Three Gold Coins Read online

  Lara sensed his nerves beneath the bravado. It was an awful feeling, she knew, to be vulnerable. ‘To be honest, I can’t say for sure.’ His eyes pinched in the corners. ‘But I would like to help you out for a while. If you’re happy to have me, of course. I can get you references and so on, if you like.’

  He nodded curtly, but seemed relieved that she wasn’t rushing away for the time being. ‘We need to agree on the terms of your employment,’ he said, trying to recover some control.

  ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘In fact, I have a notebook and pen here in my bag—let’s write it down, shall we?’ If real estate had taught her anything it was to take scrupulous notes.

  Samuel eyed her bag as she pulled out the notebook.

  Lara clicked her pen and smiled at him. ‘Ready.’

  He held out his hand for the notebook. She passed it to him, along with the pen. He scribbled down a figure with his right hand; the writing was shaky and the penmanship from a different era. He passed it back to her. ‘I’ll pay cash as you obviously don’t have a permit to work here. It will include your board in the villa and use of the car.’

  ‘The car?’

  ‘I have an Alfa Romeo. Bought it in 1995 and it’s still going.’ He said this proudly, with a lift of his chin. Everyone liked to feel they’d made a good purchase, especially when it was an expensive one.

  ‘Oh yes, I saw that,’ she said, remembering seeing the square-jawed bonnet of a black car under a terracotta-tiled carport with vines proliferating over it. Never having been interested in cars, her eyes had just ticked over it.

  ‘Hours are six to six a day, with a two-hour break in the middle.’

  Six a.m.

  ‘Hm. What about duties?’ she said, narrowing her eyes at Samuel. He was old, frail and in need of help, but she suspected he was far more cunning than one might think.

  ‘You’ll be my personal assistant,’ he said, narrowing his eyes back at her.

  ‘Give me some examples,’ she said, tapping her pen on the page.

  ‘Shopping, cooking, cleaning, taking me to appointments. I have to come back here in a couple of weeks to have this changed,’ he said with disgust, raising his left arm with the heavy cast.

  ‘What about helping you with showers and getting dressed, things like that?’

  Samuel huffed and looked to the ceiling. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And what about looking after the goats…the milking?’

  ‘Have the goats been milked this morning?’ he asked, his eyes widening, and she could see it clear as day: the goats were the thing he loved most now. She felt for him.

  ‘Matteo gave me a lesson in milking and we sorted it out.’

  Samuel nodded, obviously relieved. ‘Yes, I suppose I’ll need you to help with the goats too. And the garden.’

  The garden? She was hopeless at gardening. She loved planting seedlings with Daisy and Hudson, watering them, watching them grow and bloom, then picking the flowers or the beans or snow peas or strawberries. But that was it. Once that first flush of blooming life had passed her interest faltered.

  Lara considered the figure on the notepad in her hand and the extensive list of duties, uncertain if this was something she should commit to. She certainly wouldn’t abandon Samuel right now—he needed her. He’d been through a lot since yesterday morning and it was showing.

  Besides, where would she go? She had no plans, and a job like this would buy her more time as she wouldn’t have to dip into her savings. She felt somehow bonded to him now, as though she was meant to be here, ever since she had been in the right place at the right time at the Trevi Fountain. Speaking of which, why had he thrown his wedding ring away? She was dying to know. And as for herself, maybe keeping busy was just what she needed to stop having nightmares about…him. A spiralling sense of helplessness was to be avoided right now.

  ‘Okay, look. I can do all this, and I’m happy to help you. But I want Saturdays and Sundays off,’ she said firmly. If she was going to stay in Tuscany, she’d at least like to explore a little.

  Samuel raised his chin. ‘Saturday afternoons after one o’clock, and Sundays,’ he countered.

  ‘Alright, I agree. Deal?’ she said, holding out her hand to him.

  ‘Deal,’ he said, and shook it.

