One Summer in Italy: The most uplifting summer romance you need to read in 2018
‘I love all of Sue Moorcroft’s books!’Katie FfordeWhen Sofia Bianchi’s father Aldo dies, it makes her stop and look at things afresh. Having been his carer for so many years, she knows it’s time for her to live her own life – and to fulfil some promises she made to Aldo in his final days.So there’s nothing for it but to escape to Italy’s Umbrian mountains where, tucked away in a sleepy Italian village, lie plenty of family secrets waiting to be discovered. There, Sofia also finds Amy who is desperately trying to find her way in life after discovering her dad isn’t her biological father.Sofia sets about helping Amy through this difficult time, but it’s the handsome Levi who proves to be the biggest distraction for Sofia, as her new life starts to take off…
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Published by Avon, an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London, SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Sue Moorcroft 2018
Cover illustration © Carrie May 2018
Cover design © Head Design 2018
Sue Moorcroft asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008260040
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008260057
Version: 2018-06-21
Table of Contents
July
‘Don’t mope, Sofia. Non frignare.’
Sofia jumped out of her reverie. She hadn’t realised her dad, Aldo, was awake. His eyes had been closed for ages, the steady hiss of oxygen a contrast to his ragged breathing.
She edged her chair closer, glad to see a twinkle in Aldo’s dark eyes. ‘I’m not moping. I’m a bit worried about you, that’s all. We worry about each other, don’t we? That’s how it works.’
He met her smile with one of his own. Aldo had a beautiful, mischievous smile, spoiled now by the odd colour of his lips as his heart failed. ‘I don’t mean now. I want you to promise you won’t mope when I’m not here.’ His voice still sang with the rhythms of Italy, but his English was fluent after living in the UK for more than thirty years. Sofia was so used to hearing both languages from him that she sometimes scarcely noticed which he was speaking. It had brought him comfort in these last few years to roll Italian lovingly around his mouth, as well as allowing her to practise her grasp of one half of her family’s mother tongue. Not that she’d met any of her family, on either side, apart from her parents.
The smile she’d summoned up for him wavered.
‘Promise,’ he insisted gently.
It was obviously so important to him that she nodded. ‘I’ll try.’
‘No. You must promise. You’ve given up so many years to being my carer. I don’t want you to be trapped in this house any more.’
She swallowed the fruitless urge to demand that he live for ever. ‘OK. I promise.’ Leaving the house in Bedford, the only home she’d ever known, would be taken out of her hands anyway. She hadn’t stressed Aldo by telling him about the builder who’d inspected the big crack running up the dining-room wall and into Sofia’s bedroom above. The builder had recommended an engineer’s report. He thought the house had subsidence, and Sofia already knew that it needed a new roof and had woodworm. When Aldo’s health had taken this recent grave turn, she’d been nerving herself to reveal that they needed to put the house on the market in the hope that a developer would buy it as a project and she and Aldo would receive only a proportion of what they considered its worth. Money had become the least of her worries.
He gave a slow, satisfied nod, his gaze unwavering. ‘And promise me you’ll get out and do all the things young single women do. Travel. You’ve always wanted to travel and instead you’ve stayed to help me. Go and have fun.’
‘Dad, I don’t want you to feel—’
‘I don’t feel anything you don’t want me to feel,’ he assured her with a dismissive wave. He made a mock reproving face. ‘But this is the dying wish of your papà. You must promise.’
She’d often shared with him her fantasy of getting on the plane from Stansted Airport for breakfast and arriving at a pavement café in Italy in time for lunch, even before his health had made such an adventure impossible. Sofia grinned, though her eyes swam. Half her life he’d cared for her and half her life she’d cared for him, latterly in his hospital-style bed in the front room with the oxygen cylinders located behind it. ‘OK, if you’ll stoop to emotional blackmail, you old fox, I promise.’
