Storm On The Jetty
The gale came in from the southwest on the sixteenth of November, which was four days earlier than the Genoese weather service had predicted and three days earlier than Sara, who trusted her own reading of the barometer above her father's logbook shelf more than she trusted the Genoese, had herself expected. By two in the afternoon the sky over the spur had gone a colour she associated from childhood with a particular kind of evening, and she had walked down to the village to tell Teresa to take in her café chairs and to ask Marcello on the Vespa to go round the three houses at the base of the path and warn them that the road would be wet by dark.
She got back to the lighthouse at four. Giulia, who had been on the spur since eight, was in the kitchen bent over the barometer with a pencil in her teeth.
"Falling," Giulia said.
"I know."
"Fast."
"I know. Tea?"
"Yes."
They had reached, over the last three days, a careful and working understanding of how to live with the letter from Florence. They had not discussed it again after that Wednesday. They had eaten, they had worked, they had gone to bed early in their respective rooms — Giulia had moved up from the pensione for the final fortnight of the survey, and was occupying the guest bed permanently — and the letter itself had been put, by Giulia, into a drawer in the kitchen that did not belong to either of them