CHAPTER TWO

      ‘WHY you never take the car?’ Maria demanded one day. ‘When you arrive I say, ‘We don’t need the second car. You use it.’ But you never do. Is very unkind.’

      ‘Don’t be offended, Maria, please,’ Joanne begged. ‘It’s just that I’ve been so busy.’

      ‘Don’t you have any friends from when you were here before?’

      ‘Well—my cousin’s family lives near Asti—’

      ‘And you haven’t visited?’ Maria shrieked in horror, for like all Italians she was family-minded. ‘You go now.’

      Vito backed his wife up, and the two of them virtually ordered her out of the house.

      ‘You stay away tonight,’ Maria ordered. ‘You won’t have time to drive back.’

      ‘I’ll have plenty of time,’ Joanne insisted. ‘I’m only going for a couple of hours.’

      They argued about this until the last minute, Maria demanding that she pack a bag, Joanne firmly refusing. She was going to make this visit as brief as possible, just to prove to herself that she could cope with meeting Franco. Then she would leave and never go back.

      She was dressed for the country, in trousers and sweater. But both had come from one of Turin’s most expensive shops, and she added a gold chain about her waist and dainty gold studs in her ears. She didn’t realize that she was making a point, but the costly elegance of her attire marked her out as a different person from the gauche girl of eight years ago.

      As soon as she got out onto the road and felt the beauty of the day, and the sun streaming in through the open window, Joanne was glad. She’d been shut up too long with the smell of oil paint and turpentine, and she needed to breathe fresh air.

      She took the route through the little medieval town of Asti. Already there were posters up advertising the palio, the bareback race that was run every year around the piazza. The jockeys were all local lads, and Joanne’s mind went back to the time Franco had taken part.

      She’d been nervous as she’d taken her place in the stands with the family and almost every worker from the Farelli vineyard. The palio was so fierce that mattresses were fixed to the walls of all the surrounding buildings to save the riders and horses who crashed into them. Even so, injuries were common.

      After the first lap it had been clear that the race was between Franco and another rider.

      ‘That’s Leo,’ Renata said excitedly. ‘He and Franco are good friends—except today.’

      It was neck and neck on the last lap. Then Leo went ahead. Franco made a desperate attempt to catch up. The crowd’s cheers turned to screams as the horses collided and both riders were thrown. Miraculously the following riders managed to jump over them, and neither man was hurt. But Joanne’s heart was in her mouth as they all hurried around to see Franco afterwards.

      Sophia clung to him, almost suffocating him until Giorgio gently prised her away. Leo hurled his whip to the ground, complaining, ‘I was winning. I had the race in the palm of my hand. And he robbed me.’

      Franco offered Leo his hand. Leo stared at it until everyone thought he would refuse to shake. At last he put out his own hand, saying through a forced smile, ‘I’ll get even with you next year, Farelli. See if I don’t.’

      But Franco had never competed again. By the next race he’d been married to Rosemary, looking forward to starting a family.

      Joanne parked the car and spent an hour wandering the streets she’d once known so well. She decided she might as well have lunch here too, and enjoyed a leisurely pizza. She would have denied that she was putting off her meeting with Franco, but she didn’t hurry.

      But when she resumed the journey she was further delayed by a traffic jam. For two hours she fretted and fumed behind a trail of trucks, and it was late afternoon before she neared the Farelli vineyards. She parked the car off the road and got out to lean over a fence and survey the land. The vines were growing strongly and everywhere she looked she saw the brightness of summer. It reminded her of her year in Italy when she’d fallen in love with Franco.

      What would he be like now? Her last picture of him had been taken eighteen months ago and showed him older, more serious, as befitted a man of responsibilities. Yet even then a mischievous devil still lurked in his eyes. But he must have changed again since the death of his beloved wife. Suddenly she was afraid to see him. He would be a stranger.

      But she couldn’t give up now. Courtesy demanded that she see Rosemary’s widower and child before she left the district. She started up again and drove on to the turning that led to the house. At once memory began to play back. The dirt track was still the one she’d seen the day Renata had brought her here for the first time. There were the ruts left by the trucks that regularly arrived and departed.

      The big, sprawling house too was the same, yellow ochre in the blazing sun, the dark green shutters pulled closed against the heat, the roof tiles rusty red. And everywhere there were geraniums, the brightly coloured flowers without which no Italian country home seemed complete. Geraniums around the doors, in window boxes, in hanging baskets: red, white, pink, purple, every petal glowing vividly in the brilliant light.

      Chickens strutted pompously back and forth in the yard, uttering soft, contented clucks. The Farelli family was wealthy, but the house was that of a prosperous farmer, with homeliness prevailing over luxury. That was its charm.

      Did nothing ever change here? There was the long table under the trees with the benches at either side. Above it stood the wooden trellis roof with flowers wreathing in and out and hanging down from it. How many times had she sat beneath those flowers, as if in paradise, listening to the family backchat over a meal? Paradise that might have been hers, that could never have been hers. Paradise lost.

      The front door was open and she walked inside. Rosemary had made this place her own, but it still felt familiar. The few new pieces of furniture blended in with the warm red flagstones. The huge fireplace, where the family had warmed themselves by