Roberto could barely suppress his amusement, although he did treat me to dinner that night, in a beautiful hilltop restaurant nestled inside the medieval walls of San Gimignano. He had a knack
of knowing all the best places; the back-street restaurants with al-fresco tables, flickering tea lights and views from heaven.
It was a people-watching paradise, from the backpacking American students to the head-over-heels-in-love elderly couple on the next table, who, we discovered, after Roberto got chatting with
them, had made the journey from Rome.
I’d been mildly bewitched by those two and the idea that, one day, after a lifetime together, Roberto and I would still be like that, holding hands, laughing at each other’s jokes,
comfortable in our own skin with each other in every way.
‘They’re getting married next year,’ Roberto revealed as we made our way down the steep, cobbled hill towards home. ‘They only met in December, after his wife passed away
last year.’
‘What?’ I wailed. ‘How disappointing.’
Roberto laughed. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Oh, nothing – it’s nice, I suppose. I just liked the idea of them acting like newly weds when they’d been together for sixty-odd years, that’s all. I feel
robbed.’
‘Obviously,
we
’ll be like that after sixty or so years.’ He grinned. ‘Although, if I go first, for the record, you can go and marry who you want. No point in being
unhappy.’
‘I’ll have to say the same now, or I’ll look churlish,’ I replied, with a mock pout. ‘Fine then. If we both reach our nineties, then I go, you have my full
permission to go bungee jumping with someone else.’
He laughed. ‘That’s very good of you.’
I breathed in. ‘What
is
that gorgeous smell?’ It had been everywhere since we’d arrived in Tuscany, but I only seemed to register it at that moment.
‘You mean, apart from me?’
‘It’s herbier than you.’
‘Ah . . . that’s the sage. Lovely, isn’t it? It’s associated with a long and happy life, according to legends, anyway. That, and treating mouth ulcers.’
I know that my second excursion to the sun deck today won’t be much better than the first, as now I’m simply lying down and stressing about when Cosimo’s
going to ring. Not that I can really do much until he does.
I find a spot on the edge of the sun deck and order a drink from a passing waiter. Ideal as it isn’t that I’ve got to work, I can’t deny this beats sitting at my desk in
London. I pull out a pad from my beach bag and start jotting down a potential quote for Cosimo to supply to the
Daily Sun
. But I scrub it out, and come up with something else, before
repeating the exercise, then ripping off the page and dumping it in the bottom of my bag, deciding it’s better if we can suss out what they’re going to run first. I pick up my book.
Perhaps distraction is the best tactic after all.
‘Here is a small fact . . .’
I glance up and spot the gorgeous woman with the clipboard, fussing over a group of people by the pool. A bit like me, none of them looks like they quite belong here. Though I’d struggle
to define why this is beyond the Next T-shirt worn by the young guy with Einstein hair, and the fact that the girl with the streaky red lipstick keeps her suncream wrapped in a plastic Boots
bag.
I lower my eyes again to my book.
‘Here is a small fact . . .’
A soft breeze whispers past and lifts up my chin. My skin prickles with interest. Because Harry’s joined the group. And he hasn’t got a top on.
I feel an increasing sense of agitation as I peer over my book at him. Unthinkingly, I reach up to touch my necklace and when I register its absence, experience a swell of unease, abhorrence
almost, at what I’m feeling. Because there’s no doubt I’m feeling
something
.
I focus hard on my page, looking at the words without actually reading, until I become aware of Harry engaging in conversation with another new member of the group – an older guy with a
walking stick, and knees that clearly haven’t seen sunlight since the mid-1980s.
Clipboard Barbie is finding it impossible to quell her heaving bosom and, nauseating as it is, it’s easy to see what’s motivating her. Men with muscles have never held much appeal to
me on the basis that their owners usually spend so long admiring themselves, they haven’t got time for anyone else. So I can only think that I’m struggling to keep my eyes off
Harry’s torso because, after five years of singledom, it’s natural to find some fascination with the male form.
I realise that these new, or rediscovered, stirrings feel like the return of a long-lost, slightly mucky friend one half of me is glad to see, even if the other doesn’t like her that much.
Of course, I’m not saying I haven’t felt hot and bothered once in the last five years. But those moments have been rare, and prompted by old favourites such as the rainy day bit in
Dirty Dancing
, or an especially diverting scene in
True Blood
, rather than by a real-life human being.
