Page 46 of My Lemon Grove Summer
‘Ciao!’ I call. ‘Luca!’
A dog wanders out from the shadows of the lemon trees and barks, and I stand still as it trots over to investigate me. It’s a big, thickly furred dog. Like a German shepherd but not quite. I let it sniff around me whilst I breathe in the scent of the lemon grove. It’s like, well, heaven. Once the dog has carried out its security check, it goes back into the shadows, and I call out again.
‘Luca! Hello?Buongiorno?’
The dog is barking again, urgently now, and I follow it through the lemon grove, stepping down the terraces. The trees look fantastic, full of big fat lemons like yellow cricket balls.
‘Luca?’ I’m starting to get anxious. What if something has happened to him? A falling-out over the lemons? A fight? ‘Luca!’ I shout, my heart pounding.
Suddenly a head pops up from, well, a hole in the ground.
‘I see you met my dog. This is Rocca. She is a Sicilian shepherd dog. Acane di mannara.’ He smiles and rubs her head as he steps out of the hole. ‘This breed has been here since the Bronze Age, but sadly, like the rest of the inhabitants, they are dying out.’
I stroke the dog’s head and it pants contentedly.
‘What were you doing down there?’
‘Ah . . . you caught me,’ he says, brushing his hands together.
‘Doing what?’
He sighs and pushes his hair back from his face.
‘Can I trust you, Zelda?’ he says seriously.
‘Yes, I think so,’ I say. Being trustworthy is something I definitely am. Too trusting for my own good. I think back to the ghostings.
‘Something tells me I can too,’ he says quietly, and my mouth goes dry. He pauses. ‘I’m delivering lemons.’
I look at him quizzically.
‘Down a hole?’
He nods and smiles lazily. ‘Do you want to see?’
I frown. ‘Do I want to go down a hole?’
‘It’s not just a hole.’ His smile widens. ‘They’re tunnels. They were created by the Greeks, to store water, years ago. Do you want to see?’
‘Tunnels,’ I say.
‘They lead out to the coast. There are a lot of them in Sicily, mainly round Palermo. But like most things, they have been taken over by the Mafia – secret tunnels that can get them where they want to be without being seen.’ He shrugs sadly.
‘What are you doing in them then?’
‘Like I told you. Delivering lemons. As you might have noticed, no one else farms lemons round here any more. This little corner, my grandparents’ first lemon grove, has been overlooked. I grow lemons here and then deliver them to be sent to my British agent. They get picked up away from town and shipped out from there.’
I look at him, not sure if he’s telling the truth or teasing me.
‘Do you want to see?’ His eyes twinkle, and I know that if he told me the man in the moon was real, I’d believe him, and yet I hardly know him!
I shake my head. ‘No. It’s okay.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t do confined spaces, sorry. Just . . . just something that happened, y’know.’
I brush it off, but the feeling of claustrophobia comes rushing up to meet me. The memories of my childhood hand in hand with the clammy feeling of fear. The nights I would huddle in my bedroom cupboard when I was still living with my mum, hiding from the chaos of her party lifestyle, the rude awakenings when she would fill the space with strangers there for a good time. It had felt like my safe place, until the day a boy locked me in a cupboard in the care home, bringing back all those feelings of fear and uncertainty.
