Page 29 of A Wedding in Tuscany

Jean-Luc wanders back to me as Sarah jogs over to Josh and they line up a selfie. ‘Hungry, chérie?’

‘Oui, j’ai très faim.’ He smiles the special smile that’s just for me, one I get to see often but always after answering him in French?even if my accent is très mal.

‘Bien. Josh, Sarah?’ They come over to us. ‘We have great hunger. Should we have lunch?’

‘Oh, yeah! Actually, I know just the place if it’s still there. They have the best wild boar pappardelle in San Gimignano!’

I’m doubtful that a restaurant Sarah frequented in her touring days?a dozen years ago?will still be there, let alone still serve the best pasta in the town, but she seems confident. She scans the piazza?getting her bearings, I imagine?then strides off, calling, ‘This way.’

Not only is the restaurant still there, but she was right about the wild boar pasta. It’s without a doubt the best pasta I’ve ever had and I am now utterly ruined for Prezzo.

After an epic lunch and more mooching?the guys did climb the tower, Josh returning to us energised, like he’d just had a good workout, and Jean-Luc flushed and wearing a sheen of sweat?we finally called it a day and drove back to the castle in the late afternoon. None of us were particularly hungry, so we doused ourselves in Aerogard, opened a bottle of Chianti, and sat out on the balcony to watch the sky turn from blue to pink to orange and finally settle into an inky darkness dotted by pinpricks of light.

Glorious.

Tomorrow, the others will start to arrive and if that folder Sarah brought with her is any indication, we’ll all be assigned tasks and given deadlines. I hope she’s scheduled in some fun?outings and such?though I suspect that her organisational efforts are as much about avoiding thoughts of the ‘BIG 4-0’ as they are about Sarah being Sarah?freakishly organised and a little bit bossy.

I need to get some time with her?proper sister-to-sister time. Perhaps she can help me with my thing. I mean, where are my husband and I going to live and why hasn’t he asked me about it? Are we going to still be living in different countries in thirty years and then one day, one of us will say, ‘Why didn’t we ever live together?’ and the other will reply, ‘Well, you never brought it up’?

Around nine, I stretch my hands above my head and yawn loudly. ‘We boring you?’ Sarah asks.

‘No, just shattered. Bedtime, methinks.’ I stand and drop a kiss on Josh’s cheek, then hug my sister from behind. She squeezes my arms tightly as I rest my chin on her head. God, I love her. I can’t believe we’re here?together. Best wedding present ever.

I release her and reach out for Jean-Luc’s hand. He clasps mine, then kisses it. ‘I will be in soon, chérie.’ I open the double doors leading to our room and push aside the gauzy curtains, and I’m just inside the doorway when I realise that I’m not alone. A loud buzzing draws my eye upward and the biggest wasp I have ever seen is doing laps of the room.

‘Um … um … hello? Help!’ I call, my eyes fixed on the beast invading our bedroom. It must be at least two inches long. And how the hell did it get in here? I sense the others behind me, bottlenecked in the doorway.

‘Oh, shit,’ says Josh. ‘How fucking huge is that?’

‘Oh, my god,’ says Sarah.

Jean-Luc is silent beside me, his mouth agape?almost in wonder. ‘Une guêpe,’ he says quietly.

‘Sorry?’

‘En français, it is une guêpe.’

‘That’s wonderful, darling, but I hardly think this is the time for a vocabulary lesson. Do you know how to get the bloody guêpe out of our room?’

‘Cat,’ warns Sarah, chastising me for being rude.

‘Sorry, darling.’ Jean-Luc shrugs?I’m forgiven?but while we’ve been conversing, I’ve lost track of the wasp. ‘Crap, where did it go?’ I am not sleeping in here with a wasp that may or may not want to kill me.

‘There,’ says Josh, pointing to the air-conditioning unit.

‘He looks like he’s doing a dance,’ says Sarah.

‘Maybe he’s calling for the other wasps?“Hey, you guys! Fresh meat in here!”,’ jokes Josh.

‘He’d better bloody not be,’ I growl, glaring up him. ‘We have to get it out of here. What about the Aerogard?’ I ask Sarah.

‘It’d probably just piss it off?and we need that for the mozzies. Oh, speaking of which.’ She shepherds us further into the room and closes the doors behind us. Now we’re locked in the room with the wasp-beast.

‘Why on earth are all the insects in Tuscany so bloody huge?’ I screech.

‘I’m going to get a broom,’ says Josh. He bravely passes directly under the wasp-beast on his way out, while the rest of us just stare at it, watching it do its evil little dance. Josh is back in moments with one of those old-fashioned straw brooms, passing under it for a second time and joining us in the middle of the room.

‘What are you thinking?’ Jean-Luc asks.

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