Tell Me No Truths by Gill Vickery

Author:Gill Vickery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Greystones Press
Published: 2018-07-29T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV

WHEN JADE AND Amber reached the Villa dei Fiori they saw a bright yellow scooter parked underneath a chestnut tree. Amber immediately got on it.

‘Get off!’ Jade said.

‘Don’t be so boring.’

‘I said, get off!’ Jade pulled at her arm.

‘Lighten up – I was only having a laugh.’ Amber dismounted.

‘Not funny,’ Jade mumbled. Why had she panicked like that? They’d both done similar things before and it had never bothered either of them. She decided it was because she wanted to make a good impression on Caterina; after all, how could she insist Nonno had been a good man if she and Amber behaved like idiots?

‘You can be so sad.’ Amber left the bike and went to the door, Jade close behind to make sure she didn’t make a run for it and jump back on the scooter. Caterina answered Amber’s knock, her face as smiley as when they’d last seen her.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said, kissing the girls in welcome. She ushered them through to the sunny kitchen where a tall dark boy stood talking to Teo. ‘This is your cousin, Dario,’ Caterina beamed. ‘He has returned early from his trip so that he can meet you.’

‘I’m very pleased you are here,’ Dario said in English and shook hands with them.

‘Let’s talk Italian,’ Amber said. ‘It reminds me of talking to Nonno.’

Jade groaned inside. Why does she have to wind everybody up?

Dario grinned. ‘That’s good,’ he said in Italian, ‘my English isn’t great.’

Teo threw an arm round his shoulders and shook him. ‘You should practise every day like I have to for my work.’

Dario shrugged him off and Teo cuffed him affectionately.

‘Why aren’t you at Mrs Bax’s?’ Amber demanded.

Jade began to wonder if she’d ever be able to relax around her sister.

If Teo had noticed Amber’s hostile tone it didn’t show when he answered: ‘I told her I have family business and that I’ll be back later after lunch to take your friend Nico back to his mamma.’

Caterina brought refreshments and the atmosphere eased. Dario was funny and Jade relaxed as his jokes coaxed Amber into a better mood, his hazel eyes glinting at each sharp remark she made. Talk about instant attraction, Jade thought and hoped Dario’s magic would still work when they started to talk about Nonno.

Nico looked at the huge, half-scale reproduction of Botticelli’s Primavera propped against the wall in an annexe next to Mrs Bax’s study. It had sticky notes all over it; blue ones on the bushes and trees, and green on the flowers. Each one was dated and had the name of the plant in Latin, English and Italian written on it.

‘How many plants are there?’

‘Six trees, two-hundred-and-forty non-flowering plants, forty-two identifiable flowers, several about which one might argue and nineteen absolute fantasies,’ Mrs Baxendall said promptly.

Remembering what the old lady had said when she first spotted the viperina at the chapel, Nico looked closer. Nestling under a nymph’s foot was a blue flower shaped like a snake’s jaws open wide, the hairy stem sprouting leaves growing up it in steps and ending in a collar just underneath the bloom.

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