LITMIR.BIZ

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will you make it up to me?’

      ‘I don’t know. But I will and you’ll be glad you came and picked me up, I promise. What about a subscription to Jackie or something?’

      ‘Hm,’ she said. She knew she would have to fetch him. ‘Oh, all right – but this is the last time.’

      ‘Thanks, Jessica, you are more than gorgeous. I’ll be outside Terminal One. I can’t tell you how good it is to hear a friendly voice once more.’

      Jessica put the phone down and scrabbled around for a blank video and then headed off. Flin was so annoying. Typical of him to have had his card swallowed up, and even more typical of him to bank on either her or Geordie to come to his rescue. But what did he mean by that last bit? she thought to herself as she quickly put on some lipstick and tidied her hair.

      Any irritation Jessica may have felt disappeared by the time she saw Flin standing helplessly by the pick-up point; somehow, for all his height, he looked like a lost little boy. Hopeless, but it was good to see him. For his part, Flin was elated to see Jessica. He’d forgotten just how beautiful she was. Elegance personified and a true friend indeed. An hour earlier, with enormous relief, he had said his farewells, and then, while waiting for Jessica, had wandered around happily looking at all the comforting signs of English life. Warmth stole over him as he recalled his life before Poppy.

      ‘So?’ said Jessica, as soon as they started off again.

      ‘You don’t want to know. It was awful. A total, unmitigated disaster.’

      ‘I do, I want to hear the whole saga from start to finish.’

      ‘Jessica, I just can’t bear to – and please don’t say “I told you so” in a superior way, or I’ll probably go mad.’

      ‘Well, I did, and I do think that in return for picking you up – on a Sunday night – the very least you can do is tell me what happened.’

      Flin acquiesced. ‘It was dreadful, J,’ he told her, having explained about Poppy’s bombshell. ‘You were so right. She was just using me to bolster her confidence, but it was a bloody long way to go to find that out. I felt such an idiot although I completely realize it was as much my fault as hers. Should have known my image of being carefree and in love in Italy was too good to be true.’

      ‘Not really – just with her,’ Jessica said, hoping to sound sympathetic.

      ‘The first morning I was there,’ Flin told her, lighting one of her cigarettes, ‘I remember waking up very early and sitting outside on the terrace and thinking, I would do anything to see Jessica and Geordie cheerily walk round the corner. Or any of my friends for that matter – just someone friendly I could talk to. I really wished I had a mobile I could call you on. Geordie would’ve had his internationally linked up and ready to use.’

      ‘Of course he would,’ Jessica laughed.

      ‘The real tragedy was that it was such a beautiful place. The air was fantastically fresh and I was sitting there, drinking coffee and watching the early-morning sun beginning to lift the lingering mist from the slopes of vines. A bell even started tolling from the nearby village – I felt as though I was in some sort of advert or Merchant Ivory film.’

      ‘Sounds heaven.’

      ‘It should have been. Such a bloody waste.’

      ‘My poor darling. So what did you do all week? Did you just pretend nothing was amiss?’

      ‘Exactly. I mean, what else could I do? If I acted sulky and petulant, a) that would have made things worse, and b) it would have looked rude to her parents who quite clearly had no idea that Poppy and I had at any stage been romantically involved.’

      ‘And what were they like?’

      ‘Liz and Donald? Really sweet, but Christ, did Liz like sightseeing. She was nice, but completely ran the show all week and we all trooped round museums and monasteries all day long while she gave us the guided tour. She was a bit like Eleanor Lavish from A Room with a View. Great if you’re into history of art, not so brilliant if you’re not.’

      Jessica laughed once more.

      ‘Well, I’m sure I’ll laugh about it one day,’ Flin continued, ‘but there was one time when I very nearly lost it completely. We’d been looking round the church of San Marco and Liz had been giving us another lecture. “Just look at Fra Angelico’s brushwork,”‘ he said, imitating Liz’s precise speech. “‘You can see every sweep of the brush as the paint was carefully applied to this figure’s robes.” That was the sort of stuff she’d come out with. What’s more, I’d been there before with Josh when we went inter-railing and frankly, once you’ve seen one fresco, you’ve seen them all. Well, as you can imagine, by the end of it, I was pretty keen just to get back to the villa. But no, we then had to go round the bloody Duomo, with Liz starting yet another lecture. By the time we finally headed back to the cars, I was feeling decidedly tired and grumpy, but I was also determined not to get in Donald’s car as he was just about the worse driver I’ve ever seen.’

      ‘Worse than you, darling?’ asked Jessica.

      Flin ignored the jibe. ‘Much, much worse. Believe me. Anyway, having engineered my way into Liz’s car, I thought I was safe until Poppy and Alice, Poppy’s sister, started singing rounds.’

      ‘Rounds?’

      ‘You know, singing the same tune but at different times.’ Flin shuddered at the thought. He had never felt so awkward in his entire life, and doubted he would ever forget that particular car journey. With a renewed wave of gloom sweeping over him, he recalled his feeble attempts at joining in.

      ‘Oh, Flin, haven’t you ever sung rounds?’ Poppy asked him. ‘You know, I sing a line, then Mummy sings a line as I’m starting my second, then Alice joins in, then you join in and so on. You can sing, can’t you?’

      Yes, Flin thought to himself, but it always made him feel self-conscious, especially when he was the only male amongst three females. Liz started the ball rolling. ‘London’s burning, London’s burning.’

      Then Alice sung the same line as Liz moved onto ‘Fetch the engines, fetch the engines.’

      At the moment Flin was due to join in, Poppy and Alice, and Liz in the mirror, all nodded at him gleefully. But at that appointed moment, racked with horror and embarrassment, he remained mute.

      ‘Come on, that’s when you come in,’ Alice said, at this stage still humouring him.

      ‘I’m not very good at singing.’ Flin knew he sounded lame.

      ‘Nonsense, anyone can sing this,’ Liz scoffed.

      ‘Have a go, Flin, it’s good fun, honestly.’

      A dark cloud of self-consciousness lowered above his head before enveloping him completely. From its murky depths, he growled out his lines.

      ‘There, that was easy enough.’ Poppy smiled at him encouragingly.

      ‘You’d find it a lot more comfortable to sing at the proper pitch, though, Flin.’

      ‘Mummy, don’t bully him. Flin can sing however he likes. Now what next?’

      The next ‘round’ was considerably more complicated and, try as he might, Flin was not able to get to grips with it at all.

      ‘Look, sorry, I’m spoiling your fun. You three sing without me. Let me just listen to you doing this properly,’ he had told them.

      Deciding that Flin was a lost cause and that any further attempts at coercion were useless, they finally ignored him and carried on singing increasingly complicated sequences. Flin chewed his fingers and abstractedly watched the Tuscan landscape drift past his window, conscious that his week from hell was descending into new depths of surreal horror.

      ‘God, that sounds horrific,’ said Jessica, laughing out loud

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