Page 59 of My Lemon Grove Summer
‘Could be the answer to all our problems!’ Lennie laughs, and I swish at him with a tea towel.
‘I’m going to clear up in town,’ he says. ‘See if I can come up with any ideas. You stay here, clear your head.’
‘Okay,’ I say as he bends and kisses me on the cheek, and I feel grateful that we’re not going to do the rather wet-lips kissing again.
I turn back to the mass of fruit spread across the kitchen table and push up my sleeves. There’s only one thing I can think of doing right now, and I don’t stop until all the verdello have been used up, throwing my frustration into peeling them and steeping them in the alcohol Luca has sourced for me from an out-of-town supplier, hoping to think of something that will stop us having to leave this place; that life will hand us something other than lemons.
Chapter Thirty
I look at the bottles of verdello limoncello lined up on the kitchen floor. The bottles are a bright light green – the same colour as the ribbon I found. I pick one up and slide it into my bag, then hesitate and pick up another.
‘I’m off to work,’ I tell Lennie.
‘Wish I was,’ says Lennie, looking unusually fed up, his hands shoved into his pockets. ‘Anything I can help you with?’
I wish I could think of something, but I can’t.
Over the past few days, whilst the verdello had been steeping I got to work cleaning and pressing the clothes Giuseppe gave me. Valerie helped with any little repairs and Tabitha photographed them on her iPad, and set up a website to sell them on. Handbags, shoes, coats and dresses. The only thing I haven’t put up on the website is Nonna’s handbag, which I have started using on a daily basis. I love it. It sits over my arm now. I reach up and kiss Lennie on the cheek.
‘Something will turn up,’ I say, sounding more positive than I feel, ruffling his hair and then thinking that it’s not a very sexy thing to do. I love Lennie; he’s my best friend and I don’t want to lose him. The fact that he has no interest in sex with me right now is something I can live with. Because I realise – if I’m being honest with myself, and with a certain amount of relief – that I don’t have any interest in having sex with him either. But that does mean that us having a family is never going to happen and I’m going to have to get used to the idea. That part of my life is over, I tell myself, but it hurts trying to shut the door on it. And then I wonder if Lennie is feeling it too. I mean, family was one of the things we both wanted from the pact. Is he coming to the same conclusion as me? That this is as good as it gets? Is being with me going to be enough for him? I wonder if he feels let down in some way.
I walk into town, dodging what looks to be a fallen balcony. A pile of rubble that could easily have killed someone. This whole town is falling apart, literally. I wave to Sophia, checking that her mother doesn’t see me, and she grins from her seat under the shop awning, pen poised over a book, and raises her free hand. I carry on to the lemon grove and call out to Luca when I arrive. Rocca stands stiffly and comes over to greet me. I pat her head as she gives me a polite sniff then goes and flumps under a tree out of the hot sun. It’s nearly August. In just one month I will be getting married.
‘Ciao!’ I hear Luca’s voice from the balcony of his apartment. ‘Come up.’ He waves a hand.
‘Ciao,’ I reply as I push back the beaded curtain and step into the cool interior. He has notepads and drawings spread out over the coffee table that he carefully gathers up as I walk in. He kisses me on both cheeks, and I can’t help but breathe in his citrus aftershave.
‘Coffee before we work?’ he says, walking over to the kitchen area and taking down a Kilner jar of ground coffee from a shelf.
‘Actually, I brought you this,’ I say, feeling suddenly shy. What if it’s wrong? What if it shouldn’t be that bright green colour? ‘I don’t know if it’s okay,’ I add. ‘I’d really like to serve it at the wedding. We don’t have lots of money for champagne, so I thought . . . Will you try it?’
Luca looks at the bottle, then goes to a dresser in the living room and takes down two glasses. I glance around. There is a large map on the wall with different-coloured pins in it.
‘What’s this?’ I ask, studying it.
‘Places I’ve been and others I’d like to visit,’ he says, taking the bottle from me. ‘The red pins are the places I’ve been to; the blue are the ones I plan to visit some day.’
‘When your father . . .’ I stop myself from blurting out the obvious.
He shrugs, opening the bottle.
‘When I feel I can,’ he says.
‘Where would you go first?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Paris, or even London. See if I can spend some time working as a tailor, get into one of the fashion houses there maybe. I have friends from college working there and asking me over.’
He opens the bottle and I suddenly feel nervous and a bit foolish offering him this drink that is the colour of alien snot.
‘Maybe you should save it, try it when I’m not here. It’s probably not quite right . . .’
‘Let us try it now,’ he insists.
‘No, you don’t have to . . .’
But he ignores my protests and takes the glasses and the bottle out onto the balcony overlooking the lemon grove and the sparkling sea beyond. He hands me a glass of the thick, practically neon-coloured liquid, and I hold it nervously.
‘I wanted it to be ready for the wedding.’ I look at it suspiciously. ‘But what if—’
