But Uncle Leo just laughs and reaches out a hand to ruffle my hair. “A pair of tearaways when you were together,” he says with a sigh. “Heaven help us now that you’re reunited.”
“Oh, we’re much older now.” Hero dimples.
“And much, much worse,” I finish, daringly. All three of us laugh then, the sound bouncing off the walls, warming the air around us.
“I see our guest has arrived.” A voice comes from the stairs behind me. “And already she is filling this old house with laughter.”
I turn around and feel my mouth drop open in surprise. The woman standing there is tall, almost as tall as me, and generously curvy, with long, straight black hair that hangs down to her waist. She is wearing a decadent black silk kimono printed with red flowers, tied loosely over a red silk nightgown. Her features are large and expressive, and only the tiny spidery lines around her eyes and mouth give any indication that she’s older than me. She moves with the kind of sultry grace that I have typically heard attributed to large cats.
“Ah, Fil, my love!” Uncle Leo booms.
“Filomena, this is Bea.” Hero drags me forward a couple of steps. “Filomena and Daddy are getting married.”
This, then, is the “respectable widow” who will curb my headstrong behaviour. I hear Father’s voice in my head, and just like that I am laughing again. But really, if ever there was the polar opposite of the “widow of good standing” of my parents’ imagination, then she is surely embodied in the woman in front of me.
“Sorry, sorry,” I splutter, moving towards the vision before me on the stairs, trying to recover my manners. “I always seem to laugh at just the wrong moment.”
Filomena tips her head. “I think there is no wrong moment for laughter,” she says, a smile curving her generous lips.
“Well, I’m very pleased to meet you,” I manage, pulling myself together and holding out my hand to her.
But Filomena shakes her head.
“None of that.” She steps forward, pressing warm kisses on to each of my cheeks, and I catch the heady scent of amber and cinnamon that clings to her skin. “It has taken me a great effort to rid your uncle and cousin of that terrible English formality. I preferred the laughing.” Her voice is low and musical, a slight Italian accent altering the cadence of her perfect English.
“Don’t horrify the girl,” Leo says, stepping up beside her and taking her hand before pressing it to his lips. “She’ll run home telling her parents that we have devolved into chaos without the influence of good British manners.”
“Bah!” Filomena wrinkles her nose.
“Oh no I won’t,” I say quickly. “Honestly, a break from good British manners sounds quite … wonderful.”
“You see, Leo.” Filomena smiles up at him. “Bea will fit in just right here.”
I like that she calls me Bea, not Beatrice, using the same affectionate contraction as Hero. Somehow it sounds different in her voice, a lazy, drawn-out “ee” that tilts up at the end. At home no one calls me Bea; I am only ever Beatrice. Bea feels like a different person: a new name for this new place.
“Now.” Filomena runs an eye over me. “This poor girl has been travelling for days on end and it is the middle of the night. Hero, I know you will want to be the one to show Bea to her room.”
“Of course!” Hero retrieves my bag and begins to stagger up the stairs.
And just like that I feel exhaustion rush through my body, leaving me swaying on my feet. In spite of all the excitement, the thought of bed is overwhelmingly welcome. I follow my cousin, turning when we reach the top of the stairs to look back down to the hallway. As I do so, I am shocked to see Uncle Leo and Filomena locked in a rather ferocious embrace.
I turn the corner down the winding corridor, following the trail of lights as Hero flicks them on along the way. This is certainly not the Uncle Leo that I remember. Nor, I am sure, is it the Uncle Leo my parents imagined they were sending me to.
I smile to myself. It seems that things at Villa di Stelle might not be so respectable after all. What a pleasant thought.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I wake the next morning, I am not sure where I am. I stare up at the ceiling for a second, the events of the last few days racing around my head in a jumble of images and sensations, before arranging themselves into something more orderly.
I’m here. I’m really here, in Italy, and the proof is all around me, written into the walls and furniture of this unfamiliar room. I take a moment to absorb it – the heavy, embroidered cotton of the white sheets, the wooden bed frame and the pale green shutters which are throwing stripes of golden light across my legs.
I stand up, swinging my feet down to the ground, the cool touch of the terracotta tiles a shock to my warm, sleepy body. I stretch and move around the sparsely furnished room, running my hand over the rough plaster of the walls. Apart from the huge four-poster bed there is little else in here – a small dressing table in one corner with a pretty, bevel-edged mirror above it and a rickety chair. There’s also a large wardrobe in which my meagre collection of clothes is hanging a little forlornly, and a thin woven rug that was once probably a deep red but has now faded to rosy pink. Through a door to one side is a small, basic bathroom. I turn one of the taps, which splutters to life with – joy of joys – hot water. The villa may be old, but the plumbing is blissfully modern.
When I return to my room I make straight for the window, wrestling with the shutters for a moment before locating the catch and flinging them wide open.
All the air leaves my lungs in one dramatic rush.
The view before me is truly a fantasy made real: something that belongs in the pages of a fairy tale. It’s a place of such light and lushness, beyond anything I could ever have dreamed.
I am high up, very high up. We climbed an awful lot of stairs last night and I realize now that I am in the top of the crenellated tower, at the top of the house, on the top of the hill, and that the scenery has been rolled out in front of me like an offering. Directly below me is the red-tiled roof of another part of the house, and in front of that are the most spectacularly kept formal gardens; hedges divide the space into neat squares and circles, and in the centre a huge stone fountain, with water splashing merrily from various urns held by beautiful women and babies. Beyond the gardens the cypress and ilex trees huddle like a protective wall, sheltering the house from the undulating green and gold carpet of the hills that spread out into the distance.
The rain of yesterday is a distant memory, and an endless blue sky stretches overhead. The mingled summer song of birds and crickets and lazy bees drifts through the window, along with the smell of warm, baked earth and pine needles. It seems impossible that I arrived through those hills last night, with the darkness wrapped close around me, keeping the secret of all this beauty like an elaborate practical joke.
I don’t know how long I stand there, taking it in. The moment feels precious and endless. As I contemplate the view, its breadth and wildness seem to match the dizzying feeling of freedom that pounds through me. I am so far away from Langton Hall – in every way imaginable.
I’m already itching to get out there and explore when I hear the unmistakable “oop oop oop” of the hoopoe, a bird that I have never seen before, one that does not live in England, one whose call I have only read about. I rush to my bag, rummaging around for my binoculars, but they’re not there. Perhaps they fell out in the car last night. I tut in exasperation and return to the window, leaning out as far as I can, and straining my eyes, but I can’t pinpoint where the sound is coming from.