The Italian's Token Wife

She stood in the hall, wondering what to do, hoping that whatever happened she would not meet Rafaello’s father. But with any luck he was in that room with closed double doors—she could hear opera wafting out of it. Verdi, by the sound of things. Though she owned no hi-fi, she had scraped enough money to buy a small portable cassette player and radio, and usually spent the evenings once Benji was asleep reading and listening to the wealth of current affairs, arts and science programmes available, as well as her favourite classical music stations.

Rapid footsteps on the stairs made her turn. Rafaello was descending—looking, she thought as her breath caught in her lungs, like some Roman god coming down to earth, all lithe power and grace in dark, immaculately cut chinos and his pale, open-necked polo shirt. A silk-lined jacket was hooked over his shoulder with his finger, and from the other hand dangled a pair of sunglasses. She stood, battered bag held in front of her with both hands, awaiting his bidding and trying to stop thinking that he was the most beautiful male object in the universe.

‘You are ready? Good.’ His tone was brisk, impersonal, the way it usually was when he was required to address her.

He headed for the front door, and reluctantly she went after him. Outside, the sun dazzled her, and she blinked, following his crunching footsteps over the gravel as he headed around to the back of the villa.

‘Wait,’ he instructed her, as they arrived at what was evidently a row of garages. Dutifully she did so, and he headed inside one of them. A moment later a loud, throaty roar sounded—like a dragon disturbed in its lair. A monstrous beast of an open-topped car emerged slowly, gleaming scarlet and bearing the easily recognisable insignia that marked it as a top-of-the-range sports car.

Rafaello nosed it round to position it beside Magda. Then he leaned across and opened the door.

‘Get in—’

She did, very trepidatiously, and seemed to sink almost right down to the ground. Just as she was getting her bearings he leant across her, reaching for the seat belt.

She froze. He’d never been this physically close to her, and it was unnerving. She shrank back into the deep bucket leather seat, and tried not to feel that at any moment her breasts would brush his arm. Then, just as swiftly, he was gone again, sitting back in the driver’s seat. He slipped his dark glasses over his eyes, put the car into gear, and roared off.

Magda hung on for dear life, as if she were on a roller-coaster, as they headed down towards the autostrada running along the valley of the River Arno.

She stared ahead, and around, as the Tuscan landscape shot by her, blurred by speed, and glanced at Rafaello’s hands on the steering wheel. They curved around it, tensile and expert, tilting and twisting just enough to manoeuvre the awesomely powerful car just the way he wanted it, dropping one hand repeatedly to the gearstick to change gears relentlessly up and down as the journey required.

He seemed, Magda thought, to be working something out of his system.

CHAPTER SIX

THE walls of Lucca were as spectacular as her guidebook had promised, girdling the ancient city and topped with plane trees to make, she could see, an elevated walkway.

But the walls were not Rafaello’s destination, nor the medieval cathedral of San Martino, nor any of the city’s host of churches within the ancient centro storico, nor the art museum, nor the Puccini museum which commemorated one of Lucca’s most famous sons. Instead, Magda found herself being walked up to a narrow building with an elegant frontage, in one of the lanes that led off the fashionable Via Fillungo. She had been going along in a daze, her neck craning crazily as she took in all around her. Wherever she looked were the wonders of an ancient Tuscan city, drenched in history: the palazzos and the churches, the cafés and the restaurants, and she soaked up the architectural glory that was Italy.

‘Come,’ said Rafaello, and ushered her inside the doorway.

A brightly lit reception desk faced her, staffed by a chicly-dressed woman in her twenties. She looked up from an appointments book as they entered, and her face lit up.

‘Rafaello.’ She launched into voluble Italian, coming around from behind her desk and lavishing kisses on both his cheeks, openly hugging him. He said something to her with a laugh, clearly at ease with her. Then he began to talk.

Magda stood uncomfortably a little way away, aware from the expression on the woman’s face, and the little glances she threw at her from time to time as she heard Rafaello out, interjecting a few questions of her own, that she was the object of their conversation. She clutched her bag awkwardly and felt the colour rising dully in her cheeks. She was just about to turn away and stare out through the window on to the narrow street outside when the woman gave a delighted laugh, clapped her hands, and turned to Magda.