Christmas at Claridge's Page 36

  ‘And I get no say in this?’ Rafa raged. ‘I just get told he will live with me and then he won’t?’

  ‘You get every say He loves you like a father. But he is my brother, not my child, and I have looked after him and taken care of him every one of the days in the eight years since Mama died. I gave up my own life in Firenze and my career hopes to come back here for him, because I love him with all my heart. But it has come at great cost to me. I have been sad for very long and now . . .’ Her glance flickered back to Tom, and once there couldn’t wrest free again. ‘This is my chance for happiness. I love Tom and I want to be with him.’ She looked back at Clem, her expression tender, affectionate and utterly implacable. ‘I would not even consider this if I did not believe Luca would be safe, protected and loved by you both.’

  ‘Why do you include her?’ Rafa roared. ‘She is a stranger.’

  ‘Not any more. Not after this summer,’ Chiara said, her eyes on Clem as they communicated without words, their tangled past twisting into the present, too, keeping pace with them both, keeping them connected.

  ‘Well, it will not work, your plan,’ Rafa hissed. ‘She is already going. I heard her. They cannot wait to leave.’

  Clem gasped at his words. He’d been listening that night?

  He nodded, leaning in to her, his eyes on the ring glittering on her right hand. ‘Not a white diamonds girl?’ he snarled, standing up with such force that his chair went flying back, clattering noisily to the floor as he stormed from the room.

  The back door slammed behind him and Clem stared at her hands miserably, shaking from the blitzkrieg. ‘When are you going?’ she asked after a few minutes, defeated. She knew when Chiara had made up her mind; and she also knew what Luca’s response was going to be, if this afternoon’s was anything to go by.

  ‘After the wedding. Luca goes back to school a few days later and he will be so busy he will not miss me so much as he thinks. He will only be home to sleep and eat. Anyway Rafa is his world.’ She reached her hands out to Clem’s, her face low to the table, trying to catch Clem’s eye. ‘Please, it would just be a few weeks more for you, Clem. Surely, after everything, you can give me that? Is it really so dreadful to stay?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what it is you’re asking of me . . .’ Clem whispered.

  ‘I do,’ Chiara nodded soberly. ‘And I still believe it is the best. For all of us.’

  Us – the very word was inclusive, implying their shared, overlapping lives, how they were as linked as sisters.

  Overwhelmed by all of this, Clem got up and walked to the back door in silence.

  ‘Clem?’ Tom asked, looking concerned.

  But she shook her head. She didn’t want to talk any more – she’d had too much to drink and was feeling dangerously emotional; she didn’t trust her own tongue. She pulled the door shut behind her and leaned against the wall, breathing in the night air. She walked slowly through the garden, trying to take in the bombshells that had fallen on her in the course of one afternoon. She had spent the last ten years trying to outrun her past, but it had well and truly captured her now, gathering her in its sticky claws and refusing to release its grip, no matter how much she struggled to get away again.

  She opened the gate and stepped onto the road just as a scooter blasted round the corner, its lights dazzling her. She pressed herself against the rough wall in fright as the Vespa passed. She couldn’t see who it was over the headlights, but she could guess. The blonde hair streaming from the passenger riding pillion was a dead giveaway.

  ‘You are awake.’ Gabriel’s voice was soft in the dark, like fur brushing over her skin.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she whispered from her position, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling. She wished she could brush her fingers against the smooth silk envelope that had always kept her going during her most difficult moments, but she couldn’t. It was hidden beneath a hard and heavy mattress – away from Gabriel and Signora Benuto but, crucially, away from her, too.

  ‘You are. I can tell.’ She could tell that he was smiling. She felt the mattress dip as he shifted position to face her, and she knew he had planted his head on his hand and was looking down at her. ‘You are a truly dreadful sleeper. If I had known this before, it might have changed things between us.’

  She turned to look at him and his mouth swooped down on hers. ‘Got you,’ he murmured.

  She smiled and turned onto her side, facing him, nestling down into the pillow and closing her eyes again.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘How can I? I’m still sleeping,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Maybe I shall use that to my advantage.’

  Somewhere further down on her thigh, she felt his fingers beginning to tiptoe over her skin, and her muscles contracted involuntarily, her body instantly waking up to his touch without hesitation. His fingers stopped their march.

