The Right Place Read online

  CARLA CARUSO was born in Adelaide, Australia, and only ‘escaped’ for three years to work as a magazine journalist and fashion stylist in Sydney. Previously, she was a gossip columnist and fashion editor at Adelaide’s daily newspaper, The Advertiser. She has since freelanced for titles including Woman’s Day, That’s Life and Shop Til You Drop. These days, she writes fiction in between playing mum to twin sons Alessio and Sebastian, making fashion jewellery, and restoring vintage furniture. Oh, plus checking out her online horoscopes, jogging, and devouring trashy TV shows. Find her at www.carlacaruso.com.au, and @carlacaruso_creative on Instagram.

  Also by Carla Caruso

  Available in ebook from Escape Publishing

  Run For The Hills

  THE RIGHT PLACE

  Carla Caruso

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  To my late nonni, Maria and Ferdinando Felis, and Carmelo and Carmina Caruso—thank you for the inspiration, your culture, and for paving the way.

  Munti ccu munti ‘un se juncianu mai, ma cristiani ccu cristiani se juncianu sempre. ‘The mountains may never meet other mountains but people will always meet again.’

  Calabrese proverb

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Also by Carla Caruso

  Oven-Roasted Tomatoes

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Stuffed Capsicums—Vegetarian Version

  Five

  Six

  Summer Vegetables Pasta

  Seven

  Tomato Fritters

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eggplant Parmigiana

  Fried Eggplants with Yoghurt Mint Sauce

  Mint Yoghurt

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Pasta E Fagioli—Italian Bean and Pasta Soup (Serves 6)

  Adrian’s Semi-Dried Tomatoes

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Esta’s Homemade Ricotta

  Nella’s Updated Version

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Choc-Orange Persimmon Cake

  Eighteen

  Capsicum Strips in Red Sauce

  Chilli Olives

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Lasagne

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Zeppole

  Twenty-Six

  Donata’s Meat-Free Meatballs

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Limoncello

  Adrian’s Easy Chicken Schnitzel

  Fried Broad Beans

  Kiri’s Quick & Easy Tomato and Bean Salad

  Orange and Fennel Salad

  Pickled Eggplant

  Lemon and Mint Cordial

  Salsa Verde (Green Herb Sauce)

  Zucchinis with Pasta Sauce and Breadcrumbs

  Mostaccioli Biscuits

  Acknowledgements

  Recipe Index

  OVEN-ROASTED TOMATOES

  (SERVES 4 AS A SIDE)

  INGREDIENTS

  About half a kilo of medium-sized tomatoes

  To taste: minced or chopped garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper

  METHOD

  Preheat oven at 200°C. Cut fresh tomatoes in half with a sharp knife. Line a tray with baking paper, place tomatoes on top, and sprinkle with garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper.

  Bake for roughly 30 minutes, or until the tomatoes shrivel. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn!

  Once ready, allow the tomatoes to cool for a bit, then enjoy on a hunk of sourdough with eggs and roasted herby mushrooms, or however you prefer.

  ONE

  Mitchell Park, South Australia—present day

  ‘This the right place?’ the balding taxi driver asked Nella Martini over the din from the traffic-clogged main road.

  Granted, Nella’s clothing—a maroon belted shirt-dress and sky-high beige heels, direct from Melbourne—was a little too ‘shiny’ for the dust and smog of the Adelaide suburb of Mitchell Park, where the main road nosed through industrial buildings and scant agriculture.

  But, for once in her life, Nella had barely thought about her outfit when she’d dressed that morning at her now exboyfriend Matt’s place. She’d just thrown on yesterday’s clothes and wheeled her two suitcases, crammed with whatever she hadn’t already hocked on eBay, down the street. Then she’d jumped in a cab and headed for the airport, without looking back.

  Still, repeat outfit or not, what she wore was who she was, while this—food-growing land, hemmed in by homemaker centres, automotive businesses and industrial estates—was not. What did she know about growing tomatoes? About food at all? Unfortunately, it was the only place for her to go right then.

