‘You can let go now,’ says his colleague, laying a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘All right, Phil? One, two, three. There we go.’
I stagger to my feet and look down atSergio’s face, his eyes wide with shock and fear.
‘Tutto bene,’ I whisper, as he is whisked out to the waiting ambulance. ‘Tutto bene.’
I just stand there, staring at my blood-drenched shirt and hands. There’s a swimming sensation in my head as my legs buckle beneath me and I slump down onto the floor.
* * *
I jog past the bins and piled-up garden furniture early next morning,entering the restaurant through the kitchen, where Nonna Maria is by the sink, chopping onions, humming and crying at the same time.
‘Ciao, Maria,’ I pant, removing my earphones and kissing her on both cheeks.
‘Any news from the hospital? Er …notizie da Sergio?’
These three little words unleash a torrent of Italian, of which ‘aeroporto’ and ‘ospedale’ are the only vocabulary I understand.I just do my customary nodding routine, interspersed with the odd ‘sì’ or ‘no’, then escape to the dining room with a ‘miscusi’ the moment I’m able to get a word in edgeways. It’s empty and silent. I put on someMadame Butterflyto soothe my frayed nerves. Grabbing a stiffly starched tablecloth from the pile, I start laying up.
A retro flower power van mounts the pavement. A woman in dungareesjumps out.
‘Let me give you a hand,’ I say, propping the door open. Back and forth we go, until all the floral arrangements are inside.
‘Twenty individual centrepieces, three large,’ she says, handing me the consignment note and a pen. ‘Hope it all goes well.’
‘Wine order for Il Mulino,’ comes a voice behind me.
‘Ah, yes, that’s us,’ I reply, chewing on a fingernail as the deliveryman negotiates his trolley around the obstacle course of rosemary, white freesias, and red roses.
‘Twelve cases of Valpolicella, Chianti, Lacryma Christi, Verdicchio, Pino Grigio, and Prosecco,’ he says, unloading. I begin to check the boxes off against his inventory, but with so much more to do, I abandon this task and just pray that nothing’s missing.
Help! Where is everyone? I can’tdo this on my own. The evening hasn’t even begun and I have this horrible sense of foreboding. I feel panic rising inside me, mixed with guilt about Sergio’s accident; just moments before, hadn’t I wished him gone? Next minute, bam. He was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. My visualisation powers have taken on a telekinetic life of their own, like in some Stephen King horror film.
‘That’syour lot. Sign here please,’ says the deliveryman, thrusting his clipboard into my hand. ‘When’s the party?’
‘Tonight, believe it or not,’ I reply, rolling my eyes.
His eyebrows shoot up and he gives a low whistle. ‘I’d get the white in the chiller as soon as you can.’
‘Sure,’ I say with a hint of sarcasm, scooping up a handful of cutlery. Now, will that bebeforeI’ve laid up twentytables, folded eighty napkins into birds of paradise, put fresh towels in the loos, sliced up the lemons, polished the wine glasses and cutlery, and filled the butter dishes?
‘Good luck!’ he says cheerily, shutting the door behind him.
I flop into a chair, surveying the war zone: boxes of wine, flowers, glasses, tablecloths, bread baskets, bunting, cutlery everywhere. I feel exhaustedand emotionally drained, and have absolutely no idea how I’m going to get through the day, let alone the opening night. With the local press, not to mention Michelin and Egon Ronay representatives invited, the future of Il Mulino is riding on the success of this one night. It’s going to take an Oscar-worthy performance to pull this off. I haul myself to my feet, turn up the volume of the CD player,and resume laying up.
* * *
Only three more tables to go. This is my favourite bit ofMadame Butterfly: the finale, where Cio-Cio San reads the inscription on her father’s knife: ‘Who Cannot Live with Honour Must Die with Honour.’ She stabs herself just as that two-timing, naval love rat Pinkerton is heard calling out her name.
Cutlery in hand, I allow my eyes to close for a momentand breathe deeply. That feels so good. The notes flow through me, as I surrender to the flood of heart-rending, dramatic, sorrowful emotion …
‘“Con onor muore, chi non puo serbar vita, con onor amore, addio, addio! Piccolo amor! Va, gioca, giocaaaaaah!”’
‘Emileeee!’
‘Aaaah!’
‘This is my nephew, Francesco Rossi,’ says Luigi, switching off the music. ‘He will be in charge of thekitchen until Sergio returns.’
‘Zio Luigi, you tell me in the car she is British, but she can sing like an Italian,’ says the dark stranger, brimming with amusement.
‘Piacere,’ I say, flushing to the roots of my unwashed hair as we shake hands.
‘You dropped this,’ he says, bending down and handing me a knife.
‘Grazie,’ I say in a low voice, averting my gaze, sorely tempted to doa Madame Butterfly and die with honour then and there.
