The Right Place Read online

  He gave her a curt nod. ‘I’ll make sure to keep out of your way.’ Then, without another word, he turned and strode deeper into the foliage.

  If she’d ever imagined for a millisecond that they might use the rare opportunity to reminisce about old times that was shot to pieces.

  Spinning away herself, Nella practically ran back to her nonna’s place, heels be damned, every return step now a relief. Mercifully, the key she’d been posted worked the first time on the back door. She avoided looking at the metal floor grate to the right, which ventilated the cellar below, though her mind still jumped to the memory of sneaking her first kiss with Davide down there.

  Slipping the key back into her handbag, Nella wrenched open the screen and stepped inside. All at once, she was overcome by the lingering perfume of percolated coffee, pasta sauce and furniture polish. For once, though, this wasn’t accompanied by the hum of Italian radio, the banging of pots, or anything bubbling away on the stove.

  Crowded by ghosts of the past, Nella fumbled for her phone in her bag. She really should text her mum to say she’d arrived. But the loudly ticking pendulum clock, which always chimed out of time, instead had her imagining her nonna. Alone at the plastic-covered extendable table with no one but herself to cook for, her eyes vacant, waiting for the years to pass.

  All at once, the mobile slipped from Nella’s fingertips and her stiletto-clad feet gave way beneath her. Slamming heavily onto her backside on the beige lino finally encouraged the tears to fall.

  Mitchell Park, South Australia—1956

  ‘Welcome to your new home.’

  Esta Feliciano attempted a smile at her husband Lucio’s words as she stared out at the panorama. At the rows of metal-framed glasshouses, the scraggly trees, the stretches of sunburnt grass. Somewhere beyond there was a trickle of water they called a creek. What she really couldn’t get over though was the landscape.

  It was dead flat. Where she came from—the Calabrian village of Acquaro in Italy’s south—rugged mountains always hovered out of the corner of your eye and the Tyrrhenian Sea was never far away. She’d felt on top of the world, the tang of citrus fruit freshening the air. The scorched scenery here, alternatively, made her feel oppressed, landlocked. And where was the sunshine the Australian Government had promised in its newspaper ads? The sky, though blue, was riddled with clouds.

  Not that Esta could say any of that right then. She’d been separated from her husband for endless months while he established himself in Australia, working in factories and elsewhere until he could afford to buy a market garden of his own. Identical to the other properties on the dusty road. The type of business that didn’t require too much land, machinery or capital. Plus, working the land was what they knew.

  Lucio had been gone so long, however, that their four-year-old daughter, Olivia, currently playing in the dirt, had asked who the ‘strange man’ was upon seeing him again. That was a day ago when he’d picked them up from the Melbourne wharf in his ute.

  Before that, Esta and Olivia had travelled twenty-nine days by sea. And whenever the ship rolled, Esta’s poor stomach would too. A nice lady sharing their cabin had helped chase after Olivia when Esta wasn’t up to the task. The ship had been full of Italians, though no one she knew, and they’d headed off all over the place—to Perth, Sydney, Melbourne itself, and beyond. For Esta, the drive to Adelaide had meant another day of travel.

  She glanced at a proud Lucio. Torrente Blu. The sign he’d hung out the front of the house had been a nice touch at least. ‘You’ve done well.’

  His brilliant blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. The gauntness from the war years had gone, his frame now filled out and muscular, his skin a deep bronze, and his light brown hair parted to one side and slicked down. ‘I knew you’d like it once you saw it.’

  She’d been twenty when Lucio had asked her father for her hand in marriage, plucking her from domestic duties on the family’s olive grove. The gossips had been surprised when he’d singled her out, considering his chiselled matinee-idol looks. Okay, so she was no Sophia Loren, but she wasn’t a gypsy either. Her dark silky hair, which she’d plaited that day in two strands and pinned up either side, regularly drew comments. She was also industrious and unafraid of hard work, including making the full-skirted red dress she was wearing and Olivia’s floral pinafore.

