Annie had to concede that maybe he had a point.
'I don't really like . . . well . . . lounging,' Annie had to confess. 'If I had to lie by the pool for more than an hour or so, I'd probably get a bit bored.'
'Aha!' was Ed's response. 'Now we're getting to the truth of it – we're not interesting enough for you. You're running away.'
'Just for a few hours,' Annie had promised them. 'And Ed, don't worry, I'm going to sell all this stuff, for so much money that you're not going to regret anything!'
'No, regrette rien!' he'd joked, 'that's my motto.'
'I don't think it's Connor's though,' Dinah had to add at the sound of loud retching coming from the direction of the open bathroom window situated just a little too close to the terrace for comfort.
Having parked on the edge of the town, Annie meandered in on foot through the quieter, dustier streets and drank in all the sights on the way.
A pair of heavy wooden doors was pulled open by a wiry man in a straw hat, who began to drag a wooden crate of lemons out onto the doorstep. The grocer was setting up shop. Annie looked at the doors with their ragged and flaking sun-bleached blue paint. If she'd seen them in London, she'd just be itching to pick up sandpaper and paintbrushes and re-do them. But here in the dazzling morning sun, it looked just right. Ancient, faded blue, set off perfectly by the acid lemon yellow heaped beneath it.
As she approached the town centre, Annie walked towards a café and spotted a supremely elegant woman seated at an outside table reading the paper. Her huge tortoiseshell sunglasses, already on against the glare of the sun, glinted darkly just like her chunky brown and black necklace.
There was a tiny white coffee cup in front of her and there she was, dressed to the nines, happy to be alive.
This was the essence of what Annie tried to inspire in her clients: dress to express yourself! Dress to make yourself feel good! Who cares what anyone else thinks? If you want to wear the green shoes with the yellow skirt, go for it!
Dressing well was the one genuinely creative and artistic thing most people were allowed to do all day. It wasn't about fashion and it wasn't about how much things cost . . . but then maybe she'd been in danger of forgetting that too.
To her surprise, the woman in the sunglasses looked up, seemed to study her briefly and then called out, 'Annie? Is it you? Buon giorno.'
Only when the glasses were removed did Annie recognize the woman behind them. It was Patrizia, from Mr B's glamorous factory shop. Annie had decided yesterday that Patrizia wasn't Mr B's wife, but looking at the glamorous lady now she still wasn't sure if there was anything between them or not. How could they resist one another?
'Allora,' Patrizia patted to the chair beside her, 'come, you sit and have a little coffee with me. Beautiful morning, no?'
Annie was delighted to be asked. She pulled up the spindly little metal chair and sat down, not opposite Patrizia but beside her, so they could both, from behind their glamorous shades, look out onto the street, watch the comings and goings and take little glances at each other now and then.
The coffee brought by the waiter was so strong, it was like drinking hot whisky. It tore down Annie's throat, burning a hole, shot through her blood and made straight for her heart, which began to pound. No wonder they only served it by the thimbleful. It should come with a health warning.
'So?' Patrizia leaned back in her seat, pushing her long, wavy hair away from the nape of her neck and releasing a lovely blast of the complicated citrus perfume everyone here seemed to wear their own version of. 'You came to town for the mercato?'
'Yes, maybe I'll have a look around.'
'Delicious, delicious things,' Patrizia enthused. 'Wonderful food from all around the region. The prosciuttio and olivas!'
'I was going to look for your necklace shop,' Annie confided, since she was trusting Ed to look after the food side of things during the trip, although, just to be nice to him, she might go to the market and buy him something special to cook with. 'Where did you buy this wonderful piece?' Annie asked, pointing at the fat beads Patrizia had wound several times around her neck. 'Is the shop in town?'
'Ah!' Patrizia looked genuinely pleased at the compliment, 'I take you! Yes!' she insisted when Annie raised her hands to protest. 'No! No problem. I show you some of my favourite boutiques on the way. Today, you shop like an Italian lady.'
Patrizia insisted on paying for the coffees, then they fell in step along the delicate stone pavements, complimenting each other on their shoes.
'It is very English to love shoes,' Patrizia said. 'Mr Berlusponti-Milliau say this because English women too fat to get excited about clothes, only shoes.'
'Oh no!' Annie reacted in outrage on behalf of every English woman, 'it's because English men love our shoes and . . . English women have beautiful feet,' Annie declared. No, it wasn't necessarily true but it was the best excuse for the shoe thing that she could come up with on the spot. How long have you worked for Mr Bellissimo?' she asked next.
'Mr Berlusponti-Milliau?'
'Yes, but I can't pronounce that.'
'So you flatter him and call him Mr Very Beautiful.'
'Well, I don't think he minds!'
'No, no, and I am sure he not mind. He has, how you say? Ego . . . gigantico!' She spread her arms wide to demonstrate, 'Oh,' she interrupted herself, 'but first you must come and see the shoes in here.'
Annie, who had a hundred pairs of Timi Woo shoe perfection neatly boxed up at home in London, was not exactly bowled over by the shoes on offer. They were quite elegant and very reasonably priced, but they bore no comparison to the genius shoes she had discovered. However, Patrizia was an insistent shopping companion. She wanted to know Annie's size, she instructed the sales assistant to bring out a selection of shoes to try and before Annie knew it, she was at the till paying for a pair of creamy fake snake-print slingbacks.
