‘Santo took me there on the way here,’ Ella said. ‘I am going to visit my aunts when we finish shooting.’
‘And your mother, does she love Australia? I have heard so many good things about it.’
And Ella sat quiet for a moment, sipped on her limoncello and answered carefully. ‘It’s a beautiful country,’ Ella said, ‘but my mother misses home an awful lot.’
‘Of course,’ Teresa said. ‘But she is happy with her choice?’
And she looked at Ella for a very long time. There was a moment, a long one, and one Ella decided where it would be prudent to play by very old rules. It was, Ella told herself, a practice run for her aunties. ‘Very happy,’ Ella said and returned Teresa’s smile, looking up in relief when Santo came in.
‘Take Ella and show her the winery,’ Teresa said. ‘Choose something nice for dinner tonight.’
‘You have to get back, don’t you?’ Santo said to Ella. It was nice that he offered the choice as to whether they stay longer, but Ella knew it would be rude to leave now, knew from her mother what was silently expected.
‘No.’ Ella smiled. ‘I’ve got everything done. Dinner would be lovely.’
‘She seems to like you.’ They were walking in the grounds, through the vines and out to the winery. She’d have loved to take a photo, to tell her mum she was here, but she wasn’t sure that that suggestion would be particularly welcomed.
‘You’re quiet,’ she commented, because Santo rarely was.
‘It feels different to be here and know he isn’t.’
‘Sorry...’ Ella could have kicked herself for her own insensitivity. ‘I didn’t think.’
‘No!’ Santo shook his head. ‘I am not upset.’
‘I do understand that whatever has gone on, still he was your grandparent.’
‘It’s not fond memories I’m having, Ella.’ Santo said no more than that. They walked into the cool dark winery and she wondered if here he might try something, but instead Santo spent an awful long time choosing the wine.
‘This one,’ he said. ‘This was from the year you were born.’
‘I didn’t know you knew the year I was born.’
‘I read your résumé.’ He gave her a smile and walked over, lifted his hand to her hair, just wondered about her, really. ‘You know I always wanted to have sex in here.’
He was just so direct.
‘With your grandmother waiting in the house?’
‘That doesn’t come into my fantasy.’
‘Well, it’s a bit off-putting in mine,’ Ella said. She was terribly wary of him, trying to keep things light when she felt anything but, trying to keep her head on during a most difficult of days.
‘I miss you.’ He watched her frown.
‘You don’t know me.’
‘That’s what I miss.’
He didn’t even try to kiss her, did nothing other than take her hand and walk back to the house. She just couldn’t read his mood.
The food was heavenly—fennel salad dripping in the best olive oil Ella had tasted, and a huge lasagne, but the Sicilian way, stuffed with Italian sausage and cheeses.
Santo sat at the table, chatted and spoke and smiled in all the right places, and she tried to fathom him, but couldn’t. He looked up and caught her staring, and smiled till she blushed as he stared back and he pressed his foot to her leg just once, but it wasn’t Santo.
It was like watching an actor play his part.
‘Do you remember my birthday?’ Teresa smiled and recounted tales of supposed happier times, but Ella watched a muscle flicker in Santo’s cheek as Teresa mentioned Benito’s children and asked after Luca and Gio, though she was wise enough perhaps to not mention Matteo. ‘And that time Lia hid and we could not find her for hours. You were so young then. Grace was still alive.’
‘Grace?’
‘Lia’s mum,’ Santo explained. ‘Benito was married before Simona.’ He was so much more open here, but then so was Teresa, Ella realised. She must assume, given that Santo had brought her here, that they were serious.
‘She lived with us,’ Teresa explained. ‘When Grace died.’ And she smiled over to Santo, and Ella watched as there was just a brief pause before Santo duly smiled back, not that Teresa noticed. She turned her attention to Ella.
‘Will you tell your mother that you ate with me?’ Her eyes twinkled.
