E-Book, Englisch, 368 Seiten
Buchan Two Women in Rome
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ISBN: 978-1-78649-534-1
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The compelling, romantic and gripping novel from prizewinning bestselling author Elizabeth Buchan
E-Book, Englisch, 368 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-78649-534-1
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton and The Museum of BrokenPromises. Buchan's short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival. elizabethbuchan.com
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CHAPTER ONE
LOTTIE ARCHER HAD KNOWN FOR SOME TIME THAT HER nature was divided – she put it down to the fact her mother had given her away at birth and her father was unknown from the word go.
Which life is ever nourished in ideal circumstances? Not many; but Lottie’s had fallen short from the start without anyone to guide or guard her. There had been no flowing, and unconditional, tenderness to weep with her over bruised knees, or to apply sticking plaster to the terrors of growing up. No one to say with total conviction.
The reasons for her abandonment might have been noble or ignoble but Lottie was never informed, either by the care homes she frequented or by the foster parents who took her in as a teenager and with whom she – sadly – had nothing in common.
She grew to see that her abandonment was hers with which to cope, and hers alone, and she hugged its whys and wherefores to her inner self, no doubt hampering her emotional development in doing so.
There had been dark times.
The scissors.
The uneaten meals.
But the memory of the weapons that she had used against herself had been banished to a dark recess in her mind. Useful experience. Never to be repeated – but something that added an edge, a serration, to her character.
Occasionally, during those years, a counsellor suggested that she unburden herself but, at those times, she was not sure of what she wished to achieve.
It was sufficient for her to understand that one half of her loved order, procedures and clarity – and she was superb at those. The other, wilder half could, on occasion but not always, take risks and had been known to dance around (the permitted areas) of Stonehenge at midsummer and to climb Mount Kenya without a sensible sleeping bag.
Three weeks ago, she had accepted another risk by marrying, and now she was lying beside Tom, her husband, in the apartment in Rome in a newly purchased double bed.
To say she was astonished at herself was an understatement. Marriage had never been part of her plan and, even more astonishing, she had only known Tom for nine months.
Tom arrived in Lottie’s life on a hot July day. Her close friend Helena, who was getting married for the second time, had insisted her attendants, of which Lottie was one, should wear pink. Neither the dress nor the colour suited her. But, because she loved Helena, she laced herself into it and resolved to avoid the photographs. Tom had spotted her skulking behind a pillar and introduced himself.
Halfway through their conversation, he broke off. ‘I don’t think you like your dress. Your idea or the bride’s?’
It was a neat insight and she burst out laughing. ‘Truthfully, I hate it.’
‘It doesn’t matter, though,’ he said. ‘You’re lovely.’
She looked at him and her stomach did an extraordinary contraction. ‘So are you,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure that we know each other.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘It means there’s something there.’
They went to bed that night, a glorious, slightly drunken, surprising encounter in an upmarket hotel with a marble bathroom and a stack of white towels.
The pink dress was abandoned on the floor, never to be worn again.
Partly, Tom snared Lottie with his gift for listening, which meant he paid as much attention to the unspoken words as the spoken ones. Partly, she loved his body, from which she took as much pleasure as she hoped she gave him. Not handsome, with a nose that was a shade too long, his charm came from his lean and rangy energy and it snared her.
He was the only one of her lovers who had got her to talk about her childhood, and she found herself telling him about the care homes and the fostering.
‘I survived,’ she said.
He stroked her hair back from her forehead. ‘Not funny, though,’ he said. ‘Not for a child.’
‘I yearned for the safeness of a mother – except my mother had been anything but safe. I think I wanted relief from being responsible for myself and I was angry that I had to be.’
‘Yearning can be cruel,’ said Tom. He paused. ‘Did you ever try to find your parents?’
She felt the old anguish stir. ‘Tom, do you mind if we change the subject?’
He seemed perfectly at ease with her retreat. ‘Fine,’ he said gently. ‘We all have no-go areas.’
