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Angelo stepped into the lift, his expression openly speculative. ‘Sorry, my mind is a bit one-track at the moment.’
Gianfranco unclenched his fists and struggled to respond appropriately to the social cue. ‘How is Kate?’
‘Fine. Give Dervla our love, Gianfranco, and I hope she’s feeling less … tired soon.’
Gianfranco nodded absently, thinking that this message would take lower priority than many things he needed to say to his wife when he saw her.
He was mentally polishing the more personal messages as he walked into the office and dialled his son’s number. As he was not fully concentrating on what Alberto said he assumed initially he had misheard him.
‘What did you say, Alberto?’
‘I said I’m running away.’
CHAPTER SIX
OF COURSE you are.
Gianfranco dragged a hand through his hair and glanced at his reflection in the mirrored surface of a wall cabinet. Despite the concerted efforts of his nearest and dearest there were no white streaks in the hair of the man who looked back at him.
But it could only be a matter of time.
‘I’m assuming this is some kind of joke?’
It seemed a safe assumption. Having broken family tradition, he had sent his son to a day school in Florence. Alberto was on a school field trip to Brussels to see the European Parliament in action, safely supervised by teachers.
‘I’m in Calais at the moment, but the ferry leaves in a few minutes.’
Staring out of the window at the traffic below, he shook his head, still feeling slightly more irritation than concern. ‘You’re in Brussels.’
‘No, Calais.’
Gianfranco felt the concern versus irritation dip towards concern.
‘Calais?’
‘I told you—I’ve run away.’
Gianfranco’s stomach muscles clenched in icy dread as he realised this was no warped teenage sense of humour he was dealing with, but a genuine situation.
‘You are actually in Calais …?’ Gianfranco struggled to get his head around it.
How could a thirteen-year-old schoolboy meant to be in Brussels in the care of teachers be in Calais?
Thoughts of abduction and kidnap flashed into his head to be almost immediately dismissed. Alberto’s voice was not that of a scared victim. Like someone coming out of a trance, he dragged a hand down his jaw and exhaled.
‘You’ve run away? From me?’ Why not? It was becoming quite a fashionable thing to do. If this was true Alberto wouldn’t be sounding so chirpy once he got his hands on him, Gianfranco decided grimly.
‘Yes, I just said so, didn’t I? So if the school contacts you tell them I’m fine. They might have noticed I’m missing by now.’
‘Might have noticed!’ Gianfranco choked. He pushed aside the thought of what he would say to the teachers who had failed so miserably in their duty. There were more important things to think about. ‘How did you get to Calais? Are you alone?’
‘I hitched.’
His teenage son’s explanation made Gianfranco’s blood run cold. ‘You hitched a lift?’
Impervious to the horror in his father’s voice, the teenager added tetchily, ‘You’re not usually this slow, Dad. I know what you’re thinking but the lorry driver was a really nice guy, not a pervert or anything. I told him I was seventeen and he believed me.’
Gianfranco bit back a curse and rolled his eyes heavenwards. He was having a nightmare, that was the only explanation, he decided.
Every parent knew it was a delicate line—the one between wrapping your children up in cotton wool and letting them run around oblivious to the dangers that lurked for the unsuspecting.
Like every other parent he wanted to keep his child safe. He had always been conscious that there was also a danger that an overprotective parent could stifle any sense of adventure in a child. In his efforts not to quash the spirit of adventure in his son he might, Gianfranco acknowledged grimly, have gone a little too far the other way.
‘Listen to me very carefully,’ Gianfranco said slowly.
‘I can’t. My battery’s low and, don’t worry, I can look after myself, you know, Dad.’
‘Would it be pushy of me to ask why you’re running away?’
‘You might be divorcing Dervla, but I’m not.’
‘Divorce!’ Gianfranco yelled down the line. ‘There will be no divorce.’
‘That was my eardrum you just perforated. And if anyone asks I’ll tell them I’d prefer to live with her.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Gianfranco inserted drily in response to this warning. ‘Let me remind you again, nobody has mentioned divorce.’ And nobody will.
‘Not yet,’ his son said darkly. ‘But it doesn’t take a genius to see where things were heading left to you two. So I decided you needed some help.’
‘This form of help involves you running away?’ Gianfranco tried to control his temper as he made a rapid mental calculation of how soon he could get to England before his son got into any more trouble.
‘But where, or rather who, am I running to? I mean as a responsible parent you have to come get me, it’s totally legit and there’s no question of you chasing after her. I reckon you’ll be all over each other about twenty seconds after you see each other.’
Not many things shocked Gianfranco to silence, but this nonchalant prediction did.
I’m being manipulated by a thirteen-year-old. A reluctant laugh was torn from his throat. If he’s like this now, what will he be like by the time he’s eighteen?
Hearing the laugh, the boy gave a sigh of relief. ‘I knew you’d like my plan. Cool or what? Which reminds me, Dad, would you ring Dervla and ask her to pick me up at the ferry terminal? I think the boat gets in around six. Look, my battery really is low. I’ll be in touch later …’
The line went dead and after a short pause Gianfranco keyed in a number.
Dervla took another doughnut from the bag that Sue had dumped on the tea tray. ‘I don’t usually like these,’ she said, taking a large bite.
