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‘Happy?’ Dante gave a disbelieving smile.
‘Yes, happy.’ Matilda nodded. ‘I happen to like my work, Dante. I just want to make sure that you’re fine with me being there.’
‘I’m fine with it.’ Dante gave a short nod.
‘Because Hugh’s sick?’
‘Does it really matter?’
Matilda thought for a moment before answering. ‘It does to me,’ she said finally. ‘And whether it’s ego or neurosis, I’d like to think that when I pour my heart and soul into a job at least my efforts will be appreciated. If you and your wife are only doing this to pacify Hugh, then you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. To make it effective, I’m going to need a lot of input as to your daughter’s likes and dislikes. It needs to be a reflection of her and I’d like to think that it’s going to be a place the whole family can enjoy.’
‘Fair enough.’ Dante gave a tight shrug. ‘I admit I do not believe that a garden, however special, can help my daughter, but I am willing to give it a try—I’ve tried everything else after all…’
‘I clearly explained to Hugh that this garden isn’t going to be a magical cure for your daughter’s problems—it might bring her some peace, some respite, a safe place that could help soothe her…’
‘If that were the case…’ Dante said slowly and for the first time since she had met him his voice wasn’t superior or scathing but distant. Matilda felt a shiver run through her as she heard the pain behind his carefully chosen words. ‘It would be more than worth it.’
‘Look.’ Her voice was softer now. ‘Why don’t I take the plans and have a look? Then maybe on Sunday I could speak with your wife about Alex…’
‘My wife is dead.’
He didn’t elaborate, didn’t soften it with anything. His voice was clipped and measured, his expression devoid of emotion as he explained his situation, the pain she had witnessed just a second before when he’d spoken about his daughter gone now, as if a safety switch had been pushed, emotion switched off, plunging his features into unreadable darkness as she faltered an apology.
‘I had no idea,’ Matilda breathed. ‘I’m so very sorry.’
He didn’t shake his head, didn’t wave his hand and say that she couldn’t have known…just let her stew in her own embarrassment as their food arrived, raining salt and pepper on his gnocchi until Matilda could take it no more. Excusing herself, she fled to the loo and leaned over the basin, screwing her eyes closed as she relived the conversation.
‘Damn, damn damn!’ Cursing herself, she relived every insensitive word she’d uttered, then peeped her eyes open and closed them again as a loo flushed and she was forced to fiddle with her lipstick as a fellow diner gave her a curious glace as she washed her hands. Alone again, Matilda stared at her glittering eyes and flushed reflection in the massive gilt-edged mirror and willed her heart to slow down.
She’d apologise again, Matilda decided. She’d march straight out of the bathroom and say that she was sorry. No, she’d leave well alone—after all, she’d done nothing wrong. Of course she’d assumed his wife was alive. He had a child, he wore his wedding ring. She had nothing to apologise for.
So why had she fled? Why didn’t she want to go back out there?
‘Everything OK?’ Dante checked as she slid back into her seat.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Matilda attempted, then gave up on her false bravado and let out a long-held sigh. ‘I’m just not very good at this type of thing.’
‘What type of thing?’
‘Business dinners.’ Matilda gave a tight smile. ‘Though I should be, given the number that I’ve been to.’
‘I thought that your business was new.’
‘It is.’ Matilda nodded, taking a drink of her wine before elaborating. ‘But my ex-fiancé was a real estate agent…’
‘Ouch,’ Dante said, and Matilda felt a rather disloyal smile to Edward twitch on her lips.
‘He was very good,’ Matilda said defensively. ‘Incredibly good, actually. He has a real eye for what’s needed to make a house sell well. It’s thanks to Edward that I got started. If he was selling a deceased estate often it would be neglected, the gardens especially, and I’d come in…’
‘And add several zeros to the asking price!’ Dante said with a very dry edge, taking the positive spin out of Matilda’s speech. She gave a rather glum nod.
‘But it wasn’t like that at first.’
Dante gave a tight smile. ‘It never is.’
‘So what do you do?’ Matilda asked, chasing her rice with a fork as Dante shredded his bread and dipped it in a side dish of oil and balsamic vinegar, wishing as she always did when she was out that she’d had what he’d had!
‘I’m a barrister. My specialty is criminal defence.’ Matilda’s fork frozen over her fish spoke volumes. ‘Ouch!’ he offered, when Matilda didn’t say anything.
