Urban Venus

Chapter Two

Florence, Present Day

‘Ecco, signorina,’ exclaims the tassista, the unfortunate Florentine taxi driver who has had the onerous task of transporting me and my luggage from the station. And plenty of it there is, too. The term ‘travelling light’ has yet to make it into my vocabulary, let alone my way of life, and the poor man had spent ten minutes outside the station, attempting to squeeze every last suitcase and holdall into his small, battered (and almost certainly un-roadworthy) Fiat, for the final leg of my journey.

Fortunately I’ve been lucky enough to have had plenty of offers of help with my heap of clobber at all the various en-route changeovers; there seemed to be a steady supply of willing passengers (usually male, so chivalry can’t be entirely dead, can it?) or porters to help me disembark from one leg of the journey and re-embark on the next. And that was without employing any of my feminine wiles on them; not that I’d dream of capitalising on being a mere petite little thing, with a tonne of luggage, and more than slightly challenged in the ability-to-carry-one’s-own-bags department. I know I’ve packed too much, and that’s my own fault, but there you go. I’m going to be here for the best part of a year, so I need it all! I just don’t have enough arms to carry it myself, so any offers of help are greatly appreciated.

I suppose I have fared pretty well on this journey, all things considered. Flying just wouldn’t have been an option for me; the check-in chick at the airport would have taken one look at my personal luggage mountain and run off screaming, not to mention the hideous amount in excess baggage charges I’d have had to pay. Anyway, I’ve made it now, and as I hand the driver a twenty euro note, I don’t expect to see any change from it, despite the relatively short trip. The poor man has had to work hard for his money after all.

What a place this is! I’ve only ever seen Florence in 2D, and the 3D version is really quite overwhelming. ‘Shabby chic’ has to be a term that was coined for this city; my short taxi ride brought me past palazzos and through piazzas, under archways and alongside gothic churches in glorious gilded stone and marble, all teeming with history but with an unexpectedly welcoming feel to them. There’s culture by the bucket-load here, no doubt about it, but none of it daunting in the way that it can be in some big cities. To me, Florence seems to beckon you to explore and enjoy; nothing is hidden away behind barriers like a museum piece, preserved for posterity but never experienced by the masses.

The streets are heaving with tourists and locals alike; the latter go brusquely about their daily business, the former trail languorously, guide-book in hand as they gaze upwards at the magnificent domes and towers, oblivious to the crowds hurriedly trying to get past them. The inevitable parties of Japanese tourists shuffle quickly from street to street, following their umbrella-clutching guides, and snapping away on the myriad high-tech bits of photographic equipment that dangle round their necks.

And here I am, finally, outside the place that is to be my home for the next year. It, too, is steeped in that same gorgeous shabby-chic as the parts of the city I have seen so far – a tall medieval building on several stories, each floor seemingly with its own style, almost as if it had been built one layer at a time by different architects, like some sort of gigantic wedding cake. No doubt it has simply been modified countless times over the centuries; some of the changes remain and others have crumbled to reveal the original detail in the structure behind them. Whatever its history, it’s a far cry from my student accommodation in Newcastle, a typical little early twentieth century northern two-up-two-down ‘back-to-back’, complete with original outside loo (and one indoors now too, thankfully), back yard, and a view of the identical row of houses behind it. I’d been happy there though – at least until recent events had conspired to make me otherwise – and I hope it will be available to rent again when I return to Newcastle next autumn to do my final year.

With a deep breath for courage, I grab what I can manage of my bags, leaving the long-suffering taxi driver to carry the rest, and turn the heavy iron handle of the little door in the huge oak gate on the front of the building. The taxi driver steps through behind me, calling out a ‘Buonasera signorina, e buona fortuna!’ as he heaps my luggage in a pile, happy to leave me quickly and move onto the next (hopefully less demanding) customer, now that his job here is done. Whether he is wishing me luck for my stay in Florence, or merely with getting all my bags up to my apartment, is anyone’s guess. I’m going to need luck for both, I suppose.

What greets me inside that little door is far from what I’d expected. In my head is a cool, slightly tatty but grandly marbled vestibule of a large block of apartments; instead I open that door and step into a magical garden. It’s brimming with bougainvillea, roses and hibiscus flowers, and surrounded on three sides by a high brick wall, giving it an air of complete stillness and tranquillity, and shielding it from the prying eyes of neighbours; a tiny, perfect and fragrant oasis within the heart of this bustling city. I can’t believe how fabulous it is; the surprise takes my breath away and I stand there, rooted to the spot, trying to get my wits together.

I spy a pair of slim, brown feet with cyan-painted toenails peeping round the side of the building; presumably another resident soaking up a bit of sun and enjoying this beautiful space. I decide not to go any further for fear of disturbing whoever she is and making a nuisance of myself in my first moments here, but just as that plan formulates, the feet drop to the ground, and the person attached to them comes around the corner.

