I flashed her a quick smile while Vincent looked warily from her to me. He had probably been able to sense the undercurrent of hostility in the air between us earlier and was wondering what it was all about. I sighed at the ineptitude of this man to see what was plainly before his eyes—that his housekeeper was secretly in love with him.
Pulling on the chunky cardigan, I buttoned it up to my neck as Vincent opened the front door.
‘You are sure you’re up to this?’ he asked as we stood in the doorway. ‘You still look a bit peaky.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I assured him as he turned to where Tara was hovering behind us.
‘We shouldn’t be too late,’ he said.
‘I’ll be waiting,’ Tara replied drily as we stepped out into the freezing night.
I clung tightly to Vincent’s arm as we negotiated a partially cleared path through the front gardens between Maria’s front door and his. It wasn’t far to go, which was just as well because I had on the boots I’d been found in, which weren’t much better here than they had been the previous day. Once or twice I nearly fell and Vincent had to grab me to stop me pitching headlong into the snow-covered bushes. Each time he touched me I half expected the pressure of his hands on my arms to send shivers down my spine, but the only shivering I was doing was from the biting cold.
As we stood in the covered porch, Vincent asked, ‘Do you want to make up a name for yourself before we go in? We’re going to have to call you something.’
Resting my hand against the wall, I chewed my lip. ‘I don’t know…’ We heard footsteps coming to the door. ‘I can’t think of anything.’
Maria opened the door, dressed in a gypsy-style skirt with a flowing long-sleeved top in a deep burgundy red. Her black hair hung loose and she had a sparkle to her eyes and flush to her cheeks that made me wonder if she’d been drinking. With her long black hair and slightly haughty demeanour she reminded me of Kate from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
‘Vincenzo!’ she exclaimed as though she had been caught totally off guard by our arrival. She looked me up and down much as she had done earlier and pasted a thin smile on her sensuous lips. ‘And, er…?’
‘Kate,’ I said hurriedly, still thinking of Shakespeare. ‘It’s Kate.’
‘Come on inside. Dinner is almost ready.’ She took Vincent’s coat and my cardigan. ‘Please come through to the dining room.’
We followed her through a mirror image of the house next door, past an imitation of the open staircase towards the dining room, which was decked out with candles and glittering silverware. There was a large wooden salad bowl on the table and a basket full of bread. I noticed that the table was set for four.
‘What would you like to drink?’ she asked, indicating several bottles of wine standing on the sideboard next to a cheese board groaning with assorted cheeses and decorated with small bunches of grapes. ‘The white is good, but I think the red is better; perhaps both, eh?’
She disappeared off to the kitchen and Vincent poured three glasses of the red while we stood awkwardly. I wandered to the window, pulled back a corner of the curtain and looked out through the leaded-light windows into the darkness beyond. When Maria came back she was bearing a large ovenproof dish, which she placed in the centre of the table. It smelled delicious.
‘Michael! Our guests are here and we are ready to eat!’ Maria called as she discarded the oven gloves and slid into the seat at the top of the table. She waved for Vincent and me to sit so I pulled out one of the heavy chairs and waited politely, wondering what her son would be like.
The door opened and a dark-haired boy of about Maria’s height walked in. He was pleasant-looking, with big almond-shaped eyes set in an oval face that had yet to require the attention of a razor. I guessed he was around thirteen but he was going to be handsome one day, of that I had no doubt.
‘Good evening,’ Vincent said magnanimously.
‘Hello,’ Michael managed, though the flush that suffused his cheeks told me that he would rather not be helping to entertain his mother’s guests.
‘Michael, hand me the plates,’ Maria said. ‘I hope you are all hungry! Here, Vincenzo.’ She handed him a plate piled with food. ‘We must feed you up while that skinny housekeeper of yours is not looking.’ She passed me a plate of pasta with meatballs. ‘How do you come to know Vincenzo, Kate?’
‘I got lost in the snowstorm,’ I told her. ‘Vincent very kindly gave me shelter in his home.’
‘Ah, but your family must be so worried about you! And the phone lines are down. Have you managed to let anyone know where you are?’
I picked up my fork and toyed with the food, my appetite suddenly gone. ‘I’m not sure that I even have a family,’ I admitted.
‘I know exactly what you mean.’ Maria threw up her hands and nodded; her eyes dark. ‘My own family in Sicily were once lost to me. I married an Englishman and my father disowned me. And then almost two years ago my mother begged my father to allow me to return for a brief visit. Until then my parents had never even met their grandson! Now I am on my own with Michael and they want me to return permanently, but I am not so sure it would be a good thing for Michael. His life is here and he goes to visit with his father one weekend a month, which would not be possible if we moved back to my home country.’
Maria pushed a bowl of salad towards me. ‘And family is so important,’ she sighed. ‘At home in Sicily, the firstborn son of each generation of our family is always called Michael.’ She reached out and patted her son’s hand proudly. ‘I have kept the tradition although my husband had wanted only British names; but Michael is a British name also, no? More wine, Vincenzo?’ Maria paused to replenish our glasses before we could refuse. ‘Please, help yourselves to the salad. In Sicily we always have the salad first, but it is so cold outside I thought you would like to start with the hot dish.’ She turned to her son. ‘Michael, stop playing with your food and put some of it in your belly; you are so thin.’ She turned to me. ‘The youngsters today don’t eat enough, do they? I blame the film stars; they are all like stick insects.’
I glanced at Vincent, but he was keeping his head down, piling salad onto his plate next to the pasta and meatballs and tucking in. Michael seemed content to let his mother do all the talking and we ate while Maria prattled on about one thing and another, all the time plying us with wine. After the main course and salad she placed the cheese platter in front of us. I nibbled at a slice of Roquefort on a cream cracker—and almost gagged. The cheeses had looked so enticing, but now I had a piece in my mouth I realised I didn’t like the taste of it at all.
Swallowing with difficulty, the significance of what had just happened suddenly hit me. A tiny bit of the person I really was had revealed itself to me. I wanted to shout for joy.
‘I don’t like cheese,’ I whispered triumphantly to Vincent as Maria went off to fetch coffee. ‘I don’t like cheese!’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s the first thing I’ve found out about the real me,’ I explained. ‘Whoever I am and wherever I came from—I don’t like cheese.’
Vincent smiled as the significance of my discovery dawned on him. ‘Thank goodness you liked the meatballs then, and didn’t turn out to be a vegetarian! I told you Maria was an excellent cook.’
‘You were right,’ I groaned. ‘And I’ve overindulged big time. I don’t think I’ll ever need to eat again.’
‘Unless the roads clear soon we shall none of us eat again,’ Maria proclaimed as she set the coffee tray on the table. ‘The only shop within a reasonable walking distance is the newsagent’s and I don’t think we can survive the winter on crisps and sweets.’