In an undertone I said to Nico, ‘Isn’t he supposed to be driving?’
Massimo obviously had bionic hearing and butted in before Nico could answer. ‘Don’t be so English, Maggie! We’re in Italy, the land of wine. We don’t worry too much about that, as long as we’re not seeing double. I’ve only had a glass anyway, but I’ll stick with water now since you’re being the wine monitor.’
I was getting a bit bored with being talked down to. ‘There is a reason we have drink-driving laws. I think it’s something to do with not killing people.’
Massimo laughed as though I had the sophistication of someone who’d been born in a hamlet on a hillside. ‘I didn’t have you down for being so law-abiding, Maggie.’
I knew he was joking but I still felt like the killjoy at the party, the person going round putting the bottles in the recycling instead of opening all the cupboards to see if there was a secret stash of booze.
Thankfully Mum and Sam bulldozed through any tension by comparing how many Italian words they’d learnt so far. Mum made us laugh, adamant as she was that the word for swimming pool – piscina – had its origins in the fact that so many people had a wee in it.
I hoped that today’s clashes would be forgotten as we headed out to the cars after dinner, but Massimo made a point of telling me to go in the one Anna was driving ‘as she hasn’t had anything to drink’, trapping me between wishing I’d never commented and treating him to a salute with my middle finger.
As soon as we arrived in San Gimignano though, I forgot about Massimo. It was like walking onto a movie set. Fourteen towers rose up into the starry sky. I fully expected to see Spiderman swinging from the crenellated tops.
Mum grasped my arm. ‘Lordy, it’s like being in Hollywood. It don’t look real.’
Just behind us, I heard Francesca say, ‘Doesn’t’ under her breath.
I hoped Mum hadn’t heard but she turned round and said, ‘My grammar’s a shocker, isn’t it? You are so lucky to speak lovely. It’s too late for me, but you make sure you get Sam speaking nice like you.’
Francesca had the good grace to mumble, ‘Sorry,’ and yet again, I felt a rush of affection towards Mum. I saw Anna roll her eyes when Mum said, ‘Pacific’ when she meant ‘specific’, but as far as I was concerned, her generous heart trumped all of Anna’s pontificating about grammar as though she needed to prove her intellect was so dazzling that her grasp of English was better than any native speaker. Even though a missing ‘s’, dropped ‘h’ or swallowed ‘t’ was clearly on Anna’s list of top ten first-world worries, it would only ever make number twelve thousand and seventy-two on mine, way below my fear of a moth flying into my ear and dying there.
The squares thronged with kids dashing about, splashing in the fountain, grandfathers sitting on the benches in their smart trousers and white shirts, portly grandmothers waving their arms about in animated conversations that looked for all the world as though the topic in hand was a life or death scenario.
I walked down the cobbled street with Nico, his hand in mine and allowed myself to think our funny little family would be okay in the end.
We stopped at an ice cream parlour with about a hundred different flavours. Francesca explained to Mum and Sam what all the names were.
‘That one, bacio, that means “kiss”, it’s sort of hazelnut, then that one zuppa inglese is “English soup”, a bit like custard…’
As we wandered through the square, Nico and I swapping ice creams – liquorice – yuk – tiramisu – yum – I felt a surge of happiness I hadn’t felt since before ‘Boxgate’. Sam and Francesca kept scooting off to look in clothes shops, trying to give Anna, who thought she was the last word on style, the slip. Mum was walking on ahead with Sandro, arm-in-arm. Every now and then he’d stop to look in a window of a ceramic shop with all the mini reproductions of San Gimignano. I looked forward to seeing his drawings later on in the week.
I’d deliberately walked off ahead of Massimo so that he couldn’t spoil my evening. He was following behind with Lara, though judging by the way they were scuffing along in silence, she hadn’t yet decided to forgive him. But Massimo wasn’t going to let anything blight our opera experience, trotting up and chivvying us along, determined to make sure we didn’t miss the start. ‘Honestly, nothing beats sitting under the stars with fabulous singing, surrounded by the towers. It’s just magical.’
I decided to offer an olive branch by showing some enthusiasm, despite wishing we could just sit and have a drink in one of the little squares.