The Impulse Purchase, page 20
Mario shrugged. ‘She doesn’t have your class, though.’
‘Ah, yes, well. You can’t buy class, can you?’ Maggie teased.
She looked at Mario. He was slight, in his white linen shirt and Armani jeans, but she could see the outline of his toned arms through the fabric.
‘Well, I just wanted to say thank you. You taught me a lot. About how to look at food. And the world. And how to treat people. I would never have done what my sister and mother did. I still can’t speak to them.’
Maggie knew he was exaggerating. He loved to dramatise.
‘Oh dear. I don’t want to cause a family rift.’
‘They are power-crazy. They don’t listen. And that scares me sometimes. I wonder maybe if it’s time to leave the business.’
‘And do what?’
‘I don’t know. I just feel like if I don’t go now, I’ll be with them for ever. And I’m not sure that’s what I want.’
Maggie was intrigued. She’d never seen this side of Mario.
‘Do it! You know your stuff.’ She laughed. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? You’re trying to leave your family and I’ve just gone into business with mine.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing.’
‘My mum’s bought a pub. We’re running it together. Me, Mum and Rose.’
‘A pub? What pub? Where? Are you insane?’
‘Maybe. It’s the pub in the village she was brought up in. We’ve gone there for years. Mum worked there when she was a teenager. It’s kind of a dream of hers.’
Mario whistled softly. ‘That’s cool. Three generations of women. Running a pub. That is great PR. Smart.’
‘Of course.’ Maggie smiled at his teasing.
Mario ran his thumb over his bottom lip, looking thoughtful. ‘You know there’s one good thing that’s come out of this.’ He leaned forward. ‘Because while I was working with you, I couldn’t ask you out.’
‘Oh?’ Maggie raised an eyebrow.
‘I never mix business with pleasure.’
Maggie picked up a plump black olive and put it in her mouth. She didn’t know what to say. Mario sat back in his chair.
‘I think you’re amazing,’ he said. ‘You’re so smart and you care so much and you’re such a great mother and a great daughter. And now you’re not working with us . . .’ He looked down at his wine glass, swirling the liquid round, then looked up again. ‘Maybe I have a chance?’
Maggie didn’t answer straight away. She was a little taken aback, not thinking she would be Mario’s type at all. She imagined a size eight goddess in Gucci sunglasses, sultry, sulky, high maintenance. But Mario wasn’t her type either. He was charming, entrepreneurial, engaging – but a little too smooth for Maggie.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said softly. ‘But I’m not ready for a relationship yet.’
He reached for the bottle of wine from the bucket next to the table. There was a chink of ice cubes as he lifted it out, and Maggie watched a trail of water splash onto the tablecloth as he filled her glass.
‘Maggie,’ he said. ‘It’s been four years. More than four years.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help how I feel. I’m just not ready.’
‘OK,’ he said. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, but it was disappointment rather than petulance. Maggie was surprised at how crushed he seemed. Maybe he wasn’t used to not getting his own way?
‘We can be friends though.’ She lifted her glass to him. ‘And no hard feelings.’
He gave a tiny shrug, and his mouth twisted into a half smile. ‘Friends.’
After that, the tension eased and dinner was fun. Maggie realised how starving she was. Apart from Winnie’s feast, none of them had really eaten a proper meal all week; she’d served them all up her staple ramen bowls to keep them going. Now they had laid down the ground rules, the conversation flowed as smoothly as the wine – they talked about the plans for The Swan, and Mario promised to supply everything she needed from him. And he talked about how difficult it had been for him to leave Rome when he was small, but how he had come to love Avonminster nevertheless. And Maggie talked about her fears for Rose, how worried she was that the life she was leading was never about her, that everyone else seemed to come first.
‘Does she complain?’ asked Mario.
‘Never,’ said Maggie. ‘But sometimes I want her to behave like a normal kid her age. She knows I will always have Gertie for her. Though it’s going to be hard with the pub.’
