He looked at her, seemingly torn, but Annie just waggled her fingers and wandered away. “See you again, maybe.”

She was pretty certain she would.

Chapter 14

Then

“Yes, I will take you to Villa Dolce Vita. But since you are hungry, maybe first I take you to the best restaurant in Positano?” offered the taxi driver Colette found at the Sorrento train station. “If you are hungry, trust Jacopo—I know the best places.”

He had a huge gap between his front teeth and his mustache covered half his upper lip as he smiled, yet it wasn’t Jacopo’s appearance that disarmed her. It was his effusive demeanor. Taxi drivers didn’t smile at you in England. They barely turned around to look at you. You were just a fare and they were just a means of transport. Seemed Italians saw things differently.

And Colette was indeed famished. The train journey from Naples had taken longer than she’d anticipated and while she was rapt by the magnificent winding coastal view as they traveled, she wished she’d thought to grab a sandwich back at the station.

But in all her excitement about being here—in Italy—she’d completely neglected her stomach.

“OK,” she answered politely. He looked friendly and certainly didn’t seem like the kind of person who would take unsuspecting British tourists off into the mountains to maim and bury, she joked to herself with an ironic smile.

This was all so new to her, though. The furthest from home she’d ever traveled was across the channel to Paris for a day. This was Italy. Fortunately, she did have one advantage, however: she knew conversational Italian.

Colette’s obsession with romantic languages had begun as a child. She loved stories of Ancient Rome and the Italian cadence was so beautiful and lyrical she wanted to learn the language.

She eventually did as part of her studies at university and had hoped to spend time abroad once she’d saved enough money, but her mother’s failing health had prevented that. Now, she was finally getting to see the country she’d spent all these years dreaming about.

Jacopo was like something out of a cartoon as he took her huge suitcase and hefted it into the boot of the taxi. Colette now wondered if she might have overpacked, but again she had never traveled before. What did you pack for three weeks in Italy? She’d put in everything she could think of, just in case.

As the car wound along the coast, Jacopo continued to amuse her with stories of his passengers. She asked him to intermittently chat to her in Italian so she could get her feet wet again with the language.

It had been some time since she’d been able to practice and she wanted to test herself before she interacted with the locals. Turned out she still remembered a lot.