She wakes. Sun is stealing round the edges of the darkened shutters, channelling the light into a sharp laser-like beam that highlights the knots and nail heads of the stained-oak floor. She pulls herself up in the large bed, leaning against the unyielding carved headboard, momentarily confused. There is an unfamiliar smell: slightly musty, overlaid with beeswax polish. She runs her fingers over the white linen sheets – they are old, not yet threadbare, but soft.
The last time she had lain in a large bed in soft, white sheets in Italy he had been there with her. They had gone to Florence to celebrate her birthday. She had reached out to him but he had turned his back. She had watched as the muscles that ran along either side of his spine flexed at her touch.
‘Millie… Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ she’d asked, not yet understanding.
‘You know. This. It’s over. You must see that.’
She had lain silently then, hardly daring to breathe; the marks left by her fingernails just a few moments before, as she climaxed, were developing into red weals near his shoulder blades. Perhaps, she thought, if I don’t say anything we can both forget what he just said. We can get up in a moment and go out into the sunshine. We can sit at our favourite cafe and I can order us coffee just how he likes it – strong and short, with a little pasticceria that I will dip into my milky latte. We will wander round the market, or along the banks of the Arno. Later, we will come back to our white bed and make love again before falling gently asleep. I will listen to his breathing as it becomes even and I will lay my hand on his thigh. It will comfort me as I too slip into sleep. We will wake as the sun sinks low in the sky, take a shower, and I will put on the dress he likes – the coral linen that I bought in the market yesterday; the dress he says makes me look like a ray of sunshine. I will brush my dark auburn hair and twist it into a chignon and he will kiss my neck.
He turns finally to look at her. His eyes are cool pools of water.
‘Well?’ He sounds irritated. As if this is an editorial meeting he is chairing back at their offices in London and he is waiting for a verdict from one of his best journalists on an idea he has just floated. She almost expects him to say: ‘Will it fly? What do you think, Millie?’
‘What do you want me to say, Max? Why is it over?’ She is trying to stay in control. She won’t cry, won’t beg. He wouldn’t like that; won’t respect her for it – better to challenge a little, as she would with a story.
‘Isn’t it obvious? I can’t keep lying to Katje. She sent me a text this morning, wishing me a great day. It’s just wrong, Mills. You know that.’
‘Wrong for who?’ Millie says, bridling slightly at the use of this most private of diminutives – only Max and her brother Freddie ever call her ‘Mills’. To use it now seems like a further betrayal.
‘You, me, Katje, the kids.’
This was a low blow. At thirty-eight, Millie, with no children of her own, tried hard to excise Max’s kids from her mind. He had already acquired two families: three boys – all grown men now, from his first marriage to ‘Lady’ Jane, and two ‘adorable’ blonde girls with Katje. Any mention of them was out of bounds for Millie. He knew that. She had laid it out for him fair and square when they began their affair six years earlier, as he nuzzled her neck in the taxi after the awards ceremony where he had taken his team and finally made his move.
‘I like you, Max, I really do, but anytime you bring your wife and family into our relationship it’s over – OK?’ He – a little drunk, randy, intoxicated by his star reporter and the award she had just won for ‘best feature’, would have promised her anything to get into her bed that night.
And so it had begun…
Millie had gone from one-night stand, to lover, to mistress. The early days were a whirlwind of whispered conversations on office phones, fleeting meetings in corridors, kissing in the lift. The excitement and adrenalin of it all was somehow life-affirming. Over time that early lust had turned to love, or at least what she thought was love. There was passion certainly, on both sides, a mutual sense of longing, and tumultuous lovemaking. But six years on, the harsh reality of what they were doing had set in; the passion had subsided a little and had been replaced with something else. On her part a sense of disillusionment: she was sad and lonely much of the time, with a creeping guilt about those little girls living in the tall house in Notting Hill with their Pilates-toned mother. But most of all, she had an overwhelming feeling that life was passing her by. She had a chic flat in Spitalfields, a good job and three awards displayed on the mantelpiece above the designer fake fire. But there was emptiness at the core. Her kitchen – which should have been filled with the comforting chaos of loving meals for two, three, or even four – was more often just a place for coffee for one. No family casserole dishes graced her cupboards. No rolling pins or cookie cutters cluttered up her drawers. No children’s drawings were stuck magnetically to her fridge door. There was none of the muddle created by two, three or more people jostling for position in a household. Just a clinical set of matching white china – chic, expensive and somehow soulless.