‘I think Rose is really lucky. Being young isn’t always a picnic. All those hangovers and comedowns and broken hearts. She’s safe and secure and loved. Isn’t that what we all want?’
‘You’re right. I guess I feel guilty.’
‘How is any of it your fault?’ Mario shook his head in disbelief.
‘I don’t know. A mother’s default position, I guess.’
They finished off with cantucci dipped into vin santo. Maggie felt completely relaxed after the mayhem and physical rigour of the week. And spoiled – the food at Ottantadue was lusciously indulgent and Maggie knew they were VIPs from the little extras that had come from the kitchen for them to try: truffle porcini arancini and pumpkin tortellini with sage.
‘Do you want to come back for coffee? My apartment is two minutes’ walk.’
‘I never do coffee. I won’t sleep.’
There was a pause. ‘Then I’ll make you decaf. Though it is against my religion.’
‘Oh.’ Maggie blushed.
Suddenly, sitting there in the comfort of the banquette, in the glow of the lamplight, filled with delicious food and not a little wine, Maggie felt a shoot of desire. Mario was as tempting as the tiny little cups of tiramisu they had just devoured: sweet, dark wickedness. He was crumpling up his napkin, studiously ignoring her until she answered. She knew if she refused he would accept her refusal graciously. But suddenly she didn’t want to refuse. They had bounced off each other all evening, laughing and teasing each other, but also sharing some intimate details about their fears and worries. Mario had revealed a depth she had never appreciated before. As the evening drew to a close, she felt herself warming to him.
More than warming.
She reminded herself that they’d had a bottle of Amarone on top of several glasses of white wine. And the vin santo. But she wasn’t insensible. She just suddenly felt the need for a pair of arms around her, the warmth of a body. She hadn’t felt that for a long time.
‘OK then,’ she said, and burst out laughing at his astonished expression. ‘Let’s go.’
They walked out onto the little cobbled street and along to the harbourside. She tucked her arm into his, and it felt strangely familiar, walking amidst the Friday night throngs of drinkers and diners moving from bar to restaurant to club. This was Avonminster at its best: the river gleaming black under the moon, the music spilling from doorways, the lights of the city twinkling behind. He led her to an apartment block in a converted warehouse.
‘That’s a lot of tins of tomatoes,’ said Maggie, looking up at it in wonder, then thought perhaps she’d been a little rude. Mario laughed.
‘I guess I’ll be selling tomatoes until my dying breath.’ He punched in the code and the door swung open. He held out an arm. ‘After you.’
This was the moment she could change her mind. She knew he wouldn’t protest. She trusted him. They understood each other. And maybe that was why she smiled and walked straight inside.
The apartment was as sleek and expensively dressed as Mario. A flick of a switch lit the living room with a soft warm glow, and Maggie made her way over to the sofa and sank down into its velvety depths with an appreciative sigh. And realised she’d forgotten this feeling. Anticipation, uncertainty and that delicious corkscrew of lust. She had buried so many feelings out of necessity, and now they were unleashed she relished the relief. They were red-hot against the grinding grey of her grief. The grief had once been black and harsh, but was a softer constant now, though no less wearing. To feel something different was a release.
Mario walked behind the sofa to put on some music. Some smooth seventies soul. As he made his way back past her, he ruffled her hair affectionately. Without thinking, she leant back into his hand, like a cat asking for more affection. He didn’t say anything, but began to massage her scalp with the most gentle touch, his fingers playing with her hair, lifting strands of it and letting it fall. She felt as if her head was covered in a million tiny pinpricks of light.
‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘That feels wonderful.’
He still didn’t speak, just let his fingers dance over her head and down her neck, touching the top of her spine, skittering up behind her ears until she was almost melting. To be touched like this after so long was exquisite but almost unbearable. She was hypersensitive, and Mario was as deft as a virtuoso piano player, knowing exactly how much pressure to apply. She almost couldn’t bear it but at the same time she didn’t want him to stop.
