Three Days in Florence Read online

  Contents

  Praise for Chrissie Manby

  Also by Chrissie Manby

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Chrissie Manby

  ‘This sassy and addictive read will make you laugh – a lot!’

  Closer

  ‘I’ve been a fan of Manby’s writing for years and thoroughly enjoyed this’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Perfect, unputdownable summer adventures’

  Jenny Colgan

  ‘Manby’s novels are made for holidays’

  Glamour

  ‘Nothing short of brilliant’

  Marie Claire

  ‘Funny and inventive’

  Company

  ‘Destined to keep you up until the small hours’

  Daily Mirror

  ‘What a wonderfully lighthearted and uplifting novel’

  Bloglovin

  ‘Heartwarming … truly funny’

  The Bookbag

  ‘[This novel] was funny and emotional, it was heartwarming, it was so genuine and realistic and it is a MUST READ this autumn. Highly recommended!’

  On My Bookshelf

  Also by Chrissie Manby

  Flatmates

  Second Prize

  Deep Heat

  Lizzie Jordan’s Secret Life

  Running Away From Richard

  Getting Personal

  Seven Sunny Days

  Girl Meets Ape

  Ready Or Not?

  The Matchbreaker

  Marrying for Money

  Spa Wars

  Crazy in Love

  Getting Over Mr Right

  Kate’s Wedding

  What I Did On My Holidays

  Writing for Love (ebook only)

  A Proper Family Holiday

  A Proper Family Christmas

  A Proper Family Adventure

  A Wedding at Christmas

  A Fairy Tale for Christmas

  The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club

  Once in a Lifetime

  About the author

  Chrissie Manby is the author of twenty-five romantic comedy novels and a guide for aspiring writers, Writing for Love. She was nominated for the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance for Getting Over Mr Right. Raised in Gloucester, Chrissie now lives in London.

  You can follow her on Twitter @chrissiemanby or visit her website to find out more: www.chrissiemanby.com

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Chrissie Manby 2019

  The right of Chrissie Manby to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 9781473682962

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Victoria Routledge

  Chapter One

  Italy was a place of legend for Kathy Courage. Her middle name was Florence: her mother had fallen in love with the Renaissance city, which she had visited with Kathy’s father on their honeymoon, and insisted on naming their daughter in its honour.

  As a child, Kathy had loved to hear her mother Clare’s stories about that long-ago romantic holiday. Not so much about the fabulous architecture, the frescoes and statues back then, but about the ice creams as big as a baby’s head – ‘and so many flavours’ – the endless spaghetti, and the glamorous Italian ladies who carried small fluffy dogs in their Ferragamo handbags. Often Kathy’s mother would get out the honeymoon photograph album and together they would marvel at the joys of la dolce vita. So different from life in the Essex suburbs where Kathy had grown up.

  Kathy’s favourite photograph was one of her parents standing together beneath the giant replica statue of Michelangelo’s David in the piazza della Signoria. Her mother, with her flicked-up hair-do – ‘very fashionable then’ – was wearing a red dress with white spots that showed off her tiny waist. Kathy’s father, Eddie, sported a hat – a sharp-looking Panama that he’d bought from a street vendor. It was the only time Kathy had ever seen him in a hat other than the grey knitted beanie he sometimes wore for the office commute in winter. Her parents looked so young and so happy that Kathy became convinced of the power of sunshine and good ice cream.

  Kathy’s mother always promised that one day she would take her to Italy – ‘when you’re old enough to appreciate it’. For various reasons that moment had never come and, somehow, Kathy had never found her way to Italy on her own. As an adult she could in theory have gone anywhere any time she wanted, but over the years Florence had grown to occupy such a special place in the Courage family mythology that it would not have seemed right for Kathy to go there for the first time alone. It was a city she wanted to share with someone special, just as her mum and dad had shared it on their honeymoon all those years ago.

  So, when David, younger brother of Kathy’s long-term boyfriend Neil, had announced that he and his fiancée Shelley were getting married in Tuscany, Kathy was over the moon. She might get to see Flore
nce at last.

  Shelley and Dave outlined the plan over Sunday lunch with his and Neil’s mother, Margaret.

  ‘We went for a destination wedding,’ said Shelley, ‘so that people can combine it with a holiday.’

  ‘If they’ve got time for a holiday,’ said Neil, who worked as a corporate lawyer.

  ‘We chose the Thursday before the bank-holiday weekend for the wedding day itself so you wouldn’t have to take many days off to make a whole week of it,’ Shelley continued.