  ‘This is it,’ she confirmed to the taxi driver, unzipping her black leather handbag at her hip. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  He rattled off a ridiculously cheap amount, showing her hometown of Adelaide did have some advantages over Melbourne, however few and far between.

  The driver shook his head as she fumbled for her purse. ‘Can’t believe there are still a few market gardens out here.’ He gestured at the cars and trucks streaming past the window. ‘Amongst all this. It’s like a time warp.’

  ‘I can barely believe it either.’ Nella handed over her plastic fantastic.

  Most of the food growers had been smart enough to sell up over the years, let industry encroach, and give in to progress. Most.

  That magic word, ‘approved’, flashed up on the cabbie’s EFTPOS machine. Then he shuffled out to help lift Nella’s suitcases, in matching faux snakeskin, from the boot to the footpath.

  As he took off, the January sun beating down, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the taxi window. Seemed she still had the looks of a Calabrese peasant, with her dark hair and eyes, even if she couldn’t comprehend her ancestors’ connection with the land.

  Turning, she stared up at the early 1900s sandstone villa, which fronted her late nonna Esta’s market garden and evoked so many good and heartbreaking memories.

  A brown-roofed verandah wrapped around the spacious house, with the centrepiece a blue slatted garden bench, designed for people-watching while peeling potatoes and the like. The vast windows were covered up with stark beige roller shutters to keep out the Aussie sun, and a handpainted sign reading ‘Torrente Blu’ was attached to a porch peak—her nonno’s ode to the ‘blue creek’ out the back, even though the stream was a murky green in reality, albeit tranquil.

  The front yard was more ‘suburban’ than the rest of the property, comprising a small patch of lawn and some mismatched flower beds. But beyond offered a glimpse of open sky and flat scrubby farmland, about the size of two soccer stadiums, dotted with twinkling glasshouses and stretching to the aforementioned Sturt Creek.

  Nella’s heart twinged. For the first time ever, her nonna wouldn’t be there to greet her, wiping her hands on her black floral-print apron and demanding Nella ‘sit, sit’ while she put the espresso maker on. Without her, the place felt bereft. Wrong. An empty shell.

  Shaking herself out of her reverie, Nella wheeled her bulging suitcases, one at a time, around to the rear verandah and set them by the back door. It’d always been the entrance as far as her nonna was concerned. Only suit-clad Mormons and door-to-door salespeople darkened the front.

  At last, she paused to properly drink in the view from the verandah, which, along with the colossal glasshouses, featured glossy fruit trees, lines of leafy crops, rustic sheds and a tomato-red tractor. A wind chime, handcrafted by her nonno to scare away ‘blasted
fruit-eating’ birds, tinkled on the breeze.

  The property was like one of those houses that looked like a run-of-the-mill single-storey from the front but dropped away to a super modern two-storey at the rear: a total surprise package. It still took Nella’s breath away. A slice of the country in the ’burbs.

  No wonder her nonna had been too stubborn to leave unless in a casket, even after her husband, suffering dementia, had died a decade ago. Along with the Mediterranean climate, if Nella tuned out the rumble of traffic from Marion Road, she could imagine being transported to Italy’s south. What she’d seen of it in photos anyway. Nella had never set foot in her grandparents’ place of birth.

  Her nonni had been among the influx of Italian immigrants who’d landed in South Australia after World War One, searching for work and a better life. Back then, as her nonna had told her, a large number of commercial fruit and vegetable gardens had flourished on Sturt Creek’s flood-plains. This led to several Italians spending their first years in the Marion area, working as labourers on properties owned by local farmers, her nonno among the first.

  They’d toiled in the market gardens, often living on-site in the barns or sheds, before establishing themselves as producers in their own right. The glasshouses crucially made winter production of vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers possible. Adelaide’s sudden growth, though, meant that much of the land—located just twenty minutes’ drive from the CBD—was reclaimed for housing and industry.