‘I can’t wait to tell her.’ Ella laughed, because she’d been sitting there thinking just that. For the first time in a very long time, she actually missed her mother, wished that today was something they could have properly shared.
‘She will be shocked, and she will warn you about me, but also she will love to know!’ Teresa promised, and it was as if she had met her mother—she just knew what she was like. ‘She will want every single detail,’ Teresa said as the maid brought in a huge tray of sweet canelloni, ‘but even as you give her the details she will tell you that you should not have come!’
‘Then she’ll ask me to tell her about your furniture.’
He watched as the two women sat laughing, and thank God he’d brought Ella with him, because Santo wasn’t sure he could have got through this visit alone, and certainly not as well. Memories were churning. The happy birthdays his nonna all too frequently regaled were not quite as perfect, if Santo remembered correctly.
And he was quite sure he did.
Surprisingly it was Santo who declined coffee.
He just wanted out.
Even as they left, Teresa was plying her with bottles of olive oil and limoncello and, even as they climbed in the car, offering them to come back in for coffee.
‘We really have to go,’ Santo said. ‘We need to get back to the Olympic Village.’
Thankfully his little dig went straight over Teresa’s head.
‘That wasn’t funny,’ Ella said, her cheeks scalding as he started up the car.
‘I thought it was.’ Santo smirked. ‘You know, I think sex actually enhances performance.’
‘I’ll draft a letter to the IOC for you,’ Ella said tartly. ‘I’m sure they’ll welcome your thoughts.’
‘Do you?’ She turned and saw that his expression was serious. ‘Can you talk to me? Can you tell me why you were so upset when I came to your room this afternoon?’
And he’d shared so much with her today that maybe she could. There was this argument raging but it was dimming. Quite simply, with Santo she wanted to share—she just didn’t know how. ‘It’s my mum’s birthday today,’ Ella admitted. ‘I’d just called her when you came to my room.’ Santo said nothing. ‘I find it really hard to talk to her.’
‘You don’t get on?’
‘I don’t agree with some of her choices,’ Ella said and then amended, ‘I don’t agree with a lot of her choices.’
She said nothing more for a while, and neither did Santo. He was waiting for her to talk to him and she tried to a couple of times, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. It was twenty-seven years of silence that she was fighting to break and it was especially difficult to break that silence to a man.
Except Santo was like no man she had ever met and maybe she was starting to actually trust him, maybe it was time that she opened up. As they drove in to the hotel and the valet approached, just as he went to open her door, Ella spoke.
‘My father is an alcoholic.’
As she went to climb out of the car he caught her wrist and gently pulled her back. ‘For that you get a kiss.’
He ignored the open doors, the people standing in the foyer, the valet waiting to take his keys. Instead, as promised, he gave her a kiss for telling, and she was crying as he did so, because she’d never actually said those words before. Then his tongue was on her cheeks, taking her tears. It was a very private, very thorough kiss, in a very public place, but right now, neither cared a fraction.
‘Let’s get inside,’ Santo said.
Once they were out, he took her hand and they walked towards the hotel. Clearly he had to let it go, ought to let go, for they were about to step into the revolving door, but it was as if they were glued together, as if neither could bear to be apart, not even for a second, and they walked into the door together.
‘He beats her.’ She just said it out loud in a tiny space and, oblivious of onlookers, not caring that no one could now get in or out of the hotel, as promised, he rewarded her with his mouth, just pulled her right into him. They were the only two people left in the world. He could have taken her there had he wanted to. There was just this slow unfurling of her heart as he held and kissed her, and in that moment, Ella truly thought she could tell him anything. For the first time in her life, she trusted another with her heart.
‘Now,’ Santo said, ‘I take you to bed and then after—’ because there would be after ‘—if you want to, we can talk some more.’
Ella, weak from admission, was grateful for the chance of a reprieve from her confessions. As he pushed the glass door, as they walked through the entrance, all she wanted was his bed, his warmth, the shield of him that for far too long she had denied.
‘Santo Corretti...’