  ‘It sounds wonderful,’ said Kathy, who was very fond of Shelley and Dave.

  ‘I’ll have to see what’s in my schedule,’ Neil muttered.

  ‘Neil,’ Dave looked upset, ‘you’re my brother. You’ve got to be there. And so have the children. Shelley wants both my nieces as bridesmaids.’

  Sophie and Amelie, Neil’s teenage daughters, shared a not very subtle look of horror at the thought.

  ‘And Oscar can be ring-bearer if he likes,’ Shelley joked.

  Oscar, Amelie’s twin, did not look up from his phone.

  Margaret said, to no one in particular, ‘I don’t know if Italian food agrees with me.’

  ‘Italian food agrees with everyone,’ Shelley insisted, by now on the verge of tears.

  Kathy said what she knew Shelley needed to hear. ‘It’s going to be lovely. I’ve always dreamed of going to Italy – and for a wedding? How perfect.’

  Shelley gave her a grateful smile.

  On the way home, Neil and the children continued to come up with reasons why the wedding could only be a disaster.

  ‘It’s selfish,’ Neil announced. ‘And pretentious. Typical of my brother to expect people to fly out to Italy. To stay in a palazzo, for Heaven’s sake. It’s going to cost a fortune.’

  He said this, though Dave had already assured him that he and Shelley would be paying for the whole family’s accommodation.

  ‘And it’s the same weekend as the Jolly Farmer Festival,’ Sophie complained. ‘All my friends are going to that.’

  Kathy didn’t think that would sway Neil. The Jolly Farmer Festival was not, as it sounded, a weekend of agriculture-based activities but a music festival that should have been banned after three drug-taking teenagers had ended up in hospital the previous year.

  Seventeen-year-old Amelie groaned. ‘I can’t believe she wants us to be bridesmaids. I’m not doing it unless I can choose my own dress.’

  Oscar didn’t look up from his phone.

  Did Kathy really want to go to the wedding? Neil asked, as they got ready for bed that night. Of course she wanted to go. While Neil complained that flying out on the Tuesday to attend the pre-wedding festivities would mean four days away from the office and a lot of inconvenience and catching up for him, Kathy was already planning her mini-break wardrobe and imagining herself standing on the terrace of a Tuscan palazzo, overlooking a splendid garden scented with jasmine and roses.

  ‘Ridiculous to choose a date right before the bank-holiday weekend,’ Neil continued. ‘The airports are bound to be chaos.’

  ‘But it’s perfect timing,’ Kathy jumped in. ‘If the wedding party officially ends on the Friday morning, we can have three more nights in Italy without you having to take any extra holiday. We could hire a car and go to Siena. Or Montepulciano. Or Pienza. Even better, if you don’t feel like driving, we could just spend three days exploring Florence.’

  As Kathy said the words, the city shimmered in her mind. At last, at last, she would be visiting her namesake. She and Neil could even recreate the photograph of her mum and dad in front of the statue of David. Neil would look good in a hat.

  ‘I’m sure the children would enjoy it,’ she added hopefully.

  In her imagination, Kathy glossed over the fact that Sophie, Amelie and Oscar would be scowling on the sidelines of any photo. Whenever a camera was brandished in their direction, Neil’s children conspired to look like three ghosts come to deliver terrible news.

  ‘Oh, Chicken Licken,’ Neil sighed, ‘it all sounds like way too much bother to me.’

  Kathy bristled.

  The one downside about having Florence as a middle name was that it rendered Kathy’s initials ‘KFC’. It was Sophie who had first made the connection with the fried chicken chain and christened her ‘Chicken Licken’. Kathy didn’t like it – the insinuation that she was cowardly or flat-out stupid stung – but Neil and the three children thought it was all great fun and, alas, the nickname stuck.

  ‘I’ll have had four really tough days at the wedding,’ Neil continued. ‘It isn’t going to be a holiday for me. You know what my family’s like. My brother. My mother … Shelley’s lot are even worse.’

  ‘Then all the better reason to tag on three days of pure fun at the end,’ said Kathy. ‘We’ll be in Tuscany anyway. All we have to do is find a nice hotel for three days of chilling out and doing some very gentle sightseeing but mostly eating pasta and gelato and drinking Aperol Spritzes in sunny piazzas …’

  Neil patted his flat-as-an-ironing-board stomach. ‘Pasta and gelato? I’m watching my weight.’ Kathy was sure she caught his eyes flickering to her stomach, which was more waterbed than ironing board, as he said it. Though, technically, Neil had only commented on his own weight, the implication for hers was there in every syllable.

