Page 1 of The Girl from Sicily

1

JESSICA, APRIL–JUNE 2005

Rain splattered the paving stones in the garden outside Jess’s ground-floor flat, and the melodious song of a blackbird echoed as she unfurled her umbrella. She opened her front door and stepped over the pile of mail on the mat: leaflets advertising pre-approved credit card applications, supermarket special offers, and ‘fantastic’ deals on replacement windows.

A white, formal-looking envelope caught her eye. Surely it wasn’t another communication from Scott’s solicitors. Jess sighed. Although they’d completed all the paperwork, their divorce had yet to be finalised.

With a frown, she picked up the envelope with ‘McKirby Solicitors’ stamped in the top left corner and a London address below. She and Scott were based in Bristol, as were their lawyers. Why on earth would a London law firm be writing to her?

Jess carried the envelope through to her kitchen, where she picked up a knife to slit it open. She pulled out a chair and began to read.

Dear Mrs Brown,

We regret to inform you that your grandmother has passed away in New York and we offer our sincere condolences. Probate has been granted, and you are the beneficiary of an inheritance. There are, however, certain stipulations. Therefore, we request that you schedule an appointment with us at your earliest convenience so that we can explain these stipulations to you in person.

Yours faithfully

Jonathan Burridge

Solicitor

Shock wheeled through Jess. She’d never met her grandmother. The one and only time she’d questioned her mother about her family background, she’d encountered a stony silence. The panic in her mother’s eyes had stopped her from returning to the subject. All she knew was that Nonna Lucia used to live in Sicily, and that she’d moved to New York after the war.

A lump of sadness formed in Jess’s throat. How she wished her parents were still alive. She missed them dreadfully – just thinking about them made her eyes prickle. The day they’d died, they were on their way down from Cheshire to console her after her latest round of IVF had failed. One of the many. She’d just turned thirty-five, advanced maternal age as the medical profession liked to call it. Scott had said they should stop trying. ‘They’ being the operative word. It hadn’t taken him long to find a younger woman and impregnate her, hence the impending divorce. Scott was the proud father of a newborn baby boy now.

Jess gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t succumb to self-pity; she was made of sterner stuff. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help the lingering quiver of disappointment that Scott had refused to consider adopting. There was so much love in her heart for a child that Jess was even considering exploring the possibility of adoption on her own.

Tiredness seeped through her. What a day she’d had! Not only had she spent the entire morning target setting – a thankless task – but, in the afternoon, the computer system had gone down. Smoothing the ruffled feathers of impatient customers was part of her job description as a bank manager, but sometimes she wished that it wasn’t.

And then, on top of everything, she’d learnt that her grandmother had passed away. Jess had intended to contact her after her mother’s death, but now it was too late. Her heart grew heavy – the mystery of the rift between Nonna and Mum would never be resolved.

* * *

A week later, Jess found herself pulling out a chair in a dour, wood-panelled office on the first floor of a Victorian terraced building in the heart of London.

Jonathan Burridge pushed his glasses up his beaky nose and squinted at her from the other side of his wide rosewood desk.

‘Your grandmother has left you a peasant farmhouse, a baglio contadino , on the outskirts of the village of Villaurora in central Sicily,’ he said. ‘Despite being empty, it has been well cared for. She has set up a trust fund for you to restore and maintain it, should you so wish. The money must be used solely for this purpose.’

Jess’s mouth dropped open; she blinked rapidly and closed it again.

‘I’m truly flabbergasted.’ She could hear the disbelief in her tone.

‘Your grandmother’s great-niece, Giovanna Alessi, has the keys to the baglio and has been keeping an eye on it. If and when you decide to accept the inheritance, you’ll need to contact a lawyer in Palermo, who will oversee everything.’

‘How amazing!’ It was all Jess could think of saying, she was so surprised.

‘Indeed.’ Jonathan Burridge steepled his bony fingers.

‘Where is the village?’ She’d forgotten the name. ‘Central Sicily, did you say?’

The solicitor, obviously well prepared, picked up an atlas from a pile of books at his side, opened it at a bookmarked page, and spun the revealed map around.