She put her hands up to her face and gave a sigh.
‘I can stop if you want.’ He took his hands away and she longed for him to put them back.
‘Don’t stop.’
He bent down and she felt his lips on her neck, just beneath her hairline, and she gave a whimper that she hated herself for. God, if she couldn’t control herself when he kissed her neck, what chance did she have if—
She stood up. He looked up, mortified. ‘I’m really sorry. I thought . . .’
She held out her hand to him. ‘I presume you have a bedroom?’
His eyes widened. ‘Strangely enough, I do.’
‘Then come on.’
She felt bold as she followed him, trying not to laugh at herself. What was she doing? What the hell, she thought. If his head massage was anything to go by, she was in for the time of her life.
His room was just as she imagined it might be. Just a seven-foot bed visible. Everything else hidden behind sliding walnut doors. Subdued lighting. A grey velvet bedcover and crisp white sheets. They stood at the foot of the bed, staring at each other for a moment.
‘On your back,’ said Maggie, gently pushing his chest with her palm.
‘Oh my God,’ he said, falling backwards with his arms spread out and a wide smile on his face.
She kicked her boots off and pulled her dress up so she could put one leg either side of him, and began to unbutton his shirt. When he went to touch her, she tapped his hand.
‘You’re quite the dominatrix,’ he said admiringly.
She smiled as she reached his bottom button and revealed the top of his jeans.
And then the track changed and she recognised the intro. ‘Lowdown’ by Boz Scaggs. And she froze. All she could see was Frank, in their kitchen, doing his smooth Studio 54 dance, friends doubled up with laughter as he pointed his fingers in the air and strutted his stuff.
And then she looked up and saw the full-size mirror over the bed, and a dishevelled woman staring back at her, her hair wild, her skirt pulled up and her legs either side of a man who until ten minutes ago she had never even thought about kissing.
She was jerked back into reality. What on earth was she doing? Who was that crazy woman? She was a grieving widow, for heaven’s sake. Suddenly all she could see was Frank’s shocked face. His crushed expression at the sight of her rolling around with the Italian Stallion, as he used to call Mario. This was wrong, no matter what her body might be telling her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and scrambled off him as elegantly as she could.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mario sat up, leaning on his elbows, his shirt falling away to show his chest.
‘I can’t do this.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Oh.’
She couldn’t vocalise her feelings. She just shook her head.
‘I’m sorry. I really thought you were up for it. I wouldn’t have . . .’
‘Oh God. I was. I totally was. Don’t think I wasn’t. It’s just . . .’ She sat on the bed with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I can’t stop thinking about Frank.’ She was surprised at herself for telling him, but to her surprise Mario looked sympathetic.
‘I get it. It feels like a betrayal?’
‘Totally.’
‘But it’s not. You deserve to feel good. This doesn’t mean anything, Maggie.’
‘Oh. Right. No. I mean, I know it doesn’t. But it’s still—’
‘It’s just a physical pleasure. Like the food and the wine. The perfect end to a wonderful night. We’re not fucking with our minds, Maggie. Or our hearts. Just our bodies.’
She couldn’t help but look shocked. ‘Right.’
‘I don’t expect anything from you. No strings. Amici con benefici. Friends with benefits.’
‘It’s sounds so much better when you say it in Italian,’ Maggie murmured, but she was drawing away. The moment was gone. The desire had evaporated.
‘Don’t do this to yourself, Maggie.’ Mario was gazing into her eyes. ‘Don’t keep yourself on ice for ever.’
‘It’s how I feel. I can’t help it. I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m not saying this for me. I’m saying it for you.’
She stood up.
‘I’m really sorry. Please don’t take it personally.’
‘No, no – I do understand.’
‘You’re very lovely, Mario, and I would love to . . .’ she gulped, ‘. . . you know, under any other circumstances, but it doesn’t feel right and that isn’t fair on you.’
‘Hey, listen, I can handle it.’
