Page 89 of In Italy for Love

I hope it’ll feel like home again soon. Send me a picture in the morning.

As Jules recovered from her jet lag and reluctantly adjusted to the high temperatures, it was easier than she would have liked to settle into her life from before she’d left for Europe. She arranged to start back at her old office job temporarily after Christmas. Her parents were taking an extended holiday after schools went back and she was doing them a favour by living at home for a while longer.

Her family treated her as though she’d never left and if they occasionally asked why she was staring out the window with her brow drawn tight, she told them she was wondering about the sale of the B&B.

She texted Alex every day, still keeping to the pretext of missing the dog, but living for the glimpses of his hands on Arco’s furry back or holding the lead. Then one day he sent her a selfie, poking his head into the shot while he crouched next to Arco at the top of a hill, the Friulian plain and the dark silhouette of the mountains behind him. The way her heart banged against her ribs was almost painful.

In her room late at night, she searched job listings in Italy, not even willing to admit to herself what she was doing. She missed Berengario and Maddalena and all the others as well. But the kind of job she’d walked into here, she had no hope of obtaining in Friuli with her limited Italian. Alex had alreadyencouraged her to go home. Holding on made no sense, but she struggled to stop.

What if one day she heard about Alex and a new girlfriend, the way she’d discovered Luca’s relationship with Claudia the estate agent?

No, the only option was to get over him. The problem was, she didn’t want to. She wanted to hang on to the past the way he did. As much as it hurt, there was something good in the way she felt.

Berengario sent her the occasional wonky picture of the sunrise or a plate of frico, which made her laugh. She searched for Friulian restaurants in Brisbane but drew a blank, and her parents’ well-meaning attempt to cheer her up with dinner at an Italian restaurant backfired when it turned out to be a Sardinian fish restaurant. The food was delicious, but it wasn’t the comforting fare she’d hoped to find – although she carefully kept her disappointment off her face and allowed her parents their indulgent smiles.

She hadn’t told them much about Friuli, beyond that picking olives had been fun – and even that had felt like a half-truth because when she thought about picking olives, she thought about Alex’s tall frame up a ladder.

At the beginning of December, Berengario sent her a text that made her wonder if he could read minds. There was no explanation, just the website for the Fogolâr Furlan – the Friulian Club – in Brisbane. When she clicked on the link and scrolled through the photos of past events, the sudden nostalgia was powerful.

Children in folk costumes with black vests and little ties posed for photos with older men in bright blue T-shirts with the alpine eagle and the word ‘Friûl’ in yellow lettering. There were felt Alpino hats and posts remembering the earthquake of 1976 and greetings in English, Italian and Furlan.

But it wasn’t only the memories of Friuli that struck her. All of the events took place in the bright Queensland sunshine. The war memorial stood in front of an enormous eucalypt and the members of the association smiled and ate their barbecue lunch off paper plates and drank Kirk’s soft drinks straight from an Australian supermarket.

The combination made her throat thick.

When she found a poster for the upcoming picnic and AGM in the middle of December, the temptation was too strong. It was downright weird to get such a zing of excitement about the annual general meeting of a little association she wasn’t part of. She imagined driving out to the property at the edge of the city and turning up with an awkward smile and just the prospect was mortifying.

But none of that stopped her.

On the Saturday morning of the AGM, she mumbled an excuse about going shopping and jumped into her mum’s car before anyone could question her. Crossing the city took time and patience and by the time she arrived at the iron gates, the leafy property surrounded by bushland was already full of people.

A banner reading ‘Benvignus Fogolâr Furlan Brisbane’ hung limply on the fence in the still sunshine and a grin spread on Jules’s face as she parked the car and crossed the street.

She wouldn’t find Alex here, but maybe she could keep some of her new-found roots and it wouldn’t hurt so much to be separated. As the thrum of an accordion reached her ears, the sound expanded in her chest like the bellows.

Wow, the feelings hadn’t faded in the weeks since she’d left Italy. If anything, she was realising just how much Alex had meant to her – how many emotions she’d refused to acknowledge.

Taking a deep breath, she snapped a photo and sent it to Berengario along with a smiley-face emoji. He’d sent her a picture of Arco eyeing Maddalena’s goat earlier that morning – yesterday in Italian time – which had only made her picture Alex out at Due Pini.

It was the middle of the night in Italy, but a reply from Berengario dropped in almost immediately.

I’m glad you’re there! Mandi dal Friûl – say hello to Alice from me.

Alice? Was this another weird Friulian situation where everyone knew everyone – even the ones who’d emigrated years ago? With a perplexed frown, Jules stowed her phone and crossed through the gate to join the picnic.

Although there were no chickens and no goats eating the tablecloths, and none of the old men were wielding chainsaws, the trepidation in her steps reminded her of walking up the drive to the farmhouse at Due Pini. She would never have guessed that she was meeting dear friends that first day and her skin prickled at the thought that she was back at the beginning.

A woman in a smart patterned dress carrying a bowl of radicchio salad slowed her steps to study Jules.

‘Uh, mandi,’ Jules mumbled, hitching her bag higher up her shoulder.

A smile broke out on the woman’s face as though the Friulian greeting were a magic word. Jules hated to think what would have happened if she’d said ‘Ciao’ instead.

‘Mandi,’ the woman said warmly, juggling her salad to hold a hand out. ‘Are you… joining the picnic?’

‘Is that okay? I’m not a member. But I just got back from a few years in Italy. I was in Cividale…’ That made it sound as though she’d spent longer in Cividale, but she had no desireto change the misconception. ‘And I have Italian heritage. My surname is Volpe. I’m Julia – Jules. Spelled the English way. And I’m supposed to pass on greetings to Alice.’

‘Ahh, Alice,’ the woman said, correcting Jules’s pronunciation to the ItalianA-li-chey. ‘Come with me.’ Jules followed her to the tables set up under a large open patio and beckoned to an energetic woman in her forties.

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