‘You deserve more,’ he had said at last, sitting up in bed. ‘I know how much you want kids… I just can’t give them to you.’
Her eyes stung with tears now. He always could get right to the heart of any story. That was his genius as an editor. He would sit in editorial meetings patiently waiting for all the hacks and researchers and editors to bring their ideas to the party and then would say, with a slight air of resignation, ‘OK, so this is what we’re going to do…’ And he would proceed to outline ten, or fifteen, stories that scarcely anyone had mentioned, all brilliant, relevant and right on the money.
And now it seemed, their relationship was at an end. He packed his in-flight bag that morning in Florence. He kissed her ‘one last time’. He told her the room was paid up till the end of the week. She must ‘order anything she liked’. She had an open ticket back to London. ‘Take your time, do some shopping,’ he’d said, passing her a credit card he had opened specifically for their time together. He slid the plastic card guiltily over the bed towards her – as if a new dress or designer handbag could wipe out six years, anaesthetise the pain. She thought back to a month or so before, when they had stayed in a little boutique pub on the South Downs; a rare weekend as a couple. They had talked over dinner of their fantasy home: a cottage in Sussex where they could ‘really be together’. Looking back, she realised that it was she who had talked about the cottage; he had just not disagreed. He had never lied, but he had allowed her to fantasise; she saw that now. Had allowed her to dream that they too could have a loving family of their own, if he could just tell Katje that it was over. But he never could. Now, instead, they were over.
She stayed in the hotel for one more night before flying home. She was back in the office the next day, at her desk working on a story, when Max came in. He looked surprised to see her.
‘Welcome back,’ he said. ‘Good trip?’
She nodded silently, fighting back the tears, and turned away. Later that day she left an envelope on his desk marked ‘private’. When he opened it, clipped pieces of a credit card would fall onto his desk.
She had considered including a letter of resignation, but common sense got the better of her: she had a mortgage to pay. But she needed a way out, a way not to have to see him every day.
The solution came a few days later. The women’s page editor – a glamorous and experienced journalist named Sonia – called her into her office one morning.
‘Millie, darling, pop over and see me a bit later? I’ve got a little story I think you’d do so marvellously.’
The Italian government had recently given financial support to an initiative to reinvigorate the silk industry in the Veneto region of northern Italy. The initiative was being spearheaded by a local entrepreneur, who was determined to revive the indigenous silk industry, to wrest it from the grip of the Chinese, who had been flooding the market with cheap silk for decades. Silk had been produced in Italy for hundreds of years, but the increased use of pesticides in the 1950s had damaged the delicate balance between the mulberry trees and the silkworms. The entrepreneur was keen to get a tiny foothold back in the market of which they had once been leaders. In future, ‘Made in Italy’ would regain its significance. A revitalised silk industry had the potential to make a difference to thousands of people’s lives, providing work and an extra source of income for local landowners.
‘Get over to Verona, darling,’ said Sonia. ‘Verona, Lake Como, Venice – that’s just the start of it. I think you’d do such a lovely job… a real “feature” piece. Romance, fashion, the EU, China, biodiversity, economics – it’s all there. Tickets on your desk. We’ve booked you into a fabulous-sounding villa near Verona, fifteenth-century originally, been in the same family on and off ever since. Run now as a B&B. Vineyards, silk farm, even a swimming pool. Enjoy!’
On the flight over, she wondered if Max had had a hand in it. Had he ‘had a word’ with Sonia? They went back over twenty years. Sonia had seen him through two marriages and many more ‘liaisons’. Rumour had it that they had been lovers too, back in the day. Had he said, ‘Sonia, darling, find something lovely for Millie. She’s had a rough time of it lately.’ Is that how it went? Was she simply a disposable commodity – like a flat that never got used, or a piece of designer clothing that had once been loved but was now destined for the charity shop?