He smiled at her, wry. In the lamplight, he looked like a model posing for Italian Vogue, his dark hair tousled, his shirt undone, his abs smooth and hard.
‘Can we forget this ever happened?’ she asked.
He stared at her.
‘There’s no way I’m ever going to forget it,’ he said. ‘But I won’t mention it again, I promise.’
Maggie fled the apartment, heading out into the harbourside, which was still heaving with people. She tried to make herself look as unflustered as she could while she called an Uber. Her head was starting to throb from the unaccustomed drinking – she didn’t usually mix her drinks like that. She tried to add it up, and thought it was no wonder she’d behaved how she had.
Back at home, she drank three glasses of water and swallowed two paracetamol. She took her notebook out of her bag. She let the pen hover over the page for a few seconds.
You will not believe the chef we’ve got for The Swan. She’s only Rose’s age but she’s awesome. And I really hope the two of them will be friends. I feel like all Rose’s friends went off the radar a bit when she had Gertie. Not that they don’t love her still, but she doesn’t see them so much any more. But Winnie would be great for her. She’s smart and sassy and sorted. Anyway, a good end to an amazing week. I really think it’s going to work, this mad venture of ours. One more week to go before we open. Shiiiiiit!!!!
Mario took me out for dinner to say thank you for everything I did for When in Rome. Which was sweet of him. He’s not as . . .
Then she put the pen down. She was still drunk. And she wasn’t sure what she should say. Whether she should confess what happened. Frank might think it was funny. But he might be hurt . . . up there, wherever he was.
She shut the notebook, ran up to her bedroom and put on Frank’s Nirvana t-shirt over her pyjama bottoms. Straight away she felt comforted. She remembered him wearing it the day Rose was born, sitting with her in the delivery room for fourteen hours of unfruitful labour, until they wheeled her off for an emergency Caesarean . . .
She could see him now, blue scrubs over his t-shirt and jeans, and a sort of shower cap over his hair. Most men, she knew, would blanch at the prospect of watching their wife undergo a C-section, but Frank suffered from an insatiable curiosity. To him, the prospect was fascinating. The chance to see inside someone didn’t come along all that often. Not in his line of work, anyway.
He stood as close as he could to the operating table, at Maggie’s head, because the team liked to keep partners on that side of the screen, away from the business end of things. After all, he was there to give her support and comfort, not be a spectator. But he peered as closely as he could, mesmerised by the deft ballet, the incision, the gleam of the knife.
‘Stop gawping. I haven’t given you permission to look at my gizzards.’ Maggie was holding tightly on to his hand.
As the team prepared for the incision, Frank was doing a Groucho Marx waggle with his eyebrows, running through a series of expressions: quizzical to disapproving to shocked to outraged.
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Maggie pleaded. She didn’t want her belly shaking when someone was about to cut into it.
He grinned, and settled for a final nod of approval.
‘They’re going in,’ he said, and Maggie winced – at the thought rather than any feeling. Although she couldn’t feel pain, she could feel tugging and pulling.
Frank watched intently, and she watched his face rather than the surgeon’s. He was riveted, and her heart buckled with love for him. His pale heart-shaped face with the too-thick eyebrows, the Tintin quiff, his eyes the pale green of old-fashioned lemonade bottles. Her quirky, eccentric husband with his eye for detail and his never-ending ability to see the sunny side, the funny side. His party trick was to sing ‘The Joker’ by Steve Miller, complete with the wolf whistle on his guitar, and it always made everyone gleefully weak with laughter.
‘My gangster of love,’ she called him, giddy with a fondness that was so much more nourishing than the unhealthy passion she’d had for the bad boys before him.
He was the least likely person for Maggie to end up with. Geeky, bespectacled, uncool – yet somehow supercool, with his chivalry and his forensic understanding of how everything worked, from the Hadron Collider to her hair straighteners. He would be identifying all her body parts as they were revealed, nodding sagely as he recognised them.
