at the little girl.
‘Vivienne!’ he said, as if there was nobody he was more pleased to see. ‘Well. Now. What we say? Fast is last.’
‘Fast is FUN.’
He grinned wider.
‘It is fun. Hello, Mrs Cordwain.’
The similarly frizzy-haired woman smiled happily and followed the little girl up the steps.
‘You stay?’
‘It’s been giving me a headache all week,’ she said easily. ‘Another few dozen repetitions can’t make any difference now.’
‘I hear your mother say you do lots of practice,’ said Mr Batbayar to the little girl, who smiled with delight and nodded.
‘Also . . .’ went on the woman, smiling hopefully.
‘You want coffee?’ said Mr Batbayar, sounding much jollier than Marisa had heard so far.
‘I would love one. You make very good coffee.’
‘No. England coffee is very bad coffee. That is not a hard thing.’
Presently the small party disappeared into the house and moments later a very loud and fast and not entirely accurate version of the ‘Skye Boat Song’ came banging out from the little blue house next door.
Marisa stood there with the parcel she had been so delighted to receive only moments before, feeling suddenly very sad. How easy they had found the conversation, how relaxed the curly-haired woman had been, going out and about and into someone’s house. And they had both looked right through her.
Well. At least she had a parcel. Clutching it like a miser, she went back into the house and sat down. She recognised the wobbling antique handwriting and the sunny stamps; they had arrived on every birthday card of her childhood. It occurred to her, for the first time, that of course it must have been her grandmother who chose and wrote those cards, took them to the little ufficio postale and sent it safely on its way, in good time. Huh.
She realised very quickly why he had sniffed it.
Inside, carefully wrapped, she found treasure.
There was Barilla pasta and Mutti tinned tomatoes, straight from the store. Carefully wrapped in straw was a tiny pot of homemade tapenade scented with everything good. There was a jar of tomatoes her grandmother had dried herself on a corner of the little sunny terrace where it was too hot in the afternoon but glorious at any other time of day. A big hunk of parmesan, and, instantly recognisable from the second she’d picked up the box – the smell of it pervading everything, overpowering and absolutely enchanting and something that had probably perfumed the entire Mount Polbearne postbag (Janka did indeed complain about being expected to deliver it; head office had regrettably replied that unless it was a fungus that was likely to explode they were unable to intervene in this instance) – a large brown truffle.
She buried her nose in it; it was extraordinary. Deep and rich and heavy with scent; to be used sparingly and stored carefully, otherwise it would contaminate the entire rest of the house and, quite possibly, the street. She immediately fetched a tupperware container, and sealed away her treasure carefully.
There was more. Local sea salt, and even some potted basil so she could grow her own, although what could possibly thrive in the harsh rocky salted sand of her new home and survive the brisk westerlies she couldn’t imagine. A jar of plump shiny black olives, a twisted vine of garlic which would have smelled amazing if they hadn’t been pushed sideways by the truffle and a bottle of exquisitely good first-press olive oil.
She pulled them out carefully. It was amazing. The one thing her grandmother could have done for her right now that was as close as could be to putting her arms around her and giving her a hug. She glanced over at the Skype window, but her nonna wasn’t in view.
She smiled ruefully at her nonna’s bossiness. It genuinely did hurt her that she wasn’t eating properly.
She thought of her dinner for that night – a stodgy and not very appetising ready meal, with microwave noodles and almost certainly not enough vegetables – and sighed. It had been so long. The joy she had always found in making food.
‘SO!’
The voice from the laptop startled her. She sat up. It was Nonna, of course, returned from her siesta.
‘I got your parcel!’
‘I see!’ The woman was grinning broadly.
Glancing behind her, Marisa saw all the tins laid out on the countertop.
‘It must have cost a fortune to send.’
‘Yes, it ate in very heavily to the money I had to spend on designer clothes for the Christmas ball at the Duke of Lombardy’s.’
‘Aren’t you