The Lemon Tree Hotel

by Rosanna Ley

Genres: Holiday books; Women's Fiction; Holiday Romance

Synopsis

A story about love, family secrets and a little piece of heaven.... In the beautiful village of Vernazza, the Mazzone family have transformed an old convent overlooking the glamorous Italian Riviera into the elegant Lemon Tree Hotel. For Chiara, her daughter, Elene, and her granddaughter, Isabella, the running of their hotel is the driving force in their lives. One day, two unexpected guests check in. The first, Dante, is a face from Chiara's past, but what exactly happened between them all those years ago, Elene wonders. Meanwhile, Isabella is preoccupied with the second guest, a mysterious young man who seems to know a lot about the history of the old convent and the people who live there. Isabella is determined to find out his true intentions and discover the secret past of the Lemon Tree Hotel.

Release date: March 7, 2019

Publisher: Quercus

Print pages: 544

Sample

CHAPTER 1

Chiara

Vernazza, Italy – November 1968

After the argument, after Dante had returned home, Chiara went to bed, knowing she would not sleep. How could she sleep after everything that had happened today?

She closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. She could see their faces, hear the barely disguised ill-feeling in the words being thrown between them – these two men she loved best in the entire world: her father and Dante Rossi. Dante, she had known for only weeks, but as Mamma always said of her cooking ingredients: it is a matter of quality rather than quantity, my dear – and there was that question of destiny . . . Papà, of course, she had known her whole life.

She’d sat at his knee and listened to his stories even before she could understand them. Tales of L’Attico Convento, the Old ­Convent which had been transformed into The Lemon Tree Hotel where they now lived and from which they made their living; tales of the war; tales of how he had first met Mamma: ‘I saw her there in the olive grove and suddenly it all made sense.’

‘What made sense, Papà?’

‘Why, our Resistance, our fight for freedom against those threatening to destroy the country we loved, my whole life. It all made sense, my darling, when I looked into your mamma’s eyes.’

Chiara let out a deep sigh. Was it like that for Dante? She thought of the dark, knowing looks he would send her when he imagined no one but Chiara could see them. Did it all make sense for him when he looked into her eyes? She hoped so. She stared up at the high slanted ceiling, illuminated only by slivers of moonlight creeping through the wooden slats of the shutters. She loved this room; liked to think of the nuns who had once slept here – like her aunt Giovanna, who now had her own cottage in the grounds of the hotel. Chiara wanted to think that one day Dante might be saying something just like that to their own daughter. But . . .

It was a very big ‘but’. The ‘but’ included Alonzo Mazzone – her parents’ favourite, son of the friends to whom they were indebted (though this was another story, which Chiara refused to dwell on now). A ‘but’ that reminded her she was only sixteen: ‘too young to know your own mind,’ Mamma had said only yesterday when she caught her daughter gazing at Dante Rossi as he expertly gathered up the nets of the olive harvest and simultaneously swept Chiara that glance which told her everything she wanted to know and more. And now, it was a ‘but’ that included the bitter taste of today’s harsh words.

A sharp sound at the window snapped into her thoughts and she blinked in surprise. It couldn’t be Dante – he had returned to Corniglia and surely wouldn’t be coming back in a hurry. Rain? Unlikely – the sky had been clear this evening, and Papà had insisted the weather wasn’t due to break for at least two days. A tile falling from the roof? The Lemon Tree Hotel was old and more rundown than they would like. In its previous life as a convent, it had witnessed violence and suffering, but Chiara liked to think that it had retained its sense of peace and spirituality even in adversity. And surely the condition of the roof was not that bad?

Another noise at the window. She sat bolt upright. It sounded like soft hail. Or . . . She felt a whisk of excitement. The sound came again. She jumped out of bed and quickly crossed the old wooden floor, polished by nuns over the years until it shone. Or . . . olives? Would he have come back then after all?

She flung open the shutters, peered into the darkness. The haze of the half-moon cast an eerie halo around the olive trees. ‘Dante?’ she whispered.

A beam of light flashed from the grove – just for a second, then another, then a third. Three flashes of torchlight. It was their agreed signal. She put a hand to her throat. How could he have dared to return here?

Chiara grabbed her own torch from the marble-topped dressing-table. She gave the two-flash signal back. I’m coming.

