Page 23 of My Lemon Grove Summer
‘Luca?’ I go to ask the questions crashing round my head.
‘So, Zelda, isn’t it?’
We both speak at the same time.
‘You first.’ He crosses his legs and sips at his coffee, holding it tightly I notice.
‘I just wondered, um . . . How well do you know Giuseppe, the mayor?’
He puts down his coffee cup, and looks up at me.
‘Very well. He’s my uncle,’ he says matter-of-factly.
‘Oh.’ I’m not sure what to ask next. I’m still feeling a little dizzy, and all my thoughts have jumbled up.
‘He’s a good man. He was married to my aunt. My father’s sister. I have known him all my life. He grew up here, as did my aunt. They were childhood sweethearts.’
‘And your aunt?’
‘She died. Ten years ago now.’ He picks up his coffee cup again.
‘You’d trust him then? You think this project to bring us here is genuine?’
‘Oh yes, without a doubt. He wants new people here to bring the town back to life, to how it used to be.’
‘Not like the sour-faced man in the restaurant our first night.’ I give a grimace. ‘Thank God we don’t need to have anything to do with him. I don’t know what his problem is, but clearly he’s not happy about us being here, and frankly, I found him really rude.’ I take a mouthful of coffee. ‘There’s something creepy about him too. He was watching us the other day from the terrace of a big red villa. I recognised him from that hat. I mean, who wears a hat in this heat?’
‘Ah, the one in the hat. That would be my father,’ says Luca.
I practically choke on the coffee.
‘I’m so sorry! I always seem to do that. Open my big mouth without thinking.’
He throws his head back and laughs, showing off his long neck, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down.
‘I’m sorry about that night,’ he says, serious again. ‘I had to move you. My father insists on . . . well, preferential treatment. It’s always been that way round here.’
‘And I’m sorry for what I said about him.’
He holds up a hand, a tiny smile lurking at the corner of his mouth.
‘Please, there’s nothing you can say about my family that I haven’t heard already.’
I look out at the lemon grove, leaves and fruit waving in the wind.
‘You have a beautiful place here.’
‘Thank you. It was my grandfather’s and grandmother’s, my nonna. That’s their initials on the gate. My grandfather wasn’t from here; he was from the mainland. But when he met Nonna, he realised how much she loved this place and knew she would never leave. So he gave up his life on the mainland and came here to be a lemon farmer. He used to say, “No one ever became a lemon farmer for anything other than love.” ’
I want to ask him why his lemon grove is the only one I’ve seen tended, but my thoughts flip back to Giuseppe and the project, and Luca’s father bullying us out of our seats at the restaurant.
‘I’m taking it, then, that if your father likes preferential treatment, and that’s how things have always been done, he’s not keen on change.’
‘Exactly,’ says Luca, draining his coffee.
‘And he’s not keen on a whole load of new people coming in?’ I suggest.
He takes a moment and then repeats, ‘Exactly,’ and the town’s reluctance to welcome us is beginning to make sense.
