Page 44 of Slow Burn

Underneath, she had on a strappy dress that fell just above her knees, but had tantalizing buttons all the way down the front of it.

I knelt down, undoing them one by one from the bottom up.

She pushed her fingers through my thick hair, snagging them on my curls.

It was not an unpleasant sensation as I worked to remove her dress, slowly revealing more and more of her, finally letting me see the point at which her thighs brushed lightly together at their fleshiest part.

I buried my face in them, groaning at how warm and familiar they felt.

She gasped.

‘Gabriele. Your mother. What if she comes in?’

I stopped, reluctantly. She had a point. I had left Mama out in the garden, but she could absolutely walk in at any moment. There was no way I would want her to meet Lira for the first time while she was in this compromising position.

Groaning with frustration, I began to do her buttons up again.

‘Raincheck?’ said Lira, ruffling my hair.

I stood up, running my hands over her body as I did so, dragging my mind back to reality.

‘Let me introduce you to her,’ I said.

I was surprised that my mother had not called out, wanting to know who was at the door.

That was what she would usually have done, because she was a control freak, and she liked to be in absolutely everybody’s business, but then, at the moment, I supposed she did not have the energy to project her voice even if she had wanted to, plus her throat was permanently croaky from all the crying.

I took Lira’s hand and led her out into the garden.

It was one of those perfect Tuscan days: a blue, cloudless sky; temperatures warm enough to sit out wearing nothing more than a vest or a T-shirt; the smell of wine and honeysuckle in the air.

Mama was curled up under the veranda. She had a book in her lap, but I would be surprised if she had read more than a few pages of it over the last few days.

I was achingly aware of Lira’s hand in mine as we approached – I had not mentioned her to my mother at all. There had not been a chance before Papa, and afterwards it had not felt like the right time.

My love life felt like the least of both our worries, and yet now that Lira was here, I noted the positive effect it was having on me.

I had always had relationships pinned as a problem – too much pressure, too much commitment required, molto hard work.

But having Lira here had already made things feel just the tiniest bit lighter and less terrible, which I thought was probably all I could hope for from anyone or anything under the circumstances.

My mother looked up as we approached. I saw a brief flash of confusion on her face as she noticed that her only son was holding hands with a woman she had never even heard me talk about.

‘Mama, this is Lira, my dance partner in Slow Burn . Lira, meet my mother, Sofia Riccitelli.’

Lira, perhaps losing her nerve under the scrutiny, dropped my hand and offered hers to my mother instead.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Riccitelli. I’m so sorry for your loss. This must be such a difficult time for you. And for Gabriele.’

My mother shook Lira’s hand, but I saw her hesitate just a second too long.

I knew my mother very well and I knew when she was not happy about something; it was obvious to me in the tiny adjustments she made to her manner.

And I did not think I was mistaken when I noted that she appeared to be far from delighted to meet Lira.

‘Lira. What a lovely name,’ said my mother.

‘It’s quite popular in South Africa,’ said Lira. ‘That’s where my mother is from. Where I lived for the first few years of my life.’

My mother nodded.

‘Sit, Lira,’ I said. ‘Can I get you a glass of cold lemonade?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘That would be lovely, thanks.’

I dashed back into the kitchen, looking nervously over my shoulder, not wanting to leave them alone for too long because I did not know what my mother was capable of saying at the moment.

Logically, there was no reason for her to say anything out of line – Lira had done nothing wrong.

In fact, in my mind, she had done everything right.

She had seen me at my worst – dismissive, tightly coiled, snappy, rude, sobbing for my father.

She had seen all of those parts of me and yet still she had come for me when I needed her, when I was grieving.

And I thought that I had probably given her the impression that I wanted to be alone – had convinced myself of that, even – but the truth was, having her here had already made a vast improvement to my mood.

Sadly, the same could not be said for my mother’s.

Glass in hand, I hot-footed it back out into the garden, where my mother and Lira were sitting in what appeared to be an extremely awkward silence.

‘Everything okay?’ I asked, hastily pouring Lira a glass of lemonade.

Lira nodded and smiled. ‘Just what I needed. Thank you.’

‘ Parli Italiano , Lira?’ asked my mother.

Lira, getting the gist, shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. Although I would love to learn.’

She took a long sip of her lemonade, placing the glass carefully back on the table once she was done.

‘Tell me about yourself, Lira,’ said my mother.

I noticed that Mama’s hand was shaking when she reached for her own glass of half-drunk lemonade and I made a mental note to mention it to the doctor when he called in to see her next.

It worried me, because it was like she had aged ten years in one week.

Was it true that somebody could die of a broken heart?

Because if it was, I was seriously concerned that she would not be able to go on without my father – that she would not wish to.

‘I’m one of three sisters,’ said Lira, who to her credit did not seem to be intimidated by my slightly standoffish mother.

I had the sense that her own mother was a force to be reckoned with, too, and they sounded similar in many ways, so perhaps she was used to dealing with interrogations like these.

‘My mum, Amahle, was a ballroom and Latin dancer. In fact, she was South Africa’s most famous Black dancer back in the eighties.

And my dad, Michael, is British. He’s more of a numbers guy. ’

‘And your sisters?’ asked my mother.