Her body was instantly alert and fired with adrenalin. Dante . . . He had argued with her father about the olive oil, he had stormed off, walking the three and a half kilometres over the mountains and back to Corniglia, his own village, which was next in line to Vernazza in the Cinque Terre, the five lands, five villages built on the cliffs in Liguria, part of the Levante, their section of the Italian Riviera. And now he had returned.

She threw a woollen shawl over her white cotton nightdress and drew it around her shoulders; she pulled on some shoes and opened her bedroom door as silently as she could. She held her body tense and waiting, but there was no sound from the rest of the building. She took a breath and crept down the wide, winding stairs. It was late – almost midnight – and her parents were in bed, of course. There were no guests – it was November and this time was reserved for the olive harvest, although, as Papà often said, the time was gone when a hundred trees would mean security for a family here in Liguria. And it was oil of the finest quality – extra virgin Riviera del Levante. Still, olive oil was needed in la cucina, was it not? Olive wood also gave off the most wonderful fragrance and warmth, and both were useful in the hotel . . . Fortunately, her parents’ room was on the other side of the building, so Chiara hoped she was safe from discovery.

She made her way swiftly past the reception desk and into the high-ceilinged kitchen, her soft footsteps sinking onto the cool flags, the emptiness of the room that usually had such a bustling and sweet-smelling warmth making her feel quite ghostly. She slipped out through the kitchen door, which led directly to the olive grove that surrounded The Lemon Tree Hotel on three sides. ‘Dante?’ she whispered again, shivering from the cool air on her skin, and with something else, something powerful that seemed to shimmer inside her and make her almost want to explode.

‘Chiara.’ He stepped out in front of her and drew her towards him, into the protection of one of their oldest trees, which formed a moonlit-green canopy around them.

‘Dio santo,’ she said. ‘My God, I can’t believe that you—’

He silenced her with a kiss. The sweet press of his lips on hers was intoxicating. Chiara gave herself up to it with a surge of longing. How could anything in the world be this good?

‘My father . . .’ she began, when he finally released her. Would kill him if he saw them now.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Dante hung his dark head. ‘He is your father. I should have shown more respect. I should have stayed silent.’

‘No.’ She stopped him. ‘It wasn’t your fault. He was wrong. He . . .’

It had been simmering since they came from Corniglia, this grain of resentment between the villages. Usually, only the boys from Vernazza helped with the olive harvest. But recently, some of the local youths had left the area, just as they were leaving many of the rural communities of Italy. There were new opportunities for them in the cities these days, she knew, a chance to earn money working in different industries. Everyone was saying it: life was not all about farming any longer. So, Papà was worried they wouldn’t get the olives down, gathered and to the press in time before the weather broke. It was important to pick the olives before they were completely ripe and purple. A green olive gave less oil but was lower in acidity, so the oil was fresher, more delicious and of better quality. Papà had asked in Corniglia if anyone could help, and Dante had come with his friend Matteo. Dante. She had seen him in her life twice before, and those two encounters had made her think about him more than she could say. And now, he was here, at The Lemon Tree Hotel.

Chiara held the face that in the last weeks had quickly become so dear to her between her two hands and examined every detail in the pale moonlight: his gentle dark eyes, the generous curve of his mouth, the slant of his cheekbones, and the dark stubble on his jaw. When Dante had come to the hotel to help with the olive harvest, when she had first seen his frown of concentration as he unwrapped the orange nets from the trunks of the trees and laid them out to catch the fruit . . . She had caught her breath. It was him. Surely it was him? When she had watched him stretch and roll his broad shoulders as he and Matteo beat the tree and branches with the bastone, heard his soft deep voice as they lifted the edges of the nets, witnessed the infectious rumble of his laughter as the olives rolled together into heaps to be loaded into bulging oily sacks to take to the press . . .

From that moment, she had been lost. She was standing by the kitchen doorway, he hadn’t seen her yet. Then he straightened, called out to Matteo, pushed his black hair from his forehead, shifted slightly, as if he felt the force of her scrutiny . . . And their gazes had locked. He recognised her from before. Had he known perhaps that this was her father’s place? She wasn’t sure. But she was sure that he felt it too – this strange emotion that she could not name. Was this what Papà had described to her? Was this love at first sight?