  Even still, only her father had said, ‘Yes, you go to Australia’ when Lucio had proposed it. Nobody else had wanted them to move permanently. Not her mother or siblings, even Lucio’s father. But Lucio had said they had ‘no other choice’. The clincher had been when a man was shot by the Mafia in the same street Esta had grown up in.

  With a young daughter and more children planned, they had to blaze a trail, he’d said. To be the first among their families. World War Two had devastated Italy to a shell of its former self. Poverty was rife. Australia, meanwhile, had a buzz about it.

  In her suitcase she’d brought all the things from her glory box. Sheets, blankets, clothing, some plates, glasses, cutlery, a couple of saucepans. Lucio had said she could get whatever else she needed second-hand in Australia.

  Tiny fingers suddenly gripped her hand, bringing her back to the present, and she looked down into Olivia’s coppery eyes. Her pinafore was pristine, despite the surrounding dirt, but the white bow in her inky-black curls had come undone. ‘Mamma, I’m hungry.’

  Esta worked up a small smile. ‘I suppose I should find out where the kitchen is.’

  Perhaps that would be the starting point for this place beginning to feel like home.

  TWO

  Mitchell Park, South Australia—present day

  There was no way Adrian could hear Nella moving about next door that night. Brick walls, sturdy fences and the rumble of traffic made sure of that. And yet her presence pervaded the place like a noxious weed.

  In his kitchen, he added another heaped spoonful of ground coffee to a stovetop percolator old Esta had passed on. She’d had several stainless steel espresso-makers stored in deep kitchen drawers in case there was ever a world shortage. The old woman’s daily caffeine intake would have put a Rundle Street barista to shame. It was a wonder she ever slept at night.

  Although, if she didn’t sleep, Nella was more likely to blame. Esta must have known neither her granddaughter, nor daughter, would continue the legacy started by her husband once she left this world. Even after all the old couple had toiled, skimped and sacrificed for …

  Adrian screwed the top back on the percolator and put it on the hotplate, turning up the heat. It wasn’t like he was going to sleep that night either with all that was whirring through his mind. That was despite his fatigue from picking and packing tomatoes until dark and doing his usual round of late-night deliveries.

  But then, he hadn’t stopped feeling tired since the day his dad dropped dead from a heart attack—or a broken heart—three years ago and the business had fallen solely into Adrian’s hands. His father, born in Australia to Italian parents, had bought the property from an Aussie family, kick-starting his own legacy.

  Adrian missed his dad’s jokes, his energy, his everything; he’d even take his drinking just to have him back for a minute.

  Adrian’s parents had split when he was eleven, each raising a twin separately, though Davide had still visited the market garden during the school holidays. Well, until his big move to Canberra with their mum’s new highfalutin’ diplomat partner and step-siblings.

  Most kids suspected their parents had favourites but Adrian had had it callously confirmed when his mother had disappeared one night, rousing only Davide from his slumber to accompany her. True, Adrian had always tagged along with his dad on farm duties while Davide had been the token mummy’s boy, but it had still jarred.

  The night his mum left, his parents had had another argument and his mother’s words had been forever burned into Adrian’s brain: ‘I want to see the world, to have a life beyond this place!’ So many evenings afterwards, when Adrian was meant to
be asleep and was fighting back his own tears, he’d hear his dad, a grown man, sobbing his heart out.

  Adrian mentally shook himself. Speaking of the unreliable … he wondered how long it would take Nella to put her nonna’s place on the market. A month maybe, a week? Earlier he’d signed on to farm her side of the property for another six months. But even if the lease was upheld following a sale next door, no doubt it wouldn’t take long for the new owner to send in the bulldozers in the aftermath, effectively killing his business. Even with the two properties combined, his was a small-scale operation. Seeing it halved didn’t bear thinking about.

  Like the good soil hadn’t been intruded on enough.

