Page 66 of In Italy for Love

What he said next knocked the breath out of her. ‘You made so much noise, I don’t think any doubt remained.’

‘I—I—’ she scoffed. ‘Youwere the one who?—’

‘Shh,’ he said with a smile, grasping her shirt and pulling her closer. ‘I’m joking.’ He kissed her, soft and slow, and all the words they’d exchanged, the mixed-up thoughts and feelings fused and grew into something bright.

Her arms wrapped around his neck and she could happily have wound up for another go, but instead of diving into the warm covers and heady company in Alex’s bed, she dragged her feet up the stairs to her own, shivering when she sat on the cold sheets. As she set her phone on the night table, the date on the display seemed to stare back at her.

It had been seven days since her appointment in Parma. The trees had dropped more leaves; there were no more olives ripening to purple, only tangy oil, and her brusque and distant housemate had finally allowed her to see him again in vivid focus.

But the time had also elapsed in a blink. Any day now, the postman could deliver her passports, that she’d hoped would open the door to the next stage of her life – leaving Italy behind. Suddenly, she wasn’t ready.

When she eventually drifted off to sleep, it was to the distant croon of an accordion – a little wonky and out of tune. He must have fixed the bellows on the tattered old instrument from the market. A hot tear dripped onto her pillow when she reflected on his late-night accordion surgery. He tinkered and tweaked and brought life back into instruments others had long given up on – perhaps because he thought he himself was beyond repair.

She wanted something more with him. It wouldn’t help to deny it. But only a fool would stay to have her heart broken twice.

27

The festival honouring the dead continued the following day. All Saints’ Day was a holiday and Alex disappeared with Berengario and his accordion to sing at various events while Jules found herself back at Due Pini to keep busy, slowly improving her wood-chopping technique. When she returned in the afternoon, Alex’s neighbours took turns to ring the doorbell and brusquely hand over small, wrapped packages – biscuits, some kind of sweet bread made with dark flour and a paper bag of beans.

When Alex got home and caught sight of them he sighed, explaining in a clipped tone that it was the night to pray for the dead.

‘Which everyone seems to think is my special holiday,’ he mumbled, before taking himself off to the shower.

Afterwards, he obviously didn’t want to talk about it and Jules didn’t judge when he kissed her instead and tugged her into his room. But she was careful to leave again before she fell asleep, one last protection against feelings she wouldn’t be able to take back.

On Thursday and Friday, Maddalena insisted she go home after lunch and Jules made use of her newly-acquired freedomof the Friulian plain – her bicycle – to explore further along the emerald river, parking her bike in a village and walking in the hills with Arco before stopping to taste the most famous speciality of the valley, the spiced bread with nuts and grappa called gubana.

Although she spent all morning out in the vines or repairing the chicken coop with wire-cutters and her bare hands, or clearing the tomato plants that had died off in the polytunnel, she had no desire to go inside to the stove until the first chill of the evening chased away the sun. The bright-eyed, rough-skinned woman who stared back at her in the mirror in the evening would have been a stranger three weeks ago.

A stranger, too, was the rumpled woman who dragged herself out of Alex’s bed every night just before she went to sleep, despite the big, warm hand that sometimes fumbled to stop her. On Friday evening, he fell asleep before she did, his lashes casting shadows over the hollows of his eyes. It was even harder to leave with him so peaceful beside her. But on Saturday morning Alex looked even more wrecked than usual, his hair standing up on one side and refusing to be tamed, even after he emerged from the bathroom ready for work.

‘Did you sleep at all?’ she asked warily, worried that his early night yesterday evening had led to a worse night’s sleep.

He shook his head and said in a gravelly voice, ‘Slept through.’

‘Really?’

He eyed her. ‘Sometimes it happens.’

‘But you look like shit.’

He smiled then and ruffled her hair. ‘I feel like I’ve slept for three weeks.’ With a dismayed glance at her, he added, ‘Except that you’re still here, which suggests it hasn’t been that long since yesterday.’

Maddalena had insisted she take Saturday off with a strong hint that she should spend time with Alex. Jules hadn’t had the heart to tell the older woman that he was working anyway – although she’d also developed a few plans for his long lunch break – so she farewelled him at the door, feeling a little forlorn.

At the last minute, he turned back and pressed a quick kiss to her lips that left her stunned. Coming back to herself, her gaze flickered around the courtyard, wondering which of the neighbours might have witnessed that and trying not to be touched that Alex had done it anyway.

Jules was so uncertain about what was going on between her and Alex – and scared to upset the delicate balance they’d created – that her phone call to her mum was tongue-tied as she tried to avoid mentioning her housemate at all. If Brenda noticed, she thankfully didn’t say anything.

Her long walk with Arco started out wet and ended soaking, too muddy even to collect chestnuts. By the time she cycled home from where she’d left her bike, even Davide’s solid shoes were drenched and the dark clouds rolling in made it feel like four o’clock and not midday.

As she hurried for the door, the top branches of the persimmon tree whipped in the wind, even though it was protected on all sides in the little courtyard. Siore Cudrig’s pumpkin decoration was nowhere to be seen and the lanterns under the tree had fallen on their sides.

Jules closed the door behind her with a sigh of relief, but her stomach didn’t settle. Texting Maddalena, she asked if everything was all right at Due Pini. They probably hadn’t had many lunch customers in the downpour.

Even when Maddalena replied that she’d weathered worse before and everything was all right, the sense of unease still plagued Jules. She showered and then blow-dried Arco with an amused smile. She needed to take him to Marisa to be clipped.He couldn’t have all this fur in Brisbane, where temperatures were over thirty degrees already.

Brisbane was as abstract a thought as thirty degrees when it was about eight outside and the sky was thick with cloud. Despite the storm and the worry cramps, Jules was satisfied to keep it that way.

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