Page 2 of In Italy for Love

‘I don’t “have to” do anything, Jules.’

Go. Now!

Wrenching the drawstring closed, she hefted her backpack with a stumble and dumped it at the door. Stomping to the kitchen, she stuffed a shopping bag full of dog food tins and some biscuits, then grabbed Arco’s blanket.

‘Here, boy!’ she called, her voice quavering.

Burying her fingers in his thick, woolly fur, she was glad at least for the confidence she was doing the right thing: leaving Parma; taking Arco, despite the certain inconveniences. Oblivious to the situation, the dog just gave her a panting look of barely contained excitement at the prospect of a walk.

‘This is ridiculous! You’ll be living on the street. If you’re worried about awkwardness with Claudia, then you don’t have to be. I’ve managed to keep everything separate until now and it was just because of a simple mistake on her calendar that you met her at all.’

Jules was going to scream. Fumbling with Arco’s harness and lead in her distress, she managed to get them on and swing her backpack onto her back without keeling over. Storming out and slamming the door would have provided a much-needed drop of satisfaction, but she made the mistake of grabbing her keys, then staring at them with a choke of dismay before flinging them backonto the console table. She didn’t have any doors to open any more.

Only after she’d stalked past the pair of palms in the front courtyard did she stop to take a breath. The big old house they’d turned into a B&B loomed silently behind her. She’d always thought it looked a little gothic, especially with the leaves on the wisteria tinted yellow. Even though she’d repainted the white window frames herself, the grey brick still looked forbidding.

She’d mortared and plastered, painted, drilled and polished that house. She’d built her hopes and dreams and little pieces of her heart into their hotel project, trusting that Luca was committed, if not to her romantically, then to the project at least.

But no, he’d been screwing Claudia, an estate agent, and she’d convinced him he should cut his losses and sell, pulling the plug on Jules’s own investment.

Walking away broke her a little more, but what difference did that make when she already knew she had to put herself back together? When her steps grew unsteady, she paused for a moment, dropping to her knees to lean her forehead on the top of Arco’s woolly head. He pressed himself to her, always greedy for cuddles, this bouncy little dog.

Leaving was the first thing she’d done right in the year since the break-up. It didn’t matter where she ended up. She’d only be there until she had her passports and then she’d go home to grieve and heal and start over.

She just had to get through a couple of weeks in any old place – any place that was far, far away from Luca and all their shattered dreams.

‘We’re both strays now, hmm?’ The thought was much less frightening knowing she wasn’t alone. ‘I’m glad you’re with me, pup. I’ll take good care of you, I promise. We’ll find a way to sort everything out together.’

It was astounding how much money a single person and a dog could chew through in a week.

Even in a rough hostel by the train station in Bologna, eating only mortadella and cucumbers, her bank balance was setting off even more alarm bells than usual. Jules was glad she and Luca had been meticulous about keeping their finances separate from day one – even more so after their romantic relationship had kicked the bucket – and she could walk away in an instant with full rights to what little she had.

Although, come to think of it, it might have been more satisfying to use a joint account for a decent hotel while she got the hell out of there.

Her mum had offered to send money, but that had to be a last resort, not least because she’d lose a chunk in fees and exchange rates – and a chunk of pride, knowing her parents weren’t made of money either. The last message Jules had received from her mum was a link to the ‘emergency passport’ application from the Australian Embassy in Rome, but she wasn’t quite that desperate yet. She wanted to go home, but she had her affairs to settle first with the Italian government.

The citizenship process had been traumatic, with its lineage requirements and official translations and ‘Jure sanguinis’, which was Latin, for fuck’s sake. Luca had tried to tell her what it meant, but she kept seeing ‘Law of Blood’, which sounded like a fantasy novel. No, to get a real passport in her hand and say, hopefully, a final goodbye to Italian bureaucracy, she would manage for a few weeks – somehow, with a dog, and clothes that were rapidly growing smelly, and a rising sense of panic.

The dodgy hostel was her saviour in the end. A group of French people with dreadlocks turned up on their way to a farm stay somewhere lovely near Florence – a farm stay where they would work for two weeks in return for room and board. A light bulb immediately went off inside her head.

She didn’t need ‘somewhere lovely near Florence’ – that was back in the direction of Parma and she wasn’t in the mood forla dolce vitaanyway – but if she could find a farm as far away from Luca as she could get without a passport, where she could hole up and work in return for food and accommodation, she might just make it on the money she had. Even if it was a run-down farm in the middle of nowhere?—

That sounded perfect, actually. The best part was, Luca would never guess where she had gone.

2

Twenty-four hours later, she got off the train at the terminus of an ancient diesel railway with vintage seventies upholstery, in a place called Cividale del Friuli. She was still in Italy – technically. But it was in an autonomous region with borders everywhere: Slovenia was twelve kilometres away and Austria just over fifty, plus the natural boundary of the Adriatic coast.

So many borders she couldn’t cross, but with each kilometre she travelled away from Luca, she felt lighter. What kind of idiot stayed with their ex after they’d broken up? Worse, she’d believed that they could amicably run the business together, right up until he’d pulled the plug.

And now she was in a place that had apparently been founded by Julius Caesar, making the small city significantly more ancient even than the upholstery on the train. But at least the B&Bs were such good value she could afford a single room for two nights and a load of washing before she went out to the farm stay in the countryside.

Cividale had unexpected corners and the skewed street layout of a town with mediaeval history – and the concerning cracks to match. Arco was in heaven, poking his nose into dampcorners and whining and tugging at the lead whenever he saw one of the many other dogs trotting along between the rendered buildings with coloured shutters. Just on the walk from the train station to her cheap B&B, she’d seen a pet supplies shop and a dog salon, which spoke highly of the population as animal lovers.

Refreshed after a night of sleeping without the rustling and snuffling of ten other people in the dorm, she was looking forward to taking Arco for a walk for once. He seemed gleeful too, as though he knew he would be able to pee on actual grass, rather than in the grotty corners near a train station. She decided to cross the old town once to get her bearings and then walk along the river she could see on the map.

When she reached the main piazza, she marvelled that every single corner of Italy was bursting with charm, as this far-flung town was enchantingly dilapidated. The coloured render ranged from ochre to yellow and everything in between, with contrasting green shutters. Some of the buildings boasted stone porticos with pointed Venetian arches. Cafes sprawled out over the cobblestones.

As she made her way along the main thoroughfare, narrow and lined with shops, she felt as though she were travelling steadily back in time. Faded frescoes adorned one palazzo. Ancient brick houses loomed over the streets and she stared up to see patterned tiles in the wood-beamed eaves.

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