  Except at this end of Marion Road.

  Nella’s gaze shifted to the left. Alongside her nonna’s property stood its virtual twin, the two homes separated by the barest of fences, which ended once the white gravel driveways made way for glasshouses.

  Sooner or later, she’d have to let her grump of a neighbour know she was here. She might as well get it over with. Somehow the prospect seemed less daunting than heading indoors and being overwhelmed by grief and guilt.

  So, steeling her nerves, she took off for the nearest glasshouse, picking her way through the dirt and patchy grass at her heels. Changing her shoes, she figured, would only give her time to back out.

  There’d once been twenty glasshouses across the neighbouring properties but they’d been replaced by two massive ones that did the same job. Easy-listening music spilled from a nearby radio, signalling she was heading in the right direction.

  However, a first glance inside the whitewashed, light-filled space revealed nothing more than a jungle of plants. Egg-plants, cucumbers, zucchinis, basil, parsley, and the property’s pride and joy—tomatoes, trained up string trellises as far as the eye could see, in all shapes and sizes and varying shades of red and green. The familiar grassy scent of their leaves pervaded Nella’s senses, conjuring up more memories, the balmy air clinging to her skin like an unwanted layer of clothing.

  A rustle alerted her to a young brunette, crouching down in the thicket to the right. Upon seeing Nella, the woman stood up, a tomato-filled bucket in hand, and gave Nella a wary once-over. Nella shifted her feet, aware she couldn’t have looked more out of place while simultaneously wincing at the dirt now powdering her metallic grey pedicure.

  ‘Um, hi. I’m Nella. Nella Martini,’ she attempted in greeting. ‘I’m just looking for Adriano Tomaso. Is … is he around?’

  Even saying his name felt surreal. From another time.

  ‘Kiri Yun,’ the girl introduced herself, one eyebrow remaining arched. Her Cambodian surname made sense. In the eighties, a new wave of migrants from Cambodia and Vietnam had taken over the market-gardening scene, picking up where the Italians had left off. Somehow her lack of a smile and unflattering gardening clothes didn’t take away from her overall prettiness. ‘As for Adrian, last I checked he was in the far back bay, with the Mortgage Lifters.’

  ‘The Mortgage Lifters?’ Nella echoed.

  ‘The tomato variety,’ came the response, as though Nella was as thick as polenta soup.

  It was further proof she didn’t belong here. ‘Uh, thanks.’

  Turning on her heel, Nella was only grateful her stilettos didn’t get stuck in the dirt as she did so. Each step forward, though, just made her more on edge. The worst was yet to come.

  There was a reason she’d never sought out Adrian when she came to visit her nonna in recent times. She knew how he’d look at her—like the granddaughter who was so wrapped up in her own life, her own self-importance, that her trips home became more infrequent, dropping back to a mere few a year. Who, in her busyness, would sometimes forget to return her nonna’s phone calls.

  Like she was an opportunist who only left the confines of her glamorous big-city life and returned to her past when there was something in it for her.

  She didn’t want to think about whether he was right.

  After bypassing a few more tomato pickers, Nella reached the end, her search feeling fruitless. Then she saw him amid the foliage, before he saw her, and it was like a kick to the stomach, for another reason again.

  In her mind’s eye, she was seeing his twin, Davide, rather than Adrian himself. They weren’t identical, just close enough—the same dark blond hair, hazel eyes, golden-brown skin. Only this version of him was older, with a proper five o’clock shadow, broad shoulders and sculpted arms. How many years had it been since she’d actually seen Davide, her first love? A seeming lifetime. Last she’d heard he was a commercial lawyer in Dubai, specialising in hedge funds. What else?

  Adrian turned, catching her gaze, and she swallowed hard, tumbling back to the present. The passage of time had certainly been kind to Adrian. Despite his green-stained hands and dirt-ingrained nails, she knew he’d be beating off women with a tomato stake these days, likely including the Cambodian girl.