‘Ciao!’ the gorgeous vision before me exclaims, shaking her mane of glossy dark hair almost in slow motion, like something from a shampoo ad, and stretching her lithe form. ‘You must be Lydia,’ she exclaims in perfect English with only the merest lilting hint of an Italian accent. ‘Benvenuta a Firenze! I am Leonora! I am your flatmate! Pleased to meet you!’ and at this juncture she grabs my hand in both of hers and shakes it vigorously, whilst proceeding to plant a kiss on each of my cheeks. ‘I thought I would wait for you here, help you with your bags,’ she goes on, surveying the luggage around my feet. ‘Good job I did,’ she adds, laughing.

Leonora can obviously spot an English person at ten paces – how else could she have been so sure that I was her new flatmate and wasn’t moving into one of the other apartments? I hope it’s just my mountain of luggage giving me away and that I’m not letting the side down in the fashion stakes by dressing like a dowdy Brit. But one glance at Leonora’s attire – perfect figure-hugging designer skinny jeans and simple but elegant black strappy top – confirms that yes, I probably do look like your typical English girl abroad, in my cropped summer trousers, pastel tee-shirt and flip-flops. And my (relatively) pale complexion probably has something to do with it too. I think I’m quite brown (for once it hadn’t been a bad summer back home) and by UK standards I almost certainly am, but compared to Leonora’s naturally gorgeous olive glow, I look positively anaemic.

I am as overwhelmed by this friendly, gushing welcome as I had been by my first glimpse of that walled garden; Leonora must think I am stupid, as it’s a good couple of minutes before I manage to emit a single word. Although that’s partly explained by the fact that she barely comes up for air. She is obviously glad to have a target on which to practise her immaculate English, but at this rate I anticipate I won’t be making much improvement in my own Italian linguistic skills – it’s going to be all too easy to speak to her in English.

When Leonora finally stops regaling me with the joys and wonders of ‘La vita fiorentina’ (she is going to have to fill me in on the finer details of the city all over again at some point, as this is all way too much too soon and I can’t take it in) she grabs a few of the heavier looking bags and bounces energetically on her endless legs towards the building to escort me upstairs to our apartment.

And what greets me inside is more along the lines of what I’d expected, although it still produces a jaw-hitting-the-ground-in-amazement moment. A cool, pale and well-trodden marble floor gives rise to the most dramatic, if shabby, staircase, which coils intricately around the edge of the circular stairwell like a tangled and gnarled wisteria. The iron fretwork of the banisters is broken at intervals with metal flowers and garlands, which make the whole structure seem alive, and possibly more at home in the garden we have just left, than in here. As I crane my head upwards I imagine climbing to the top of its infinite spiral like Alice, and disappearing into Wonderland, into another space and time away from reality.

‘We are on the third floor, il terzo piano,’ Leonora informs me as we climb, giving me a little Italian lesson en route. I don’t know if she’s been told that actually I do speak some Italian, but I can see I’m going to have to fight for my right to have a bash at it, or I will go back home after a year out here with not much more than the pidgin Italian I possess now.

We reach the third floor and Leonora opens the door to our apartment. Another ‘wow’ moment as we enter the place that is to be my home; a huge room of epic proportions with a fantastically high ceiling – and a painted ceiling at that. I can’t believe I’m actually going to live in a building which has its own built-in Renaissance works of art! It’s furnished with antiques, whose general state of repair is indicative of the fact that this is a rental property – so they probably aren’t terribly valuable – but that doesn’t matter as the overall effect is perfect. To fill a room such as this with a couple of cream sofas from Ikea and a glass coffee table would have been an offence punishable only by death.

Leonora shows me to my room and dumps the first few bags on the bed. Not only am I going to be living in Renaissance heaven, but I have an oak four-poster bed to boot! Leonora explains to me that this was her friend Manuela’s room; she is off doing a similar thing to me apparently, living abroad for a year, only Manuela has gone to South America. She is an archaeology student and plans to spend the year researching the Inca Trail. What a relief she and I aren’t doing a straight swap – can you imagine giving up all this for a single room with a faded candlewick bedspread, a view of the outside loo and forever grey Northern skies? I hope she’s been given an equally stunning room in her new temporary accommodation, wherever she is, in sight of a plethora of historic monuments or with some dramatically mountainous vista to open her shutters onto every morning.

‘You settle in and have a look around,’ Leonora suggests generously. ‘I’ll bring up the rest of your baggages.’ Finally, a flaw in her otherwise perfect English. Just wait till she hears my Italian, though. Still, at least I can muster up the basics such as ordering food and drink, and making myself understood around town, so in theory I won’t starve or get too lost, which has to be pretty high on the list of most important things as I settle into my new home city.

