Stretching Bonds

Chapter 3

"Look Allie! This country's a little silly, all the signs are covered in spelling mistakes." I giggle as I pull Molly up into my arms and approach the luggage carousel in the rush of our fellow passengers after we passed through passport control. "Molly, we're in Italy and that means all these signs are written in Italian." She just throughs me a confused look, "But why are they covered in spelling mistakes then?" This does nothing to squish my giggles of course, "Italian is a different language to English. To the italians, it's us who make all the spelling mistakes." Molly just nodded to feign understanding but she obviously still didn't get it, I'd obviously have to find someone else to explain it to her because I was hopeless when it came to answering her questions. I see our suitcases coming past so I set her down and grab them quickly, I manage to haul them both onto one of those trolleys that seem to be at every airport then Molly jumps on top if them both laughing. "Hold on," I tell her as start to speed up and manoeuvre the trolley through the other passengers and towards the arrivals lounge. Other travellers were looking at us strangely but I honestly didn't care, Molly's squeals of delight were like rocket fuel to my muscles and I couldn't keep the grin off my face when we almost knocked down the arrogant pretty boy who had made a pass at me on the flight. I could feel my heart lightening slightly as it tried to make the most of being forcibly parted from the almost sole retainer of its affection, Brendan. I ground to a sudden halt in the arrival lounge and realise I never asked our father how we were getting to his house. I don't even have an address, just the knowledge we had landed in Rome and a few euros in my pocket. To make matters worse our flight landed an hour early, if Daddy dearest was going to pick us up he wouldn't be here for a while yet. I groan and my head smacks against the handle bar of the trolley. Hurts more than I thought it would actually. "Alless, are you Ok?" I'm going to answer her with an unintelligent grunt when inspiration strikes me (probably encouraged by the head injury) and look up at her with a grin. "Better than ok, what do you say we go get some ice cream while we wait for some form of miraculous transportation?" ******** Dragging the suitcases behind us along the twisting and turning cobbled streets of Rome is just as difficult as it sounds but thankfully my 'spider senses' seem to have built in Sat-nav do I just followed my instinct and before we know it we're outside a quaint little ice cream shop in a small piazza. Molly doesn't ask any questions about how I knew where to go, she's grown accustomed to my powers now even if I haven't. I mean, I've only had them a few weeks so it's understandable. I walk in and smile at the woman behind the counter, she starts speaking to me in Italian passionately and warmly but unfortunately I can't understand a word she's saying! I manage to grab her attention after she finally pauses for breath, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Italian." She looks at me confused, obviously she doesn't speak English either, but she seems to get the message and indicates towards the counter for us to pick a flavour. I smile at her again and lift Molly into my hip so she can see the options. Molly of course just picks the brightest coloured one, a pink one I can only assume is strawberry, and I don't take much longer picking a green one I'm assuming is mint or something; I point to the flavours and then to two cones and the woman nods in understanding and I hand over the money. She starts making strange waves with her hands and I just stand there blankly like an idiot, what is she trying to tell me? Why didn't they teach us Italian at school? "She's telling us to wait outside you idiot and that she'll bring it to us." I stare at Molly as I let her pull me outside, "How on earth did you know that?" "Allie, everyone knows that." "Whatever, kids these days think they know everything."I mutter sourly as we sit down. Not 30 seconds later the woman comes out with two ice cream sundaes absolutely loaded to the brim with ice cream and toppings. And she set them in front of us. "Miss, I'm sorry but we didn't order these." I stop her and desperately start to hoak through my purse to try and find more euros to pay the extra but she put her hand over mine and stopped me. "No. Gift." "No miss seriously, I'll pay-" "Gift," she said and walked away with a final smile. Molly of course being the pig she is dug straight in without any qualms and after a slight internal battle I decided there's no point letting the ice cream to to waste, is there? And dig in too. And it was delicious, without a doubt the best ice cream I've ever had, and from the giggles of glee coming from Molly I can tell she feels the same. We're almost finished our ice cream when I feel a small mental tug in my head. A feeling that I should look up. So I do. Just in time to see two burly men in black suits and sunglasses speed walking around the corner and conversing frantically in Italian. They look worried and anxious and are furiously sweeping the area for something. Or someone I think as I realise with a jolt these guys are our ride. "Here Molly you better finish that quickly as our lift has finally arrived." Again she doesn't question me but looks up at the men, "Why do they look like Will Smith?" "Will Smith?" I question, confused. "Yeah, when he kills aliens he wears a suit just like that." I burst out laughing when I realise she's talking about the Men in Black movies and answer her question, "I don't know hun but maybe you shouldn't mention it to them, these aren't the sort of people you want to mess with." "Are you sure that's them? Because they're leaving again." I look over to see she's right, they haven't noticed us or maybe they just don't know what we look like and they're moving towards a street which I can only assume connects to another piazza. What do I do? I mean, I can't just go up to them and tell them who we are or they'll get suspicious of how I know. And I can't just let them leave or else me and Molly will be sleeping rough on the streets of Rome for the next few days as my phone's run out of battery and I haven't memorised Dad's phone number, not that it would matter anyway as I've no euros left whatsoever. Realising what I have to do and groaning internally over what I'm about to do I push our suitcases very obviously into the open beside our table then turn to Molly and tell her, "When I do this let out a loud scream and if you have to start crying or something so those guys look our way. Comprendes?" "What does comprendes mean?" I sigh, "Just do it ok?" Not waiting for her answer I stand, step forward and then very dramatically trip over our suitcases with a yell. True to her word Molly let's out a scream, probably partially due to surprise, and as I grip my ankle dramatically I see the men turn and can practically see everything clicking into place in their heads from their expressions. The suitcases. Two girls without any other escort. Our comfortable travel clothes. In fact I almost let out a sigh of relief when it seems to fall into place for them and they start rushing over, one of them helping me up while the other going to calm down Molly. I swear, that child can act. The one who helped me up turned to me, "Are you Allessandra Laurence?" I nod but stop and correct him, "Yes but I prefer going by Donatelli." "We were sent by your father to come pick you both up though he sends his apologies for not coming himself." Yeah of course he does(note sarcasm), our dad more than likely said no such thing but this man wanted to make us feel better thinking we would be upset. "I'm sure he has his reasons." The man's expression turned stern then, "You should not have left the airport. We didn't even know what you looked like and when we discovered your flight had already landed and you weren't there needless to say we panicked a little. We would never have recognised you both without the suitcases, you look nothing like your father. I'm sure you father has told us what type of business we're involved in and I'm sure you are intelligent enough to guess what can happen if mistakes are made so please refrain from acting so rashly again." I suddenly realise how stupid I was to leave the airport with Molly, we were playing with this man's life! Well, maybe not that because I doubt my father has that much influence but still. "Honestly I am truly one hundred percent sorry. I won't act so rashly next time, it's just I promised Molly Italian ice cream so I thought I would seize the opportunity. It won't happen again." He nods curtly, clearly hearing the sincerity in my voice, and puts an arm sound my waist to help me keep the weight off my 'injured' ankle before dragging one of the cases and leading us presumably to the car with the other man, who Molly had somehow talked into carrying her, filling behind pulling the other suitcase along behind him. This really wasn't a great start to our as-drama-free-as-possible visit.