The Italian’s Miracle Family Read online

  ‘You mean the statue at the end of the Ponte Vecchio?’

  ‘And the padlocks.’

  ‘Did he and Carlotta exchange them?’

  ‘They must have done. He said the one I found was for me. But after we broke up I came home one day and he’d been there while I was out, fetching some personal stuff he’d left behind. The padlock was missing too. He must have gone through my things. He didn’t leave a note or anything, just his key on the table.’

  ‘I’m beginning to get a picture of this man,’ Drago said slowly. ‘He liked to do things in a way that was easiest on himself-going to your home when you weren’t there.’ His mouth twisted in contempt. ‘And this is the man my Carlotta preferred.’

  ‘I guess she hadn’t discovered that side of him yet,’ Alysa reflected. ‘He just didn’t like confrontation.’

  ‘I wonder how he and Carlotta would have managed after a while,’ Drago mused, looking into his wine glass.

  ‘Did she like confrontation?’

  ‘She was never backward about telling people what she thought.’

  ‘Just like you. The two of you must have had some terrific fights.’

  ‘Spectacular,’ he confirmed. ‘She once said-she once said she loved me because I was the only man she knew who could stand up to her. She’d have got bored with James in time.’

  ‘And you’d have taken her back for Tina’s sake?’

  ‘Yes. What about you?’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘I didn’t know before, but I know now. I would never have taken James back in a million years.’

  ‘Let’s drink our coffee and brandy by the fire,’ Drago said.

  They cleared the plates into the kitchen, but he rejected her offer to wash up, steering her firmly back into the living room and towards an armchair close to the fire on one side. Another one stood on the other side, and he threw himself into this.

  ‘That was the best meal I’ve ever tasted,’ Alysa said sincerely.

  ‘Thank you. I guess I owed you a decent meal.’

  ‘I think you needed it too. You look more relaxed.’

  ‘Cooking does that for me,’ he admitted. ‘Going to the cemetery with the whole family was very tough, having to watch every word in case they guessed. You can’t imagine how I longed for the one person I can be honest with.’ He raised his brandy glass to her.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she murmured. ‘Me too.’

  He was about to answer when his mobile phone sounded. He answered and immediately his face became exasperated and horrified.

  ‘I told Pietro to send them up here,’ he barked. ‘What does he think he-? How soon can you get them here? Why not tonight? All right, but first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Shall I guess?’ Alysa asked as he hung up. ‘My bags?’

  ‘Pietro took them to the villa. I thought I made myself plain, but evidently I didn’t. I’m sorry. That was my steward wanting to know what he should do. You find it funny?’

  Alysa had given a little laugh. Now she said lightly, ‘It does have its funny side. You were so determined to avoid the curious eyes of your employees.’

  ‘I apologise for all this,’ he growled. ‘They can’t get out here tonight, not in the dark on that mountain road. Your things will be here tomorrow, but until then-’

  ‘I’ll cope.’

  ‘Alysa, I swear I didn’t plan this.’

  ‘It’s all right, I believe you,’ she said through laughter. ‘With another man I’d be suspicious, but you and I aren’t about that.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She had set her brandy glass down on a small fender before the fire. Now she reached forward to get it, and kept on sliding down until she was sitting on the floor, finding it surprisingly comfortable because of the thick rug that seemed to be made of fake fur. She leaned back against the chair, sipping contentedly.

  She was enveloped by a sense of well-being. It had something to do with the fire and the fine brandy, but more to do with Drago. He’d said, ‘the one person I can be honest with’, and it was true for her too.

  She thought of the journey home that she’d nearly taken: landing at the airport with nobody to meet her, queuing for a taxi, reaching her home to find it cold, dark and empty, as it had been for the past endless year. The lonely evening with only her bleak thoughts for company.

  Here she was effectively a prisoner, but a well-fed prisoner, basking in the glow of a friendly fire, relaxed and almost happy. If she could have escaped she would not have done so. She sighed pleasurably, feeling her cares fade away.

  Drago, happening to glance across at her, saw the brandy glass about to slip out of her hand and hastened to remove it. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing coming steadily.

  He studied her, feeling guilty but unable to stop. It was unforgivable to watch her while she was unaware, but something about her face held him against his will. Now that her defences were abandoned, she’d changed in a way that made him grow still.

  If asked to describe her mouth he would have said that it was too firm and precise to be attractive, but exactly right for the slightly grim female she’d been at their first meeting. No man, he thought, considering the matter impartially, would ever be tempted to kiss that mouth.

  But now it was softened, her lips slightly apart, the breath whispering through them. Nature had shaped her more generously than she wanted the world to know, and sleep had revealed what she had tried to hide.

  Her whole face was one that a man might contemplate with curiosity, even while he blamed himself for his impertinence.

  She stirred and he backed off, rising to his feet and going to a chest of drawers where he’d deposited a canvas bag when he’d first come in. Having retrieved it he returned to his seat. For a while he remained still, until at last, with evident reluctance, he reached inside, drew out an envelope and sat turning it over between his fingers. He did this for some time, making no attempt to open it, and putting it aside quickly when Alysa stirred and yawned.

