Page 12 of Far from Home
‘Well, welcome.’ The lady held out her hand. ‘My name’s Rosa Grosseto and this is my husband, Vincenzo. Are you planning on staying long?’
‘I’m very pleased to meet you both. I’m Amy Sherwood and this is my friend Gavin.’ She gave them both a smile and the husband smiled back at her as his wife resumed the conversation.
‘And did you say you’re interested in Martin’s old house? Is it for sale? I didn’t know.’
‘No, it’s not for sale, it’s a bit complicated…’ Amy’s voice petered out as she searched for the right words, but Signora Grosseto was quick to fill the silence.
‘Martin was a lovely man. It was so sad that he died. Are you a relative of his?’
So these people had also known him. Giuliano, the restaurateur, hadn’t been joking when he had said that Martin Slater had been well-known here. Amy shook her head. ‘Like I say, it’s complicated. Didyouknow him well?’
‘Indeed we did.’ Signor Grosseto spoke for the first time. ‘He lived here for many years and we knew and liked him. We used to see a lot of him.’
‘Until his illness.’ His wife’s voice was suddenly sombre.
‘Yes, until his illness.’ Signor Grosseto’s face fell, too. ‘Such a pity. More or less overnight, poor Martin became a hermit. Didn’t want to talk to anybody, didn’t go out. Such a shame. Still, it didn’t last long. His heart gave out only a matter of a few months later. It was probably for the best, really.’
‘What was his background? You see, I really know next to nothing about him.’
What Signor Grosseto said next made Amy sit up in surprise.
‘I reckon he used to be a gangster, or a spy.’
‘Don’t listen to him. He’s just kidding.’ His wife frowned at him. ‘Of course Martin wasn’t anything of the sort.’
Amy was relieved. ‘So if he wasn’t a gangster, what was he then?’
‘Nobody knows.’ Signor Grosseto gave her a little smile. ‘He hardly ever spoke about himself. For all we knew, he could have been an English milord or a paid assassin… or maybe he was hiding out here under an assumed identity, living under a witness protection scheme.’
‘Vincenzo, stop it.’ Signora Grosseto stepped in to silence him. ‘My husband has a strange sense of humour. Martin was a lovely man. There’s no way he could have been a criminal.’
‘Well, that’s good to hear.’
‘What’s happening with his house, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Amy decided the time had come to come clean. ‘It’s all a bit strange. I’d never even heard of him before last weekend, but I’ve just discovered that he left it to me in his will.’
‘You knew nothing about him and yet he left you his house?’ Signora Grosseto sounded as bemused as Amy herself had been feeling, but fortunately she just nodded a few times and was polite enough not to probe further. ‘Well, it’s a wonderful old house – even though it’ll probably need a bit of work.’
‘Abit?’ Signor Grosseto shook his head. ‘Martin never did anything to it. He said he liked it as it was. You’ll probably need to start from scratch.’
‘And are you thinking of moving in? It would be lovely to have some new blood in the town.’ Signora Grosseto gave Amy a reassuring smile as she repeated what the restaurateur had said. ‘Sant’Antonio’s a lovely place to live.’
‘I honestly don’t know. I have a job and…’ Amy cast a quick glance at Gavin, whose nose was buried in his phone. ‘It would be difficult for us both to uproot and move, but I want to make sure the house is habitable before I make any decisions. Maybe we’ll keep it as a holiday home.’
‘Make sure you come back as often as you can. We’re very pleased to have met you.’ Signora Grosseto stood up and gave Amy a warm smile. ‘I do hope we meet again before too long.’
Chapter 7
When Amy dropped Gavin at Pisa airport early next morning, she felt little or no sense of abandonment. Very much the opposite, in fact. As she waved goodbye to him and put the car into gear, the main feeling running through her was one of relief: relief that they had been able to spend a pleasant twenty-four hours together without arguing, but also relief that she was now free to do whatever she wanted. Since her health scare last week she had been doing a lot of reassessing of her personal life, on top of her working life. What had been emerging ever more clearly had been the fact that she and Gavin didn’t really have very much in common, apart from both thoroughly enjoying their respective jobs. Now that she found herself – for just about the first time in years – with time and leisure to think about something other than work, all the doubts that had been floating around inside her head for over a year had begun to coalesce.
She still liked him and, when he was being attentive and unselfish, she still probably loved him. He was very handsome – and he knew it – and he was the life and soul of any party, but she had started to see him for the thoughtless character he really was. She knew, for example, that when she got home from Italy in a few days’ time, she would find that he had spent more time at her apartment than at his – no doubt lured by the attraction of the big-screen TV – and her sink would be full of dirty dishes. It wouldn’t surprise her either if she found a pile of dirty laundry discarded by him that he would expect her to wash and iron. The idea of doing housework never even entered his head, and the closest he got to preparing food was ordering takeaways.
Yes, he’d made the effort to come and see her in hospital twice, but the day after she’d been discharged with orders to take it easy, he’d dropped in to see her at the end of an afternoon at a corporate golf event, clearly expecting her to make him dinner. When she’d told him she was still feeling washed-out and had just made herself a salad, he’d looked far from happy. The simple truth was that the most important character in Gavin’s life was Gavin, and unless she could make him change, she felt in her bones that the relationship was doomed.
When she got back to Sant’Antonio, she parked the car at l’Ospedaletto and looked across the road towards Signora Grande’s house. The shutters on the first-floor windows were open and, on impulse, she went across and knocked on the door. A volley of barking then ensued and she heard footsteps approaching and the old lady’s voice admonishing the dog in a stage whisper.
‘Max, do be quiet. Stop it, Max!’
