Page 5 of Storm in a D Cup

Normally when Julian was away I considered it my duty to hold the fort, make sure everything was under control and catch up on my ironing or cleaning. Or preferably my grooming and my numerous Netflix series. So now going over there on my own without Julian felt awkward.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not really up for it. I think I’ll catch up on my sleep.’

‘Come on, Erica. It’ll be a relaxing evening. Some good Chianti, somesugo alla lepre…’

‘You had me at the pheasant,’ I said with a grin. ‘OK, I’m in.’

He dropped me and my bike off at my front door and I turned to wave. ‘Thanks, Marco!’

‘I’ll stop by tomorrow to fix that,’ he called as he pulled out.

‘Oh, that’s OK. Julian will be home tomorrow.’

With a grin and a wave he drove off. What a wholesome guy. I wondered how Renata could have been in love with such astronzolike Leonardo.

2

The End

I was piling my freshly decorated cupcakes into my favorite food-traveler basket, our five-year-old Jack Russell Sookie slack-jawed in the hope of a crumb or two, when Maddy and Angelica sauntered in and reached for the goods.

‘No more than one each. These are for Renata. There’s some cake in the pantry if you want,’ I said, so proud to be able to say that I’d had time to bake. Because ever since we’d uprooted from Boston our life had literally slowed down. No more rushing down the highway to work, no more speeding tickets, no more feeling sorry for myself and the bad marriage I literally ran from (well, OK –Iraran. I simply let him).

‘Are you going out?’ Maddy asked me in surprise as she downed the last of her milk.

‘I was going to dinner at Renata’s as you said you were sleeping at Angelica’s, but if you’ve changed your mind, I’d much rather stay in with you two.’

They eyed each other, the wordsas ifwritten in bold letters across their foreheads. Maddy was the first to recover from my offer. ‘Uh, no thanks. Angelica’s mom’s like, due any minute.’

‘Oh? OK, then,’ I conceded, a little crushed. ‘Don’t forget your keys.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘When have I ever forgotten my keys?’

‘Got your toothbrush?’

‘Yes,’ she huffed.

‘Right. Well, call me when you need a ride back tomorrow. And say hi to your mom for me, Angelica, will you?’

‘Sure. Bye, Mrs. Foxham.’ Angelica smiled sweetly as I turned to go down into the cellar to retrieve a crate of our own wine while making a mental note to keep a closer eye on those two.

Call it motherly instinct, call it that I am Mrs. Suspicion by nature, but I had a feeling they were up to something. I made a mental note to keep my eyes even more peeled than usual.

Now, which bottles to bring? Vino della Tenuta Cantelli, the labels read. Could you believe it? If years ago while sipping Chianti with Ira in Boston and talking Tuscany, someone had told me I’d have a vineyard bearing my own surname, I’d have laughed and told them that things like that only happened in the movies. Well, after a few big bumps in the road two years ago, so far my personal movie was a success. I looked around our house with great satisfaction.

Built in local stone, it had three stories, a paddock, two swimming pools (one for us and one for our guests) and a tennis court. With his own money and before we married, Julian had separately bought the adjoining acres and the four ruins, which we had painstakingly renovated, respecting the Tuscan style, and rented out to jet-setters from around the world.

So you can see how it had then been a no-brainer leaving my job as hotel manager of the luxurious Farthington Hotel in Boston. When my cheating and IRS-scamming first husband Ira ditched me, I upped sticks and took Maddy and Warren to Castellino. Luckily I had drummed up the nerve to ask Julian to come with us, despite the fact that I’d turned down his first marriage proposal with the promise that I’d consider it while we lived together in sin for the first year. But it didn’t take me long to stop being afraid and succumb to my dreams.

Everything – Julian in my life, and our subsequent move to Italy – had happened so suddenly, when the bad days had been piling up faster than I could count them and the only friendly face was my kids’ gorgeous and incredibly kind principal. I deserved this now. I’d earned it.

I stopped at Maddy’s bedroom door that was open for once. Because the walls were frescoed, posters were prohibited, so she had a cork board propped up on her desk, just like Julian had for his writing ideas, only hers was plastered with images she had taken of herself, lips pursed, eyebrow cocked (that was one thing she got from me) and hair tousled.

Yes, at almost sixteen, she was a beauty. All I could do was hope that her self-obsession would soon pass – as my Nonna Silvia had hoped while watching her own daughter Marcy preen in the mirror – and that it wasn’t genetic because otherwise we were screwed for life. But that was nothing compared to my real fear. She was too impatient to become an adult and already acted like she knew everything about the way the world turns, and especially men, whom she seems to prefer over boys her age. I’ve seen her stop to flirt with the more pleasant-looking members of our staff and people in the village. Lesser men would seriously take advantage of her naivety. That, mixed with her newly found worldliness was a recipe for disaster. I definitely owed my first grey hairs to my daughter.

The fear that she’d turn out like her grandmother had driven us to be extra careful and strict, as Maddy was very popular and overly confident of her looks and artistic aptitude. At least that was the message she was sending out. Only I knew that her best friend Angelica’s more mature looks made Maddy feel like a little girl in comparison.

Angelica had a shapelier figure, a throaty laugh and that look in her eyes that Maddy, who was at least a year behind in the curves department, didn’t have yet. One day Maddy wanted to be a fashion designer. The next she wanted to be a model slash actress. And for a while she wanted us to call her Madeleine Silvia (my grandmother’s name). No surname.

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