‘Both dancers,’ explained Lira. ‘Nolo is in New York dancing with the New York Ballet Company, and Sedi is a commercial dancer. She gets to travel all over the world with various artists when they’re on tour.’

‘Sounds very exciting,’ said my mother. ‘This must feel like the depths of hell out here in the middle of the countryside with nothing to do, and fields as far as the eye can see. You are like Gabriele; he cannot wait to get back to the city, either. Perhaps you have come to rescue him.’

For some reason, I was so tense that the coffee I was drinking hit the back of my throat and I splattered it everywhere. ‘Sorry,’ I said, catching my breath.

‘Anything wrong, Gabi?’ asked my mother all innocently, as if she had not caused me to nearly choke with her strange line of questioning and passive-aggressive comments.

‘Nothing is wrong,’ I said. ‘Went down the wrong way, that is all.’

Lira shuffled in her seat.

‘Anyway, I can’t stay long. I only called in to see how Gabriele was. We were all very worried about him.’

‘All?’ said my mother. ‘And yet you are the only one here.’

‘I—’

‘You do not need to answer that, Lira,’ I said, throwing my mother a look.

I stood up, wanting desperately to remove Lira from this awkward conversation.

It was all my fault for not having told my mother about her in the first place, and for not explaining how much she meant to me.

The last thing I wanted was for Lira to go; she had only just arrived – although I would not blame her if she wanted to order the first taxi out of the village.

Mind you, I did not like to tell her that Uber did not exist out here in the hills and that there was only one local taxi driver, Guiseppe, who sometimes randomly decided to take the day off.

If Lira thought spending a few hours at the farm was inconvenient, she should try growing up here.

‘Let us go for a walk. I will show you around the farm,’ I said to Lira.

She nodded gratefully. ‘I’d love to see it.’

I could feel my mother’s eyes boring into us as we walked through the garden, heading for the gate leading to our plot of land comprising several acres of vineyards, the olive farm, and a barn housing huge vats of fermenting wine.

‘Through there we have a little shop,’ I explained to Lira.

‘We have connections with some of the tour operators who work out of Florence and Siena. They bring tourists here as part of their wine-tasting tours. It is a good opportunity to tell them about our wines and sell them a few bottles each. Often they cannot carry them back to wherever they have flown in from, so instead they will order a full case to be delivered to them at home. It can be quite lucrative.’

‘I bet,’ said Lira. ‘And after a few glasses of wine in these lovely surroundings, I bet they’re ordering by the caseload!’

I shrugged noncommittally, but of course, yes, that was exactly how it was.

We walked in silence for a bit, enjoying the heat of the sun on our bare arms, the companionable silence between us easy and unthreatening.

‘Apologies if my mother seems a little off,’ I said. ‘She is finding losing Papa very hard.’

Lira nodded. ‘Of course she is. I completely understand.’

‘This house here, see?’ I said, pointing to a brick building to the left-hand side of one of the vineyards, ‘was to be turned into a bed and breakfast. That was always my mother’s dream for when my father finally retired. I have no idea what she will do now. How she is going to cope without him.’

Lira rubbed my arm gently. ‘I shouldn’t have just turned up like this, at such a difficult time. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

I stopped, putting my hands on Lira’s waist, spinning her around to face me so that she could see how serious I was.

‘You coming all this way to see me, without me having to ask, is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. Seeing you lifted my heart. I do not know why it had that effect on me, and I do not have the headspace to analyse it right now, but there is something about being with you that makes me very happy, Lira. And this weight that I feel I am carrying all of the time, even before my father died, is lifted from my shoulders. Because of this connection we have. The way we seem to understand what each other needs, on the dance floor and off it.’

I took her head in my hands, desperate to kiss her, to lose myself in her perfect mouth.

‘Do you feel the same way?’ I whispered. ‘Please tell me you do.’

She nodded, just a tiny movement of her head, but it was the confirmation I needed.

‘Don’t leave yet,’ I said. ‘Please. Stay for dinner. Stay with me tonight, and tomorrow I will drive you back into Florence in plenty of time to get ready for the show.’

She had her arms wrapped tightly around me, but her face seemed more distant, like perhaps she was not sure.

‘What about your mother? Are you sure she’ll be okay with that?’ Lira asked.

‘She will come around, I promise you. We will have dinner together, all three of us, and she will see how amazing you are and then after it will be just you and me. We can sit out here, share a bottle of wine. I want to hear all about the show, about your sisters, your parents on their cruise. There are so many things I do not know about you that I want to learn.’

There was uncertainty in her eyes, I could see it simmering under the surface.

The part of me that still felt like a lonely little boy assumed that it was not only my mother she was not sure about, it was me, too.

But, then, when we were together, dancing, in bed, whatever, it was like she was totally with me.

I did not doubt it for a second. So why was I doubting it now?

Was I scared of what might happen if things became more serious between us?

Because how could it ever work, with me here in Italy and Lira in England?

And of course with love came loss, and this week had been a stark reminder of that.

Could I really give everything of myself to someone who might leave me one day, just like my papa had?

And was there any point in pursuing this when I could not imagine a way for us to be together?

Or a solution to the fact that I would have to give up my career as a dancer and run my family business instead?

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay.’

I took one of her hands in mine and kissed the back of it, grateful and apprehensive and relieved all rolled into one.