‘I see.’ He gave her another of those long, thoughtful looks but it wasn’t his obvious suspicion that was making her feel faint, cling like a lifeline to the edge of the desk that separated them. ‘You look unwell, signora Marlowe.’
‘I’m not feeling that great,’ she admitted. Her skin was pale and clammy and her hair, blown out of the scarf she used to tie it back on the blustery deck of the ferry, was sticking to her cheeks and neck.
She knew exactly what he was thinking and in his place she’d probably think the same.
‘I have to ask you if you are carrying—’
‘A baby.’
She blurted out the word. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. She’d told her sister that she was tired, needed a break, and Posy, unable to get away herself, had been so happy that someone would visit the villa, make sure everything was okay, that she hadn’t asked her why she wasn’t going to some resort where she could lie back and be waited on.
The first person in the world to know that she was going to have a baby was a border control officer who was about to ask her if she was carrying an illegal substance... ‘I’m carrying a baby,’ she said, her hand instinctively rising to her waist in an age-old protective gesture as she backed away from the desk. ‘And I’m about to be sick.’
The ferry crossing from Italy had been choppy. The sandwich she’d forced herself to eat had gone overboard within minutes of leaving the harbour but her stomach seemed capable of creating a great deal out of nothing. It had been years since her last visit to the island but the Porto had not changed and she made it to the toilet before she disgraced herself.
Once the spasms had passed she splashed her face with cold water, retied her hair, took a breath and opened the door to find the officer waiting with her passport, wheelie and a sympathetic smile.
‘Complimenti, signora.’ She hardly knew how to respond and he nodded as if he understood that she was feeling grim and might just be having mixed feelings about her happy condition. As if that were the only problem... ‘My wife suffered with the vomito in the early days but it will soon pass,’ he said. ‘Relax, put your feet up in the sun and you will soon feel better. Is anyone meeting you?’
‘I was going to grab a taxi.’
He nodded, escorted her to the rank, spoke sharply to the driver who leapt out to take her bag.
‘I have told him to take it slowly, signora.’
Out of the noisy terminal building, standing in the fresh air, the afternoon sunshine warning her face, she managed a smile. ‘Did he hear you?’
His shrug and wry smile suggested that his words might well have fallen on deaf ears.
‘Could you ask him to stop at a shop...il supermercato? I need to pick up some things.’
He exchanged a few words with the driver. ‘He will take you and wait.’
‘Grazie.’
‘Prego. Bon fortuna, signora. Enjoy your holiday.’
Andie lay back against the cool leather of the seat as the driver drew carefully away from the taxi rank, out of the port and after a few minutes pulled into the car park in front of a small supermarket.
Her sense of smell, heightened by pregnancy, had her hurrying past the deli counter. She quickly filled her basket with some basic essentials and returned to the car.
* * *
‘Baia di Rose?’ the driver asked.
‘Sì. Lentamente,’ she added, using the word that the border official had used and Sofia had called after them as they’d raced down the path to the beach. Slowly...
‘Sì, signora,’ he said, pulling out into the traffic with exaggerated caution.
It didn’t last.
He was a native of this ancient crossroads in the Mediterranean; his blood was a distillation of the Greek, Carthaginian and Roman invaders who had, over the millennia, conquered and controlled the island. His car was his chariot and the hoots of derision from other drivers as they passed him were an affront to his manhood.
She hung onto the strap as he put his foot down and flung the car around sharp bends, catching glimpses of the sea as they climbed up out of the city and headed across the island to Baia di Rose and the villa that guarded the headland.
She’d left London on a cold, grey day that spring had hardly touched. How many times had she and her sisters done that in the past when her grandmother had whisked the four of them out of England in the school holidays to give her mother a break?
She still remembered the excitement of arriving in a spring so different from the one they’d left behind. Being met in a sleek Italian car by Alberto who, with his wife, Elena, looked after the Villa Rosa, its gardens and acted as chauffeur to Sofia and who treated them as if they were little princesses. The exotic flowers, houses painted in soft pastels and faded terracotta and the turquoise sea glittering in invitation.
The house was only a few hundred yards up the hill from the village, perched on an outcrop in a swathe of land that stretched from the coast to the rugged, forested lands that led to the peak of the mountains in the heart of the island that King Ludano had declared as a national park.
Portia, her older and more worldly sister had shocked them all by suggesting the real reason was to keep his visits to his mistress from prying eyes.
Whatever his motive it had preserved this part of the island from commercial exploitation, the ribbon development of hotels along the east coast.
The last stretch to an elevated promontory was reached by a narrow, twisting road. As children, they’d competed to be the first to catch a glimpse of the pale pink Villa Rosa. With its tiered roof and French doors opening onto a garden that fell away to the sheltered cove below, it was so utterly different from home.
Inside was just as exciting. Endless rooms to explore and the excitement of being allowed to join grown-up parties in the vast drawing room with its arched ceiling painted in the pale blue, pink, mauves of an evening sky.
There were dusty attics filled with treasures to explore if you dared brave the spiders and, her favourite place of all, the cool covered veranda looking out to sea where you could curl up with a book in the heat of the afternoon.
When they were children the gates had stood wide open in welcome and as soon as the car came to a halt they’d tumbled out, rushed down to the beach, kicked off their shoes and socks and stood at the water’s edge, shrieking with excitement as the water ran over their feet.
Today the gates were closed and it was too early in the year to swim in the sea. Too late in the day to go down to the beach. She just wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep off the flight from London, the ferry trip across from the Italian mainland.
The driver asked her a question in something that wasn’t quite Italian, that she didn’t understand, but his look of concern suggested he was asking if she was in the right place. She nodded, smiled, paid him and waited while he turned and headed back down the hill.
Once he’d gone she took the weighty bunch of keys that Posy had given her from her bag, opened the small side gate and stepped into the peace and tranquillity of the villa courtyard.
On one side there was a low range of buildings that had once been stables but, for as long as she had been coming here, had been used as garages and storerooms. On the other side of the courtyard was the rear of the house with its scullery and kitchen. The door that, wet and sandy from the beach, they’d used as children.
It had been eight years since their last visit. She and Immi had been sixteen, Posy fifteen. Portia hadn’t come with them. She had been in her first year at uni and thought herself far too grown-up for a family holiday by the sea, even in a glamorous villa owned by the mistress of the island’s monarch.
Those