  As the espresso bubbled away, Adrian’s mind drifted again, to how Nella had looked when she’d strutted in that afternoon. He hadn’t sought out her face at Esta’s funeral, and whenever there’d been a whiff of a suggestion she was making a flying visit next door, he’d made himself scarce. But he hadn’t been able to escape her today—her citrus-sweet perfume cutting through the earthy scent of the tomatoes and dirt, and the familiar singsong rhythm of her voice.

  Too bad she still took his breath away with that raven hair spilling past her shoulders, those flashing dark eyes and that honeyed slender frame, curving in all the right places. Like a fine vino, she’d only improved with age.

  Still, he wasn’t so easily fooled by appearances now. It was like those conventional supermarket tomatoes that were picked early and gassed to ripen to the perfect shade of red but tasted like crap. As an organic farmer, he knew it was what was inside that really counted.

  ‘You’re making coffee? At this hour?’

  Kiri’s heart-shaped face poked through the kitchen doorway as the percolator spluttered. She’d been watching TV in the lounge, and her elfin features were still a welcome sight after a day of tomato picking together.

  She had that winning combo of beauty and brains, studying to go into business for herself, even if her dad didn’t think a woman’s place was on the farm. Helping Adrian pick veggies a few days a week was just a casual gig for her.

  Despite enjoying her company, Adrian knew their dalliance would be over by the end of the tomato season. He didn’t have room in his life for a woman, or the inevitable heartache. And they both knew the score.

  While he hated the term, theirs was a ‘friends with benefits’ type arrangement. One night, a few months back, after downing one too many homemade wines following a massive day of picking, they’d fallen into bed together, and their hook-ups had continued, at random, ever since. But hook-ups were all they were. As much as he respected and appreciated Kiri, he wasn’t in love with her. A shrink would probably say that his parents’ divorce—and his mother’s abandonment—had shuttered his heart indefinitely; maybe they’d be right too.

  In an effort to clear his head of such seriousness, he waggled his eyebrows at Kiri. ‘I put the pot on because I didn’t think you’d be ready for sleep yet. If you catch my drift …’

  Kiri flipped caramel locks, courtesy of the dye bottle, over her shoulder. ‘Ha, someone has stamina.’

  ‘All that fresh air and sunshine has got to be good for something,’ he joked.

  ‘Well, make mine a strong one then.’ With a knowing grin, she headed off for the lounge again.

  Turning back to the stove, Adrian removed the grumbling espresso pot from the hotplate and placed it on the benchtop, then sorted out the cups.

  While he knew that sex was one way to bring on sleep, he hated the thought of tossing and turning for endless nights in between. He had enough headaches trying to keep his business afloat as it was. So maybe it’d be a good thing after all if Nella sold up; it’d only do his nut having her as a landlord for long.

  Nella’s stomach made a noise like an earthquake. She dragged her eyes away from the black-and-white picture of Esta holding her mum as a baby, and glanced at the time on her laptop.

  Yikes. It was late late and somehow she’d forgotten about dinner. She’d come into the lounge to unwind for a bit, unable to face starting the big tidy-up until tomorrow. Cocooning herself in one room had felt … safer. But she’d since got lost in poring over old photo albums found stashed in the TV cabinet.

  It was one way, she supposed, to erase the last image she had of her nonna at the open-casket viewing: her face plumped with fillers and sporting clownish makeup, though the most she’d ever worn in real life was lipstick to weddings, and dressed in her Sunday-best rather than some shapeless floral dress, which was more practical on the farm. Like she might spring to life any minute and tell Nella she wasn’t dead, she’d just been really tired and needed a lie-down.

  Nella took one last look at the picture before she closed the album. Her nonna’s once all-black hair was braided either side and clipped underneath, highlighting her round face and dimpled cheeks. Her dark eyes gazed slightly off-camera and she wore a loose-fitting dress and cardie in ‘mourning black’—someone had always just died back then—with sheer tights and fabric Mary Jane flats. On Esta’s knee, Olivia looked sweetly pudgy in an ensemble that reminded Nella of an old-fashioned nurse’s hat and pinafore.

  She mentally shook her head. It was weird to think that there were whole parts of her nonna’s and mum’s lives she’d never fully know about because she hadn’t been around. That they’d racked up a whole heap of life experiences before she’d even come into the world.