Since that moment, Chiara and Dante had grabbed every opportunity to spend snatched minutes together – to chat when she brought out the lunch or the beer, to linger by one another’s side while they were working to bring in the olives, the heat building between their bodies even though it was already November, to meet just like this, in the olive grove under the cover of darkness.

‘It is you,’ he said to her in that first snatched moment alone only minutes after she’d stood there watching him.

‘It is me.’ She could still hardly believe that it was him. It was the third time. It was as if Fate or some Divine Intervention had stepped in, and . . .

‘Can we talk? Later, I mean?’ His brown eyes were intent as he watched her collecting the glasses to take back to la cucina.

‘Before you leave. In the grove at the back of the hotel,’ she said, quick as lightning, as if she made such assignations every day of her life. In fact she had never done anything like this before – but then again, she had never felt this alive.

The first time she’d seen him had been in Corniglia, as she walked through the village on an errand for her mother last spring. She was still fifteen. A group of boys were eyeing her as she walked down the hill, swinging the basket, oblivious at first to their grins, the way they were nudging one another and looking her way.

‘Hey, look what a gift someone has sent us today. How lucky are we, eh?’

Chiara flinched. She was used to the boys of Vernazza – she knew them all well, she had grown up with them – but she hadn’t seen these boys before, and she felt a stab of fear. Of course, they were harmless, naturally they were just having a joke with her. But something about the look in the eyes of the one who had spoken – a lascivious look, a greedy look – made her footsteps waver. She tossed her head. She wouldn’t let them see that she cared.

‘Oh, she is a princess, is this not so?’ He sneered. ‘Should we teach her a lesson perhaps?’

Chiara stood her ground, glared at him. But she found she could not speak, the banter that usually came so easily to her had left her. The boy took a step closer.

‘Hey, Franco! Give it a rest.’ Another boy appeared. A boy with dark eyes and an upright bearing. He smiled at her. Don’t worry, he seemed to say. He looked back at the other boy. ‘Go home to your mamma,’ he teased. ‘Leave the poor girl alone.’

And it seemed that he possessed an unlikely authority. The boys mumbled and drifted away – all of them.

‘Thank you,’ she said to him. She felt unbearably shy, ridiculously naïve. He gave a little nod back to her – and was gone.

Chiara hadn’t forgotten him though. A few months later she saw him again – this time in Vernazza. An elderly lady who lived down by the waterfront had collapsed – heatstroke perhaps, for it was a hot day in August. Chiara ran to help her, but someone else had got there first. Him. He mopped the old lady’s brow with his handkerchief, helped her sit up, fetched her water from the fountain. Chiara had watched him, half mesmerised. Who was he? Some sort of guardian angel?

Now, she knew better. Dante was no guardian angel – he was a hot-blooded, wildly attractive young man who was more than willing to meet her under the cover of darkness and shower kisses on her lips, her neck, her breasts . . . But still – surely he had been brought to her for this reason alone?

But without Chiara noticing – for she had plenty of other matters on her mind – that grain of resentment between the two neighbouring villages had swollen. And when the yield of their olives turned out to be less than previous years, considerably less than Papà had expected despite the fact that the boughs of the trees had been heavy with the little green fruit for months, one of the locals, Salvatore, was heard to mutter that some of the olives might have been kept back for the Corniglia press.

Dante had fiercely protested their innocence. ‘It is the climate,’ he had said with a frown, the frown that Chiara longed to smooth from his brow. ‘It is the same all over Liguria this year. Everyone knows it.’

‘Do they indeed?’ Papà did not like his tone, Chiara could tell. He was experienced with the olives, and he would not tolerate any of his workers getting above themselves.

Dante held his head high. ‘What else?’ he demanded. ‘What else could it be?’

Papà shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

Dante stared at him with undisguised hostility. ‘I am surprised you asked us here,’ he said, ‘if you have such little trust.’

‘What choice did I have, eh?’ Papà glared at him. ‘You come, and you—’ He stopped abruptly and Chiara wondered if Mamma had told him what she might have observed these past days. They should have been more careful. Papà was obsessed with Alonzo and his family, and he would not take kindly to another man coming to steal his daughter’s heart.

Matteo had gone to stand next to Dante, the two of them facing her father and the others. Suddenly, they had become enemies, it seemed. The tension hung thick in the air.

Papà waved them away. ‘Enough,’ he blustered. ‘You have done your work, you will be paid, and now you can go, both of you. That’s it. I don’t want to see you again.’