A quick jaunt along the cobbled pavement later and they were in a boutique which Patrizia insisted had the very best dresses at the very best price.
'I buy
everything
here,' Patrizia informed her and indeed, the woman in the shop greeted Patrizia like her very best customer.
'You like? You like this?' Patrizia kept asking, holding out dress after dress from the rack. Somehow it would have been almost insulting to both Patrizia and the owner to say no. Anyway, the dresses were beautiful and most of them were less than a hundred euros, which seemed astonishing for such intricately patterned silk.
Before she was able to say much more about it, Annie was in the changing room admiring herself in a floaty, chiffonish creation, all reds and oranges and vibrant pink. When she ventured to suggest that it might be just a little over the top for day wear, Patrizia clapped her hands and insisted: 'No! You are not thinking like Italian woman yet.'
Then, seized with the sort of enthusiasm Annie usually had for her clients, Patrizia asked permission to loosen Annie's hair from its tight ponytail. Before she knew it, Patrizia had snapped open her small leather bag, brought out a comb (in what else but coordinating tortoiseshell) and within a few quick moments, she had bouffed Annie's just below the shoulder blonde bob up to about four times its normal size.
'Now, put on the new shoes, then we go to my special shop to buy necklace. Then, you truly stunning Italian-style woman . . . this the kind Mr B-M do business with.'
Truly Italian-style tarty woman, was Annie's thought as she tried to smooth down the bouffant hair surreptitiously. But when in Rome and all that . . .
In a tiny shop, slightly bigger than a booth, a dark-haired, darkly tanned man with a winking gold front tooth sold necklaces with price tags only half as much as Annie had expected. In imitation amber, topaz, or multi-coloured Murano glass, they were all jaw-droppingly beautiful, every single one of them.
Annie took her time looking carefully through them. She wanted to buy everything, but having to narrow the selection down, she decided that she liked the chunky glass pendants best. Fashioned from amazing whirls of colour, each was like an oversized jewel strung along strands of shiny glass beads. Every colour combination was as intricate as a miniature constellation, absolutely unique and beautiful.
'So tell me more about Mr B,' Annie said as she and Patrizia tried to make a choice from all the amazing things on sale: 'is he a good businessman?'
'Yes, I think so,' Patrizia told her. 'I've only been working with him for four months. He has good connections and he has just opened the shop. But now he does not have enough customers. This is why he so interested in you. You are the way to customers. He has the very nice things to sell. You are the one with customers.
'I think he was impressed with your eBay shop,' she added. 'He has spoken of something like this. But I don't think he want to be posting handbags by himself every day. Anyway, post here, not so good.'
'Yeah, well, we have that problem too,' Annie confided picking up a small pendant of many shades of blue swirled with gold dust. This was for Lana, no doubt about it. One of the blues spiralling in the mix was exactly the colour of Lana's vibrant eyes. And her daddy's, Annie remembered with just the tiniest of shivers.
'But do you think he will be a good business partner?' Annie asked Patrizia a little anxiously. She'd only just met the man, but felt she was going to have to make a decision. If she was to take this chance, she had to decide as soon as possible, before someone much more impressive than her walked into his shop and took the bull by the horns. 'Is he honest?' Annie asked.
'Everything I see of the business, fine,' Patrizia said firmly, 'Buona. But you should know,' her voice lowered, 'he has a lot of girlfriends. He big lady man.'
This made Annie laugh, although she understood that it meant Mr B was big into ladies, not – judging by his shoe comment – into big ladies.
Patrizia held up an emerald green pendant decorated with rich brown and yellow whorls, then lighter green inside. It was strung on a multi-strand of tiny brown and gold pearls, and when she held it against her neck, her brown eyes glittered gold.
'Oh, you have to have that. Have to,' Annie commented, 'that is just perfetto for you. So Mr B is a ladies' man . . .'
'Si, but I think this is not a bad thing for his business, no?'
'And between you and Mr B . . . ?' Annie thought it might be rude to spell it out exactly, but she was curious to know if there was anything at all going on between the two of them.
'What?' Patrizia didn't seem to catch Annie's meaning at first but then . . .'Oh!' she smiled, 'you mean a romance between him and me? Oh no, no, no,' she laughed as if this was a completely ridiculous idea, 'I have fiancé,' she said and to prove the point she raised her right hand and held out the chunky smokey-coloured topaz ring on her fourth finger.
'That is lovely,' Annie told her, but felt some confusion.
Topaz
? For an engagement ring?
'Much more beautiful than diamond, no?' Patrizia asked. 'This is the ring I choose.'
'Oh yes,' Annie agreed, but really she was lying. When it came to engagement rings, she'd have to love someone very,
very
much to let them get away with anything less than a truly stonking diamond.
'But he try, of course, ' Patrizia added, fastening on the green necklace and looking at herself in the mirror with concentration, 'he lean over and say "something on your face Patrizia, let me move it away", this sort of thing. But for me is nothing,' she added, 'I wave
him
away,' she batted her hand vigorously to demonstrate, 'like mosca.'
Annie got the idea.
* * *
In the flamboyant pink and orange dress and new Italian heels, with the still scarily bouffant hair, Annie got out of the mighty people-carrier as elegantly as she could and headed towards Mr B's factory shop.