The shutters had been closed against the onslaught of the sun’s heat, and the room is dark but by no means stuffy. Although it’s late September, the temperature is still in the upper twenties (oh, to have that even in the height of an English summer!) and the sun high in the sky, but my room is cool and tranquil, something to do with all the marble and high ceilings, I suppose. I’d lost my directional bearings as we circled up the staircase, and as I throw back the shutters and let the warm air gush in, I am delighted to find that my room overlooks the garden and I smile with undiluted pleasure as I take it all in again. I’m not so high up that I can’t appreciate the colours and aromas from up here, in fact I can smell the late summer roses that twirl round the building and reach as high as the floor below ours. I breathe in the exotic, heady scents, and shiver with excited anticipation. I have a feeling I’m going to be happy here.



I wake up in a daze, completely disorientated and glancing around the room for some reassurance as to my whereabouts. As my brain and eyes slowly come back into focus I remember I’d started unpacking, hanging my clothes in the vast armoire which is so huge I’m convinced there’s a rear exit leading to Narnia. I’d been setting up my books and art materials on the huge oak table which will serve more than adequately as a desk, but then that gorgeous four-poster had looked so inviting, calling ‘Try me, try me’, with its creamy embroidered bedspread and huge squidgy bolster pillows, I thought I’d just have a teensy little go and see how comfortable it was. Not surprisingly, I was shattered after nearly twenty-four hours of travelling, and must have nodded off almost instantly.

I have no idea what time of day it is; there is still a gentle warmth wafting in through the open window and although the sun isn’t blazing with quite the full force of earlier, it isn’t yet dark. Good, so I haven’t missed the evening, then. Leonora had promised to show me some of the sights by dusk; trendy bars and restaurants, the ‘cool’ places to ‘be seen’, which is a big thing for the Italians, so I’ve been informed. From early evening, the aperitivo hour comes into full force, and anyone who is anyone wants to be seen socialising at the smartest bars and bistros, soaking up the café culture and watching the rest of the world go by. It’s the time of day when all the beautiful young things are out and about, gossip and confidences are exchanged, and martinis and proseccos quaffed in abundance. It sounds glamorous and exotic, and a far cry from a trudge down to the dingy old-man’s pub on the corner, in coat and boots, for a ‘quick one or two,’ as it would be back home. I can’t wait to experience it for myself.

I can hear voices coming from the living room – although that seems a pretty lame word for a room of such palatial dimensions; I think I might have to be posh and call it the drawing room. So I quickly run my fingers through my slept-in hair, add a touch of lip gloss, and venture out to investigate.

Leonora is draped gracefully over one of the antique sofas, now wearing a light blue strappy silk dress which shows off her perfectly tanned and toned arms, and sipping a tall glass of something cool and sparkling. Her head is thrown back, showing her long elegant neck, as she laughs at someone’s joke. Next to her is another girl, presumably Sophia, my other flatmate. She is equally gorgeous but in a blonder, more Northern-Italian, curvaceous sort of way. Actually, she looks more Swiss than Italian, although her dark skin gives away her heritage. She is a complete goddess as well. How am I ever going to stand a chance with the male of the Italian species with these two to compete with? At most I will be picking up their cast-offs. Although having had that thought, I sneak a quick glance at the three men who are also here and try to keep my bottom jaw from going slack; well, if they are representative of the standard, then cast-offs aren’t going to be half bad. I can cope with that.

Hang on a minute, what am I doing thinking about men? I surprise myself at how soon after a broken relationship I find myself ogling these three. (I’m not really ogling, am I? More like just appreciating the scenery.) But then they are a huge cut above most of the men one comes across in the UK. Not wishing to put our dear old pale English chaps down at all, but the chances of being in a room with three UK blokes, and even one of them equalling these Italian gods in looks and style, has to be highly improbable. And here I am, merely hours after setting foot in this place, surrounded by wall-to-wall Italian male totty. How can a girl complain about that? I must have died and gone to tall-dark-and-handsome heaven…..

I’d managed to put Ed and all the emotional baggage surrounding him out of my head during the journey down here, probably because I’d had too much physical baggage to contend with. There hadn’t been a lot of time for contemplation, which was probably just as well. And I can see there are going to be plenty of distractions here too; that all has to be cathartic doesn’t it?