‘Double ouch.’ Matilda gave a small, tight smile as reality struck. ‘Now you come to mention it, I think I know your name…’ Matilda took another slug of wine as newspaper reports flashed into her mind, as a lazy Sunday afternoon spent reading the colour supplements a few months ago took on an entirely new meaning. ‘Dante Costello—you defended that guy who—’
‘Probably,’ Dante shrugged.
‘But—’
‘I defend the indefensible.’ Dante was unmoved by her obvious discomfort. ‘And I usually win.’
‘And I suppose your donation to the hospital was an attempt to soften your rather brutal image.’
‘You suppose correctly.’ Dante nodded, only this time his arrogance didn’t annoy her—in fact, his rather brutal honesty was surprisingly refreshing. ‘I try to give back, sometimes with good intentions.’ He gave another, rather elaborate, shrug. ‘Other times because…’
‘Because?’ Matilda pushed, and Dante actually laughed.
‘Exactly as you put it, Matilda, I attempt to soften my rather brutal image.’ She liked the way he said her name. Somehow with his deep Italian voice, he made it sound beautiful, made a name that had until now always made her cringe sound somehow exotic. But more than that it was the first time she’d seen him laugh and the effect was amazing, seeing his bland, unfathomable face soften a touch, glimpsing his humour, a tiny peek at the man behind the man.
They ate in more amicable silence now, the mood more relaxed, and Matilda finally addressed the issue that they were, after all, there for.
‘It would help if you could tell me a bit about Alex—her likes and dislikes.’
‘She loves water,’ Dante said without hesitation. ‘She also…’ He broke off with a shake of his head. ‘It’s nothing you can put in a garden.’
‘Tell me,’ Matilda said eagerly.
‘Flour,’ Dante said. ‘She plays with dough and flour…’
‘The textures are soothing,’ Matilda said and watched as Dante blinked in surprise. ‘I found that out when I was researching for the hospital garden. A lot of autistic children…’ She winced at her insensitivity, recalled that it was only a tentative diagnosis and one that the family didn’t want to hear. ‘I’m so—’
‘Please, don’t apologise again,’ Dante broke in with a distinct dry edge to his voice. ‘It’s becoming rather repetitive. Anyway,’ he said as Matilda struggled for a suitable response, ‘it is I who should apologise to you: I embarrassed you earlier when I told you about my wife. You can probably gather that I’m not very good at telling people. I tend to be blunt.’ He gave a very taut smile and Matilda offered a rather watery one back, reluctant to say anything in the hope her silence might allow him to elaborate. For the first time since she’d met him, her instincts were right. She watched as he swallowed, watched as those dark eyes frowned over the table towards her, and she knew in that second that he was weighing her up, deciding whether or not to go on. Her hand convulsed around her knife and fork, scared to move, scared to do anything that might dissuade him, might break this fragile moment, not even blinking until Dante gave a short, almost imperceptible nod and spoke on.
‘Fifteen months ago, I had a normal, healthy daughter. She was almost walking, she smiled she blew kisses, she waved, she was even starting to talk, and then she and my wife were involved in a car accident. Alex was strapped in her baby seat. It took two hours to extricate my wife and daughter from the car…’ Matilda felt a shiver go through her as he delivered his speech and in that moment she understood him, understood the mask he wore, because he was speaking as he must work, discarding the pain, the brutal facts, the horrors that must surely haunt him. And stating mere facts—hellish, gut-wrenching facts that were delivered in perhaps the only way he could: the detached voice of a newsreader. ‘Jasmine was unconscious, pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.’ He took a sip of his drink, probably, Matilda guessed, to take a break from the emotive tale, rather than to moisten his lips. But other than that he appeared unmoved, and she could only hazard a guess at the torture he had been through, the sheer force of willpower and rigid self-control that enabled him to deliver this speech so dispassionately. ‘At first Alex, apart from a few minor injures, appeared to have miraculously escaped relatively unscathed. She was kept in hospital for a couple of nights with bruising and for observation but she seemed fine…’
Dante frowned, his eyes narrowing as he looked across to where Matilda sat, but even though he was looking directly at her, Matilda knew he couldn’t see her, that instead he was surveying a painful moment in time, and she sat patient and still as Dante took a moment to continue. ‘But, saying that, I guess at the time I wasn’t really paying much attention…’ His voice trailed off again and this time Matilda did speak, took up this very fragile thread, wanting so very much to hear more, to know this man just a touch better.