‘There.’ He pointed with his finger at the island. ‘The meeting point of Caltanissetta, Agrigento, and Palermo provinces forms a triangle apex.’ Burridge inclined his head towards her. ‘How should I respond to Signor Gentile?’

‘Signor Gentile?’

‘The notaio in Palermo.’

‘Can I think about it? I mean, this is a shock, to say the least. How did he know where you could contact me?’

‘Of course you must think about it. I imagine your grandmother left him your address.’ A smile twisted the solicitor’s thin lips. ‘Let me know when you’ve reached a decision.’

Jess shook Burridge’s hand and made her way out of his office. It was a short walk from Lincoln’s Inn to Holborn, where she boarded the Tube to Paddington station and then the train back to Bristol.

As she stared out of the window of the bus taking her home to Julian Road, she barely registered the early-evening rush-hour traffic grinding up the hill past the university. She’d been mulling over her visit to Burridge the entire journey and myriad questions still flooded her mind. Should she go to Sicily and check out her inheritance?

She could kill two birds with one stone and find out why her mother, Carula, had cut herself off from her family. The thought snagged Jess like a hooked fish. She’d always felt as if part of her had been missing. Mum must have inherited her almost-black hair and olive skin from her parents, both of whom were Sicilian as far as Jess knew. That much she’d managed to winkle out of Dad before he’d told her to let the matter drop. Jess could see little of her blond, fair-skinned father in herself and, with her own dark hair, she looked nothing like her English cousins.

She couldn’t wait to meet Giovanna Alessi. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she found more family in Sicily? Maybe that was why her nonna left her the baglio? Jess heaved a sigh. She was being fanciful and, besides, what would she do with a peasant farmhouse?

You’re at a loose end , she told herself. And you have used none of your holiday allocation this year. It wouldn’t hurt to go to Sicily and look at the place. You don’t need to decide until then.

* * *

Two months later, Jess was driving a rented Fiat Punto along a strada statale , state road, heading deep into the heart of the island. She muttered under her breath as she swerved to avoid yet another pothole. Sunburnt peaks stretched across the far horizon, notching the hard blue sky like the points of a fever chart. The strada hugged the sharp ridges of dusty, ochre-coloured valleys, seemingly devoid of human habitation. She passed a series of grey-green prickly pear cacti, and it struck her that this was a harsh, uncompromising land.

Soon, her satnav was taking her through olive groves and then, finally, the verdant vineyards of the Tenuta Sacca di Melita estate, a winery where she had booked holiday accommodation. Imposing stone gateposts ushered her through to a white gravel driveway. She brought the Fiat to a halt in front of a long, beige-coloured two-storey building.

The perfume of roses invaded her senses and her eye was captured by a beautiful flower-filled garden sloping down to a massive vegetable plot. She stepped out of the air-conditioned Punto to be greeted by a whoosh of baking-hot air. Wiping sweat from her brow, she made her way to an enormous wooden door, painted Capri blue, set into a portal with a full lowered arch. A balcony presided above a wrought-iron half-circular rose window, the railings rendered the same blue as the wide door.

Taking a deep breath, Jess pressed the bell and waited. A dog barked from within. An attractive young woman with a mop of curly, short, bright red hair opened the door, a waggy-tailed black Labrador at her heels.

‘Mrs Brown? I trust you had a pleasant journey. Please, come through. I’ll help you with your luggage once you’ve checked in.’

Jess was swept into a huge quadrangle with a Judas tree at its centre. The shrill chirp of the crickets in its spreading branches meant she could hardly hear the beep of a message arriving on her phone.

It was her cousin, Mel, asking if she’d arrived safely. Jess promptly reassured her that everything was fine, then bent to pat the dog, who was sniffing at her shoes with interest.

‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

‘Cappero. It means caper. And I’m Stefania.’

‘ Piacere .’ Pleased to meet you.

‘You speak Italian?’

‘I studied it at school, which is quite a while ago?—’

‘It will come back to you with practice, I’m sure.’

Jess gazed at her surroundings. It was as if she’d stepped into a small hamlet. Shuttered doors opened into the square inner courtyard, and wrought-iron balconies graced the upper floors. Terracotta pots of bright red geraniums filled the spaces between the steps leading up to the openings. Cappero went to lift his leg on one of them, making her smile. They walked into the cool of an office, and Stefania took Jess’s passport.