Either way, it was a good story and the locations were undoubtedly beautiful. And now here she was in the villa near Verona. Her room overlooked the rear of the house; the swimming pool was to one side, the garden to the other. It was overgrown, in need of some tender loving care. By contrast, the vines that stretched away from the end of the garden were meticulously kept and reached down to a river that carved its alluvial way through the valley. To the other side of the garden were the mulberry orchards: neat rows of trees, their branches stripped bare to feed the hungry caterpillars that, even now, were ingesting their own body weight in mulberry leaves each day, before spinning their silky white cocoons.
The villa and the surrounding estate were owned by brother and sister, Lorenzo and Elena Manzoni, both in their mid-forties. Elena was divorced and lived in the villa with her two young adult sons. Lorenzo was a widower. He had one child, a nine-year-old daughter named Bella. He had greeted Millie warmly when she arrived in the hire car. Had solicitously shown her where to park in the shade of an old barn. She glimpsed barrels stacked up in corners. Huge wooden racks lined the remaining three walls. Lorenzo gestured towards them.
‘That’s where we used to keep the silkworms in the old days. We’ve got a bit more scientific now,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you tomorrow.’ The sun was beating down on the pale apricot walls of the villa. He carried her case up the grand but crumbling stone steps and opened the heavy oak doors that led to the high-ceilinged entrance hall. He smiled slightly as she gasped in admiration at the decoration; the walls were painted with frescoes – faded and peeling, but beautiful. He asked for her passport.
‘Ah… Camilla Caparelli – you are Italian?’
‘On my father’s side,’ said Millie. ‘My great-grandfather was Italian but I was brought up in England – Berkshire, in fact, about as English as it gets. I don’t even speak Italian that well, I’m rather ashamed to say. Just a bit of restaurant Italian, you know?’
‘Where were they from, the family, do you know?’
‘Lucca. They were in the leather trade, I think.’
He showed her to her room.
‘I hope you like it… It’s one of our best rooms.’
‘Oh that’s so kind. I hope you don’t need it for a proper guest.’ Millie’s newspaper was being given the room free of charge in return for a good plug for the Manzonis’ business.
‘No, no, it’s our pleasure. It’s not really the season yet. May, you know, is quite early for most of our regular guests. I don’t know if they told you, but we don’t normally serve dinner – just breakfast. There are several nice restaurants nearby. And my sister Elena, she’s a wonderful cook and breakfast is quite special. I don’t think you’ll need much lunch. But we would like to invite you to dinner with us, this evening.’
‘That’s really kind,’ said Millie. ‘Please don’t feel you have to, but it would be good to chat and find out a little about your business.’
‘Yes, of course. We live just over there.’ He pointed out of the window towards an old gold-coloured stucco barn. The end wall was decorated with small regular openings, forming a triangular pattern up into the eaves.
‘You have a dovecot,’ said Millie delightedly. Five pairs of creamy white doves sat contentedly in the early-evening sunlight on the ridge of the steep terracotta-tiled roof. ‘I love the sound that doves make. It reminds me of my parents’ house, which was surrounded by woods. That cooing always takes me back there somehow. It’s comforting… you know?’
Lorenzo smiled.
‘I understand. A sound from your childhood that makes you feel safe.’
‘Yes, exactly.’ She smiled at him. ‘So you don’t live here in the villa?’ she asked, back in reporter mode.
‘No, we keep the rooms for guests. But in the winter, when we are closed, we move back in for a few weeks – for Christmas and New Year. It’s fun with lots of family around but a little cold, if I’m honest. We are more comfortable over there. It’s cosy, you know? See you at eight.’
The Manzonis’ kitchen was at one end of the barn. It was simply and inexpensively furnished with an elderly electric stove on which stood two ancient pans, bubbling gently, alongside an extra double-electric ring on the chestnut worktop. It was not elegant, but serviceable. There was a freestanding fridge and a shallow, stained stone sink, beside which was plumbed an elderly dishwasher. Opposite this run of units was a table topped with a huge slab of grey marble, obviously well used, dulled with age. A tomato salad, sprinkled with basil, had been laid out on a colourful maiolica plate. Bread lay invitingly in a basket. A long chestnut table ran down the centre of the barn, surrounded by wooden kitchen chairs with rush seats. French windows looked out over a small terrace, upon which stood four elderly, rusted wire chairs with pale blue cushions. A bottle of red wine stood open on the table with several mismatched glasses and a turquoise pottery bowl filled with pistachios.
