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‘You should have said it was your first time.’
‘Would it have changed things?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
Alicia inhaled deeply as they disembarked. She stood, hands on hips, blocking the exit for a moment and just taking it all in. The sky was a different blue here, and more familiar, the needle of her inner compass almost settled in relief as she stepped back onto Sicilian ground.
‘Alicia!’ Dante prompted, impatient. ‘Can we please move?’
The drive to Ortigia was for the most part accomplished in silence. Alicia gazed out of the window as heaven unfolded before her eyes. It really was an island—a separate entity, almost.
‘It’s just linked by bridges...’
‘Three,’ Dante said, glancing over, back in entertaining client mode as he started to tell her all the myths. ‘Asteria turned into a quail.’
‘And threw herself to the sea.’ She could remember Beatrice reading the story to her. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said as they took one of the bridges, and she felt as if she was crossing into another time zone, for it really was an ancient world they were entering.
‘We are going there...’ He pointed to an elegant palazzo within the citadel as they exited the bridge and the vehicle slowed. ‘The roads here are not really made for cars.’
‘Can we walk, then?’ Alicia said. ‘Show me...’
‘This afternoon we can—’
‘I meant now.’
Dante was surprised—he was more used to women who liked their views from a penthouse suite.
‘I slept on the plane,’ Alicia pointed out.
Her energy was refreshing—but then he reminded himself that this was exactly what he and Alicia had loved to do. They’d used to spend their days wandering. It was how they had found the little meander in the river—a place to this day where neither of them had seen another soul.
He was surprised, too, at the pleasure he found in showing her the tiny island that burst with the history and rich beauty of this ancient place.
‘It’s a maze!’
‘No, it’s just small,’ he said as they walked under an archway. ‘If you get lost, you always end up back here.’
They stepped out into a central square with a beautiful fountain in the middle, but Dante’s attention was elsewhere.
‘Tomorrow we dine there...’ He pointed to a very sophisticated-looking restaurant and she took in a nervous breath.
‘It’s quite relaxed,’ Dante said.
He thought she was intimidated by the surroundings, Alicia knew, but it wasn’t that. It was the thought of a family dinner that made her both excited and anxious.
Another first.
‘I’m so nervous about tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘I want them to like me.’
She made him laugh, and that was unusual, and both of them sort of knew that it was.
‘I don’t even think they likeme.’
He wanted to say they would love her, tell her to relax, but he knew it was a snake-pit he was bringing her into.
