Fay turned on the coffee machine. As her espresso was being prepared, she looked out of the tall kitchen window. And, as usual, she was enchanted by the view. The house in Ravi had become her own earthly paradise. The place was not particularly large, with only about two hundred permanent residents. It took about five minutes to walk around Ravi if you went a bit slowly. But in the middle of the small square, there was a restaurant with the tastiest pizza and the best pasta she had ever eaten. It was full every night. Occasionally tourists visited, but especially now towards the end of May, their numbers had started to increase: French cyclists or American retirees who had rented a motorhome and were fulfilling their dream of seeing Italy, while their adult children wondered why their parents insisted on living their own lives instead of babysitting their grandchildren. But there were no Swedes.
Fay had not seen a Swede here since she bought the house, which was a decisive factor in choosing the location. In Sweden, she was famous, known throughout the country. In Italy, she wanted and needed to be anonymous. The beautiful old house she had bought was not inside the village, but outside it, about a twenty-minute walk away. It was situated on a hill, with vineyards climbing the slope and reaching up to the house. Fay loved going up and down it, going to buy bread, cheese, and prosciutto. Of course, all these were the absolute clichés of life in the Italian countryside, but she enjoyed them to the fullest. The same went for her mother Ingrid, as well as Serstin and Julien. They had become a very close-knit group in the two years since Jack, Fay’s ex-husband, was sentenced to prison.
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