Yet, as each time I catch a glimpse of Harry’s body, all I can think of is how gratifying its strong lines are, how distracting its masculinity. He has an honest-to-goodness six-pack. And
I know that if I closed my eyes, I could so vividly imagine kissing it I can almost taste the sunshine on his skin. So I don’t close my eyes. I open them wide, trying to think of a way to
halt the cloudburst rising in my pelvis.
‘Well, you missed a treat!’ Nic’s smiling face appears above me.
Meredith’s generous shadow suddenly eclipses the sun. ‘We’re going to have to go again – it’d be right up your street, Imogen.’
‘Really?’ I cough, pulling myself together as I take a sip of my drink to cool down.
‘Undoubtedly.’ Meredith takes a seat next to me. ‘Big place, lots of history, very photogenic. Of course, the hunky tour guide helped.’
‘It’s a church – you’re not supposed to be drooling over the tour guide,’ I point out.
‘God won’t mind,’ she says confidently. ‘He wouldn’t put men like that on earth if he didn’t want women to drool over them.’
I glance up as Yellow Bikini Lady arrives at a sun bed on the other side of the pool, this time sporting a blue rhinestone swimsuit that’s even smaller than her previous efforts.
‘You should’ve seen the car she arrived in earlier,’ I whisper.
‘Oh, that waiter I got chatting to the other day mentioned them – they’re regulars. Russian, apparently.’
‘I heard the concierge mention his name,’ I say. ‘Venedictov or something.’
Meredith Googles him on her phone. Her eyes widen. ‘Alexander Venedictov.’ She looks up.
‘Is he a movie star, too?’ asks Nicola, stretching out on the sun bed next to mine.
‘No, he’s one of the world’s most infamous crime lords,’ Meredith replies casually. ‘Can I have a sip of your sangria?’
My eyes widen. ‘You’re kidding? We didn’t have that at the Hotel Sunshine in Zante.’
‘Exciting, eh?’ says Meredith.
Nicola suppresses a smile and picks up her phone as a text arrives. ‘My mum says hi to you both.’
‘Aw . . . say hi back,’ Meredith replies.
Nicola’s still close to her parents, who always struck me as jolly, salt-of-the-earth sorts with a door that was forever open and a kitchen that smelled of freshly baked scones. They adore
Nicola with the peculiar intensity that some parents feel when they have an only child; it’s no exaggeration to say that when she was growing up, they’d have preferred not to eat for a
week than fail to fulfil any wish on her Christmas list.
‘So, Imogen . . . how’s our man?’ Nicola asks, with a nod towards Harry that’s heavy with implication.
I frown, mock-menacingly. ‘I don’t like this new, pushy Nicola.’
‘I’m not pushy,’ she laughs. ‘I just get the impression he likes you.’
I start spluttering. I don’t say anything in particular, simply forcing out a series of derisive grunts, before adding insouciantly, ‘What makes you say that, as a matter of
interest?’
‘I can see it a mile off. He’s looking over now.’ She nudges me.
I tentatively lift up my eyes. Harry waves. I almost fall off my sun bed.
‘Wave back,’ Meredith hisses from between a fixed smile.
I lift up my hand and wave, unable to sustain it for longer than a couple of seconds before hastily peering at my book to catch my breath.
‘Here is a small fact . . .’
Meredith shakes her head before waddling off in the direction of the Ladies, and I take the opportunity to raise a subject with Nic that I’ve been meaning to since our first day on the
beach.
‘So, what was the deal with Mr Brayfield and the conversation with your mum in Sainsbury’s? Last time I looked, you didn’t have a boyfriend, and weren’t in the market for
one, either.’
She groans. ‘Please never mention that to Jess, whatever you do. She’d go ballistic.’
‘Has your mum ever made up an imaginary boyfriend for you before?’
She shakes her head. ‘This is the first I know about.’
Nicola adores her parents and she adores Jessica. Sadly, the two parties do not adore each other. In fact, despite she and Jess having been together for years, they still haven’t even
met.
I would never have predicted this peculiar set-up. It’s not as if Nicola’s mum and dad are right-wing loonies or overzealous religious nuts. They’ve always seemed normal and
nice; old-fashioned maybe, but no more excessively strait-laced than anyone else’s parents.