‘You must have had a lot on your mind,’ Matilda volunteered gently, and after a beat of hesitation Dante nodded.
‘I often wonder if I failed to notice something. I was just so grateful that Alex seemed OK and she really did appear to be, but a couple of months later—it was the twenty-second of September—she started screaming…’ He registered Matilda’s frown and gave a small wistful smile. ‘I remember the date because it would have been Jasmine’s birthday. They were all difficult days, but that one in particular was…’ He didn’t elaborate, he didn’t need to. ‘I was getting ready to go to the cemetery, and it was as if Alex knew. When I say she was screaming, it wasn’t a usual tantrum, she was hysterio, deranged. It took hours to calm her. We called a doctor, and he said she was picking up on my grief, that she would be fine, but even as he spoke, even as I tried to believe him, I knew this was not normal, that something was wrong. Unfortunately I was right.’
‘It carried on?’
Dante nodded.
‘Worse each time, terrible, unmitigated outbursts of rage, and there’s no consoling her, but worse, far worse, is the withdrawal afterwards, her utter detachment. I spoke to endless doctors, Hugh was concerned, Katrina in denial…’
‘Denial?’
‘She refuses to admit there is a problem. So do I too at times, but I could not pretend things were OK and Katrina was starting to get…’ he stopped himself then, took a sip of his drink before continuing. ‘After a few months I took Alex home to Italy—I thought a change of environment might help. And, of course, it did help to have my family around me, but Hugh and Katrina were devastated,’ Dante continued. ‘They’d lost their daughter and now it seemed to them that I was taking away their granddaughter. But I had no choice and for a while Alex improved, but then suddenly, from nowhere, it all started again.’
‘So you came back?’
‘For now.’ Dante shrugged. ‘I am back in Australia to try and sort things out and make my decision. I have a major trial coming up in a week’s time so I am still working, but I am not taking on any new cases. You see now why it seemed pointless to renovate the garden when I do not know if Alex will even be here to enjoy it. But I think that Hugh and Katrina are hoping if they can do something—anything—to improve things, there is more chance that I will stay.’
‘And is there?’ Matilda asked, surprised at how much his answer mattered to her. ‘Is there a chance you might stay?’
‘My family is in Italy,’ Dante pointed out. ‘I have two brothers and three sisters, all living near Rome. Alex would have her nona, nono and endless cousins to play with, I would have more family support, instead of relying on Katrina and Hugh, but…’ He halted the conversation then, leaving her wanting to know more, wanting a deeper glimpse of him. Wondering what it was that kept him here, what it was that made him stay. But the subject was clearly closed. ‘It cannot be about me,’ Dante said instead, giving a tight shrug, and there was a finality to his words as he effectively ended the discussion. But Matilda, wanting more, attempted to carry it on.
‘What about your work?’
‘I am lucky.’ He gave a dry smile. ‘There is always someone getting into trouble, either here or in Italy—and being bilingual is a huge advantage. I can work in either country.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ Matilda asked, knowing that she was crossing a line, knowing the polite thing to do would be to leave well alone, but her curiosity was piqued, her delectable salmon forgotten, barely registering as the waiter filled her wine glass. ‘Defending those sorts of people, I mean.’
‘I believe in innocent until proven guilty.’
‘So do I,’ Matilda said, staring into that brooding emotionless face and wondering what, if anything, moved him. She’d never met anyone so confident in their own skin, so incredibly not out to impress. He clearly didn’t give a damn what people thought of him; he completely dispensed with the usual social niceties and yet somehow he managed to wear it, somehow it worked. ‘But you can’t sit there and tell me that that guy who killed—’
‘That guy,’ Dante broke in, ‘was proved innocent in a court of law.’
‘I know.’ Matilda nodded but it changed midway, her head shaking, incredulity sinking in. She certainly wasn’t a legal eagle, but you’d have to live in a cupboard not to know about some of the cases Dante Costello handled. They were Big, in italics and with a capital B. And even if that man she had read about really had been innocent, surely some of the people Dante had defended really were guilty. His job was so far removed from hers as to be unfathomable, and bewildered, she stared back at him. ‘Do you ever regret winning?’
‘No.’ Firmly he shook his head.
‘Never?’ Matilda asked, watching his lips tighten a touch, watching his eyes darken from dusk to midnight.
