A Postcard from Italy. Alex Brown
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to as well, when Betty had stepped in and said that payment would be very welcome, thank you very much, as she plucked a credit card from Mrs Bassett’s grasp.
‘So you’ve actually met Mrs Donato?’ Grace asked excitedly. ‘Oh, I can’t wait to meet her too – that’s if we can track her down. What’s she like? I’ve been reading this.’ She lifted the diary into the air to show him, but then fell silent on feeling her cheeks flush pink. ‘Sorry. I … probably shouldn’t have been so nosey.’ She waggled the diary around before bringing her hand back down beside her.
‘Oh it’s fine,’ Larry said gently. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ and he tapped a finger to the side of his nose. ‘Besides, how else are we going to get in touch with her. Which year is it? The diary … anything recent to give us some clues as to where she might be now?’
‘Sorry, no. And at first glance there doesn’t seem to be any kind of order to the diaries and notes written on scraps of paper. Everything is very sporadic and with some of the diaries completely empty, or with just a few lines written in them here and there. Though I did manage to find this one, dated 1955, which is pretty full up – where she’s living in Italy and it sounds so idyllic. Listen to this.’ Grace quickly reopened the diary and read a section of it aloud. ‘The warm, salty sea air is infused with the marvellous scent of citrus from the lemon and orange groves further down on the hillside. The dazzling azure-blue sea laps gently in the distance and I simply can’t imagine a more perfect place to be than standing here on the veranda with my truelove watching the plump, pink sun setting on the horizon.’
‘Well I never!’ Larry folded his arms and nodded slowly, clearly impressed by Mrs Donato’s prose. ‘Those are mighty fine words, and with a clue for us right there too.’
‘A clue?’
‘Yes … a truelove! With any luck, he’s Mr Donato by now. So we’ll find him and he will lead us to Mrs Donato. Yes, that’s what we will do.’ Larry nodded, clearly resolute about the best way forward for solving this matter.
Grace pulled out her phone and tapped through to her To Do list to make a note to read on through all the paperwork in unit 28 to see if she could find mention of a Mr Donato. Or a wedding. Surely, Connie, being the romantic she appeared to be in the diary, would write about her own wedding.
‘It’s all there in gorgeous detail. Connie is an incredibly romantic writer,’ she told Larry. ‘Reading her diary is like reading a beautiful, romantic novel. And she lived in a powder pink villa surrounded by lemon and orange groves on a hilltop in Santa Margherita. I googled it and it’s part of the glamorous Italian Riviera and just along the coast near Portofino in Italy, apparently. Imagine living somewhere as wonderful as that? Or she did in the 1950s! But I’m guessing that’s not the case any more if her stuff is in our storage unit here in drizzly south London.’ Grace patted her curls, which had turned into a giant auburn frizz ball after falling victim to the inclement weather at this time of year in London, when she got caught in a sudden downpour while counting the steps to the bus stop this morning.
‘Connie?’ Larry asked.
‘Yes, Mrs Donato. Connie is short for Constance. That’s her first name … well, the name her family and friends call her. It’s on a number of letters and cards in the first suitcase. From what I can make out, she grew up in London and then moved to Italy later. But I’d have to put it all together into a proper timeline to be sure …’
‘OK, Grace. But do we have a current address for her? Or a relative? A son or daughter perhaps? A bank statement? Anything to give us a clue as to her current whereabouts and why she hasn’t paid us? Or how about a first name for Mr Donato?’
‘Not yet. But I’m working on it. Please can I have a bit more time to go through and catalogue everything properly? There’s a lot of paperwork. But a week or two should do it.’
‘Hmm, I know I said there was no immediate rush, but we can’t afford to have units unpaid for, so we need to start getting an income for this space asap. I’ve already been a sentimental fool for far too long over this one. Perhaps we should make a start on getting it listed at auction and hopefully someone will buy the whole lot swiftly. Then we can recoup our losses and re-let the unit right away.’ He shook his head as if deep in thought as he tapped the tip of a biro on the doorframe.
‘I understand,’ Grace conceded, reluctantly, but then had an idea. ‘Some of these items are antiques and must be worth a fortune … much more than she owes us in missed storage payments, so we’ll easily recover our losses if we can’t find her and have to sell them. What do you reckon?’ She felt alive at the prospect of piecing together the life story of Connie Donato or, to use her gloriously glamorous full name, Mrs Constance di Donato. ‘And you did say that you have a soft spot for her …’ she added, hoping to appeal to his better nature. ‘It doesn’t feel fair to not even try to track her down.’ Grace inhaled, willing him to agree. ‘Surely, her belongings are as important as the old soldier’s medals? There’s a whole lifetime inside this unit waiting to be discovered …’
A short silence followed as Larry creased his forehead and gazed around the unit, seeming to take it all in. Grace inwardly crossed her fingers, because if he let her have a week or two, she was quite certain she could unearth something in amongst Connie’s belongings that would give them a clue. If not to her whereabouts, then a relative, or even a friend who might be able to help. The items in the unit were unique and far too personal to be sold off at auction.
‘OK,’ he eventually agreed. ‘A week or so. Two tops! But only because I feel sorry for her.’
‘Thank you,’ she breathed out, only realising then that she had been holding her breath for too long making her feel dizzy. ‘But why do you feel sorry for her?’ she asked, blinking a few times to clear her head.
‘Because,’ he started and then paused. ‘I don’t really know, to be honest … I mean, it was donkey’s years ago, of course, yet feels like only yesterday, that’s how distinctive she was. But I still remember when she first came here to sign up for the unit. Mrs Donato stuck in my mind. You see, there was an aura about her.’
‘An aura?’ Grace felt intrigued and widened her eyes in anticipation of hearing more.
‘Yes. Imperious. Regal almost. But kind of sad and lonely too. She was smartly dressed, in a mink coat with leather gloves and a hat … it was still OK to wear real fur in those days,’ he quickly clarified. ‘And she was wearing this expensive scent … I don’t know what it was – not something our Betty would wear. Anyway, I remember it lingered in the office for ages afterwards. Betty and I joked about it for weeks, saying, “Mrs Donato is still here” every morning when we unlocked the office door and got a great big walloping whiff.’
Grace immediately wondered which perfume it was, and from what she had already deduced about Connie, imagined it to be something romantic yet sophisticated, classic and expensive, like Cartier or Van Cleef and Arpels. Grace had been walking through Selfridges’ beauty hall one time on a shopping trip with Matthew, and the sales assistant had spritzed her with both of these fragrances and then given her some small sample sprays. She had treasured those tiny phials, eking them out as a way to hold on to that moment in time with her own truelove, as it was later that very day, over lunch, that Matthew had proposed.
Perfume was such a powerful evocation of memories: one whiff and Grace was back there with Matthew by her side, oohing and aahing over the dazzling display counters in Selfridges. Then, after the shopping trip, they had found an authentic Italian café in a quiet back street with round tables covered in red gingham tablecloths and candles in wine bottles with wax trickling down the sides. They had sipped limoncello cocktails and tucked into big bowls of buttery soft ravioli stuffed with shrimp and drizzled with pesto and pecorino shavings. Creamy raspberry gelato was for pudding, followed by mugs of hot chocolate so deliciously thick they had been able to stand their teaspoons up in it and take bets to see whose spoon would topple over first.
Matthew had joked about the leaning tower of Pisa being right there inside his mug and how they should book a holiday