  Nella got to her feet, her knees creaking in protest like she herself was an old woman. Maybe she’d find something in the pantry to fill her stomach. Something preferably she could microwave. Back home, the kitchen had always been her mum’s domain, her specialty being gourmet healthy fare. The one time Nella, as a teen, had attempted a dish while her mother was out, she’d accidentally caused a fire in the frypan. Her neat-freak mum had been horrified. Oh, and there was one other time she’d attempted using a chocolate-making kit but her mother had turned up her nose at the lumpy confection Nella had produced.

  To think, once upon a time, a Calabrese girl was not considered marriage material unless she knew at least fifteen different ways to make pasta, so her family wouldn’t find the diet monotonous!

  Fortunately, when Nella first landed in Melbourne, her housemate had been a wannabe chef too. Then she’d moved in with her ad-exec ex, Matt—the suave, dark-haired non-Italian—and it had been all too easy to keep avoiding the kitchen. All the parties he’d had her tag along to, the fancy-pants dinner dates he’d treated her to, the trendy takeaway that could be picked up mere streets from his slick Kew apartment …

  But even pre-Matt, Nella had lived the high life since relocating to Melbourne eight years ago: moving up the chain at one fashion retailer from store manager to assistant buyer, freelance styling for magazines and newspapers on the side, and finally branching out with a boutique of her own.

  Pity the latter was where it all went downhill. Her ‘hip’ fashion store in a city laneway had seen her continually throw good money after bad until finally, defeated after less than a year, she’d pulled the pin. Her boss at her old workplace had told her that she’d struggle competing with the big brands, which had their own clothing factories, endless cash to throw at ad campaigns and huge workforces. But she’d been too starry-eyed, naive, to listen then.

  Despite her grand plans and all her fashion knowledge, the boutique had fizzled. Wrong location, wrong ranges, wrong everything. Her focus on a few edgy, up-and-coming labels hadn’t hit the mark. Even having a boyfriend with advertising know-how hadn’t helped her.

  Unfortunately, the business closure had been the death-knell for their relationship too: a broke girl with a failed boutique hadn’t really fit with Matt’s carefully cultivated image. She still remembered how ‘put-together’ he’d looked the first night they met. Nella had been dragged along to a World Cup screening at a bar by a boy-crazy friend, more interested in the punters than the sport. Matt had had his wavy hair gelled back, as typical, and worn a navy-blue polo, rolled-up chinos and brown
suede loafers, like he’d just walked off the streets of Milan.

  He’d been all about ambition, success, striving, and that had never changed. He hadn’t been there for her when she’d fallen into a funk following her boutique flop, aimlessly wandering the streets in designer threads as she contemplated her next move. He’d looked at her with disdain when she’d asked for money after paying off all her creditors had left her debt-ridden. (She was too humiliated to ask her parents for a handout; it was her disaster to deal with.) Their It-couple status had further faltered as she strained to project an upbeat image at his glitzy work functions. The death of her nonna had only plunged her deeper into the abyss.

  Things had got increasingly tense between them until last night, after they’d had a row and said things they couldn’t take back, Matt had quietly suggested it might be time for them to part ways. Really, they’d been over long before that. But after three years together, including one under the same roof—her Italian parents only approving of her ‘living in sin’ because they thought it safer than her being alone interstate, or perhaps they were just worried about her being left on the shelf at thirty—it was finally official.

  His words from their argument still resounded in her head, that ‘maybe she was too much of a dreamer, not cut-throat enough to make it in the fashion world on her own’.

  Feigning chivalry at the eleventh hour, he’d given her a few weeks to find a new place. Instead, she’d slept in the guest room overnight, packed up her belongings that morning while he was at work, and headed for the airport, a Post-It note on the fridge her only parting words to him.

  If anything, though, their bust-up had only strengthened her resolve that this wouldn’t be the end of her fashion dreams. She couldn’t let doubters like Matt keep her down. She planned to keep going forward.