The Sweet Life Read online

Luca was tall, olive-skinned and clean-shaven, with dark curling hair and dark smiling eyes. His brilliant white teeth were ever-so-slightly crooked and he had a dimple in his right cheek. He was wearing a killer black suit, a crisp white shirt and a textured silvery-grey tie. He didn’t appear to be much older than she was. To Janey, he looked utterly perfect.

  Speechless, Janey did a panicky sort of half-nodding, half-smiley thing and let Luca take the handle of her suitcase. Not stopping to question why someone who looked like Luca would know someone who looked like her anywhere, she floated along beside him wordlessly until she caught sight of the car he was leading her towards.

  Like all European cars, it was black and shiny and left-hand drive. It also looked very much like the smashed-up sedan in Fellini’s MySpace avatar. Except not smashed up. Yet.

  Janey stopped dead in her tracks.

  ‘Is something the matter, signorina?’ Luca said with some concern as he caught sight of Janey’s frozen expression.

  ‘Um, w-who sent you?’ she stammered. ‘And where was it that you’re supposed to be, uh, taking me?’ She had to ask. The coincidence was too weird.

  His brow cleared. ‘Of course! It is wise of you to make the question. I am driver for the Australian Embassy. Celia Albright, she send me. She make the apology, but she has the urgent meeting. To do with the trade. Così – it is just I, Luca.’

  Janey’s smile returned – though her heart was still thundering a little – which in turn made Luca smile.

  ‘It is okay now, to go?’ he asked, gesturing at the car.

  ‘It is very, um, okay,’ Janey replied with a grin that lit up her features.

  Luca went to open the back door to allow Janey to sit in solitary splendour like a visiting head of state. ‘Oh, I’d much rather sit next to you,’ she said shyly. ‘If that’s okay. Then you can tell me about all the places we ’re passing so that I’ll remember everything exactly the way I saw it and be able to tell my friends.’

  ‘You ’ave never been to Roma?’ Luca asked with surprise as he clicked the boot shut and returned to open the front passenger door for her. Janey could tell from his expression that she was not his usual type of sophisticated passenger.

  Janey shook her head. ‘I’ve never been anywhere. This is the first time I’ve ever been out of Australia. So I want to drink it all in, every last tree, building and, uh, traffic island.’

  She felt her face flush an awful beetroot red. If that didn’t sound kooky and weird, she thought, wishing her stupid tongue would fall out, then nothing would.

  Luca just smiled. ‘Bene!’ he said as he dropped into the seat beside her and slid on his rock-and-roll blue-tinted aviators. ‘Then we will take the long way, no? And I will show you the places per i turisti and the secret places – where to get the good coffee, the gelato and the pasticcerie . . .’

  And with that, Luca slid the large black car into gear and they were gunning down the motorway into Rome at a speed that took Janey’s breath away.

  Luca was even better than his word.

  As promised, he drove her past all the usual places, like the Colosseum and the Vatican, pointing out the smart shopping streets and telling her the best times to visit the crazy tourist haunts like Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. But he also showed her the tiny side street that would take her to a shop that sold only toys made out of wood, and the store that made the most beautiful writing paper she’d ever seen. And not only that, he threw the car into a ridiculously tiny, totally illegal parking spot and took her down a winding cobbled lane that led to the best coffee in Rome made by the barista with the most attitude in Rome and bought her a macchiato (‘It is the only way to drink the coffee, signorina’). Then he urged her back into the car and whisked her up and down narrow laneways to point out the places where the gelato, pasta or pizza was good enough to cross town for, where to buy the best leather gloves in the world, the most high-fashion shoes for not-so-high-fashion prices.

  ‘Because I know about the women and the shoes,’ he said knowingly, which made Janey’s heart lurch in her chest as she wondered whether he had a girlfriend and how old he was, and how she was so not his type that she shouldn’t even be wondering about stupid stuff like that.

  And then Luca double-parked outside an alimentari – or grocery shop – and conjured up a delicious lunch of things she’d never tried before: panino with bresaola and bocconcini, topped with a simple rocket and tomato salad, with takeaway cups of freshly squeezed lemon juice over ice. They ate perched on the side of a tumbling Renaissance fountain beneath shady trees in the gardens of the glorious Villa Borghese, and it felt to Janey as though she’d known Luca forever.