  ‘Is it me? Us?’

  Her eyes opened. ‘No. You’re everything.’

  Slowly after a pause, his fingers continued their walk over her hipbones. ‘Good.’

  Clem blinked into the dark, feeling more awake than ever, and not just because of where his hands were now. She’d told him the truth, no word of a lie. He was everything.

  But it was never going to be enough.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Clem fidgeted in her seat and tried not to stare. The benches were hard and narrow and her knees pressed up against the back of the pew in front. The church was almost full now – the pews filling from the front to the back (although she’d made a beeline for the back row as ever) and she had a prime view of the backs of everyone’s heads. Surprisingly, she recognized many of them and had been gratified by the number of greetings by name she had received as she approached the church. She certainly wasn’t unknown in the port, even though she’d kept herself to herself for the most part, and she wondered if Chiara and the workmen talked about her? If they did, it would seem to be positive, given all the smiles she received.

  She smoothed the fabric of her dress across her thighs – a three-quarter-length, simple, faded coral linen number with a deep scooped back, which she’d picked up in the port. She had twisted some chunky beaded necklaces around one wrist and was wearing her hair up, messily to show off her long feather drop earrings. Simple leather flip-flops and her skinny-fit khaki biker jacket completed the look. No one else looked like her, but she didn’t stand out in a wrong way, she didn’t think.

  She kept her eyes moving. Tom and Chiara were sitting further towards the front, but she hadn’t joined them – their happiness was slightly more than she could bear, their hands clasped on the bench between them as they spoke in trailing whispers, their eyes doing most of the talking.

  Gabriel was coming later. He had some dratted meeting in Rome that couldn’t be cancelled, but he’d promised to get back in time for the dinner; she’d smiled and told him she was a big girl, but she wished he was here now. She felt conspicuous sitting alone, especially when . . .

  No. She made herself shift position again, smiling as she remembered Stella wanting to light up at the christening, six months ago, back in March – the last time she’d been in a church. She missed her friend more every day, hating that she was absent from this, the biggest journey of her life. Not that Stella was stranded without her presence. Mercy had started picking up the threads during Clem’s prolonged absence, especially now that Clem had rung with the news that she wasn’t returning until November at the earliest. Stella’s baby was due Christmas week – she quite literally couldn’t keep holding on for Clem.

  No one could, it seemed. Not Stella, not Chiara any more – she was taking her life back – not even Gabriel. Since that night in the villa when he’d given her the ring, every look he gave her was loaded, searching for commitment.

  She looked down at her hand and gazed at the stunning ring sparkling on it – the cocktail ring that could have been so much more, something significant rather than just pretty. I
f she’d only worn it on her left hand, not her right . . . Slowly, she pulled the ring off her ring finger and slid it onto the other hand, examining how it looked and felt. See? Not so hard. Not so different. So why couldn’t she do it? She splayed her fingers wide and held her hand up a little higher, letting it catch the light. Chad had almost died when he’d caught sight of it weighing down her hand, although she’d told Tom it was just a costume piece she’d bought herself. For some reason, she knew him knowing it was real and from Gabriel and on her right hand would prompt another of his concerned looks.

  Her hand reached for the football, which was rolling away from her slightly on the bench, and she sighed restlessly, waiting for the action to begin. Her eyes tracked the last guests coming in – an elderly couple – following them as they moved to the only spaces left, down near the front. They waited in the aisle as people shuffled along the pews and then sat down, nodding their heads and smiling gratefully, saying a few words to the beautiful young couple beside them.

  Her eyes lingered where they wanted to, at last, studying the girl with crystalline precision – taking in her profile (cute but not beautiful on account of her snub nose), eye-catching hair (which on inspection was too-blonde with two-inch-deep dark roots), figure (knockout, depressingly, from what she could see) and woeful dress sense (a red polka-dot prom dress that was a poor pastiche of Dolce & Gabbana’s Sicilian iconography). She was the kind of woman other women hated and men dribbled over. No wonder Rafa was hooked.

  She hadn’t seen him since that night in Chiara’s kitchen – he’d gone AWOL immediately afterwards for a couple of weeks, not turning up at work and almost driving Chad to a breakdown; Gabriel would have had him fired on the spot if he’d known, but she’d begged Chad to keep it quiet from him. Chiara had had no idea where Rafa was either, until he’d just walked back into the kitchen again one night last week as though nothing had happened.