  ‘Well, no pasta or gelato, then. Though that would be a pity. We could rack up plenty of steps exploring the city.’

  There was nothing Neil liked more than busting through his daily target of twelve thousand steps on the Fitbit. Sometimes, if he was short of steps when he got home from work, he did circuits of the kitchen-diner, pumping his arms as he went. He was wearing a groove in the tiles.

  But Neil didn’t respond to the enticement of breaking a record. By this point, he was rearranging things in the dishwasher – nobody else in the house ever stacked it to his exacting standards – and Kathy sensed she was losing the argument. She needed to change tack. If she could just get Neil to an ‘I’ll think about it’ rather than a flat ‘No’, she could do some proper research, find the perfect hotel and persuade him that three extra days in Italy would be a treat rather than a chore.

  ‘You know I’ve always wanted to go to Florence.’ Kathy tried one last time. ‘Perhaps if we considered it an early birthday present for me …’

  She thought that might swing it, offering Neil the chance not to have to think about what to do for her big birthday – she would be forty in a year. Surely that was a win-win. But no.

  ‘I’ve already been to Florence,’ Neil reminded her.

  Twenty-five years ago. He’d spent a week in Italy as part of a month-long Interrailing tour of Europe in his gap year.

  ‘And I really wasn’t impressed. I don’t know why people go on about it,’ he continued. ‘A few boring old buildings, some dull statues and a lot of overpriced ice cream. Plus, it’s full of pickpockets.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kathy.

  ‘So I really don’t need to go back. Especially after four stressful days doing Shelley’s bidding. Why they can’t just get married in Guildford like I did, I do not know.’

  Possibly because that wedding in Guildford was an unmitigated disaster. The thought crossed Kathy’s mind but she didn’t say it out loud. Neil’s defunct marriage was a minefield.

  ‘All I’ll want to do when this wedding is over is come home and get some decent rest in my own bed. I’ll have Melanie book us all onto the last possible flight out and the first possible flight back, on Friday so I can minimise the time I have to spend out of the office and catching up afterwards. I’m dreading it already,’ Neil added, as he closed the newly tidied dishwasher with a nod of satisfaction. And that was the end of the conversation.

  Kathy didn’t give up hope that Neil might be swayed, but the very next day he announced that his über-efficient PA Melanie had already executed his orders and got them on the last possible flight out to the wedding and the first flight home. They’d have to get up at six the day after the wedding to get
to the airport. Kathy knew that Sophie in particular would not be happy about that.

  Kathy was disappointed, of course, but she focused on the good news. She was still going to get three nights in Italy – her first ever trip to the country of her dreams. She would be staying in a grand palazzo with a view of the Tuscan hills – the photographs on the Palazzo Boldrini website were pure Instagrammable perfection.

  There would be great food, music and dancing. There would be excursions to Tuscan villages to taste wine and watch artisans decorating ceramics. Kathy had always wanted one of those big painted fruit bowls. There would be lazy hours by the pool and aperitivi on a terrace overlooking an olive grove. There would be glorious sunshine. There would also be a whole bunch of Neil’s relatives with whom to make painful small-talk but, in Kathy’s fantasy, they were firmly out of the picture.

  Chapter Two

  Now, six months after Shelley and Dave had announced their wedding plans over Sunday lunch, Kathy and Neil were on their way to Tuscany.

  Melanie had arranged a minibus for the trip to Gatwick (Kathy had long since given up being offended that Neil didn’t seem to trust her with any travel plans). They swung by Neil’s former family home – now his ex-wife Caroline’s house – to pick up the children, who had refused to do anything so helpful as be at Neil’s the night before they had to travel. As a result, though it was almost midday, none of them was ready to go when the minibus pulled up outside. Even before the holiday started, Neil and his teens were at daggers drawn.

  ‘I don’t even want to go to Italy anyway,’ Amelie reminded them loudly.

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve got to miss a festival for this,’ Sophie complained.

  Oscar didn’t look up from his phone. He didn’t look up from his phone or say a single word until they were two minutes from Gatwick, at which point he announced, in a wavering voice, ‘I think I’m about to be sick.’

  Oscar was sick. Kathy had to give the minibus driver fifty quid to deal with it. Neil argued that a cleaning fee should be included in the original fare. It wasn’t as though Oscar was drunk, he pointed out. He was travel sick and probably as a result of the cabbie’s appalling driving. But Kathy knew that, as far as the driver was concerned, vomit was vomit, however it came about, and if she didn’t pay up, they would never get into the terminal.