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‘Sì. Capisco, Lorenzo.’
Hold up.
Even after Geli’s lessons, I knew that my Italian wasn’t the best, but I was pretty sure that Marta had just saidyes, and that she’d understood?
Now she’s walking towards me…I quickly glanced down at her hands to see if she was holding a knife or another instrument that could kill me.
Nope. All good.I didn’tthinkI was about to get murdered.
Then again…
She opened up her arms. Was she going to strangle me instead? I’d like to see her try.
Don’t be ridiculous, Sophia.
Button it, Reasanna. Stranger things have happened.
Suddenly she threw her arms around me and pulled me in for a hug.
What. The. Actual. Fuck…
Marta hugged me.
Marta wasstillhugging me.
Squeezing me even.
Well, knock me down with a feather.
Of all the things I was expecting, all the reactions that could have happened, I was not expectingthis.
Even Lorenzo’s eyes were popping out of his head. Marta’s back was to him, so she couldn’t see his expression.
After freezing for what felt like twenty-four hours due to the shock, I finally came to. Lorenzo did say that we both needed to make the effort, so even though I didn’t want to, I guess I needed to be civil. Which meant I actually had to hug her back…
Having physical contact with a woman who I knew hated my guts?Jeez.This was going to be painful.
I slowly lifted both of my arms like they each had a ten-tonne weight attached, then gently wrapped them around her. But not completely. I didn’t give Marta a full-on squeeze. It was more cautious. Like hugging someone with glue on their back. Making just enough contact to be polite, but not enough to risk becoming permanently affixed.
I still wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t a dream.Or a nightmare. At this stage, I couldn’t quite work out which description was more accurate...
‘I am sorry, Sophia,’ said Marta in a stilted accent.
‘Mamma?’ Lorenzo beamed. ‘You speak English!?’
‘I try start to learn.’ She pulled away and turned to face him. ‘For Sophia.’ She smiled back at me.
Hmmm.
Seriously. What the hell was going on?
‘Thank you, Mamma!’ Lorenzo threw his arms around her. ‘I am happy you apologise and is good you start to learn too. I am glad you use the books and CDs I give you.’
Books? Lorenzo had been giving Marta English books?News to me.Lorenzo explained he’d given them to her a while ago, when he’d moved to London as Marta had planned to visit, but she hadn’t seemed interested in learning, so he hadn’t mentioned it to me.
Pff. And after all the vile things she’d said to me before, there was no way she’d just started. As far as I knew, Geli didn’t have an English clone teaching in this town.Beginner my arse.
That means as well as understanding when I’d asked her in English to babysit, the night she’d come to stay and I’d called out to Lorenzo, suggesting we have sex on the sofa, she’d understood too. That was why Marta had been funny when I’d asked her to sit down and she’d called it dirty. And that was why she’d huffed when I’d made a joke about us screwing on it the night before.
