The Lemon Tree Hotel Read online

  Contents

  The Lemon Tree Hotel

  Also By

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  About Vernazza (some spoilers here . . .)

  Acknowledgements

  Landmarks

  Cover

  The Lemon Tree Hotel

  Also By

  Also by Rosanna Ley

  The Villa

  Bay of Secrets

  Return to Mandalay

  The Saffron Trail

  Last Dance in Havana

  The Little Theatre by the Sea

  Her Mother’s Secret

  Title

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2019 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2019 Rosanna Ley

  The moral right of Rosanna Ley to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  HB ISBN 978 1 78648 340 9

  TPB ISBN 978 1 78648 338 6

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78648 337 9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  Cover design © 2019 debbieclementdesign.com

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Dedication

  For Richard Orridge – fellow writer and much valued and trusted friend who can always make me laugh . . . (in a good way)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  About Vernazza (some spoilers here . . .)

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  Chiara

  Vernazza, Italy – November 1968

  After the argument, after Dante had returned home, Chiara went to bed, knowing she would not sleep. How could she sleep after everything that had happened today?

  She closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. She could see their faces, hear the barely disguised ill-feeling in the words being thrown between them – these two men she loved best in the entire world: her father and Dante Rossi. Dante, she had known for only weeks, but as Mamma always said of her cooking ingredients: it is a matter of quality rather than quantity, my dear – and there was that question of destiny . . . Papà, of course, she had known her whole life.

  She’d sat at his knee and listened to his stories even before she could understand them. Tales of L’Attico Convento, the Old Convent which had been transformed into The Lemon Tree Hotel where they now lived and from which they made their living; tales of the war; tales of how he had first met Mamma: ‘I saw her there in the olive grove and suddenly it all made sense.’

  ‘What made sense, Papà?’

  ‘Why, our Resistance, our fight for freedom against those threatening to destroy the country we loved, my whole life. It all made sense, my darling, when I looked into your mamma’s eyes.’

  Chiara let out a deep sigh. Was it like that for Dante? She thought of the dark, knowing looks he would send her when he imagined no one but Chiara could see them. Did it all make sense for him when he looked into her eyes? She hoped so. She stared up at the high slanted ceiling, illuminated only by slivers of moonlight creeping through the wooden slats of the shutters. She loved this room; liked to think of the nuns who had once slept here – like her aunt Giovanna, who now had her own cottage in the grounds of the hotel. Chiara wanted to think that one day Dante might be saying something just like that to their own daughter. But . . .

  It was a very big ‘but’. The ‘but’ included Alonzo Mazzone – her parents’ favourite, son of the friends to whom they were indebted (though this was another story, which Chiara refused to dwell on now). A ‘but’ that reminded her she was only sixteen: ‘too young to know your own mind,’ Mamma had said only yesterday when she caught her daughter gazing at Dante Rossi as he expertly gathered up the nets of the olive harvest and simultaneously swept Chiara that glance which told her everything she wanted to know and more. And now, it was a ‘but’ that included the bitter taste of today’s harsh words
.

  A sharp sound at the window snapped into her thoughts and she blinked in surprise. It couldn’t be Dante – he had returned to Corniglia and surely wouldn’t be coming back in a hurry. Rain? Unlikely – the sky had been clear this evening, and Papà had insisted the weather wasn’t due to break for at least two days. A tile falling from the roof? The Lemon Tree Hotel was old and more rundown than they would like. In its previous life as a convent, it had witnessed violence and suffering, but Chiara liked to think that it had retained its sense of peace and spirituality even in adversity. And surely the condition of the roof was not that bad?

  Another noise at the window. She sat bolt upright. It sounded like soft hail. Or . . . She felt a whisk of excitement. The sound came again. She jumped out of bed and quickly crossed the old wooden floor, polished by nuns over the years until it shone. Or . . . olives? Would he have come back then after all?

  She flung open the shutters, peered into the darkness. The haze of the half-moon cast an eerie halo around the olive trees. ‘Dante?’ she whispered.

