I felt a little sliver of annoyance, but it wasn’t worth ruining the day over.
‘I already have,’ I said, kissing him lightly on the mouth. Then I rolled over and got out of bed. ‘I might get up. Go for an early walk.’
I’d spent a lot of time on my own when I was younger and so being in a group felt overwhelming sometimes. It was a running joke with my friends and family that I’d often make an excuse to slope off and have a bit of a recharge. Maybe I’d have a cup of coffee somewhere – I was sure I remembered reading something about the hotel having a roof terrace. Itwas a bit of a risk, because what if I bumped into Aidan, who was the very last person I wanted to see? He might have changed, of course, but he’d never been able to sleep, either. He’d always been up before me; loved getting out in the fresh air before everyone else.
I eyed the video camera I’d put on the desk. Perhaps I should take it. Much as I didn’t feel like working for no money at seven in the morning, if I passed somewhere particularly evocative, it seemed a shame not to capture it on camera.
‘Don’t leave,’ said Nick, mock pathetically.
He grabbed my hand, pretending to refuse to let it go. I laughed lightly, pulling it gently away.
‘I can’t sleep anyway,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been awake for hours already.’
‘Are you sure you’re OK about this whole Sophia thing?’ he asked, turning over and getting comfortable, scrunching into the foetal position.
He was so going to go back to sleep.
‘I’m sure,’ I said.
I heard his breathing deepen, watched the rise and fall of his body under the duvet. I went over and peeped out of the gap between the curtain and the window, wondering what the weather was like. I imagined April in Italy would be like June in the UK, especially if yesterday was anything to go by, but I supposed you could never be too sure. There were blue skies, though, and the few people out on the street seemed to be wearing long sleeves but no coat. I should be fine in a dress with something over the top. I picked out another Primark special, my favourite, a navy blue and white polka-dot skater dress. Then I rummaged in my (silly, too-small) suitcase and pulled out my sandals. Grabbing a cardigan just in case it was colder than it looked, I left the room, shuttingthe door gently behind me and then immediately realising I’d left my key inside. Damn. Now I’d have to wake Nick up when I got back – depending on how long I was going to be, he’d probably still be dead to the world. He slept like someone who had no conscience – I’d never, ever felt him tossing and turning, trying to solve a work problem at two o’clock in the morning, or scrolling through his phone at 3 a.m. because his mind wouldn’t settle and he couldn’t sleep. Considering his high-powered job, this always surprised me. He compartmentalised, he said. Whereas, for me, everything seemed to spill into the next thing – work and family and love and friends. If I felt bad about one thing, I seemed to feel bad about all of them.
I padded down the carpeted corridor, wondering what everyone else was doing behind their closed doors. Sophia and Daisy were somewhere on our floor, but Rosamund and Peter had a suite at the top of the hotel. I supposed it was their anniversary, but still: a suite! Part of me was desperate to engineer an excuse to go to their room so that I could have a nose around and another part of me found the idea of being alone with Rosamund terrifying. I imagined her cornering me, interrogating me about my intentions with her son, accusing me of being after his money, or something. I supposed she had no idea how much money I earned or had, but I assumed it was glaringly obvious that the answer was very little. I’d noticed how Nick’s family swanned around the hotel, completely comfortable, their clothes and jewellery a clear indication that they had a certain amount of funds in the bank. I thought everyone could probably tell that I didn’t have any such thing, and never had done.
I dreaded them asking what my parents did. It didn’t usually matter; I’d just say my dad was a caretaker in a school and my mum was a beauty therapist and nobody would bat aneyelid. But I imagined with Rosamund that where you came from, your heritage, if you like, was a sort of currency – Nick had been to uni at Oxford, for example, whereas I’d been to the University of Hertfordshire, which I’d be surprised if Rosamund had ever even heard of. He’d been to a swanky private school and I’d been to my local comp.
I pressed the button for the lift, annoyed at myself. Why was I letting these people make me feel bad about everything I’d worked hard for, that my parents had worked hard for? It was almost as though they were projecting their antiquated ideas on to me and I, as usual, was sucking them up like a sponge:You’re not good enough. You’re not good enough for someone like Nick.
I pushed the thought from my mind, but then another one came back in its place: You weren’t good enough for Aidan, either.