One way or another, Lottie’s love affairs were always conducted at long distance – , said Helena. Tom lived in Rome and so this affair looked set to conform to the same pattern, but he had other ideas and wooed her with tenderness … and stealth.
There had been many phone calls between London and Rome and those slightly concerning sessions on FaceTime that made her look haggard – ‘Rome has so many things going for it, I promise’ – and weekend meetings facilitated by budget airlines.
And what of Tom’s previous lover, who had moved out three years previously?
‘Clare found someone else,’ said Tom. ‘And she chose to leave. It was bad at the time. I missed her very much. Then one day I didn’t.’ His gaze raked past Lottie’s shoulder into a past – and a no-go area? – about which she knew little. ‘It had run its course.’ He turned his attention back to Lottie. ‘I learned that, at forty, you have to re-educate yourself for the rest of life. Clare’s leaving was my lesson that the ambitions and ideals that were good for the first half of my life needed adjustment. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that it was quite normal.’
That struck Lottie as profoundly true.
He took her hands in his. ‘We both have baggage from the past. Let’s just cut off previous labels.’
‘Done,’ she said.
Just before Christmas, Tom phoned Lottie in London. ‘The post of chief archivist has come up at the . Why don’t you apply and come and live in Rome?’
Why would she? Her work as Principal Records Specialist at Kew would lead to promotion. She was established and enjoyed her good reputation.
? The risk-taker asserting herself? Had her feelings for Tom so deepened that a sea change had taken place?
‘The Italians are wonderful,’ said Tom. ‘They are so right about many things and you speak good Italian.’ He added: ‘I love you, Lottie.’
That was the first time Tom had said it and, to her surprise, she experienced pure joy. Normally reticent, she found herself responding – and the words were almost new to Lottie. ‘I love you, too.’
She got the post and, before she took it up, Tom launched the next phase of his campaign.
He took her skiing in Austria. Nothing too expensive, but not cheap either. St Anton was less glitzy than many, but it had an old-world charm and the trails and lift networks linked delightful Alpine villages.
‘You can ski all day without repeating a run,’ said Tom. ‘I like that.’
They skied like there was no tomorrow and, at night, they dined and wined and fell into bed. On the final day, they took the ski lift up the steepest mountain. At the top, Tom sent Lottie a look over his shoulder. .
Erotic. Testing. An invitation into new territory.
Lottie pushed herself fast down the terrifying . Tom was just ahead but only just. The speed was stupidly reckless but she responded to its danger with surging blood and an abandonment to elemental sensations.
The air sliced at her cheeks, her stomach heaved with apprehension and excitement, her legs ached. She caught up with Tom and he turned his head for a second and they exchanged a look of complete understanding.
At the bottom, breathless and ecstatic, stripped of everything except exhilaration, she collapsed into his arms.
‘Marry me, Lottie.’
?’
‘Marry me.’
Lottie was unable to respond instantly.
‘Say yes.’
Adrenalin coursed through Lottie. Love. New job. Profound change. The tally was seductive. ‘Yes. Tom, yes, I will.’
Tom played his trump card with exquisite skill. ‘I want to share my home with you, Lottie. You’ve never had one.’
True: and the reminder made her cry.
As a child, she had had no real home. As an adult, she had lived – along with a vast collection of pot plants – in a series of rented flats that were never quite as she wished them to be because she never stayed long enough. In contrast, Tom had lived in the apartment in the city centre and held down the same job for over fifteen years.
‘You can come and go as you please,’ he said, blotting her tears with the ball of his thumb. ‘The travel is easy.’
He had kissed her in the way that was increasingly familiar and which she had grown to love, and she was taken aback by the strength of her desire to accept what he offered. The decision was not without struggle because her habit of self-containment was so entrenched. , said Helena during one of those talks that were supposed to be cathartic and useful but so very often weren’t. .
She could not swear that she Tom. Not through and through, at a deep level. But her instincts,...
