Page 51 of A Wedding in Tuscany

Mum has offered to drive this time and, as she hates following directions ‘from a machine’, I sit up front with her so I can navigate. Lins and Lou sit directly behind us, and Jaelee and Cat, who are the tiniest of us, sit in the very back of the four-wheel drive in the ‘kids’ seats’, as Jaelee called them.

‘So, you’re not telling me anything about where we’re going?’ asks Cat. A chorus of, ‘No,’ and in the mirror on the sun visor above my head, I catch her faux pout.

Our journey takes us from the winding back roads of Montespertoli onto the motorway and then off the motorway along more winding back roads. After an hour of driving, the warm Tuscan sun high in the late morning sky, Mum parks and we spill from the vehicle onto the gravel driveway of a sprawling resort, replete with rustic brick buildings with terracotta tiled roofs, and stone pathways lined with potted olive trees.

‘We’re moving!’ Cat announces, playfully. We’re not moving?we love our castle?but we will be spending the day here.

‘Buongiorno!’ A short, roundish man with thick grey hair, a ruddy complexion, and a broad smile waves to us from the front steps of the resort.

‘Buongiorno,’ we all reply together.

‘Benvenute,’ he says. ‘Welcome. You are Caterina and her friends, sì?’

‘Sì,’ I reply. ‘Hello, mi chiamo Sarah.’ He nods, acknowledging that he knows who I am, which I should hope so after weeks of emailing each other?though his face is much rounder in real life than in the little thumbnail affixed to his emails. He shakes my hand with both of his, still smiling. ‘And this is my sister, Catherine.’

‘Ah, lasposa! The bride!’ he declares, kissing her on each cheek. Cat grins at him. ‘Lei è bellissima.’ Ordinarily, an older gentleman?a stranger no less?declaring how beautiful you are could be considered inappropriate?cringeworthy even?but Signor Fabbri is warm and endearing, and he beckons us to follow him around the side of a large, quintessentially Tuscan building.

We emerge onto a wide terrace that sits alongside a pool. ‘Oh, my god,’ says Cat. I catch Jaelee’s eye and we grin. We knew she’d love it here?and wait until she finds out what we have planned!

‘This place is neat,’ says Lou. Cat wasn’t joking about Lou’s vernacular?it’s straight out of the 1950s. Any moment now, she’ll say ‘phooey’ or ‘darn’.

‘Come, come this way,’ our host calls. He leads us past the neatly arranged sun loungers by the pool?oh, we are so going to lounge on those later?and into a long building. My eyes take a sec to adjust after the brilliant sunshine. ‘Oh, my god!’ says Cat again. We’re in an art studio and around the perimeter of the room are large easels, each with a thick swath of paper clipped to it with large silver bull clips. On tall tables next to the easels are sets of charcoals.

‘We’re drawing?’ Cat asks excitedly.

‘Life drawing,’ says Jaelee.

Cat bounces up and down. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that!’

‘Yes, you’ve mentioned it once or twice,’ teases Jaelee drily.

‘Signorine,’ says our host?generous, considering our mean age is at least forty and two of us are married, ‘please take a position.’ We spread out around the room, each taking an easel and exchanging excited looks. A woman of around sixty enters. She’s petite and elegant and I wonder if she’s our model.

‘This is Giulia. She is the teacher.’ Giulia nods her head?no smile?then walks over to one of the tables and selects a piece of charcoal which she holds up, demonstrating the grip we should use. ‘Loose, but firm,’ she says. Right, so Giulia’s no-nonsense and straight down to business. I pick up a piece of charcoal and mirror her grip. Loose but firm? What the hell does that mean? That’s like saying, ‘light but heavy.’

‘I leave you now. Lunch is later, on the terrace.’ Signor Fabbri leaves, still smiling, his eyebrows raised as if to say, ‘Have fun, ladies,’ and when he closes the door behind him, Giulia clears her throat.

All eyes alight at once on her small form. ‘The life drawing is like life, it is fluid,’ she says, drawing out the word as she arcs the piece of charcoal in the air. ‘Keep the charcoal moving on the paper. Smooth. Draw the lines. Capito? Understood?’

‘Sì,’ we say, six obedient students. ‘Piero,’ she calls out.

A tall, wide-shouldered man wearing a dark blue robe enters the studio from a door at the back of the room. The model.

He makes his way to the plinth in the centre of the studio, the patter of his bare feet the only sound in the room. Oh. My. Fucking. God! I think. He may just be the most handsome man I’ve ever seen?and my ‘free pass’ list includes Idris Elba and Henry Cavill. My eyes dart towards Cat and when hers meet mine, it’s clear she’s thinking the same thing. We stifle smirks and I’m suddenly fifteen instead of a day off forty.

‘Hey,’ whispers Lins. I look over and her eyes are as big as saucers. I snigger, my hand pressed to my mouth. How on earth am I going to get through the next hour without dissolving into giggles like the naughty kid at the back of class?

Piero slips out of the robe?holy fuck!?and arranges himself on the stool atop the plinth. I could literally hear a pin drop if someone were to accidentally drop one, but there’s a moment of profound stillness as the six of us take in the entirety?and I mean entirety?of the natural wonder that is Piero, the nude model. Even Mum is a little flushed?perhaps because his penis is essentially staring right at her.

Giulia clears her throat again. This time, it says, ‘Ladies! Pick your chins up off the floor, please. This man is a professional,’ and we collectively ‘hmm’ and don serious expressions as we practise our loose but firm grips on our little black sticks.

‘Choose the longest line you can see …’ Oh, my god, I’m going to lose it. All I can think is that the longest line Mum can see is the shaft of his enormous penis. ‘Watch the line of the body as you touch your charcoal to the page and follow that line as you draw.’ Okay, I can do this. The longest line from my perspective is from the top of Piero’s head, down his neck, along the outline of his muscular back and curving around at his bum. I keep my eye on Piero and allow my hand to follow on the paper. When I look at what I’ve drawn, it’s half of an amoeba.

‘Connect with the end of that line and draw the next one,’ she says. I do, then scrutinise my two lines. If I squint, they could be the rear silhouette of a human being. Giulia continues to guide us and we continue to follow. She walks the room, giving instructions and the occasional praise, and when she gets to my easel, she purses her lips as her eyes rove my drawing. She nods a couple of times, then moves on. What does that mean? Am I an artistic savant or do I have the drawing skills of a three-year-old? Of course, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that this is incredibly fun?and from Cat’s expression, she thinks so too.

‘And, Piero, now change.’ He stands and stretches his head from side to side and rolls his shoulders. My god, I could watch him do that all afternoon. Maybe we can slip him an extra hundred euros so he can do that by the pool while we lounge. Sarah Parsons! I chastise myself, you are worse than those Buck’s Do party-goers who pant and drool over the stripper! Well, maybe not worse but certainly as bad.

Piero stays standing and adopts a more active pose, as though he’s just thrown a discus or something. Apt really, as he does look like an ancient Olympian?all naked and athletic and … The rustle of paper pulls me back to the task at hand and like the others, I flip my first drawing over the back of the easel and smooth out a fresh sheet ready to draw the longest line. This time, it’s from the tip of the fingers on his left hand to those on his right, up and over the outline of his wavy hair. Once I have his outline drawn, I return to the muscles of his back, though when I draw them, they look like a wonky external rib cage. Giulia is at my side again. ‘Take the side of the charcoal and shade like this,’ she says, using one of my pieces to demonstrate. I do as she’s done?well, to the best of my ability?and I think she may have cracked a slight smile at my efforts.

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