  Usually she was a tongue-tied, blushing mess when it came to meeting boys, but somehow she found herself really talking to Luca. She’d even stopped stammering! It was a miracle. Janey told him all about her mum, her friends, herself and what she hoped for one day.

  ‘Em is a total movie buff,’ Janey said between sips of her deliciously sour drink. ‘She knows every frame of La Dolce Vita like she shot it, instead of Fellini, and she can’t believe I’m here and she’s back in Australia trying to stay warm.’

  For a second, Janey recalled the Fellini she’d met online, and she shot Luca a quick sidelong look. But nothing in the guy’s expression had changed at the mention of the famous director’s name. He just continued to look drop-dead gorgeous and, amazingly, interested in what she was saying. Janey relaxed a little more.

  ‘My other friend, Gabs, is a diva in waiting. The good kind! She has the biggest, brassiest singing voice you’ve ever heard. I really think she ’ll be world famous one day. And she’s so warm, and so – oh, I don’t know – including, that when she talks to you, it’s like she’s reached out and given you a hug. While Ness is just stunning. Blonde, tall, lean, beautiful inside and out, and she’s got the greenest green cat’s eyes you’ve ever seen and is so nice that she lent me all the clothes I’m wearing . . .’

  Janey stopped speaking and blushed. Now I’m going to sound like a complete idiot who can’t even dress herself. She self-consciously tucked a stray strand of wavy hair behind one ear.

  ‘You are lucky to have such friends! It says much about you,’ said Luca, which was the perfect thing to say and put Janey so much at ease that when Luca’s mobile phone rang and he commenced to bark into it in clipped Italian, she realised that it was now way past noon and Luca had a job to return to.

  He flipped his mobile shut.

  ‘Mi dispiace,’ he said regretfully, ‘but I am shortly expected at the Ministero della Difesa Aeronautica and I will be late if we do not go now.’

  Luca guided Janey out of the gardens and back to the car. A moment later he was navigating the crazy traffic on the Corso Italia as though he had a death wish.

  He saw Janey clutch the edges of her seat from the corner of his eye and laughed out loud.

  ‘What can I say?’ he shrugged as he slid his sunglasses back on and overtook two speeding trucks and a merging van. ‘It is Italy, it is the way we drive, the way we are.’

  Janey smiled back weakly and wished the road to Celia’s place would last forever, even if she wasn’t sure she’d make it there in one piece.

  A short time later, Luca guided the black car into an impossibly tight parking spot in front of an elegant 1920s villa that housed some of the senior staff of the Australian Embassy. The villa was in a graceful suburb located just north of the towering ancient city walls that surround the historical centre of Rome and its legendary seven hills.

  ‘We are here,’ Luca said, releasing Janey’s seatbelt with a flourish. He sprang out of the car and opened her door. ‘Signora Albright and her daughter occupy Appartamento 2C. You ascend there, and then press the security, you understand?’

  Janey nodded. ‘Well, goodbye, and, um, thank you,’ she said, wondering whether she’d ever see him again.

  Luca, already on his mobile speaking Italian to somebody else, retrieved Janey’s suitcase and pla
ced the handle in her hand.

  It had to be a woman, thought Janey with a twinge as Luca jumped back into the car, still talking and smiling, to have him looking like that.

  With a last wave that she wasn’t sure he’d even registered, Janey paused beneath the grand front portico of the villa, her heart in her mouth as she watched Luca’s death-defying u-turn.

  He’s total heart attack material, she thought. But in such a good way.

  The entrance to the villa was blocked by wrought iron security doors that were at least three metres high. Janey scanned the keypad on the wall and pressed the button for 2C.

  ‘Pronto?’ purred a young female voice over the intercom.

  Janey wondered if she had arrived at the right place. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I’m looking for Celia Albright.’ She suddenly realised how tired she was. Being with Luca had masked it, but now it seemed almost too much of an effort to stand upright.