  A beam of light flashed from the grove – just for a second, then another, then a third. Three flashes of torchlight. It was their agreed signal. She put a hand to her throat. How could he have dared to return here?

  Chiara grabbed her own torch from the marble-topped dressing-table. She gave the two-flash signal back. I’m coming.

  Her body was instantly alert and fired with adrenalin. Dante . . . He had argued with her father about the olive oil, he had stormed off, walking the three and a half kilometres over the mountains and back to Corniglia, his own village, which was next in line to Vernazza in the Cinque Terre, the five lands, five villages built on the cliffs in Liguria, part of the Levante, their section of the Italian Riviera. And now he had returned.

  She threw a woollen shawl over her white cotton nightdress and drew it around her shoulders; she pulled on some shoes and opened her bedroom door as silently as she could. She held her body tense and waiting, but there was no sound from the rest of the building. She took a breath and crept down the wide, winding stairs. It was late – almost midnight – and her parents were in bed, of course. There were no guests – it was November and this time was reserved for the olive harvest, although, as Papà often said, the time was gone when a hundred trees would mean security for a family here in Liguria. And it was oil of the finest quality – extra virgin Riviera del Levante. Still, olive oil was needed in la cucina, was it not? Olive wood also gave off the most wonderful fragrance and warmth, and both were useful in the hotel . . . Fortunately, her parents’ room was on the other side of the building, so Chiara hoped she was safe from discovery.

  She made her way swiftly past the reception desk and into the high-ceilinged kitchen, her soft footsteps sinking onto the cool flags, the emptiness of the room that usually had such a bustling and sweet-smelling warmth making her feel quite ghostly. She slipped out through the kitchen door, which led directly to the olive grove that surrounded The Lemon Tree Hotel on three sides. ‘Dante?’ she whispered again, shivering from the cool air on her skin, and with something else, something powerful that seemed to shimmer inside her and make her almost want to explode.

  ‘Chiara.’ He stepped out in front of her and drew her towards him, into the protection of one of their oldest trees, which formed a moonlit-green canopy around them.

  ‘Dio santo,’ she said. ‘My God, I can’t believe that you—’

  He silenced her with a kiss. The sweet press of his lips on hers was intoxicating. Chiara gave herself up to it with a surge of longing. How could anything in the world be this good?

  ‘My father . . .’ she began, when he finally released her. Would kill him if he saw them now.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Dante hung his dark head. ‘He is your father. I should have shown more respect. I should have stayed silent.’

  ‘No.’ She stopped him. ‘It wasn’t your fault. He was wrong. He . . .’

  It had been simmering since they came from Corniglia, this grain of resentment between the villages. Usually, only the boys from Vernazza helped with the olive harvest. But recently, some of the local youths had left the area, just as they were leaving many of the rural communities of Italy. There were new opportunities for them in the cities these days, she knew, a chance to earn money working in different industries. Everyone was saying it: life was not all about farming any longer. So, Papà was worried they wouldn’t get the olives down, gathered and to the press in time before the weather broke. It was important to pick the olives before they were completely ripe and purple. A green olive gave less oil but was lower in acidity, so the oil was fresher, more delicious and of better quality. Papà had asked in Corniglia if anyone could help, and Dante had come with his friend Matteo. Dante. She had seen him in her life twice before, and those two encounters had made her think about him more than she could say. And now, he was here, at The Lemon Tree Hotel.

  Chiara held the face that in the last weeks had quickly become so dear to her between her two hands and examined every detail in the pale moonlight: his gentle dark eyes, the generous curve of his mouth, the slant of his cheekbones, and the dark stubble on his jaw. When Dante had come to the hotel to help with the olive harvest, when she had first seen his frown of concentration as he unwrapped the orange nets from the trunks of the trees and laid them out to catch the fruit . . . She had caught her breath. It was him. Surely it was him? When she had watched him stretch and roll his broad shoulders as he and Matteo beat the tree and branches with the bastone, heard his soft deep voice as they lifted the edges of the nets, witnessed the infectious rumble of his laughter as the olives rolled together into heaps to be loaded into bulging oily sacks to take to the press . . .