  ‘Have I been asleep?’ she demanded.

  ‘Just dozing for a minute.’

  ‘How rude of me. I’m sorry.’ She pulled herself up and rubbed her eyes, gazing into the fire which cast a glow over her face.

  ‘Well?’ she said at last, turning to look at him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, why are we here? Drago, when are you going to stop putting things off? You wanted to show me something so important that you dragooned me into coming here, but then you seemed to forget all about it.’

  ‘I’ve been trying not to think of it,’ he admitted. ‘It’s something that was found in their apartment and only delivered to my house yesterday.’

  ‘But didn’t you go through the place?’

  ‘Yes, and I thought I’d been pretty thorough, but it seems there was a secret place-a small cupboard in the wall that you’d never find unless you knew it was there. The people who rent the place now discovered it by accident and found a box inside, containing a cache of letters. From them they learned enough to get in touch with me.’

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Letters between James and Carlotta, dating from September, as soon as he went back to England after their first meeting. When he came to live here he brought her letters with him. His were sent to her work, and I suppose that’s where she kept them, because I had no idea.’

  She had to force herself to ask, ‘What do they say?’

  ‘I haven’t read them.’

  ‘How could you bear not to?’

  He smiled faintly. ‘Because you weren’t there. I’ve always thought of myself as a brave man, but I found I can’t do this alone.’ His smile became self-mocking. ‘I need you to hold my hand.’

  ‘If you haven’t read them, how can you be sure they’re real? James wasn’t a man for writing letters. He did it all by phone and email, like most people these days.’

  He showed her the envelope. ‘There are some things that you can’t trust to email. Is this his handw
riting?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, taking it from him. ‘That’s James.’

  She pulled out the letter and looked at the date.

  ‘September,’ she murmured. ‘He must have written this as soon as he came back.’

  The words seemed to leap off the page.

  I’m sitting here at midnight, trying to imagine that I’m still there with you. It’s only a few hours since you kissed me goodbye at the airport, yet already it seems like a lifetime. All I can do is try to tell you what our meeting has meant to me, how you’ve transformed my life in only a few days.

  She laid down the letter. ‘I can’t read any more.’

  But even as she said it she began reading again. James had written these words on the night he’d returned from Florence in September. She’d met him at the airport, gone home with him, tried to make love to him and been rejected.

  ‘Because he’d come from her bed only a few hours before,’ she whispered. ‘He sent me away, then sat down to write to her.’

  Drago was reaching into the bag, pulling out more letters, searching through them feverishly.

  ‘What does she say to him?’ Alysa asked.

  ‘She says here that her marriage is a sham,’ Drago replied in a dazed voice. ‘And she can endure it no longer. Mio dio!’

  Alysa barely heard. She too was pulling out letters, seeking the ones from James. They were revealing. He wrote:

  My darling, please don’t be jealous of Alysa. She means nothing to me any more. Even at its best it was only an insipid love, nothing compared to what I feel for you.

  And in another letter:

  I’ve promised to be with you next week, and I will. Don’t worry about my failing you, because I never will. I’ve made an excuse to Alysa and she’s accepted it. Luckily she’ll believe anything I tell her. So I’ll arrive on that plane, and, if you can be there to meet me, wonderful. If not, I’ll just go to our little home and wait for you.

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I believed whatever he told me, I loved him so much.’

  In answer to Drago’s look she handed him the letter.

  ‘It’s dated just before my birthday,’ she said. ‘We had such plans. But then he said he had to go away for a few days-something to do with the prospect of a job as a photographer. When he came back he said he hadn’t got the job and it had been a wasted few days.’

  ‘You didn’t check up on him?’

  ‘I never checked up on him. I trusted him totally. I didn’t know he despised me for it.’

  ‘And now you can despise him,’ Drago said fiercely. ‘Let that be your revenge.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in what she hoped was a strong voice. ‘You’re right, of course.’

  But the words echoed bleakly through the emptiness inside her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  D RAGO studied the contents of the next letter with a set face that grew almost cruel as he read on.

  You say your husband is a harsh man. My love, it breaks my heart to think of you trapped there with him, the victim of his bullying. But it won’t be long now before I come to rescue you.

  ‘It’s a lie!’ Drago said violently. ‘I never bullied her. Others maybe, but not her or Tina, I swear it.’

  ‘You don’t need to convince me,’ Alysa said.

  ‘But how could she tell such a lie?’ he demanded.

  ‘She was playing a part, saying what she thought would fire him up.’

  She took the letter from him and scanned it quickly, finding it full of a tender possessiveness that she would have thought charming in any other man. James was writing to the woman he had passionately adored, and it was so different from the casual love he’d given her that her heart ached.

  Or at least it would have ached, if she hadn’t been safely past that stage, she reassured herself.

  There was more about Drago, making it clear that Carlotta had painted him in a tyrannical light. Alysa found herself disbelieving every word. Already she knew him well enough for that. It was he who was Carlotta’s victim, raging helplessly like a baited bear.

