My phone beeped and I picked it up, hoping it was Lou with some encouraging words or one of her wise quotes. It wasn’t, it was bloody Tim.
anything to send in? want to start putting the city break teaser together.
Great.
‘I’m going to have to pop out and shoot some footage,’ I said. ‘Tim’s hassling me.’
Nick tutted. ‘Tell him you’re on holiday.’
‘I’ve tried that.’
‘Well then, I’ll come with you.’
Nick threw back the covers, getting up. I’d been looking forward to going out on my own and he’d really annoyed me bringing his mum into the equation when it came to our wedding date. I could just tell she was chomping at the bit to get full control over everything from the invitationsto the honeymoon. She’d probably already picked out the bridesmaids’ dresses – Versace or something, no doubt.
‘I think it would be easier on my own,’ I said tactfully. ‘It’ll be boring for you.’
But Nick was already pulling on his (ankle-skimming) trousers and I realised that I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Maybe Nick was more like his mum than I’d realised. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I came to think about it, he didn’t seem to take no for an answer, either.
I picked up my camera and my bag. ‘Come on then,’ I said. ‘You can be my assistant. And absolutely no complaining.’
Nick grinned. ‘I will follow your every command. Without a hint of a whinge.’
I gave him a dubious look. ‘I thought you hated other people telling you what to do.’
He opened the door, ushering me through. ‘Ah, but you’re not just “other people”.’
Chapter Nine
We’d found ourselves back in the same square yet again: Piazza della Signoria. I wondered why all roads led to this place, as though it had once been the central point of Florence. Tour guides were holding up coloured flags to alert their party to their whereabouts. Horses pulling carts clip-clopped across the square and the sun, which had just begun to set, was illuminating the rooftops with flashes of gold.
‘Can I actually have a proper look around this time, please?’ I said to Nick, strutting off in the direction of a dramatic sculpture depicting a powerful-looking man with young children all around him and horses spouting water from their mouths.
I peered at it. Itfeltimportant. Mind you, everything in Florence felt as though it had the potential to be a masterpiece. Loads of artists had lived or worked in Florence at one point, I’d discovered: Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo. It was amazing how creative this place had been hundreds of years ago and perhaps no surprise that it had been coined the Jewel of the Renaissance.
‘What’s the meaning of this statue?’ I asked as Nick appeared next to me. ‘Do you know?’
Since he’d been to Florence ‘so many times’, I imagined he must know quite a bit about the place, more than you could pick up from reading guidebooks, anyway. It was hard,I thought, to take in all those dates and facts out of context.
‘It’s Neptune,’ said Nick. ‘Cosimo the first of the Medici family built the Palazzo Vecchio,’ he explained, pointing at the huge building next to us, ‘for his wife, but she came from somewhere by the sea, and she didn’t like all this terracotta and stone. So he built this fountain partly for her so that she could look out of the window and imagine that she was by the ocean.’
‘So romantic,’ I said, getting my camera out and doing a sweeping, panoramic shot of the whole square, ending on Neptune himself. ‘David!’ I exclaimed, spotting a large statue of a naked man on the other side of the palazzo. ‘This is him, isn’t it? But then, wasn’t he at that Galleria place?’
Nick followed me, laughing.
‘What are you smirking at?’ I asked good-naturedly.
‘This one’s fake,’ said Nick.
‘This is a fakeDavid?!’
Nick took a photo of me looking up at it with a confused expression on my face. ‘Weird, isn’t it? The real thing used to be here, but then they moved it to the Galleria dell’Accademia in eighteen hundred and something,’ he explained. ‘They built this to replace it. The realDavidis much more impressive.’
‘Can we go and see it?’ I asked.
Nick looked at his watch. We’d only been out for about half an hour and he was clearly chomping at the bit to get back already.
‘Come on,’ I coaxed. ‘Even your mum said I couldn’t come to Florence and not seeDavid.’