Page 43 of A Chance in a Million
They circled the estate side by side and she thanked him warmly for her present. ‘But I was deliberately not telling anybody that today’s my birthday. I didn’t want people to think they had to give me anything. How did you know?’
‘Army records are pretty detailed.’ From his voice, she was pretty sure he was smiling. ‘But don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. By the way, I thought you were younger. You look it.’
She almost told him he would look a lot younger without all the hair but stopped short. How he chose to look was his affair, not hers. Instead, she changed the subject to Flora.
‘It looked as though your grandma enjoyed herself. Dancing at ninety-five takes some doing.’
‘She’s a tough old bird.’ She could hear the affection in his voice. ‘Has she told you how she met my grandfather?’
‘No.How did it happen?’
‘He came through the roof of the orangery.’
‘He did what?’
‘He was piloting a Lancaster bomber that got hit by anti-aircraft fire and the crew had to bale out. Those old parachutes were notoriously difficult to steer and he landed in her father’s sub-tropical garden.’
‘Wow. And he wasn’t hurt?’
‘Not as badly as the pineapple plant he landed on from what she says. The thing is, this was in December 1944 and, although the Italians had signed the armistice, the Germans were still occupying northern Italy, but at great risk to himself and the family, my great-grandfather took him in and hid him until the German capitulation in early May 1945.’
‘And that’s how she met him and fell in love with him. How romantic.’
‘And dangerous. If they’d been caught, the family would have been shot or shipped off to a camp. It’s a frightening thought.’
‘It is indeed. I’m beginning to see how come your grandma’s such a strong character. It must run in the family.’
‘I hope you’re right…’
What exactly did he mean by that?
They carried on walking, chatting sporadically about trivialities, occasionally interrupted by the dog emerging from the shadows, his eyes glowing a ghostly green in the starlight. Then, when they finally returned to her door, there was an uncomfortable moment as she stopped and turned towards him, their faces barely a few feet apart. For a second or two she wondered if he might be thinking of kissing her and she was almost on the verge of throwing caution to the winds and kissing him when she saw him take two steps back.
‘Thanks again for tonight. I enjoyed myself far more than I was expecting to do.’
She had to make a conscious effort to calm her swirling emotions before answering. ‘And thank you for my present. I look forward to reading it.’
‘Don’t feel you have to. It’s just a token. Ciao.’
He and the dog turned away and she was left wondering at his choice of words – a token of what?
Chapter 24
A few days later, after her parents had gone off, Jane borrowed Dino and headed once more into the woods. Beatrice had returned to work in Rome, leaving Linda with her grandmother and great-grandmother for a few more weeks’ holiday, and Diana – who had eagerly stepped into the role of surrogate mother – had volunteered to look after the little girl at the villa for the day. David was tied up as usual but Jane always enjoyed the dog’s company and this left her to her thoughts. She had made a start on her book and a quiet walk on her own would give her time to think things through.
All was going well until Dino spotted a squirrel. One minute he was trotting happily along in front of her on a narrow path through the ferns and moss, the next he had charged off into the trees and all she could hear was furious barking, fast receding into the distance. She shouted his name but with no result, so she set off after him, determined not to let him out of earshot. The last thing she wanted was to lose David’s lovely dog.
Running through the jumbled mix of rocks, brambles, fallen branches and massive ants’ nests built of dead leaves and pine needles, she knew she had to be very careful. It would be easy to trip and break an ankle or worse. She ran for quite some time until she was streaming with sweat, still just about able to hear the dog ahead of her, before the barking suddenly stopped dead. Either he had caught the squirrel or he had given up. She hoped it was the latter and she renewed her shouts to him, even managing to produce a few piercing whistles like her father had taught her. She carried on in the direction of the last barking she had heard and was beginning to get really worried that she might have lost him when she was relieved to hear a muffled woof and a whining noise from just up ahead.
‘Dino, Dino, is that you?’
The sound came again and this time the whine sounded more sinister, almost as if he were in pain. Terrified that he might have managed to injure himself, she followed the sounds until she came to an outcrop of rock surrounded by a jumble of boulders and realised that the noise was coming from the middle of them. She scrambled gingerly over the slippery moss-covered rocks and suddenly discovered what had happened. Between two huge boulders was a crevice, little wider than her shoulders, that disappeared into darkness below. From the depths came the sound of whining.
‘Dino, is that you down there?’
The answer was an uncharacteristic yelp from below her feet, but it was unmistakably him. Sliding cautiously forward until she could peer into the fissure, she pulled out her phone and turned on the torch. By leaning forward she was able to see that the rock face, covered with a slippery coating of moss and lichen, sloped not quite vertically down into a cave. Inside it, three or four metres down, was the Labrador, his eyes shining back up at her in the torchlight. She was relieved to see him moving about normally so she flicked off the torch so as not to dazzle him and made comforting noises while debating what to do.
First things first, she called his master, praying that that there was a good signal and that he would respond. The sound of his voice came as a great relief.