Chiara watched them leave in despair. She longed to run after Dante. When would she see him again? She knew already that his was a proud family, and she was aware how much damage had been done.

‘You did not think it?’ Dante asked her now. ‘What ­Salvatore said? You did not think it?’

‘Of course not.’ She knew how good he really was; she knew he would not be capable of such subterfuge and deceit. Chiara settled her head against his chest. It felt as if it was meant to be there. His arms were around her and she was no longer cold in the least. Now, she was warm; warm and loved in a way she hadn’t dreamed possible.

Papà had tasted the olive oil straight from the frantoio, the press, then he had brought it home and the family had eaten it with freshly-baked bread and bruschetta. It was as light and golden as ever and had the same mild, fruity taste as always – thanks to the Ligurian weather – not too hot in the summer and not too cold in the winter. ‘Delicious, my love,’ Chiara’s mother had declared. But the atmosphere had remained tense.

‘I have been thinking, Chiara.’ Dante straightened and she adjusted her position against him.

‘Sì?’ She had thought she would not see him for days. But now he was here in her arms once more – and so miracles were possible after all, and she wished she could tell her aunt Giovanna this. But of course, she could not. This was their secret. It had to be.

‘If we stay here, we cannot be together.’

‘If we stay here? What do you mean?’ Where else could they go? She eased slightly away from the warmth of him. What was he saying?

‘Your parents will not allow us to meet,’ he said solemnly. ‘My parents too.’

‘Oh, it will die down.’ Though Chiara spoke with an assurance she did not feel. Her father’s passions did not tend to die down; the opposite was true. ‘And until then we can meet in secret. Like we are now.’ It was, after all, rather thrilling. She glanced around at the olive trees, threaded with silver in the moonlight, old and wise, standing serene in the grove, endless as time itself. The olive tree was the symbol of peace and well-being. How many loves had they witnessed? Her father and her mother, Chiara and Dante, probably not the nuns though . . . She suppressed a giggle.

‘This is serious, Chiara.’ Dante put his hands on her shoulders to increase the distance between them. ‘At least to me.’

‘And to me.’ She pushed towards him again, intending to hold his head to her breast. She didn’t want to talk – there was no time. She wanted to feel more of the delicious sensations that spun through her when he kissed her, when he held her, when he—

‘But that is not enough, Chiara,’ he said. ‘I love you. I want to be with you.’

‘And I love you, Dante.’ The words were like flowers on her tongue. She relished the scent of them, she wanted to taste them over and over. She might be young, but Chiara knew what she wanted. And she wanted this man – with all her heart. ‘But what else can we do?’

‘Run away.’ He whispered the words into her hair.

‘Run away?’ She stared at him. It sounded impossibly romantic. ‘But where to?’ She couldn’t imagine being anywhere save Vernazza. Everything she loved was here – her father, her mother, Aunt Giovanna, The Lemon Tree Hotel . . .

‘Milan.’

She blinked at him. Milan was a lifetime away.

‘I could get work there,’ he said. ‘The car companies, they are looking for new mechanics. Alfa Romeo have a factory in the city. I learn quickly—’

‘Milan?’ she repeated, aghast.

‘Why not? I have been thinking for a while that I might leave and make a new life somewhere. There are so many opportunities, you know. Life is not just for farming and fishing. Others have gone—’

‘I know.’ Of course, others had gone. The new industries in the cities, il boom . . . Everyone was talking about it.

‘It could be a new start for us. We would be together, at least . . .’ His voice trailed as he caught her expression in the moonlight.

‘What would I do in Milan?’ she whispered. Milan was a city. Milan was very far from Liguria.

‘I’ll look after you.’ He held her closer once more. ‘We would work it out. I don’t know. But the point is, we could be together, my love.’

‘We can be together here.’ Suddenly, she wanted to cry. Suddenly, everything that had been so right was going horribly wrong.

‘We cannot.’

Chiara saw the stubborn glint in his eye, and she realised. She loved him, and she had even fantasised that he was her destiny, but she didn’t know him – not really. What she knew was Vernazza and this place, her home. What she knew were her parents, her life, the fact that she loved The Lemon Tree Hotel with a fierce passion, that she would run it herself one day – her father had always told her so – and that she was sixteen, and so how could she leave?

