curled them into claws. ‘You know, in
Peter Pan
.'

Oh, how that further flamed Lily's bravely burning embers. Of course Daniel had read his daughter
Peter Pan
. It had been his favourite book as a child, hers too. They'd bought countless copies for the children of friends and more for their own imaginary children.

Francesca wasn't an angel at all.

‘You're Tinker Bell,' Lily said.

Francesca looked pleased. ‘They're not real wings,' she said. ‘I can't fly.'

‘I love that book,' Lily told her. ‘I used to read it to my sister when I was about your age and we'd listen to it as well, I guess on the record player. You couldn't turn the page of the book until Tinker Bell rang her little bell.'

Lily wondered where those books were, the one she had bought for her own children, if they'd been relegated to the charity store like so much of the other baby paraphernalia she had collected over the years or if they were stashed somewhere in the apartment. Or maybe Daniel had brought them here. Would he do that?

Francesca came right up to the counter, her nose at fluted
cantucci
bowl level. She peered in to the bowl then up at Lily.

‘I don't know what is a record player. Have you seen it at the movies?' she asked. ‘
Peter Pan
?'

Those eyes. Daniel's eyes.

‘I don't think it was on at the movies when I was little.'

‘What about now?' Francesca asked.

‘Now I'm grown up, I don't really go to the movies,' she said.

Francesca looked disappointed.

Please don't ask me if I have children, Lily begged. She couldn't bear that question from anyone, let alone…

‘But you are American?' Francesca asked.

‘Yes, I am,' Lily answered then, keen to move on: ‘What about you? Are you from here? From Montevedova?'

‘Yes, but I'm going to America one day,' Francesca said, swivelling her slender little hips. ‘And I'm going on my own. I'm going to go to the movies and do hip-hop, and I'm not taking Ernesto with me.'

‘Ernesto?' Lily asked. She couldn't help herself.

‘My little brother,' Francesca said with a sigh. ‘He is a pain in my ass.'

‘You speak wonderful English for a little girl, Francesca,' Lily told her, ‘but I'm not sure
ass
is a word you should be using.'

‘My papa makes me have lessons, and I am nearly seven,' Francesca informed her. ‘So that's not little. Ernesto is little.'

Nearly seven. Lily turned away and fumbled for an imaginary something in her purse. She did not want Francesca to see her face. Nearly
seven
. That made her just a year younger than Grace. Grace would be nearly eight now.

That year after they lost her, that year when her world collapsed yet again, leaving her in pieces she could never put back together, all she'd had to cling to was work. Work and Daniel. Because one stopped her from thinking and the other knew what she thought. And yet, in that year, that same horrendous, hideous year, Daniel had not been thinking what she was thinking at all, not suffering what she was suffering. He had been coming here and creating himself this perfect parallel universe.

Everything she ever wanted, but without her.

The flames of her missing anger lunged up inside her, licking at her, burning her. They required immediate dousing.

‘I'm sorry, sweetie,' she said to Francesca. ‘I have to get going now. Do you have somewhere to be? School, maybe?'

‘It's summer,' Francesca said, her pretty smile gone. ‘There is no school.'

She reluctantly followed Lily to the door and waited until Lily waved her through it, but as she passed in front that blur of colour—a group of girls about the same age as she, it turned out—came clattering back up the lane.

As soon as she saw them, Francesca stepped back into the shop, pressing herself, and her fairy wings, hard into Lily's empty body.

Lily saw the look that rippled through the gang of girls, felt Francesca shrink away from them. One girl snickered, and the others followed suit—that same shrill cacophony—then they broke into a run and scattered, calling out what, Lily did not know, but Francesca stayed pressed into her.

The wings, up close, had a series of little holes in them, as if the fairy wearing them had long ago been gunned down. Her dress, Lily realised, was not as clean as it could have been. A thin crescent of dirt fringed each fingernail. Her hair had not been brushed recently. Who was looking after her?

When the slap of the girls' sandals had completely faded, Francesca relaxed and stepped out into the street as if nothing had happened.

She turned around and in the split second that Lily saw her pull her expression together, Lily realised she had been too quick to identify confidence in the child.

She showed it all right, but it wasn't quite the natural resource Lily had originally assumed. In front of those other girls, it had crumbled. How she wanted to hold that brave little body, to kiss her face, soothe her, tell her that everything would be all right, that she was worth more than a hundred of those girls, a thousand, a million.

‘Will you be all right?' Lily asked, as casually as she could.

‘Will you be here tomorrow?' Francesca asked, swivelling again.

‘I'm not sure,' Lily said. ‘But if I am I hope I see you again.'

‘OK,' Francesca said.

‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Tinker Bell,' Lily said. ‘A real pleasure.' And before she could disgrace herself and embarrass the child by releasing what felt like a lifetime of unshed tears, she turned and headed down the hill.

‘
Ciao, ciao
,' Francesca called after her. ‘
A domani
.'

Until tomorrow.