  Recognition slowly dawned in his eyes and his expression grew scornful.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said in a voice that had deepened over time, resting his white bucket down on the dirt. ‘Wondered when you’d show up.’

  ‘Hi. I—I would have rung first,’ Nella gabbled. ‘But things have been … hectic.’

  Adrian’s gaze remained on hers. ‘Thought you would have been here weeks ago, Antonella.’

  His words clanged with subtext: after a stroke had hit her eighty-seven-year-old nonna—in her beloved kitchen—claiming her life.

  Tears stung Nella’s eyes but she gritted her teeth to quell them. The thought of her nonna lying alone on the cold hard floor in her time of need, pain-ridden and bewildered, was almost impossible to bear. If only Nella had realised how dire the situation had been when her mum had called, that it wasn’t just another fleeting health ‘hiccup’ for her elder. If only she hadn’t foolishly believed that her nonna would always only be a phone call away, like she had been from day dot.

  Nella scuffed the dirt with the toe of her shoe, pedicure forgotten. ‘Yes, well … I, uh, thought I might have seen you at the funeral.’

  ‘I was there.’ Adrian crossed his arms over his rather muscular T-shirt-clad chest. ‘At the back. I had a lot of respect for Esta Feliciano. And time. But I guess I didn’t always have somewhere more exciting to flit off to. Never thought myself too good for this corner of Adelaide to stick around for long.’

  Nella tried to hide a wince, though in some way she understood his bitterness. His distrust. His mother had left his father and him for another man when he was young, taking only his twin with her. Nella remembered hearing about the family split from her nonna, who’d seemed as pained and shocked as Adrian’s dad.

  Adrian had never left the market garden, labouring along-side his dad, and from all accounts he’d grown more and more withdrawn. The Heathcliff of Marion Road. His dad had leased the acreage on Torrente Blu once her nonno had retired, Adrian partnering with his father when he came of age. Now with her nonna also gone, it was obvious he was worried about the future and suspicious of Nella’s motives.

  Still, for her own sake, she had to try to keep the peace; she was stuck in this memory-plagued wilderness for the foreseeable future. ‘Look,
I just came over to tell you that I’m going to be staying next door, tidying up the house for a while. Mum’s … not ready yet. She’s taking leave from work a bit later, so I’m making a start alone. I thought you should know in case you notice lights on and stuff.’

  Adrian slowly nodded. ‘Would have expected as much from the new landlord.’

  His words hit her in the chest. He knew about her inheritance already? That she’d become the cliché of asset-rich and cash-poor overnight? That the responsibility of his livelihood—and most importantly, her grandparents’ legacy—now weighed solely on her? It reinforced the fact that Adrian had been more like a grandkid to Esta than Nella herself lately, had been privy to the ins and outs of her nonna’s life.

  Her own mum, Olivia, had long made it clear that she didn’t want to inherit Torrente Blu, and like her mother, Nella was an only child so had landed the place by default. Her mum, meanwhile, had got the better deal—if that’s what you could call anything that came your way when someone died—a vacant beach block, on which a planned holiday house had never been built, and a bundle of cash in the bank.

  Whether Nella chose to put the place on the market or not, her nonna’s home would have to be cleaned up for the sake of moving on. A lifetime of memories needed sifting through. Her nonna had lived in the same place ever since landing in Australia in the fifties.

  Nella’s skin burned as she copped her second once-over that day, Adrian’s eyes raking every inch of her overdressed frame. ‘I gathered you weren’t here to help pick tomatoes.’ His narrow gaze returned to her face, reflecting the ‘For Sale’ signs he no doubt saw in her own. It was no way to look at his new commercial landlord, even if he was dead on the money. ‘So how long will you be gracing Marion Road with your presence?’

  She shrugged. ‘However long it takes.’

  The last thing she was about to do was detail the debris she’d left behind in Melbourne: a broken relationship, a failed boutique, a fixed address. A mess that required its own clean-up before she returned. She felt chastened enough standing before Adrian.