‘Never,’ Dante replied, his single word unequivocal. She felt a shiver, could almost see him in his robes and wig, could almost see that inscrutable face remaining unmoved, could see that full mouth curving into a sneer as he shredded seemingly irrefutable evidence. And anyone, everyone, would have left it there, would have conceded the argument, yet Matilda didn’t, green eyes crashing into his, jade waves rolling onto unmovable black granite.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I know I don’t,’ Matilda admitted. ‘Yet I still don’t believe you.’
And that should have been it. She should have got on with her meal, he should have resumed eating, made polite small talk to fill the appalling gap, but instead he pushed her now. As she reached for her fork he reached deep inside, his words stilling her, his hand seemingly clutching her heart. ‘You’ve been proud of everything you’ve done.’
‘Not everything,’ Matilda tentatively admitted. ‘But there’s certainly nothing big league. Anyway, what’s that got to do with it?’
‘It has everything to do with it,’ Dante said assuredly. ‘We all have our dark secrets, we all have things that, given our time again, we would have done differently. The difference between Mr or Ms Average and my clients is that their personal lives, their most intimate regrets are up for public scrutiny. Words uttered in anger are played back to haunt them, a moment of recklessness a couple of years back suddenly relived for everyone to hear. It can be enough to cloud the most objective jury.’
‘But surely, if they’ve done nothing wrong,’ Matilda protested, ‘they have nothing to fear.’
‘Not if I do my job correctly,’ Dante said. ‘But not everyone’s as good as me.’ Matilda blinked at his lack of modesty, but Dante made no apology. ‘I have to believe that my clients are innocent.’
She should have left it there, Matilda knew that, knew she had no chance against him, but she refused to be a pushover and refused to be swayed from her stance. She wasn’t in the witness box after all, just an adult having an interesting conversation. There was no need to be intimidated. Taking a breath, she gave him a very tight smile. ‘Even if they’re clearly not?’
‘Ah, Matilda.’ He flashed her an equally false smile. ‘You shouldn’t believe all you read in the newspapers.’
‘I don’t,’ Matilda flared. ‘I’m just saying that there’s no smoke without fire…’ She winced at the cliché and began to make a more eloquent argument, but Dante got there first.
‘There are no moments in your life that you’d dread coming out in court?’
‘Of course not!’
‘None at all?’
‘None,’ Matilda flushed. ‘I certainly haven’t done anything illegal, well, not really.’
‘Not really?’ Nothing in his expression changed, bar a tiny rise of one eyebrow.
‘I thought we were here to talk about your garden,’ she flared, but Dante just smiled.
‘You were the one who questioned me about my work,’ Dante pointed out. ‘It’s not my fault if you don’t like the answer. So, come on, tell me, what did you do?’
‘I’ve told you,’ Matilda insisted. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m sorry if you find that disappointing or boring.’
‘I’m never disappointed,’ Dante said, his eyes burning into her, staring at her so directly it made her squirm. ‘And I know for a fact that you have your secret shame—everyone does.’
‘OK,’ Matilda breathed in indignation. ‘But if you’re expecting some dark, sordid story then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. It’s just a tiny, tiny thing that happened when I was a kid.’
‘Clearly not that tiny,’ Dante said, ‘if you can still blush just thinking about it.’
‘I’m not blushing,’ Matilda flared, but she knew it was useless, could feel the sting of heat on her cheeks. But it wasn’t the past that was making her blush, it was the present, the here and now, the presence of him, the feel of his eyes on her, the intimacy of revelation—any revelation.
‘Tell me,’ Dante said softly, dangerously, and it sounded like a dare. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I stole some chocolate when I was on school camp,’ Matilda admitted. ‘Everyone did,’ she went on almost immediately.
‘And you thought that you’d look an idiot if you didn’t play along?’
‘Something like that,’ Matilda murmured, blushing furiously now, but with the shame and fear she had felt at the time, reliving again the pressure she had felt at that tender age to just blend in. She was surprised at the emotion such a distant memory could evoke.
‘So, instead of standing up for yourself, you just went right along with it, even though you knew it was wrong.’
‘I guess.’
‘And that’s the sum total of your depraved past?’ Dante checked.
‘That’s it.’ Matilda nodded. ‘Sorry if I disappointed you.’
‘You didn’t.’ Dante shook his head. ‘I find you can learn a lot about a person if you listen to their childhood memories. Our responses don’t change that much…’