Ed and I had been together for the entire first two years we’d spent at uni. We’d been one of those sickeningly loved-up couples who hook up in Freshers’ Week and are glued at the hip forever after. Only our forever after had been cut dramatically short when I’d found him in my bed with my housemate, Jules. He’d promptly become my ex-boyfriend, and she my ex-friend. Fortunately we’d all been due to head home for the summer a week or two later, so I won’t have to face either of them ever again – and by the time I return home from Florence to complete my final year they will both have finished their degrees and be long since gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Ed and I had talked about the future, marriage, mortgage, babies, all that sort of stuff, and I’d just assumed, naively it would now seem, that I’d found ‘the one’. I thought we’d just drift from uni to fantastic careers, followed a few years down the line by domestic bliss in a home of our own. How stupid I’d been. Apparently he and Jules had been at it for half of our second year. Why hadn’t he just done the honourable thing and finished with me if she was the one he wanted to be with? But no, he’d decided to keep me hanging on too, to cover his options, no doubt, in case Jules blew him out. Bastard. And there she was, fully aware of his relationship with me, AND pretending to be my friend, whilst they were both making a complete fool of me behind my back. I’d had the last laugh, though, if you can call it that – I hadn’t felt much like laughing – when Jules had promptly dumped him as well, before they’d left for the summer. Served him bloody right.

The summer at home with my parents hadn’t done much to ease the pain of deception. I’d drifted from job to job in an attempt to distract myself as well as to save a bit of cash towards coming out here, but the diversion hadn’t worked and I’d felt like I needed a complete change of scene to really thoroughly erase all thoughts of Ed (and the treacherous Jules) from my mind. Well it looks like the local eye-candy might be able to help with that. Of course I’m not so shallow as to think that a quick fling with a gorgeous Italian will completely cleanse my broken heart of all the torment it has been through over recent months, but it has to be a tonic, doesn’t it?

Even if I’m never lucky enough to hook up with one of these gods, then looking at them alone is enough to give a girl’s spirits a huge lift, from a purely aesthetic, study-of-the-male-species perspective. I’m here to appreciate the arts, after all, so why shouldn’t I start with the inspiration for much of it – the male form? It certainly puts a smile on a girl’s face, and it’s wearing said smile that I boldly venture forth to be introduced to them all.



‘Ecco l’inglese!’ one of these extras from a Dolce & Gabbana ad exclaims. And it doesn’t sound in the least pejorative, in the way that we English can sound when referring to another person by their nationality. No, he is clearly eager to meet me, whoever he is, and now that all eyes, both male and female are on me, I feel myself blush, which can’t do anything but emphasise my blotchy English Rose complexion, compared to my Italian counterparts’ smoothly glowing ones. Let’s just hope some of the men in this country have a penchant for paler skins.

I’m never great at the best of times at walking into a room full of strangers, but fortunately Leonora gets up to greet me and physically escorts me across the room to meet the others, who are all immediately on their feet and kissing me on both cheeks as though I am their long lost English cousin. Sophia, the other as yet un-met flatmate, envelops me in a huge hug. ‘Welcome to Florence,’ she says. ‘You are going to love this place, I know it. And we are going to be such friends!’ I needn’t have worried, they are all so lovely.

The three male models are introduced to me as Stefano, Dante and Lanzo. God, even their names are sexy. I just can’t imagine them being half as alluring if they were called Bob, Dave and Pete. I start to wonder whether two of them are romantically linked to my flatmates, and hope to goodness that the plan isn’t to set me up with the ‘spare’ this early on in my stay, so I immediately start watching for body language between any potential pair to see if I can deduce who ‘belongs’ to whom. There’s nothing obvious at this stage, no chemistry between any of them beyond the usual Italian all-round effervescence, so I just hope they are simply a bunch of friends who are being generous enough to include me immediately in their inner sanctum. A large group of ready-made friends is just what I need right now; lots of lively conversation and nights out and plenty of people to show me the sights, with no strings attached.

‘Allora, la bella signorina inglese,’ Lanzo begins, shuffling up on one of the sofas and patting the gap where I’m now expected to squeeze in between him and Sophia. ‘You are to be ours for this year. That is truly wonderful. We are honoured to have you.’ Were he English, I would be thinking What a sleaze-bag, but he manages to carry off, with the utmost sincerity, what could otherwise be a highly flirtatious comment, without making me cringe in the slightest. ‘My friends and me, we will show you everything,’ and he gestures with both arms in a big sweeping movement, so presumably he means the city as opposed to the contents of their trousers. That’s a relief. ‘Firenze is a wonderful place, you will settle in very quickly, be sure of it, and you need never feel homesick or alone. Our friends will be your friends,’ he says, both hands moving to cup his heart.

I’m not used to such gushy friendliness – we Brits just don’t do the whole welcoming thing in quite the same way. I used to find groups of friends at uni quite cliquey and exclusive sometimes, and not very receptive to newcomers. But I’m quite glad he is so full-on, and as he’s another one who, once started, doesn’t quite know when to stop, thankfully I’m not called upon to say too much.

‘Thank you, you’re all very kind,’ is all I can manage, as I grin from ear to ear, feeling relieved that I’ve landed where I have, and looking forward to the evening ahead.