‘It will die down,’ she said again. ‘They will forget the silly argument. And then we can start meeting openly, and I will tell them how I feel, and slowly, gradually . . .’

‘I do not want slowly and gradually.’ He held her more tightly. ‘I want you now.’

Chiara shuddered with desire. ‘I want you too,’ she whispered. She felt his hands so warm against her with only her thin white nightgown between them. She took his hand and put it to her breast. How could it be wrong?

‘Not like this,’ he said, though his voice was husky with longing.

‘But, Dante, how can we leave here? What would we live on?’ Mamma had always said it was the women in this world who must be practical.

‘I have a small inheritance, you know I told you my grandmother had died?’

‘Sì.’ Her voice sounded ridiculously small and weak to her own ears.

‘It is enough to help us start our life together. In a new place. That’s what I want.’

She heard his confidence. But she didn’t possess that, she realised. Did he have enough for both of them? She wasn’t sure.

‘If you love me you will come.’

‘I do love you, but—’ All she could think of was the disappointment in Papà’s eyes when he found out what she had done.

‘Then?’

‘How can I leave Vernazza?’ She spoke sotto voce, but her words seemed to echo around the silent olive grove in the darkness.

‘If you love me, you can leave,’ he said.

‘It is not as simple as that.’ But Chiara was no longer sure. Did love and passion sweep you into making decisions that would hurt the ones you loved? Did they pull you away from all that was familiar and dear? Did love have to be that way? She felt that Dante had set her a test, one that she had failed miserably.

‘It can be that simple,’ he insisted.

‘But I cannot leave my parents. I cannot leave the hotel.’ There, she had said it. She glanced at him warily. Surely, he would see that his was a reckless, crazy plan?

‘Then this is the end for us,’ he said.

‘No!’ She clutched at his sleeve. How could he be so stubborn, so melodramatic? ‘Everything will work out, Dante. You will see. I love you. We will be together. I know it.’

He shook his dark head. ‘Only if we go now. Only if we take this chance. If you trust me.’

‘But . . .’ It was too much. ‘I can’t.’

He took a step back. His eyes had a coldness she had not seen there before. ‘I am leaving, Chiara,’ he said. ‘I have made up my mind. I do not want to be in a place where there is no trust, where villagers live close by and yet cannot work together as a team. Where I could be accused of such a thing – and by your father.’

‘But, Dante—’

‘I am young. I want to see something of the world.’

‘But . . .’

‘And I will not – I cannot – stand by and see you married to another man.’

Alonzo. Who had told him about Alonzo? ‘I will not marry another man.’ She raised her head, jutted out her chin. She had no interest in Alonzo. She hated the idea of letting her parents down, but nobody could tell her what she must do – not even Papà. ‘I will marry who I please.’

Dante sighed. ‘Do you not see? They will not let us be together, my love.’

How could he have so little faith? How could he not believe that they would find a way? ‘But in a few years when—’

He put a finger to her lips. ‘I will not wait for years. And so . . .’

And so?

‘I will leave, my love,’ he said. He stroked her hair. ‘I will leave, and I am not sure that I will ever come back.’

Chiara’s eyes widened. He was headstrong, this man she loved, but this could not be true – he must come back, he was her destiny. But already he was turning to go, she felt it. ‘Dante—’

‘Arrivederci, Chiara. Goodbye and take care, my love.’

‘Dante, wait!’

But he slipped away into the darkness. And Chiara had never felt so alone.

CHAPTER 2

Chiara

Vernazza – October 2011

‘How long will you be gone?’ Chiara asked her husband. He was away more than he was home, but in some ways, this made life easier at The Lemon Tree Hotel. Mostly, the three women ran the place – Chiara, her daughter Elene, and Chiara’s twenty-year-old granddaughter Isabella.

Chiara glanced proudly around the room. Since her parents had bought it in the 1950s, the hotel had gradually grown into the successful business it now was. After their deaths, she had worked to retain as much of the old character of the original convent as possible, keeping many of the original hand-painted and decorative tiles, simple wooden carvings, and niches that paid homage to the hotel’s history – and the lemon tree in the courtyard that must have been planted by the nuns and had given the hotel its name. The acid yellow of the fruit was bright as sunshine for much of the year; in years gone by the nuns had made both lemonade and soap from the fruit, and on a summer’s day the lemons and the cool green of the waxy leaves presented a picture framed by the Mediterranean blue of the sea and sky that few of their guests could resist. The crumbling, narrow-bricked cloisters had been restored in keeping, and the exposed wooden beams had been repaired, varnished and polished.

