From Rome with Love: Escape the winter blues with the perfect feel-good romance!. Jules Wake
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to evaporate. Even poring over the sights of the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, all of which she planned to visit, weren’t consoling her.
She was dying to know if Giovanni had spoken yet to his friend at the electoral register and found out if the address was still valid.
Nausea danced low in her belly as it struck her. If it was, she’d have to go. Really have to go. Knock on a strange door. Speak to someone she couldn’t even picture in her head. No excuses. What on earth what would she say? ‘Thanks for nothing mate.’ No, that sounded too angry, like she cared.
‘I’m returning this. I don’t need it. Rather like you.’
Unfortunately, she doubted she could frame the haughty, dismissive words as she thrust the ring box at him. Even in rehearsing the words in her head she could feel the give-away nervous croak in her throat.
‘I’ve done perfectly well without you.’
Who was she kidding? She’d probably burst into tears rather than manage a cool, detached demeanour. Shifting in her seat, she squirmed. It had seemed so simple at home. That remote fantasy. But the reality didn’t seem so appealing now. All the possible images in her head dissolved into a knot of pure terror. Suddenly she wasn’t sure this was such a good idea.
Looking up, she realised a) Will was studying her and b) she had chewed one fingernail to near death. She pasted a dismissive expression on her face and buried her head in her guide book with determined fervour, as if the shopping section contained the answer to the meaning of life.
Eventually Will got up and went to the loo and Lisa grabbed Giovanni’s elbow.
‘Have you spoken to your friend?’ she asked quietly, keeping a watchful eye on the door at the back of the restaurant.
Giovanni suddenly looked like a small boy caught out. ‘Bellissima. Don’t worry. We have all week.’
‘I know but…’
‘I will call Luca tomorrow.’
‘You mean you haven’t spoken to him yet?’ He’d had two weeks to speak to his friend.
Giovanni shrugged. ‘He’s… been on the holidays.’ His gaze slid back the television. ‘He will be back tomorrow. I’m sure and I will speak to him then. And then we go find your father. But tomorrow I show you my city.’
A minute ago, she would have been relieved, only now she felt irritated. Talk about contrary.
‘Coffee?’ asked Giovanni, leading the way into the kitchen, bouncing off the doorway.
‘Have you got any food?’ she asked hopefully.
Giovanni looked blank and opened the fridge and poked at a couple of jars in there.
‘No.’ He shrugged and closed it again. ‘We’ll go out for breakfast.’
He put an espresso pot on the stove, filling it clumsily, spilling coffee everywhere, the black grounds trickling across the floor and spreading like iron filings. ‘Ooops,’ he giggled and staggered as he tried to brush them up with his fingers. Alberto had broken out the Grappa at the end of the game. One fiery sip had been enough for Lisa. Not so for Giovanni, who had downed several.
Will led him to a chair. ‘I think you’d better sit down, mate.’
Lisa searched through a few cupboards before finding a dustpan and brush. Will took it from her and swept up the grounds. By the time he’d finished, Giovanni had his head on the table and was already asleep.
‘Always was a lightweight,’ observed Will, as he tipped the coffee grounds in the bin. ‘Although Grappa is lethal. Sixty per cent proof.’ He shook his head. ‘Let’s see what we can find. My stomach thinks my throat’s been slit.’
Will crossed to the fridge and took a look before opening a couple of cupboards and rooting among the sparse shelves.
‘Right, you can be my sous chef.’
Lisa wasn’t about to argue.
He passed her a couple of jars from the fridge, artichokes, sundried tomatoes and olives.
‘Chuck me a handful of each of those and we can start chopping while I get this pasta on to boil.’ He pulled out a bag of pasta shapes that Lisa had never seen before. She took one of the small, thin tubes.
‘Reginelle,’ said Will, chopping the artichokes with skilled speed as she wrestled with the jar of sundried tomatoes. It was always a mystery to her that people were prepared to eat things that looked like half-dead animals.
‘You sound as if you’re some sort of pasta expert.’ And a right know-it-all. She scowled at him to let him know it wasn’t a compliment and managed to spill oil down her t-shirt as the lid finally pinged off the jar.
‘I’m learning but there are over 180 different types of pasta.’
‘Why so many? Surely they all,’ she lifted her shoulders, pulling the revolting-looking sundried tomatoes out of the jar and trying hard not to look at them, as she started to slice, ‘pretty much taste the same.’
Will looked horrified. ‘Hush your mouth; you’ll have us deported! All the same!’
Lisa looked away, interested in spite of herself.
‘Your food education has been sadly lacking. You have the tiny pasta shapes, like stellette, the little stars, that you put in soups or broths.’ He paused and pointed his knife at her chopping. ‘Smaller than that.’
She wrinkled her nose; she wasn’t even sure she liked touching them.
‘And then there are things like tripolini, tiny bow-tie shapes, that you find in soup or salad. Then you have all the different pastas you eat with sauces but the type of pasta depends on the thickness of the sauces. Then you have your stuffed pasta, tortellini, capeletti and ravioli, but again depending on the size of the packets you have ravioletti, raviolei and raviolo.’
Deftly he scooped the chopped tomatoes and tossed them and the artichokes into a sizzling pan. Lisa’s stomach let out a loud unladylike rumble, which was punctuated by a gentle snore from behind them. Giovanni was out for the count.
At last Will served up the contents of the large pasta bowls, steaming and aromatic. Despite the bits of slimy tomato, artichokes, which looked beige and unappetising, and olives, which she knew tasted bitter, it smelt quite good. At least she could pick those bits out and just eat the pasta.
Lisa gave a hungry moan. ‘This smells amazing.’ No faulting Will’s prowess in the kitchen. She hadn’t realised he could cook. At the pub he employed the rather eccentric Al as chef.
With an exasperated glance at the tiny table in the kitchen, over which Giovanni was currently slumped, she frowned.
‘Do you think we should wake him up?’
‘No,’ said Will emphatically. ‘There’s a table out on the balcony. I’m eating out there.’
He pulled open a drawer and fished out some cutlery. ‘Here, you take these and the plates. I’ll bring the rest.’
Carrying two dishes on one arm, she made her way through the salon and out onto the balcony, blinking furiously. It was like being back in the pub, when she used to be a regular waitress, when they used to get on so well.
Quickly he grated the rather pathetic lump of Parmesan he’d found at the back of the fridge and, with a last-minute glance at the sleeping Giovanni, he grabbed a bottle of red wine he’d spotted in the wine rack. A rather good Montepulciano D’Abruzzo. Tough. Hopefully Giovanni’s parents hadn’t been saving it for a special