“Not quite,” said Cat. “About your age, I would have thought. Early forties.”
Isabel was taken aback. “Over the hill in that case. You think.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Cat. “Forty’s nothing really. Forty is thirty these days, I know. I know. It’s just that for me, from the perspective of twenty-something, forty-something is . . . I’m afraid I don’t see myself falling for somebody who’s almost twenty years older than I am. That’s all. It’s simply a question of sticking to one’s contemporaries.”
Isabel touched her niece on the forearm in a gesture of reassurance. “That’s perfectly reasonable,” she said. “You don’t have to apologise.”
“Thank you.” Cat looked up. The door had opened and a man had entered. He cast a quick eye about the delicatessen and, spotting Cat, gave her a wave.
Tomasso came over to the table. Cat rose to her feet and gave him her hand. Isabel watched, and then he turned to her, and reached forward to shake hands with her. He was smiling, and she saw his eyes move across her, not very obviously or crudely, but move nonetheless.
He sat down with them and Cat went to fetch him the glass of mineral water for which he had asked. It was too late for coffee, he said, and he was not hungry. “Water,” he said, “will be perfect.”
He turned to Isabel and smiled. “Your city is very beautiful,”
he said. “We Italians think of Scotland as being so romantic and here it is, just as we imagined it!”
“And we have our own ideas about Italy,” said Isabel.
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He inclined his head slightly. “Which are?”
“So romantic,” said Isabel.
Tomasso’s eyes widened with mirth. “Well,” he said. “We are in the realm of cliche, are we not?”
Isabel agreed. But the cliches came from somewhere, and that was why they tended to have a measure of truth in them. If Italy was not romantic, then what country was? She looked at Tomasso, a bland look, she hoped, but one which concealed serious examination. He was tall and well built, and his features, which were strong, were . . . were familiar. He looked like somebody she knew, but who was it? And then, in a moment, she realised who it was. This was Jamie fifteen years on.
The realisation surprised her, and for a few moments she was sunk in thought. Jamie was the borderline- Mediterranean type, as she had often observed, and so it was perhaps not surprising that there should be some similarities between him and Tomasso, who was the real thing. But it went beyond that: there was something in the expression and in the way of speaking that made the two seem so similar. If you closed your eyes, briefly, which she now did, briefly, and if you factored out the Italian pronunciation, then it could be Jamie with her. But Jamie would never come into Cat’s delicatessen—even now.
This unexpected comparison unnerved her and for a moment she floundered. The banal came to her rescue. “You speak such beautiful English,” she said.
Tomasso, who had been about to say something, inclined his head. “I’m glad you understand me. I’ve lived in London, by the way. I was there for four years, working in an Italian bank.
You wouldn’t have said that I spoke good English when I first arrived. They used to stare at me and ask me to repeat what I had just said.”
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“They’re ones to talk,” said Isabel. “With their Estuary English and its words all run together. The language is being murdered daily.”
“The bank paid for me to have lessons with an elocution teacher,” said Tomasso. “He made me hold a mirror in front of my mouth and say things like
“And where’s that ghastly plain?” asked Tomasso.
“In Spain,” Isabel answered.
They laughed. She looked at him, noticing the small lines around the edge of the mouth that told her that this was a man who was used to laughter.
“Is my niece going to show you Scotland?” Isabel asked.
Tomasso shrugged. “I asked her if she would, but unfortunately she cannot. She is very tied up with this business. But I shall see what I can myself.”
Isabel asked him if he was going to Inverness. Visitors to Scotland made the mistake—in her view—of going to Inverness, which was a pleasant city, but nothing more. There were far better places to go, she thought.
“Yes,” he said. “Inverness. Everybody tells me I must go there.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s . . .” He trailed off, and then burst out laughing. “I shall not go there. I shall not.”
“Good,” said Isabel.
Cat returned. She was not going to be able to show Tomasso Scotland, but she was able to get away to show him Edinburgh that afternoon. Would Isabel care to accompany them?
Isabel hesitated. She noticed Tomasso glance at Cat after F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
