Page 9 of Far from Home
‘Because that’s what you do. Well, go on, deny it. Tell me you aren’t preparing a list of things you’ll need to do.’
She just shrugged sheepishly and carried on with her survey.
Halfway along the wall of the living room was an ancient wooden staircase that led up to the first floor. It creaked ominously as they climbed – and it was a long way up. On the upper floor they found no fewer than six large bedrooms and a study. There was a big, solid wooden bed, stripped of all bedding, and some hefty matching furniture in the first room, with two beds and a dressing table in the next. Otherwise, the other rooms were quite empty, except for the study at the far end of the corridor. When they got there, Amy paused at the door and looked around.
It felt strange, almost improper, to be invading this very personal space. The floor was covered in odd bits and pieces, ranging from a couple of tennis racquets and a fishing rod to what looked like a rusty cannonball, while the desk was piled high with books and papers. Light filtered in through the louvred shutters as far as the other wall, which was filled by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, packed with books. A battered old Remington typewriter took pride of place on the desk, and alongside it, a pen was lying on top of a pad as if the owner had just popped out to make himself a coffee. But, of course, Amy found herself thinking with a twinge of regret, he wouldn’t be coming back ever again – whoever he had been.
‘He certainly liked reading, didn’t he?’ Gavin was clearly amazed at the number of books squeezed onto the shelves that lined the walls.
He went over to the window, twisted the handle to open it and unfastened the shutters. As he pushed them outwards, sunlight came flooding into the room.
‘Wow! There’s quite a view from up here.’
Amy joined him at the window. They were now at the back of the house, looking out over a sea of vines that stretched up the hill above them. The leaves of the vines were a wonderful bright green, not yet burnt brown by the onslaught of the summer sun. Nevertheless, even now in early June, the stone surround to the window frame was hot. High summer here was likely to be boiling. Amy wondered how cold it would get in winter. She glanced sideways at Gavin.
‘Did you see any radiators?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s what I thought. Although it seems almost unbelievable on a day like this, I imagine it can get pretty chilly here in the winter. Take a look at that heater.’
In a corner of the room was an antiquated electric fire. It looked as if it had been manufactured around the year of Mr Slater’s birth, or even earlier. The twisted brown flex that snaked out of the back of it looked even more potentially deadly than the gas hose downstairs.Central Heating Systemwent onto Amy’s mental list. This was rapidly getting longer and longer and it was time to write it down. She picked her way through the piles of clutter across to the desk and sat down on the fine old wooden swivel chair. The floor and the chair both creaked as she did so.
She located a pencil and picked up a piece of paper to write on while Gavin poked about on the bookshelves.
‘I wonder if he was a historian. There are loads of history books here – in English and in Italian.’
‘Who knows? Maybe the lady across the road can fill us in.’ Another thought occurred to Amy. ‘You said there wasn’t a mobile signal; what about an Internet connection? I haven’t seen a computer, so does this mean the Internet hasn’t reached Sant’Antonio yet?’
‘By the look of it, he only used that old typewriter. How antiquated can you get!’
While he checked his phone again and shook his head, she found a clean sheet of paper and started to write. AfterNew Electrics,Internet ConnectionandPlumbing, she looked up. ‘I haven’t seen a bathroom up here, have you?’ He shook his head so Amy addedNew Bathroom upstairsand they headed back downstairs.
Chapter 5
One peek into the bathroom on the ground floor was enough for Amy to see that it was going to need a complete makeover so that, too, was added to her list. Gavin was quick to point out the ramifications of this for them tonight.
‘Well, it’s pretty clear we aren’t staying here, are we? Where’s the nearest hotel?’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘And I can’t get any kind of Internet connection anywhere in here. Have we somehow travelled back in time to the eighties?’ His tone made clear his disapproval.
‘That restaurant in the square, didn’t it haveHotelon the sign? I’ll go and ask Signora Grande in a minute. She’ll know. If not, the coast’s only half an hour away or there’s Pisa itself. There must be loads of hotels in this area. It’s all right, Gav, you won’t have to sleep in a ditch.’
Directly opposite the bathroom was a door. It was locked, but the key was in the lock. Amy turned it and pulled the door open, revealing a steep, narrow staircase, no doubt leading down to the garage beneath the house. The light on the stair wasn’t working, so she waited at the top, holding the door open so as to give enough light for Gavin to make his way tentatively down to the bottom.
‘It’s all right.’ His voice floated back up as lights flickered on. ‘The lights down here are still working.’
Amy wedged the top door open with an old stool and went down. The fairly modern strip lights in the garage looked a little less dangerous than the ones upstairs and allowed them to take a good look around. The floor was bare earth and it occupied the same surface area as the floors above. It was more like a warehouse or a cellar than a garage. Along one wall were three absolutely huge wooden barrels mounted horizontally on concrete supports, each almost the size of a small van. Beyond them were various barely recognisable objects, some made of wood and some rusty metal. Presumably these had all been used for winemaking or farming. At the front of the building were the two solid wooden doors that gave access to the parking area by the main gates. The rest of the space to their right was a mass of clutter, with everything from antique agricultural machinery, including half a tractor with no wheels, to bales of equally ancient straw. The whole untidy mass appeared to be welded together under a dense canopy of dusty cobwebs.
A vast woodpile started beside the entrance doors and ran halfway along the side wall of the building, piled up to shoulder height all the way, and she wandered over to it.
‘Well, at least there’s no shortage of firewood.’ But if the fireplace upstairs was going to be the only source of heat, she knew it would be woefully inadequate when winter came. How had the mysterious Mr Slater managed?
Gavin threw in a caveat. ‘Just mind what you’re doing if you start lifting those logs, though. God knows what nasty bugs and spiders live in among them, let alone rats and mice.’
Amy’s mind had been working very much along the same lines. Strange, curved tracks in the earth floor made her wonder if there might even be snakes down there. She shuddered, suddenly quite keen to get back up to the house again.
‘I think I’ve seen enough for now.’ She turned back towards the stairs. ‘Shall we head back up?’
She noticed that he didn’t hang about either.
Back up on the ground floor, Gavin made a welcome discovery. In one of the kitchen cupboards there were a dozen unmarked bottles of red wine. In the cupboard directly above, he located a corkscrew. He picked up a bottle, pulled the cork and held it up hopefully.
‘Seen any glasses?’