Even Nicola was surprised by their reaction when she finally came out to them. They didn’t hit the roof. There was no shouting or threats. Her mum simply sat with her hands clasped and
head bent, weeping gently, as her dad tensed his jaw and failed to utter anything fitting.
Nicola was convinced that they were simply in shock and that if she gave it time, things would be ironed out. Nine years on, she’s still waiting for that to happen.
Her parents’ approach – to pretend it isn’t happening – is a policy to which they’ve stuck resolutely over the years. Even when Nicola failed to ever turn up at
home with a boyfriend; even when, as a student, she was spotted by her dad leaving her flat holding another woman’s hand. And even when, nine years ago, she attempted to introduce them to the
only significant other she’s ever had: Jessica.
It was then that they had their first big row – a voices-raised, doors-slammed kind of conflagration; the sort that peppered my teenage years when I lived with my parents but which had,
for some reason, eluded Nicola’s family.
Weeks went by, then years and, despite the issue continually rearing its head between Jessica and Nicola, they still haven’t met.
Whether they think that this strategy will magically transform their daughter into a card-carrying hetero and make her marry the next handsome prince that comes along, I have no idea.
‘Anyway,’ says Nicola, clearly wanting to change the subject. ‘Why wouldn’t you go and talk to Harry, Imogen? What is it you’re afraid of?’
It’s suddenly a question I don’t know how to answer. ‘Nothing,’ I reply, defensively.
The truth is closer to
everything
.
She raises an eyebrow. Nobody is immune to Nicola’s eyebrows. All she needs to do is lift one slightly and you’re ready to confess anything.
‘Okay, fine.’ I exhale. ‘I’m afraid of making a fool of myself with someone who’s out of my league. I couldn’t stand next to him without people thinking I was
his ugly sister.’ Nicola tuts. ‘I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to speak to a member of the opposite sex about anything other than work or what my gas meter reading is. And
I’m afraid of being attracted to someone I don’t know, I’ve hardly spoken to, is quite clearly a ladies’ man and whom I’m never going to see again after this
week.’
There’s one more thing to add to the list, however; I know it, and I’m pretty sure Nicola knows it, too.
She looks at me. ‘He might be attractive, but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s a ladies’ man, and that wasn’t a conclusion I came to. Besides, even if he was .
. . Imogen, can I speak candidly?’
‘Of course.’
‘You need to chill out about Harry, about being scared and about what this is really about – Roberto.’
I look down at my hands.
‘This isn’t a big deal,’ she implores. ‘This is something very simple – chatting to a man and seeing where it goes. Which may be nowhere. Or you may get a snog out
of him.’ She smirks.
‘Who says I want a snog out of him?’
She throws me a look. ‘I’m simply saying it’d be no bad thing if you had one. Don’t think too hard about this, Imogen.’
I look over to where he’s reclining on a sun bed. ‘There is no way that man and I are ever going to snog.’
‘Why not? What have you got against him?’ Meredith asks, as she reappears and sits on the edge of my bed.
‘It’s just not going to happen for a multitude of reasons, not least that he’s so far out of my league we’re in different time zones.’
‘Imogen, I assure you – he’s not.’
I need to say at this point that I haven’t got body dysmorphia, I’m not fishing for compliments and I’m not trying to claim that I have a face like a dropped pie. At some
indefinable point in the distant past, you might have put Harry and me together. But not now. I have let myself go, gradually and willingly.
‘Ladies, I am not asking you to contradict this to try and make me feel better but, for the last couple of years, I’ve looked like a “Before” photograph on
This
Morning
. And that’s before we even get to the black eye and chewed-up feet I’ve accumulated in the last day or two.’
Meredith takes a deep breath. ‘Okay. I’ll admit it, then. You haven’t done yourself any favours on that front in the last few years, it’s true. But it’s nothing
that isn’t easily rectified. Imogen, you have natural assets in abundance,’ she continues. ‘And I’m not just talking about those boobs of yours.’
I cross my arms.
‘Is it such a bad thing that you’re attractive?
‘Don’t try and bully me, Meredith, it’ll never work,’ I mutter.
‘Hey, I’ve got an idea!’ She grins.
And that’s when I know I should be really worried.