  From that moment, she had been lost. She was standing by the kitchen doorway, he hadn’t seen her yet. Then he straightened, called out to Matteo, pushed his black hair from his forehead, shifted slightly, as if he felt the force of her scrutiny . . . And their gazes had locked. He recognised her from before. Had he known perhaps that this was her father’s place? She wasn’t sure. But she was sure that he felt it too – this strange emotion that she could not name. Was this what Papà had described to her? Was this love at first sight?

  Since that moment, Chiara and Dante had grabbed every opportunity to spend snatched minutes together – to chat when she brought out the lunch or the beer, to linger by one another’s side while they were working to bring in the olives, the heat building between their bodies even though it was already November, to meet just like this, in the olive grove under the cover of darkness.

  ‘It is you,’ he said to her in that first snatched moment alone only minutes after she’d stood there watching him.

  ‘It is me.’ She could still hardly believe that it was him. It was the third time. It was as if Fate or some Divine Intervention had stepped in, and . . .

  ‘Can we talk? Later, I mean?’ His brown eyes were intent as he watched her collecting the glasses to take back to la cucina.

  ‘Before you leave. In the grove at the back of the hotel,’ she said, quick as lightning, as if she made such assignations every day of her life. In fact she had never done anything like this before – but then again, she had never felt this alive.

  The first time she’d seen him had been in Corniglia, as she walked through the village on an errand for her mother last spring. She was still fifteen. A group of boys were eyeing her as she walked down the hill, swinging the basket, oblivious at first to their grins, the way they were nudging one another and looking her way.

  ‘Hey, look what a gift someone has sent us today. How lucky are we, eh?’

  Chiara flinched. She was used to the boys of Vernazza – she knew them all well, she had grown up with them – but she hadn’t seen these boys before, and she felt a stab of fear. Of course, they were harmless, naturally they were just having a joke with her. But something about the look in the eyes of the one who had spoken – a lascivious look, a greedy look – made her footsteps waver.
She tossed her head. She wouldn’t let them see that she cared.

  ‘Oh, she is a princess, is this not so?’ He sneered. ‘Should we teach her a lesson perhaps?’

  Chiara stood her ground, glared at him. But she found she could not speak, the banter that usually came so easily to her had left her. The boy took a step closer.

  ‘Hey, Franco! Give it a rest.’ Another boy appeared. A boy with dark eyes and an upright bearing. He smiled at her. Don’t worry, he seemed to say. He looked back at the other boy. ‘Go home to your mamma,’ he teased. ‘Leave the poor girl alone.’

  And it seemed that he possessed an unlikely authority. The boys mumbled and drifted away – all of them.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to him. She felt unbearably shy, ridiculously naïve. He gave a little nod back to her – and was gone.

  Chiara hadn’t forgotten him though. A few months later she saw him again – this time in Vernazza. An elderly lady who lived down by the waterfront had collapsed – heatstroke perhaps, for it was a hot day in August. Chiara ran to help her, but someone else had got there first. Him. He mopped the old lady’s brow with his handkerchief, helped her sit up, fetched her water from the fountain. Chiara had watched him, half mesmerised. Who was he? Some sort of guardian angel?

  Now, she knew better. Dante was no guardian angel – he was a hot-blooded, wildly attractive young man who was more than willing to meet her under the cover of darkness and shower kisses on her lips, her neck, her breasts . . . But still – surely he had been brought to her for this reason alone?

  But without Chiara noticing – for she had plenty of other matters on her mind – that grain of resentment between the two neighbouring villages had swollen. And when the yield of their olives turned out to be less than previous years, considerably less than Papà had expected despite the fact that the boughs of the trees had been heavy with the little green fruit for months, one of the locals, Salvatore, was heard to mutter that some of the olives might have been kept back for the Corniglia press.

  Dante had fiercely protested their innocence. ‘It is the climate,’ he had said with a frown, the frown that Chiara longed to smooth from his brow. ‘It is the same all over Liguria this year. Everyone knows it.’