  There was a long pause, during which Janey thought the girl might have hung up or walked away.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ the voice finally drawled through the speaker in lightly accented English. ‘You’re late.’

  The security doors clicked open, and Janey found herself standing in front of the kind of black, wrought iron, vintage cage lift that she’d only seen in movies starring Audrey Hepburn.

  She pressed the button for the second floor. The villa had three floors with several apartments on each one. As the lift ascended, Janey glimpsed the first landing through the bars of the lift. It was decorated in subtle shades of cream, muted green and gold, with tasteful urns, paintings and antiques placed about the communal hallway.

  As the lift doors opened onto the second floor, Janey found herself face to face with a girl about her age, who did a visible double take before her face resumed a pleasant half smile.

  The girl possessed the kind of dark Italian beauty that turns heads. She had long waving black hair, tanned skin, liquid brown eyes and carmine lips. She was also effortlessly glamorous in a floaty baby-doll tunic, skinny jeans and a pair of camel wedge sandals with impossibly high heels.

  Janey was so tired that it took her a long moment to register that the girl was not Celia Albright. ‘I’m sorry, you are . . . ?’ She hesitated.

  ‘I could ask you the same question!’ the girl replied, smiling. ‘But I wouldn’t have to.’ She gestured for Janey to follow her through the ornate doorway of 2C. ‘I’ve been expecting you for hours, darling. You’re lucky to even make it inside, because I was about to give up and head out for lunch with my friends and you’ve got no key. I was afraid it was going to be ships passing in the night.’

  She gave a little laugh, breezing ahead of Janey without bothering to introduce herself or to give a tour of the glorious, high-ceilinged apartment they were walking through, as though Janey had seen it all before. Janey had to remind herself to close her mouth. This was home for the next two weeks?

  ‘This is your room,’ the girl indicated. ‘Bathroom’s over there.’

  She sailed out again and left Janey to look around the bedroom, which contained a beautiful antique bed piled high with pillows and ivory linen, a lovely old bedside table with a pile of classic Australian novels on it, and a battered leather armchair. The room was probably one of the apartment’s smaller ones, with a view over a busy street corner into several other graceful old apartment buildings, rather than the internal courtyard garden in which fountains played. But Janey loved every bit of it.

  While she was unpacking her clothes into the built-in wardrobe with sliding mirrored doors that took up one whole wall, she heard the buzzer sound several times, followed by different voices breaking into Italian.

  Heading out to the bathroom to put down her toiletry bag, Janey was waylaid by the girl and four of her friends, two other girls and two boys.

  ‘This is her,’ the girl smiled. Pointing a finger at each of the teenagers, she said for Janey’s benefit, ‘Paolo, Brandon, Minka and Luz.’ Janey nodded as she found herself at the receiving end of several interested stares.

  ‘Hello Jane,’ said one of the boys finally, in an American accent. ‘I’m Brandon.’

  A little flustered, Janey registered that he was very, very cute, in a preppy, blond, tanned, all-American kind of way, and that she was still clutching her toiletry bag in front of her, like an idiot.

  ‘Everyone calls me Janey,’ she replied shyly, shifting it into her left hand and holding out her right.

  ‘That’s not the way we do things here, Janey,’ said Brandon. Without warning, he grabbed Janey close and gave her a kiss, first on one cheek, then the other, while the dark girl and her other friends looked on in amusement. Janey blushed in confusion as Brandon let her go and stepped back.

  ‘The poor darling’s been flying for hours,’ the girl exclaimed to her friends as they prepared to leave the apartment. ‘Now get some shut-eye, Janey. Catch you later!’

  Then the apartment door closed with a click and Janey’s sluggish brain ground into gear with the realisation that the girl must be Freddy, Celia’s daughter – although she looked nothing like her – and that the gorgeously dressed teens had to be friends from the posh international school Freddy attended. For a moment, she envied their witty ease with the Italian language, wondering what they’d been bantering about among themselves when they’d arrived.

  Wearily, Janey poked her head into each of the spacious rooms in order to get a feel for the layout of the apartment, noting the beautiful antiques mixed in with cutting-edge Danish modern furniture and quirky ornaments gathered from far-flung places.