  8

  Samuel

  Samuel sat uncomfortably in the badante’s hire car, his wrist aching and his shoulder even more so, having been wrenched dreadfully in the fall. The sling was pinching a nerve in his neck. And this girl drove so slowly, barely reaching the speed limit. What a joke. No one obeyed speed limits here. Italy was a country of Life, capital L. And if he could turn back time he’d be enjoying that life, flying along the road on a Vespa, preferably with no helmet (yes, even despite what had happened to Lily) and no shoes. And above all, with his dear Assunta at his back, her strong arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek resting on his shoulder, her long hair flying out behind her, shouting with joy, shouting at him to go faster.

  That was the Italy he’d fallen in love with.

  He’d been born in London just months before the outbreak of the Second World War. His father served his duty overseas, coming home to London just once through the duration of the war, to their small flat in the East End. Long enough to heal a sprained knee and father a second son. But not long enough to fall back in love with Samuel’s mother. Henry went off to war again and never returned. Not because of death, as Samuel and his brother were told, but because of love. Marisa. He went to live in Italy, to start a whole new life, and they never saw him in the flesh again.

  It was only when Samuel was a teenager that his mother had shared the truth. Henry had left them. All of them. His father wasn’t a hero at all, dying in battle. He was a coward, a deserter of their family.

  So at twenty years of age, Samuel kissed his mother goodbye and set off to find this deserter, to push him up against a wall and make him explain what was so great about this country and that woman that he’d left his wife and children to live in poverty. Samuel’s childhood memories were of shivering under thin blankets and eating boiled tripe, of wearing the neighbours’ older boy’s shoes to school, and ducking threats of eviction from their home.

  But then Samuel had arrived in Italy. It was sunny and warm. It was colourful. It was full of music and art and affection and amazing food. It was in every way alive.

  And there was Assunta, with red ribbons in her long hair and a laugh so loud it made everyone turn to look. She threw her whole body into laughing—she arched her back and slapped her sides or someone else’s arm, her frame shimmering with the sound.

  Words flew out of her mouth with passion and urgency, whether in affection or admonishment, or both.

  Samuel, my darling heart, when will you fix the leak in the roof, eh?

  Tomorrow, my love, tomorrow.

  Both the country and a woman had stolen his heart and he never returned to England. It turned out Samuel was no different from his father. He didn’t even bother to find his old man. They’d both walked away from their lives and Samuel could understand why.

  Now, the badante pulled into his driveway and parked the car next to the old olive tree, and his memories drifted away like the shifting fogs of his childhood.

  ‘Home, sweet home,’ she said, smiling as she unbuckled herself.

  Sweet. That was definitely a word he would use to describe this girl. She was unlike any badante he’d had before, motivated by genuine concern for his welfare, he could tell. But he also knew enough about people to suspect she had secrets of her own.

  He let his eyes roam over the villa. It was still in great shape. That was the beauty of these buildings: they were so solid. They’d been standing for hundreds of years and would be for hundreds more.

  He looked down at the plaster cast around his wrist.

  If only he could say the same for his body.

  9

  Sunny

  It must have been some sort of universal law that children o
nly ever got sick and had to stay home from kindy when their mother had planned a huge workday. Hudson and Daisy flopped lethargically on the lounge watching children’s morning television, their cheeks flushed. Small ‘milk bottles’, containing watered-down juice and crazy straws, sat untouched on the coffee table in front of them.

  Sunny said goodbye to the kindy director, who’d informed her that hand, foot and mouth disease was going around, and disconnected the call.

  ‘Great. Now we’ll all get some cow disease and have the authorities coming around to shoot us.’

  She turned to see Daisy watching her, eyes wide.

  ‘Did I say that out loud?’ Sunny asked, grimacing.

  Daisy nodded.

  ‘Sorry, poppet. I was joking. It was a bad joke. You don’t have a cow disease. Just a regular human one.’

  Daisy knew a little too much about anatomy and physiology. She pored over pictures of germs and antibodies and white blood cells. Whenever she bumped into something, she would hold up the offended limb and say, ‘I’ve hurt my bones. Now I’ll have to go to hospital for an X-ray to see the jagged pieces.’

