What Happens in Tuscany... by T A Williams Read Free Book Online

a passing teenager reduced Victoria to incoherent stammering.
    â€˜That boy’s trousers are positively falling down. Look, they’re almost down round his knees. You can see his underpants.’
    Katie did her best to explain and clarify where necessary. She found herself doing a lot of explaining.
    As the meal progressed, the conversation moved on from clothes to tattoos. The discovery that their waitress had a dolphin tattooed on her bare shoulder sparked off a series of sightings of other tattoos, many far less attractive than the dolphin. ‘That man’s arm is all the colours of the rainbow. It must have hurt awfully, having that done.’
    Katie now felt thankful that her mother had steadfastly refused her permission to get any of the tattoos or piercings she had so desired in her teens. And luckily by the time she had got to university she hadn’t been interested any more. As a Goth girl clumped past in black leather boots with a stud in her nose attached to a chain, Victoria was dumbfounded. ‘But, Katie, that must be so unhygienic. Imagine what happens when she gets a cold.’ There was a pause, during which Katie felt relieved to have finished her ice cream. ‘What if she sneezes?’
    As they relaxed over a cappuccino after lunch, Victoria remembered what Katie had said earlier. ‘Has this year really been awful for you?’
    Katie looked up and nodded. ‘To be honest, it’s been pretty crap the last couple of years, but it all came to a head this spring.’
    â€˜You mean, with your husband…boyfriend?’
    â€˜Him and work. With Dean it was a series of things, mainly drink-related, leading up to a full-blooded shoot-out when he missed his birthday dinner.’ She went on to give Victoria a somewhat sanitised version of the events in the pub with the stripper. Victoria was suitably shocked.
    â€˜That’s awful. I don’t blame you for breaking it off.’
    â€˜The technical term for what happened is that I dumped him, big time.’
    Victoria giggled. ‘I like that. You dumped him, just like the dustbin. And what was wrong at work?’
    â€˜I’ve been trying to analyse it. I actually like teaching, but I think it was maybe the cyclical nature of it that got me down.’ In answer to Victoria’s expression she explained. ‘The kids come to you at the beginning of the year. You teach them and then they move on at the end of the year. But you stay there. I started feeling I was just marking time. And then there was all the bureaucracy and red tape. No, I knew I needed a change. Who knows? Maybe if I’d been in a settled relationship with a good man, I might have seen things differently.’
    â€˜So is anybody courting you at the moment?’
    Katie laughed. ‘No, Victoria, people stopped courting about a hundred years ago. I think you want to ask if I’m seeing anybody at the moment. Or if there’s somebody after me.’
    Victoria acknowledged the correction with a nod of the head. ‘So, are you seeing somebody at the moment? Is anybody after you?’ Katie realised that the question was not as simple as it sounded. So far in her life, Victoria had neither been courted nor had anybody after her. This was all a whole new world waiting for her. Katie knew that she would have her work cut out helping her to navigate her way through these treacherous waters. She wasn’t looking forward to the challenge. She limited herself to short answers to the questions.
    â€˜No to the first and maybe to the second.’ She saw Victoria’s expression. ‘There’s a man called Martin. I hardly know him, though. I’ll tell you about him some time.’
    Victoria thought it best to change the subject. ‘I’ve been thinking. You were talking about your car last night, weren’t you?’ Katie nodded. ‘So, you can drive?’
    â€˜Ever since I was 17. What about you?