  Feeling a bit fuzzy, she returned to her bedroom and lay down, intending to take a short nap. She wanted to be a little more clear-headed for Celia’s arrival.

  But when Celia arrived home hours later, Janey was still out like a light.

  Via Veneto

  For a good ten seconds after Janey woke the next morning, she wasn’t sure where she was or what she could possibly be doing there. The art deco ceiling was beautiful but totally unfamiliar, and warm summer sunshine streamed in from the tall windows beside her bed.

  As she registered that she’d not only fallen asleep in the clothes she was wearing the day before (and the day before that!), but had also drooled in her sleep, Janey sat bolt upright with a groan.

  ‘Talk about making a great first impression!’ she said aloud. ‘Janey Gordon, once again, is all class.’

  Getting shakily to her feet, she headed out to the kitchen. The quality of the silence in the apartment told her that she was on her own. Freddy had evidently gone out again with her posse of beautiful besties, and Aunt Celia, it turned out, had left Janey a note and a pair of keys. The note was propped up against a coffee machine that had been loaded to the brim. Janey helped herself to a mug of strong black coffee, and sat down at the high marble kitchen bench to read the note in Celia’s strong hand.

  Janey dear,

  So sorry to have missed you,

  but didn't want to wake you.

  You looked all done in.

  ‘And,’ Janey muttered into her coffee, ‘you seemed to be drooling in your sleep, so I left you to it!’ She shook her head with a rueful grin and continued scanning the note.

  Can't make breakfast with you today, I'm afraid - meetings, meetings, meetings - but we'll have dinner tonight at my favourite trattoria, shall we?

  Food 's fantastic, it isn't dressy, and we'll have all the time in the world to catch up.

  Luca will swing by for you at 8.

  We eat late here, as I'm sure you know.

  Janey’s mouth curved into a big smile at the mention of Luca. The restaurant might not be worth dressing up for, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t make an effort!

  Big key's for the security door, small key's for the apartment. Suggest you take a bus down the Via Nomentana.

  Check it's going in the direction of the Centro Storico and you'll be right - that's the historical centre, in case your Italian's rusty.
Excuse Freddy's absence today, but her school holidays started last week and she had a few things already planned.

  I'm sure you two will catch up over the weekend.

  Ciao! Ciao!

  Celia.

  Janey smiled before chug-a-lugging the rest of her coffee and shuffling off to finish unpacking.

  After a heavenly shower in the gleaming marble and chrome guest bathroom, Janey dried her hair and tied it back loosely before slipping into the white short shorts, the silky peasant blouse and a pair of comfy leather flip-flops. She accessorised with a couple of red chunky perspex bangles, a pair of silver pirate-style hoop earrings, and a perky black sailor’s cap in the manner of boho, foho ‘It’ girls everywhere. Looking a lot more sophisticated and altogether more Ness-like than she was used to, Janey left the apartment, carrying a black daypack containing an Italian phrase book, a guidebook, her camera, the keys, Ness’s spare pair of rockstar sunglasses, and some of the Italian money she’d changed at the airport before boarding the plane.

  Janey had the worst singing voice in the world, but she felt like breaking into song as she walked down the villa’s grand front steps and looked about at the bustling street scene before her. Thanks to her mega sleep-in, it was almost high noon and cars jostled for space with scooters, which in turn fought for breathing room with pedestrians, trucks, motorbikes and pigeons. The street was crowded on both sides with huge trees and brooding villas with mysterious walled gardens, punctuated by the occasional hole-in-the-wall coffee vendor or dark green, old-style newspaper stand. She’d never seen anything like it. It seemed suddenly as though life had been magnified, like she’d stepped onto the set of a foreign movie.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Janey aloud with satisfaction. ‘It’s just perfect.’ She slipped the sunglasses on and pulled out her guidebook.

  The first order of business had to be brunch. Her growling stomach reminded her that she’d missed at least a couple of meals thanks to her extended snorefest. Flicking through her guidebook, she found that there was some kind of undercover fresh food market not too far away, in the Piazza Alessandria. Because the weather was so beautiful, and there was so much to just drink in, Janey decided to skip the bus ride described in her guidebook and walk there.