‘What a lovely place this is,’ Jess said.

‘I’ve been working here for a year now.’ Stefania entered Jess’s details into a computer database. ‘Some might call it remote, but my boyfriend works in the vineyard and we love it.’

‘It looks very old.’

‘The winery dates back to the period of colonisation of the Sicilian countryside in the sixteenth century. Spain ruled the island and needed vast quantities of cereals for its people. The estate has belonged to the Sacca di Melita family since 1840.’

‘How interesting! I need to research the history of Sicily. I’m ashamed to say I know little about it.’

‘We are a mix of cultures and ethnicities because the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Vikings, Normans, Spanish, and the Bourbon French conquered us.’ Stefania ticked the list off on her fingers.

‘I will definitely read more about it,’ Jess said as Stefania handed back her passport.

‘We have Wi-Fi in the cottages.’ Stefania gave her a piece of paper with the log-in information. ‘I’ll take you to your accommodation now, Mrs Brown.’

‘Please, call me Jess.’ She wasn’t sure if she was being too informal, but it seemed the right thing to say.

They went to the parked Fiat and retrieved Jess’s suitcase, then Stefania led her to a separate building, set back slightly from the main house. Six blue-shuttered windows lined the upper floor. A terracotta-tiled roof jutted out below, shading a paved portico with three front doors.

‘This is the place where the farm equipment was stored when the ground floor of the main building housed agricultural labourers. A couple of years ago, Piero took over managing the estate and turned it into holiday accommodation.’

‘Piero?’

‘He’s the youngest son of Baron Gaetano Sacca di Melita.’

Stefania opened the door to the cottage, and Jess entered a cosy living space with a sofa and an armchair. A kitchenette held pride of place at the far end, next to an open-tread hard wood staircase.

‘Let me take your suitcase up to the bedroom,’ Stefania said. ‘Then I’ll leave you to get settled.’

Jess thanked her and shouldered her hand luggage. Upstairs, the sight of a king-sized bed, bedside tables, and an old-fashioned wooden wardrobe greeted her. Blue, yellow, and green glazed ceramic tiles covered the floor.

‘There’s an en suite bathroom.’ Stefania showed a door to the left. ‘I would keep the shutters closed during the heat of the day. Nights get cooler, but if you need air conditioning, here is the telecomando .’ She handed Jess a remote control.

‘It’s perfect.’ Jess smiled. ‘I love it.’

‘You’re our only guest for now, as it’s still early in the season. There’s a welcome pack in the kitchen – fruit, cheese, cold meats, bread, butter, jam, etcetera. The nearest food store is in Villaurora. About half an hour’s drive away.’

‘I’ll go there tomorrow,’ Jess said.

‘If you’d like a dip in the pool, just follow the pathway. Leaflets for day trips are available at reception. You can visit Agrigento, Syracuse, Enna and other places?—’

‘I might do that. But I’m also here to relax and enjoy Sicilian country living.’

‘You’ve come to the right place, for sure.’

After Scott’s bombshell and facing an impending divorce, Jess needed a place where she could isolate herself and heal in peace. Obviously, she’d have to make up her mind about her inheritance, but when she wasn’t inspecting the farmhouse, she planned to indulge herself reading novels, going for solitary walks, and soaking up the sun. A new chapter was about to start in her life, and she wanted to be ready for it.

‘Have a lovely evening,’ Stefania said before taking her leave.

‘ Grazie .’

Jess unpacked, then went down to the kitchenette, where she made a cup of tea. Since it was still too early for supper, she set off for a short walk. Outside, the late-afternoon sun cast the garden in a golden glow. She took the path Stefania suggested and soon arrived at a rectangular-shaped infinity pool.

Sunshine sparkled on the water, inviting her to take a dip. Wishing she’d thought to change into her swimsuit, she perched on a lounger to enjoy the view. Rows of vines resembled a leafy army marching from the valley to the hill’s crest. Beyond, a brooding dark wave of craggy mountains punctuated the skyline, and a bird of prey wheeled a taut arc above the peaks.

Jess breathed in the warm Sicilian air. She was here at last, the place where her grandmother had once lived, and she couldn’t wait to visit Villaurora and find out more.