  Sunny felt Hudson’s forehead again—warm, but nothing that would ring alarm bells—then brought one of the drinks to him. ‘Come on, buddy, you need to drink something.’

  ‘My voice hurts,’ he said. At least he was talking today. Some days they could barely get a word out of him.

  ‘Me too,’ Daisy said, her lips moving but nothing else.

  ‘Mm. Open up and show me,’ Sunny told Daisy. She shone her mobile’s torch light into her daughter’s mouth. ‘Ulcers,’ she said. ‘Ouchy.’

  ‘Very ouchy,’ Daisy agreed.

  Paracetamol was what they needed. That should at least get them drinking and eating again.

  Sunny tapped her teeth together, frustrated, and went to the fridge to find the bottle, trying to let go of the great hopes she had for the old wooden door downstairs. It had a wonderful grid window divided into fifteen panes of glass. She had been planning to clean it up, sand it back, paint it, and then sand it again to make it ‘distressed’. It was part of a big project for a local bed and breakfast. The owners were renovating and redecorating throughout the house and relandscaping the grounds. The door was to be hung horizontally behind the desk in the reception area, each square filled with a heritage photo of the building. The owners had chosen her to do the job based on her Instagram photos of the items she’d completed over the past five years. This was the biggest job she’d taken on yet.

  She administered strawberry-flavoured paracetamol first to Hudson and then to Daisy, and both of them sucked it down willingly.

  Usually, Lara had Thursdays off from the agency, so if she hadn’t been in Italy she might have been able to help. And Eliza would normally step in whenever needed, but she had left early for some sort of women’s meet-up breakfast and said she wouldn’t be back till the afternoon. She might have said what she was doing after breakfast, but Sunny might not have been paying attention. Thoughts of him had been playing on her mind.

  Sometimes she thought of moving out, just her and the kids. This life of being planted in one spot—and at her mother’s house—wasn’t what she’d ever imagined for herself before the children came along. But her insufficient income was the barrier, and until she grew her business, or the kids were at school and she could take a second part-time job, she would have to be patient. It was just that every now and then the wind would blow a certain way, as if it was trying to lift her up and tumble her away like a fallen leaf, destination unknown. But then there was Lara, and Sunny had made that promise a long time ago to look after her.

  ‘Mama, what’s the difference between a giraffe and a penguin?’ Hudson asked, his usually serious dark eyes wide with mirth.

  ‘I don’t know, what?’

  ‘Flippers!’ He proceeded to fake laugh.

  ‘Funny,’ Sunny said, smiling, though obviously it wasn’t funny at all.

  ‘And now for my magic show,’ Hudson said in a ringmaster’s voice, pulling himself up to sitting. That paracetamol must have worked in seconds.

  ‘First, I’ll make you disappear.’ He pointed at Sunny and narrowed his eyes. ‘Abracadabra!’ He made a whooshing noise.

  Daisy sat up quickly, adjusting her glasses as if waiting for Sunny to actually disappear.

  Sunny joined in and began to pat her body. ‘Wait a minute, where am I? Where’d I go? I can’t see me.’

  Daisy’s eyes were wide. ‘You’re indivisible.’

  ‘Help!’ Sunny cried.

  ‘I’ll save you, Mama.’ Daisy launched off the couch and threw her arms around Sunny. ‘I’ve got you.’

  Hudson followed. ‘I’ve got you too.’

  They all fell onto the floor in a tangled mess.

  ‘No, I’ve got you,’ Sunny said, wrapping them up in a big bear hug. And she was never letting go.

  10

  Lara

  The first couple of days with Samuel went by in a daze. Surprising herself, Lara slipped into the new time zone and slept fairly well at night, only waking a few times to roll over and adjust her hips on the hard mattress. But she didn’t lie awake for hours on end, worrying about the day to come. Neither did she ruminate over the day that had just been, re-examining it from all angles to see if she had said or done the wrong thing. A lot of stress had simply fallen away. There was something about the Tuscan hills that was luring her into a place of hope that maybe the problem back home would just go away. With every hour that passed with no word of bad news from Sunny, Lara relaxed further into her surroundings as one might ease into a hot tub to relieve stiff and aching muscles, feeling each knot loosen and soften.

