‘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 havingtold 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.’
