A Postcard from Italy. Alex Brown

      Monday afternoon at work and Grace was engrossed in another, more fabulous world, where parties on board yachts on the breathtakingly beautiful Italian Riviera drinking limoncello cocktails and pure glamour prevailed. Connie was happy, meeting and mixing with Italian socialites and a new friend … a glamorous, vivacious Italian woman they all called Cristal due to her love of champagne.

      Grace carefully turned the page of the red leather-bound diary embossed with gold initials, CD, on the cover and eagerly read on, revelling in how very ‘Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in their heyday holidaying in Portofino’ it all was. Connie seemed to be having the time of her life, as if living inside an incredibly romantic Hollywood film.

       Italy in springtime really is exquisite. We drove all the way along the old coastal road today from Santa Margherita to Portofino with the top down and the glorious sunshine hot on our bare heads. With glistening waves swirling around the rocks on one side and lush green grass dotted with pastel-coloured houses on the other, I couldn’t resist untying my headscarf and truly throwing caution to the wind as it ruffled my hair and lifted my spirits.

       The boat was waiting for us in the harbour and after climbing aboard I rather enjoyed my first time at sea! The waves propelled us, quick as flash, to our destination, the tiny bay of San Fruttuoso, where we swept ashore to explore the atmospheric old Benedictine monastery. Mind you, I had a terrible fright when a squealing wild boar piglet scampered from the undergrowth and almost ran right into my legs on its way off into the pine-clad hillside. Thank heavens I had kept my gloves on as I had to pat its little rump in order to shoo it away as it double-backed and came at me for a second time.

       Later, after a scrumptious supper of roasted octopus on a bed of velvety tomatoes and olive tapenade under a honeysuckle-entwined trellis on the beach, we strolled arm in arm across the sand and then ventured up and down the steps around the monastery, picking wild mint on our way, which we later discovered was a rather splendid idea, as we dipped the leaves into our cocktails when we got back on board the boat for the moonlit voyage home to Portofino …

      Sighing in contentment and wishing she was there, hundreds of miles away in the sunshine, eating roasted octopus and patting wild-boar piglets in the tiny bay of San Fruttuoso, Grace closed the diary. And then, on hearing Larry call out her name, she glanced at the time on her phone and realised that she had been sitting (very carefully on the dust sheet near the edge, so as not to mark it) on Mrs Donato’s peacock-patterned chaise longue in the corner of unit 28 for almost an hour. Larry was probably wondering what she was doing and, more importantly, why she hadn’t come back to the office yet to make a start on sending out this month’s invoice letters.

      ‘Coming,’ she called out in reply, and hurriedly stood up, but then Larry was in the doorway. ‘Sorry. I was just …’ She stopped talking and looked at the floor, mentally kicking herself for losing track of time.

      ‘It’s fine, Grace.’ He smiled kindly, gesturing with his right hand for her to sit back down. But she remained standing, keen to see what his reaction would be as he properly saw inside the unit. His face didn’t disappoint. After casting an eye over Mrs Donato’s belongings, he let out a long, impressed whistle and raised his wiry eyebrows.

      ‘Wow! This is quite something.’

      ‘It sure is. And it’s going to be a proper adventure going through it all.’ Grace’s face lit up.

      ‘Well, there’s no immediate rush. The items aren’t going anywhere soon, not after being here for almost thirty years. But before you get stuck in, I wanted to make sure everything was OK? Betty and I were getting worried about you; you’ve been gone ages. We thought you must have fallen asleep or something.’ He smiled gently. ‘And who could blame you … I just checked my emails and saw one from you earlier this morning … sent around 4 a.m. Is everything OK, Grace?’

      ‘Yes, I … I’m sorry about that …’

      ‘Why would you be sorry? I was fast asleep at that time, but how come you weren’t?’ Larry chuckled, making his shoulders bob up and down.

      ‘Oh. I … um, I couldn’t sleep,’ she said, not wanting to go into the real reason she had been awake all night. That Cora had insisted Grace sit by the window in her bedroom on lookout duty, convinced she’d heard a noise coming from the garden below, and telling her, ‘You’ll never live with yourself, Grace. Sure you won’t, if someone breaks in and strangles me in the middle of the night while you’re fast asleep now without a care in the world.’ And Grace had loathed herself for not reasoning with her mother and telling her that it was highly unlikely someone was going to break in and strangle her … because it was more likely the person to strangle her would be her own sleep-deprived daughter who was already inside the house! But seriously, Grace knew she should have been stronger and stood up to her mother for the sake of her own nocturnal needs. But it had been late and she had been at a low ebb, knackered and not in the mood for another fight. So instead she had done as her mother had told her to, and sat in the armchair dozing as she tried to stay awake ‘just in case’ her mother’s fears turned into a reality. Because, at the end of the day, Grace knew that what Cora said was true, especially once she had planted the seed of doubt inside her head … how would she live with herself if something happened to her mother on her watch?

      ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Grace. Especially if it was work that was keeping you awake … I’m sure Mrs Donato’s whereabouts could have waited until today,’ he said, shaking his head as he referred to the email that Grace had sent to him in the early hours.

      ‘Sure, Larry, I know … but I didn’t want to forget any of my ideas. So that’s why I typed them into my phone and emailed them to you.’ Grace lowered her eyes, grateful not to have to go into detail about her own ineptitude when it came to standing up to her mother. Plus she didn’t want to complain about Cora and then come across as self-pitying. ‘I’ve not been able to stop thinking about Mrs Donato and wanted to give you some suggestions of how we might find her. I guess I got carried away and … well, it is pretty exciting seeing all her glamorous belongings in here. And I was also wondering why we had let her account go so far into arrears? It’s well over a year,’ she added, remembering the dates in the paperwork on the clipboard. ‘We usually do something long before now.’

      ‘Hmm, well that’s true. We do.’ Larry looked momentarily evasive, then a little embarrassed as his cheeks dotted pink. ‘Between me and you … well, I …’ He coughed. ‘I’m not going to lie … I guess I have a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Donato,’ he confessed. ‘But, please not a word to our Betty, because you know that I adore my dear wife.’ He lifted his shoulders to emphasise this fact.