  There’d been some awkwardness between her and Samuel, like a cello and an electric guitar trying to find a melody, but that was to be expected. At least they both spoke the same language; that helped. She tried to be sensitive to Samuel’s needs and feelings. It must be dreadful to be alone at this stage of life and needing help from strangers. And it wasn’t even as if it was ‘the kindness of strangers’ anymore, because he was paying her to help him. She intuited that he would never be able to trust that she actually wanted to help him.

  Overall, he was coping well with his injury. He was clearly made of tough stuff. From time to time she had to help him get around the ground floor of the villa. He could still use his walking stick in his right hand, but with his left arm in the sling he was even more unsteady than he’d been before the accident. She also needed to help him get in and out of the shower. For the moment, he had a plaster cast on, which couldn’t get wet. Next week she would take him to the hospital and he would get a mouldable splint that she’d be able to take off for him. But for now he had to wear a plastic bag over the cast in the shower. He kept his underwear on too. He clearly hated the process, ordering her around and snapping at her.

  She drew on her experience of looking after the twins, brushing their teeth and hair, putting on their shoes and so on; this really didn’t seem so different. Except that back at home she wasn’t the primary carer; there was usually someone else around to help. For the first time, she was caring for a dependant on her own.

  The bathroom on the ground floor had already been modified for disability access. Lara noticed that Samuel was able to undress himself with one hand as long as there were no buttons involved, and she suddenly realised why older people often seemed to dress so shabbily. It wasn’t just that they were on limited budgets and bought cheap clothes, it was because it was easier to deal with trousers that you could simply pull down with one hand, rather than having to undo zips or buttons. And the same went for shirts. She practised it herself so she could understand what Samuel had to do, and found she could undo buttons with one hand but she certainly couldn’t do them up. She could only take off a shirt by leaning forward and pulling it from the back over her head and arms. Shoes were tricky—slip-ons were the key.

  Right now, it was lunchtime. Samuel was sitting in one of t
he green velvet wingback chairs facing the sleek piano. It was another hot day outside, but the villa’s thick stone walls provided significant insulation. Samuel had asked her to put on a record from his vintage collection: a Mozart concerto, number eight. It was uplifting, with lots of happy violins and a chatty piano. She wasn’t into classical music herself—she was more of a pop person. But it was surprisingly enjoyable there in the background and she found herself chopping tomatoes and fresh oregano from the garden with a lightness of touch. She was making pasta for lunch.

  Samuel had told her that he ate pasta every day, and there was a stash of packets in the pantry. She hadn’t had to go shopping yet, which was a relief; she wasn’t keen to tackle the roads again. Today she was making a rich red sauce using the tomatoes in his garden, making it up as she went, with onions, garlic, oregano and basil. She was going to present the pasta with grilled zucchini on top, curls of grated cheese and yeasty bread on the side.

  Her phone buzzed on the kitchen bench, its screen splattered by tomato juice. It was a message from Sunny. Lara’s heart leaped to her throat. But she quickly saw she needn’t have worried.

  Whatcha up to?

  Making pasta and sauce for lunch.

  Listening to Mozart.

  How bloody sophisticated. We just had fish

  and chips for dinner. It was puppet day at

  kindy but the kids have been sick so couldn’t

  go. The teachers decided since the kids

  missed out that I could pick up the ghastly

  marionettes to take home for the weekend.

  Now Chucky 1 and Chucky 2 are sitting at

  the table and staring at us.

  Don’t turn your back on them

  whatever you do!

  Pretty sure you’ve got the better deal.

  Love you.

  Love you too x

  Lara put her phone back on the bench, relieved that one more day had passed with no news of him.

  11

  Sunny