‘Elena,’ Lorenzo called out to his sister, ‘here is our guest. Camilla Caparelli – her family are from Lucca originally.’
Elena emerged from a door at one end of the barn. Behind her, Millie could make out a large double bed with a lace bedcover. Elena, dressed in jeans and a black shirt, extended one elegant hand. Her fingers were long, the nails cut short but beautifully shaped. She wore no wedding ring, just a large silver ring on the small finger of her right hand. She was tall, like her brother, and had a few silver hairs among the lustrous dark hair that was twisted into a chignon. The siblings looked very alike. Both had an aristocratic bearing, with high foreheads, but Elena’s dark brown eyes contrasted with her brother’s, which were the colour of faded denim.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ Elena’s English accent was impeccable. ‘From Lucca, you say? A beautiful city. Do you visit often?’
‘No, not often. We went as children a few times and stayed near Viareggio with some distant cousins. Although I did go back just recently; I was visiting Florence with a friend…’
An image of Max cycling along the medieval walls of Lucca, shouting to her over his shoulder: ‘Come on, Mills, race me,’ flooded her mind. They had been so happy that day.
She looked away momentarily, aware that tears were close.
Lorenzo, sensitive to her sudden distress, handed her a glass of wine.
‘I hope you like Valpolicella. It’s from our own vineyard.’
‘Thank you,’ said Millie, blushing slightly. ‘I love it.’
‘Dinner won’t be long,’ Elena said, as she turned to her brother, and dropped her voice a little. ‘Lorenzo, quando torno a casa Lino?’
He responded in Italian. Millie understood a few words. Lino was clearly one of Elena’s sons, who was at university in Padua.
‘My nephews,’ Lorenzo said, by way of explanation, as Elena wandered through to the kitchen. ‘They are on their way back from Verona now. Lino is a student in Padua – he’s back with us for a week or so. His brother Angelo works with us here full-time; he graduated a couple of years ago. He’s been out delivering wine to the cooperative this afternoon.’
The boys arrived twenty minutes later; tall, handsome, slender, like their mother. They chatted easily with their guest, clearly relaxed in any social situation.
‘I’m sorry that my daughter Bella cannot meet you this evening,’ explained Lorenzo, as he refilled Millie’s glass. ‘She is spending the night with a school friend.’
Dinner began with pasta and rabbit sauce, followed by sea bass, simply cooked and served with tomato and basil salad. As the boys helped to clear away the plates, Millie placed her phone on the table.
‘That was delicious, Elena, thank you. Your brother was right – you are a fantastic cook.’ Elena smiled graciously. There was something inscrutable about her, Millie felt. She was not easily flattered, that was clear. Perhaps it was her aristocratic bearing, but there was an invisible wall around her, as if she was anxious to protect herself from this stranger in their midst.
‘Should we talk about the silk farm now? I hope you don’t mind if I record our chat?’ Millie gestured towards her phone. ‘It saves me making endless notes.’
Lorenzo and Elena nodded.
‘Tell me a little of the history of the house and the farm. Have you always kept silkworms here?’
‘Traditionally, yes, as the name of the villa suggests.’ Lorenzo gestured towards a business card lying on the table, decorated with a pen and ink sketch of the villa, its name emblazoned above.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Millie.
‘Villa di Bozzolo, House of the Cocoon.’
‘Oh, I see – I didn’t realise. How interesting. So silk is what you have always produced here?’
‘Yes, silk and wine. But the house and the estate have been through enormous upheaval over the years – even in the last century during the two World Wars, it was very difficult. It’s a long story… I should start at the beginning.’