  ‘We were together for ten years,’ he grated. ‘Until she left me, I thought they were wonderful years. We loved and cared for each other.’

  ‘And you were always faithful to her, weren’t you?’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Of course I was faithful,’ he said scornfully. ‘I was hers in every way, body and soul. There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for her. Nothing!’

  The last word was a shout of anguish. Alysa moved instinctively, taking his hand between both of hers. He gripped her so hard that she winced, but concealed it, letting him hold onto her as long as he needed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said ruefully as he released her. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she lied, flexing her fingers.

  ‘Do you want to stop?’

  ‘No, we can’t give in now. We’ve got to follow the path wherever it leads. After all, we already know the worst.’

  She began to read aloud.

  ‘“Talking to you last night was wonderful, but I wish it hadn’t had to be the telephone. I so much wanted to tell you our wonderful secret in person, and see your dear face”.’

  ‘What secret?’ Drago asked. ‘Does she say?’

  Alysa didn’t reply. A suffocating fear was overtaking her. It was impossible. She was mad even to think of it. She told herself she must read on, and then, ‘“It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. I thought nothing could make our love more perfect, but our baby will make us complete”.’

  ‘Baby!’ Drago sat up, tense.

  In a daze, Alysa read on. ‘“My darling, never doubt that this child is yours. Since the day I met you I’ve kept my husband out of my bed, and no man but you has loved me. No man ever will again”.’

  ‘Bastardo!’ Drago snatched the letter out of her hand and began to read it urgently. After a moment he crumpled it in his hand.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ he muttered. ‘Why does she say things that can’t be true?’

  ‘Can’t they?’ Alysa asked, watching the fire intently. ‘Did she “keep you out”, as she says?’

  ‘Yes, but-’ He broke off with a groan. ‘A few months earlier I’d told her I wanted another child, but she put me off. We quarrelled and she shut me out. I wanted to be reconciled, but she wouldn’t-Now I see that it was more convenient to keep me away, because all the time-’

  He slammed his hand down on a low table with such force that it smashed. A stream of violent Italian curses broke from him. His chest was heaving with the violence of his emotion, and for a moment he was too distracted to watch Alysa-and so didn’t see that she was staring into space, her face wooden, her eyes dead.

  She and Carlotta had become pregnant by James at almost exactly the same time. When she’d been waiting for him to arrive for Christmas, thinking how she would tell him of their baby, he had been on his way to Florence -to Carlotta, and the child he’d fathered with her.

  Half unconsciously she laid her hand over her stomach, almost deafened by the thunderous beat of her own heart.

  She’d thought there could be no more pain beyond what she had already suffered. She was wrong.

  She climbed slowly to her feet and moved away from the fire’s warmth to the window, where she stared out, unseeing. After a moment Drago came and stood beside her.

  ‘I’m glad you couldn’t understand what I was saying,’ he said. ‘I thought I was ready for anything, but that one-after all this time. I don’t know what I want to do-throw something, bang my head against the wall, curse her to hell and back.’

  But she astonished him by shrugging.

  ‘Why bother? We knew they were sleeping together. This doesn’t really make any difference.’

  Drago stared, alerted less by her words than by a note in her voice that he’d heard before: harsh. Dead. It was how she’d sounded when they had first met at the waterfall, and it had fitted with the robotic severity of her appearan
ce that day. Today that chilling note had briefly gone, revealing a vibrant sound that had suggested a whole new side to her, but now it was back like steel armour.

  He’d criticised her for it then, but not now. He was beginning to understand.

  ‘Does it really not make a difference?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘Why should it?’ She gave a brittle laugh. ‘What’s one more betrayal? They’ve been dead a year. Good riddance!’

  She leaned back against the window frame and regarded him with cool detachment as she observed, ‘I told you there was a lot to be said for putting it behind you, and now you see I was right.’

  ‘Then I envy you,’ he said untruthfully.

  He could hardly speak for horror at what he was witnessing. She was turning to stone before his eyes, retreating into a place where he couldn’t follow. If he tried she would fight him off with deadly weapons. A sensible man would have feared her, but he could only feel a surge of pity, followed by anger at himself. What had he done to her?

  His attention was caught by something floating past the window. Throwing it open, he saw a blanket of white. Thick flakes of snow poured down onto the leaves, through the branches and down to the ground far below. While they’d been unaware, the world had changed beyond recognition.

  ‘It looks so cold out there,’ Alysa whispered. ‘So cold.’ She turned away. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now.’

  He wished she would meet his eyes. Her withdrawn look unsettled him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, feeling how inadequate the question was.

  ‘Of course. I’m just tired.’

  ‘This snow will block the roads, and delay your bags getting here. You’ll find some clothes in the wardrobe, but I’m afraid they’re hers.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said indifferently. ‘I don’t need-’ she shuddered ‘-anything of hers. There’s no need to show me the way. Goodnight.’

  She walked away to the bedroom, moving carefully because she was afraid that any moment she would break in two. When she was inside she leaned back against the door and stayed there for several minutes, trying to find the strength to move.