‘You need a sugar hit. Trust me, I’m a nurse,’ Sue said, helping herself. ‘Look, Dervla, I think things have just got out of proportion. You two are meant to be together. Give him time and I guarantee he’ll come around about the baby thing. He loves you.’
‘You’re totally wrong. Gianfranco doesn’t love me. He never pretended to be in love with me, not even when he proposed,’ she admitted in a voice that cracked with emotion.
In fact he had made it pretty clear that romantic love was an encumbrance that had no place in his life.
Sue looked sympathetic but unsurprised. ‘Some men find it hard to articulate their feelings.’
Dervla’s eyelashes swept upwards. Her green eyes were bleak as she gave an odd little laugh. ‘Not Gianfranco,’ she promised.
Gianfranco could be very articulate, especially when it came to exposing romantic love for the sham he believed it was. His feelings on the subject were clear and Gianfranco had no problem when it came to clarity.
Clarity was his thing, she reflected bitterly. Her husband was not a man for whom grey areas existed.
‘He just doesn’t have the feelings to express … not for me, at least,’ she added bleakly.
Dervla had suspected early on that it wasn’t love that Gianfranco didn’t believe in, it was the possibility of him ever finding the love he had shared with his first wife, the love of his life, with anyone else.
Being a woman in love, she had ignored the deafening warning bells and decided she would be the one to teach him he could love again.
Feeling the frustrated resentment building inside her, she defiantly reached for another doughnut. It would serve Gianfranco—who had likened her to a sleek and supple little cat—right if she gained twenty pounds! She was definitely beginning to see the attraction of comfort eating.
‘He told me when he proposed that he wasn’t in love with me.’
The older girl shook her head in disbelief. ‘And I thought Italian men were meant to be romantic,’ she exclaimed, looking disillusioned.
‘He still loves Alberto’s mother. She was beautiful and perfect and—’
‘I hate to point out the obvious, but this paragon is also no longer with us, Dervla.’
Dervla’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Have you ever tried competing with a ghost?’
Sue’s expression softened with sympathy. ‘Is that how you felt?’
‘She was beautiful.’
‘So are you!’ Sue protested.
Dervla gave an exasperated shake of her head. ‘Not pretty—beautiful.’
‘Does he mention her a lot?’
Dervla gave a sniff and shook her head. ‘Never. See,’ she said when she saw Sue’s expression. ‘You think that’s a bad sign too.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Carla says he finds it too painful. She says Sara was his soul mate, they never argued and she—’
‘I get the picture,’ Sue intervened quickly. ‘The man has baggage and a son.’ She chewed worriedly on her lower lip as she studied her friend’s unhappy, downcast features. ‘God, Dervla, did you have to marry him? Couldn’t you have just had sex?’
‘That’s what he said.’
Sue’s eyes went saucer-wide. ‘And you said …?’
‘Obviously we’d already—’ Dervla broke off, blushing, and Sue repressed a grin. ‘He made this ridiculously big thing of me being a virgin at twenty-six.’
‘You were a virgin!’
Sue’s astonished exclamation brought Dervla’s head up with a jerk.
‘Gianfranco was your first lover?’
Dervla bit her lip and nodded.
‘Wow!’
They both reached in unison for another doughnut as the phone began to ring.
Sue moved towards it and Dervla cried out urgently, ‘No, leave it!’
Her friend shrugged and settled back in her seat.
Teeth clenched, Dervla stood ten more seconds before she broke and picked it up.
‘Hello.’
‘Dervla.’
His deep honey-timbred drawl was more frayed around the edges than normal but Dervla would have been able to distinguish it in the middle of a male voice choir.
Her mind went blank.
‘Is that you or a heavy breather?’
She expelled the air trapped in her lungs in one gusty sigh and wiped her wet palm against her thigh.
‘Hello, Gianfranco, how are you?’ How are you? Why stop there, Dervla? Why not sound like a complete moron and ask him how the weather is there?
‘How do you think I am, cara?’
She winced at the acid in his biting response and felt her anger and resentment stir. As if he were the only one suffering here; as if she hadn’t spent two days of hell.
‘How would I know? Silence is kind of hard to interpret. I couldn’t even read between the lines, because there weren’t any. I’m actually feeling fairly honoured that you spared a moment to pick up the phone.’
There was a protracted silence that was more than adequate for Dervla to regret her hasty comments.
‘So you missed me, then.’
He sounded so smug that if there hadn’t been several hundred miles separating them she’d have hit him. Acknowledgement of the distance between them drew a desolate little sigh from her. How could you feel lonely in a place that until recently you had called home? But she did, her home was not here any longer, it was wherever Gianfranco was.
‘Actually I’ve been too busy to miss you. There’s been no time. I’ve been shopping and to lunch, catching up on old friends. We’re on out way our now, actually. You only just caught me.’
At the other end of the phone Gianfranco snapped the pencil he was threading between his long fingers in two. ‘So should I expect to see photos of you staggering out of nightclubs to appear in the tabloids?’ he wondered in a sub-zero tone.
‘Don’t be absurd!’ she snapped, conscious that nothing he said could be as absurd as her trying to convince anyone she didn’t miss him.