Chapter Six
The terrace of the Hotel Palazzo Continentale was an oasis of calm, surrounded by shrubs with a dusting of pretty little flowers, whites and yellows and pinks, and a view of Florence’s ubiquitous terracotta rooftops. If I went right into the far corner, I could just make out the sun rising over the River Arno, which was much calmer than I’d imagined and nothing like the busy, undulating Thames. I put my video camera on the ledge and sat on one of the high stools facing the river, picking up a menu. All these breads and pastries – I was in hotel breakfast heaven! I ought to eat with Nick et al., even if I was starving already.
I tuned in to the sounds of Florence waking up: the joyous bells from a nearby church, the clinking of bone china being set up in the hotel restaurant, the revving of a moped engine somewhere down on the square – somebody delivering fresh ingredients to one of the restaurants, maybe. My mind immediately turned to pasta, possibly my favourite food in the world, which seemed to be strangely absent from the ostentatious menu at the hotel restaurant. Sometimes I just needed a big bowl of spaghetti with butter and a ton of cheese and I couldn’t see what was wrong with that, despite what I could imagine Rosamund and Sophia would say. I was determined that at some point on this trip, I was going to sneak out alone and indulge my pasta habit without fear of it being frowned upon. I could always use art as an excuseto get away, since no one in my party seemed to have any interest in seeing any, having supposedly seen every piece of art Florence had to offer ‘hundreds of times’. I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of it, whether I’d been here one time or twenty.
The highlight of their week appeared to be the trip out into the Chianti region to visit a vineyard, which we’d all been booked onto for the following day, whether we liked it or not. I immediately pulled out my phone and googled Italian wines – following last night’s epic fail with the wine list, I ought to memorise a couple of key facts in case somebody asked me a question.
I was busy wondering how to pronounceFranciacorta, which apparently was a sparkling wine from Lombardy, when someone opened the door leading from the restaurant to the terrace. Without thinking, I turned to look, which was stupid really because I should have known it would be Aidan. That was the kind of luck I had.
He stopped dead when he saw me, both of us startled into silence. My heart jolted so hard that I thought I might actually be about to throw up. I focused on my breathing: in and out. In and out. But it all came flooding back, how he used to tell me I was beautiful and funny. How we used to lie, tangled up in each other, talking for hours – I’d never felt alone when I was in bed with him because if I was awake, invariably he was, too. He’d said he’d never felt this sort of instant connection before; that he’d known I was something special the second he saw me on the banks of Loch Lomond with a weird, frumpy anorak on and windswept hair and nightmare Tim barking orders so loudly at me that the whole beach could hear.
‘Don’t bother trying to talk to me,’ I said, my voice catching annoyingly in my throat.
‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning to,’ he replied, his tone ice-cold, not at all how I’d remembered.
He turned, flung open the door and headed back into the hotel.
I watched, my mouth hanging open. He was the one who’d broken my heart, and here he was acting like the wounded party. There was no excuse for what he’d done, or at least not one that I could think of. And maybe it had all happened for a reason, because if Aidan hadn’t done what he did, I’d never have gone on a date with Nick. It had turned out for the best in the end, I told myself. Except that as I looked at the drinks menu, the words were all spinning in front of my eyes and my heart was still racing. I didn’t want him to have this effect on me anymore. I wouldn’t let him.
I stepped out onto the street, pulling my cardigan tightly around myself. The sky above me was a pure, bright blue, and I was sure it was going to warm up, but at the moment the air was chillier than it had looked from the window of our hotel room. A room that I wish I’d stayed in. What had I thought I was doing, going up on to the terrace alone? If I’d just stayed where I was, in bed with Nick, I wouldn’t have had to speak to Aidan and everything would have felt much less unsettling than it did now.
A café with racing green umbrellas was setting up its tables outside on the street. It looked like a deli as well as a café, with olde-worlde bay windows filled with enticingly displayed truffle oil, truffle chocolate, truffle paste and other truffle-based foodstuffs. Who knew you could do so much with a truffle?!
‘You like to sit?’ said a passing waiter, who was whisking two cups of espresso over to a couple already seated.
‘Sure. Yes, please,’ I replied.
He dropped off the coffees and circled back to show me to a table. I took a seat facing down the road, towards the Arno, and the round castle-like building at the bottom of the street. I ordered a coffee with milk. I’d lost my appetite since seeing Aidan and didn’t know how I was going to get through breakfast with everyone. Then I sat back in my chair, enjoying the way that the air felt fresh and clean and nothing like it did in London, checking my phone. Lou had already messaged, surprisingly. She was off to Palma today, shooting footage for the Majorca special; she must have an early flight.