Later that night, as Millie lay in bed, her fingers touching the soft white sheets, listening to the doves gently calling to one another, she thought once again of Max. He hadn’t said goodbye to her when she left the office the previous evening. In fact, he had not spoken to her at all privately since they parted in Florence a week earlier. She had sat with him in editorial meetings, but he had pointedly avoided her gaze. He had been polite enough when she had suggested ideas for features but there was a distance. It was unfair of him, of course. And yet what had she really expected?
She thought, sometimes, of her own parents; so upright, honest and faithful. Her father was a civil engineer, now retired and living in Berkshire; he was a pillar of village life. How would she have felt, as a child, if he had abandoned her mother? She knew the answer to that: she would never have forgiven him.
No, it was not a victimless crime, this love affair with Max – far from it. There were multiple victims: Katje, the girls, as well as herself. And however much he promised her that she meant something to him; that he loved her; that, yes, he was capable of loving two people and that he could cope with it – for her, increasingly, it was just not enough. When they were together there was an intensity, a passion neither had felt before; at least that is what he had told her. And yet, when she really needed him – if she had a nightmare in the middle of the night, or when she’d had a bad day at work – he could not be there. His real life happened elsewhere. It was Katje who lay in his arms at night; it was her neck that he kissed when he got home from the office. It was his daughters he sat with and watched TV; it was his family he took on holiday to Greece, or skiing in Austria. She was allocated just one evening a week, and the occasional weekend or business trip. It wasn’t a life; it wasn’t really love.
Max had told her that he loved her; that he loved to be with her – that she brought him so much happiness. And yet, she had to confess that she wasn’t happy… ever. When she was with him she was waiting for him to leave; and when she was not with him, she was waiting for him to arrive. She had been waiting too long. And yet… as she felt the sheets that night in the villa near Verona, and thought back to their three glorious days in Lucca and Florence to celebrate her thirty-eighth birthday, before the moment he told her it was over, she began to cry.
Anastasia and Marietta silently shut their bedroom door. Pale shafts of early-morning light spilled round the edges of the shutters. They could hear their father snoring loudly from his room further along the corridor. Sometime during the deep darkness of the previous night they had listened as he shouted at his wife. They heard the slaps; later, they had heard their mother weeping softly. They wanted to go to her, to lie with her and comfort her, but they had learned long ago to resist the temptation: it would only exacerbate the situation. They could only comfort her when she was alone – when their father had gone out to the vineyard, or to harangue the workers on the silk farm.
‘Marietta,’ whispered Anastasia to her sister, ‘you must stay here. There’s no reason for us both to get into trouble.’
‘No, I’m not letting you go on your own. Besides, I’d rather be with you than alone here when he finds that you’ve gone.’
‘But… what about Mamma?’
Marietta stopped on the staircase, a look of resignation spreading across her face.
‘You think I should stay here to protect her?’
‘Well, when he finds that I’ve gone, he’s going to be so angry. And maybe if you are here, and say that you know nothing, he will believe you and leave Mamma alone. Otherwise, he’ll blame her, you know he will.’
Marietta nodded her head sadly. Her sister was right; their father would certainly blame their mother for Anastasia’s disappearance. Her fear was that she too would take a beating as he sought to discover the whereabouts of his eldest daughter. But she smiled bravely, kissed her sister on both cheeks and held her to her, inhaling the sweet, familiar scent of her dark hair.
‘Are you sure Marco said you were to come today?’
‘Yes, I have his letter here,’ said Anastasia, taking the folded paper from the pocket of her skirt. She read aloud:
Come to me at the villa on the lake. I will be waiting for you.
She clutched the letter to her breast and kissed it before putting it back in her pocket.
‘But I still don’t understand,’ said Marietta, ‘how he thinks he can marry you without our father’s permission. And with no dowry?’
‘Marco will see to everything…’
Marietta saw on her sister’s face a combination of desperation and hope.
The sisters heard their father moan in his sleep – a loud animal-like groan that normally preceded his waking. ‘Marietta,’ said Anastasia hurriedly, ‘I have to go.’
