Love Falls

by Freud, Esther

• ISBN13: 9780061349614
• ISBN10: 0061349615
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

From the author of Hideous Kinky comes a charming, surprising, and utterly irresistible tale of adolescent love and self-discovery. When seventeen-year-old Lara accepts her father's invitation to accom-pany him to a Tuscan villa for the summer, she's both thrilled and nervous for the exotic holiday. To her delight, she soon discovers that the villa's closest neighbors are the glamorous Willoughbys, the teenaged brood of a British millionaire. Caught up in their torrential thirst for amusement-and snared by Kip Willoughby's dark, flirtatious eyes-Lara sets off on a summer adven-ture full of danger, first love, and untold consequen-ces that will irrevocably change her life.

Excerpts

Love Falls
A Novel

Chapter One

'I don't know if I've ever mentioned my friend Caroline,' Lambert said as a thick white plate of kedgeree arrived at the table and was set down on the linen cloth in front of Lara, 'but I had a letter this morning, and . . .' He paused to acknowledge the arrival of his chops. 'It seems she's not at all well.'

'Oh. I mean, no. I don't think you have.' Lara stared down at the slivers of browned fish, the gold yolk of the egg, the parsley sticking to the rice. She wanted to start but it seemed rude. 'Is she very . . . ?'She never knew if you were allowed to mention age to people who were old. 'Is she . . .' She said it brightly. 'Very old?'

'Well. . .'Her father took up a sharp knife and cut into the meat. 'Not terribly. A few years more than me. Sixty-ish, maybe?' He sighed. 'Quite young.'

Lara nodded as she scooped up her first mouthful, the soft grains cinnamon- and clove-scented, the tiny seeds of caraway cracking between her teeth, and wondered when, if ever, she would think of sixty-ish as young.

'It made me wonder,' her father continued while the waiter poured tea, 'if I shouldn't visit. She's taken a house in Italy for the summer. She takes one every year, her late husband was Italian, and every year she invites me, but this time . this time I thought I actually might go.'

He looked down then, frowning, giving Lara a chance to observe him, see how this declaration was affecting him, a man who made it a point never to leave London, had not left it, as far as she knew, since before she was born. Why, she'd asked him once, do you never travel? And he'd shrugged and said why travel when you're already in the best place there is?

For a while they ate in silence and then, still chewing, he fixed Lara with a look. 'Have you ever been?'

'Where?'

'To Italy.'

Lara shook her head. She'd been to India with her mother on a bus, through Belgium, Germany, Greece and Turkey, through Iran (although they'd called it Persia to make the days pass faster) into Afghanistan and across the Khyber Pass. She'd been to Scotland too, had lived there for seven years, so maybe that didn't count, but she'd never been to Italy.

He was still looking at her. 'I thought maybe you'd like to come.'

'With you?'

He nodded.

'Really? I mean yes. I would.'

They smiled at each other—a seal on their pact, and then spirals of alarm, of dread, of delirious excitement shot through her body with such force that her appetite disappeared and finishing her breakfast seemed suddenly as arduous a task as being asked to plough a field.

Lara's father, Lambert Gold, lived in a dark and thickly padded flat halfway up a wide, carpeted stairway. There was a small kitchen, a small sitting room, a large study, and a bedroom into which she'd only ever glanced, but which had a pale-green plant of such beauty growing up against one wall that it always surprised her, it seemed so out of keeping with the dark interior of the rest of the flat. Through the half-open door the heart-shaped leaves and twining stems seemed to be actually breathing, stretching towards the light, shivering very slightly in a breeze, the leaves always in spring colour, whatever time of year. This plant was the one thing that reminded her that Lambert had ever known her mother. She also had a plant, a lemon-scented geranium on a low table beside her bed, but unlike Lambert's—for which she didn't have a name—the geranium was forever changing, ageing, growing new shoots, darkening and lightening with the time of year. The stalk was gnarled and brown, the dead leaves dropped in a little curling pile on to the plate below, but when you rubbed against it a scent so rich and airy filled the room that it made you stop whatever you were doing, and breathe in.

Ever since she'd known her father, and it bothered Lara sometimes that she couldn't remember the day they'd met, he'd been writing a history of Britain in the twentieth century. Some sections of it had already been published, a fact he railed against, because each time this happened it meant his work schedule was disrupted by requests for articles, interviews, letters to which he must reply. There was a sense about him that he was warding off interruption, must really, ideally, never be disturbed, so that it meant the few people who did see him felt themselves to be the chosen, and every second spent in his time was a gift bestowed.

Lambert's real name was Wolfgang Goldstein. As a child he'd been known as Wolf, but he'd renamed himself three months after arriving in London, seeing his new name in print for the first time the day after his eighteenth birthdaywhen he'd written an angry letter to The Times, Why did you choose Lambert? Lara asked him, wondering what she would call herself if her own name—Lara Olgalissia Riley—ever became more of a burden that it was worth, and he said he chose Lambert because it was less threatening than Wolfgang but still related, a sort of private joke to himself. He'd come across it in the obituary pages of the newspaper, William Lambert 'Bertie' Percival, a colonel in the army who'd died peacefully in his sleep. What had his letter been about? She always forgot to ask him—and when she did remember the moment was never right.

Lambert was fifteen when he first came to England. He'd been sent out of Austria in the year before the war, the precious only son of his parents, and as if this was to be his fate, to be precious . . .

Love Falls
A Novel. Copyright © by Esther Freud. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

---

Excerpted from Love Falls by Esther Freud
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.