What they’d added in recent years was luxury – the best quality Egyptian cotton bedding, deep leather chairs to sink into, marble and stone bathrooms with walk-in showers, and carefully chosen pieces of antique furniture that reflected the history of the building. Chiara nodded to herself in satisfaction. Sometimes a few changes were no bad thing. She thought of Elene. But a few changes could also be enough. One had to know when to stop.

Chiara was the overall manager and owner – she had taken on this role many years ago when her beloved father had died. Her mother, the chef, usually so stalwart, had crumbled then, never recovered from the death of her husband. She’d continued to work in the kitchen, but Chiara soon saw that she could no longer keep things together. Meals did not appear on time, guests began to complain . . . So, they had brought in Marcello, a big cheery bear of a man who took everything in his stride. The kitchen returned to its previous high standards, whilst her mother stayed behind the scenes in la cucina, grieving her loss until a year later, she too slipped away as if she couldn’t wait to be with her husband once more.

Va bene. Chiara understood about that kind of love, even though she was not fortunate enough to possess it herself. And whose fault was that if not her own?

She watched Alonzo as he examined his face in the mirror, as he peered closer and plucked out an offending hair. Although in his early sixties now and not a tall man, he had not put on too much weight, his hair was a distinguished salt-and-pepper grey, and his eyes were as sharp as ever. He wasn’t unattractive, but Chiara felt strangely detached from this man she had married over forty years ago. Perhaps she had always been detached. Perhaps that was why Elene . . .

But, no, it was better not to go down that route. So, she shook the thought of her daughter to one side, and instead busied herself with straightening the cushions on the tan leather sofa that contrasted so beautifully with the clean white walls of the room. After Alonzo had left for wherever it was he must go, she would pop into the kitchen to see Elene and they could discuss the week’s menu – for Elene had taken over as head chef when Marcello eventually retired. Perhaps Elene would make coffee and they could carve out some mother-and-daughter time. That was a rare thing these days. She sighed. Truth to tell, it had always been a rare thing.

Taking over the hotel after her parents’ death had been the making of Chiara though, and she paused in her tidying as she remembered those far-off days. In the main it had satisfied her. Still grieving for her parents, still suffering from what she now recognised as post-natal depression after the birth of Elene . . . She’d had to knuckle down and get on with it. That or go under.

‘Does it make any difference?’ Alonzo was watching her curiously in the mirror, perhaps wondering where she was on all these occasions when she was not here with him, although she might seem to be.

In all sorts of places, she thought. Places I have never gone to. With people I have loved. ‘Hmm?’

‘Does it make any difference how long I’m gone?’ He didn’t bother to hide his irritation at having to repeat the question.

‘Yes.’ Chiara ignored his tone. She’d been ignoring it for years, but it never got any easier. ‘It does, because of course, it would be nice to know when you will be back.’

He shrugged, put his head to one side and straightened his tie. ‘I have no idea. Business is business. It has to be attended to. It will take as long as it takes.’

‘Not to mention that we are having a dinner party for Giovanna’s birthday, and it would be nice if you could attend a family celebration for once.’ Chiara was aware of the edge in her voice. This was what they were like these days: leading separate lives, because when they were together, they bickered. And she guessed that neither of them much liked what they had become.

‘We’ve been through all that,’ he snapped. ‘I have to work. Where do you think the money comes from, eh?’

Chiara stepped away so that she was out of his view. She knew quite well where the money came from. Alonzo liked to pretend that their livelihood came mainly from his property business – he rented out some apartments in Pisa, and no doubt had a finger in a few other pies. But in fact it was the hotel that largely supported their family. Alonzo probably reckoned that the money his parents had put into The Lemon Tree when they married was more than enough of a contribution. But Chiara knew it was passion that had kept the place going through the hard times. Her parents’ passion for the hotel that meant so much to them, and then her own. Now, Isabella had taken on that inheritance, young though she was, and maybe even Elene – though Chiara was not so sure about Elene. She never had been. Her daughter was a closed book.

Yet again, Chiara pushed the