Anastasia kissed her sister, pulled her cloak around her shoulders and ran down the last few steps into the large hall. It was just before dawn and she hoped none of the servants were awake. Her little Bolognese dog, Bianca, slept peacefully in her basket beneath the large hall table. Anastasia bent down to stroke her head. ‘Goodbye, my little darling,’ she said to the bundle of soft white fur. The dog looked up lovingly and licked her hand. Anastasia heard the distant clanking of the grate down in the basement kitchens. Realising the cook or kitchen maid must already be at work, she kissed the little dog briefly on the top of her head and ran to the heavy oak door. As she turned the key, causing the mechanism to slip back, it emitted a loud clunk. She held her breath to see if the noise had disturbed anyone, but the silence was interrupted only by the sound of the doves cooing in the dovecot nearby. She pulled back the long bolts at the top and bottom of the door. She had oiled them a little the night before, and the top bolt slid back almost silently; but the bolt at the base of the door remained stubbornly stiff, and its sharp edges cut into her small fingers painfully as she yanked. It sprang back suddenly with a loud crack. Bianca jumped out of her basket, wagging her tail.
‘No, Bianca, go back to bed. Go… shoo,’ whispered Anastasia.
The dog turned and lay down on her bed, her ears pricked, her head cocked to one side, questioning, her little black eyes alert and watchful. Anastasia paused briefly, listening for the sound of footsteps on the cellar stairs, or from upstairs. But there was silence. She pulled the door open and stepped outside. Her father’s hunting dog Arturo lay across the doorway; she stepped over him, brushing his long back with the hem of her dress. He raised his huge shaggy head morosely from sleep and watched as she ran deftly across the yard, holding her skirts high, and opened the stable door. Her horse, Minou, shook his head from side to side in greeting. She stroked his ears and kissed the side of his head, shushing him. She closed the stable door silently behind her and pushed the horse gently to one side of the stall. Taking the saddle that lay across the door, she threw it over his warm pale grey back. His ears pricked. As she buckled the girth beneath his soft underbelly, she heard the unmistakable sound of her father coughing loudly. She peered over the top of the stable door. He was standing on the steps of the villa in his nightshirt, looking around him. He rubbed his large belly and scratched his balding head. He looked left and right, then straight ahead, towards the stables.
Anastasia shrank into a dark corner of the stable; the horse peered round, watching her intently as she crouched in the shadows. She held her finger to her mouth and looked into the eyes of her beloved Minou, willing him to stay silent. Some unspoken understanding flowed between them; he stood stock-still. Normally when she was saddling him, he would shake his head happily, or paw the ground a little, impatient to be off. But that morning, as the sun rose slowly over the villa, Minou was like a Carrara marble statue. He closed his eyes and exhaled almost silently through his soft pink nostrils.
Her father coughed loudly, clearing his throat, spat on to the marble steps of the villa, scratched his backside, patted his dog’s head and turned to go back into the villa.
Anastasia breathed finally, and stood up, stroking Minou’s pale grey flank.
‘Good boy,’ she whispered.
She pulled the bridle over his head, fixing the buckles, all the while whispering, ‘Shush, boy… good boy.’
When he was saddled, she looked up towards the house. Her sister Marietta stood at their bedroom window; she raised her hand nervously as Anastasia led her horse out of his stable. Hitching up her skirts, she climbed into the stirrups and onto his back. In minutes she was gone, galloping through the archway and onto the open road.
Breakfast at Villa di Bozzolo was just as Lorenzo had promised. Half a dozen tables were arranged around the dining room, laid with colourful maiolica china. Four other people were staying at the villa – middle-aged couples who ate their breakfast in virtual silence, interspersed with sotto voce comments about needing more coffee, or another slice of cake.
A long table stood in the middle of the dining room, covered with white linen and groaning under the weight of home-cooked cakes, breads and pastries. Little glass dishes of jam, all home-made and neatly labelled, were arranged next to silver dishes of butter. Elena drifted into the room, wearing a long black apron, offering ‘any kind of coffee. We can do latte, cappuccino, espresso… Or there is filter coffee and all kinds of tea.’
Millie sat down at a table in the corner, next to a window that overlooked the garden. It was curious, she reflected, how solitary diners preferred corner tables, as if the walls around them could provide some. . .
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