  Clem watched as Rafa leaned in, a smile on his lips, saying something to the older couple that made them all laugh, his arm resting casually on his girlfriend’s shoulder as she looked up at him with an adoration that, if it was matched by passion . . . Clem felt her stomach tighten. In the five months she’d been here, he hadn’t even smiled at her, not once, and the prospect had never been more remote.

  A commotion at the enormous carved wooden doors made him turn, but he didn’t see her. The bride was here and Clem twisted in her seat to see her. She had her camera ready in her hand and was on her feet slightly too early, ready for the shot. She would only get one chance as the bridal party passed her pew.

  The bride sailed in like a yacht into harbour, shrouded in a cloud of tulle, her face bent to the ground like a tulip. Clem bit her lip, camera to her eye, her finger ready to press down the moment they came into view.

  Then there he was, looking cleaner than she’d ever seen him – Chiara must have scoured him with a wire brush; Clem could have sworn he’d lost his tan he looked so pale. He was wearing a light blue linen shirt and taupe linen shorts, his brown eyes enormous, the way they always were when he was anxious, as he carried the velvet cushion and, atop it, the two rings loosely threaded together by a silk ribbon. He was biting his lip, and Clem could see how hard he was trying not to drop them or step on the bride’s dress. She could picture Chiara this morning as she dressed him, reminding him with quiet urgency to keep clean, not play football until after the service, not overtake the bride, not drop the rings . . .

  He looked across at her – finding her exactly where she’d told him she’d be – a darting, almost frightened movement, and she pressed the button, capturing the moment. She smiled at him, grabbing the ball beside her to show him it was safe, and a tiny, relieved smile softened his face before he disappeared from view down the aisle.

  Clem immediately scrolled back through the memory card, looking at the pictures. She’d taken four but there was one that stood out. It was almost haunting, his doe eyes too big in his face. He looked scared and she winced at the thought of how much bigger those eyes would grow when Chiara told him her news tomorrow.

  If she told him. It had been bad enough with Rafa going missing in action, but Luca had begun playing up too – thrown by Rafa’s sudden absence, refusing to even acknowledge Tom, much less talk to him, defying Chiara, climbing out of his window at night, scarcely touching his food – and Clem knew Chiara was wavering That had no doubt been Rafa’s intention, especially after he’d outed Clem’s determination to leave, slashing the success ratio of Chiara’s grand plan by half. But even now that she was staying – she had to tell Gabriel by tomorrow, even though every time she tried, the words tripped her up – what consolation would it be to Luca to hear that he was getting Clem instead of Chiara? She didn’t fool herself that she was anything more than a vaguely interesting babysitter.

  Clem watched as Luca stepped forward with the rings, holding the cushion aloft with trembling arms. As he walked back to his seat, he glanced over at Rafa; Clem looked over, too, and saw the pride written on his profile, the reassuring nod and wink he gave as Luca looked for his approval. Clem felt a flutter in her stomach at the brief but touching exchange, one of so many she’d witnessed this summer. Maybe Rafa would step up after all, no matter how angry he might be at Chiara’s first-ever act of selfishness?

  But then his girlfriend’s delicate hand snaked up the nape of his neck, her fingers burrowing into his dark hair, making him move his head slightly, liking it. He turned to face her, kissing her lingeringly on the lips, everyone else forgotten. ‘. . . I am a single man and enjoying it . . .’

  Clem knew then that simply ‘hoping’ wasn’t good enough. Luca deserved more than that. She couldn’t stay. But how could she possibly leave?

  Clem sat on the old stone wall and watched as the bride and groom were showered with rose petals that didn’t touch the ground but were lifted up instead by the wind and carried out to sea in a long and winding ribbon. The wind had picked up just as the weathergirl had predicted this morning, and although the sky was still blue, the area’s notorious winds had gathered in strength just in the time they’d been in the church, and purple clouds were blossoming on the horizon.

  Clem smiled as the bride’s veil was lifted like a steeple by the tugging winds and her full skirt filled with air, making everyone laugh. She was a beautiful girl, with shoulder-length nearly black hair and a petite figure; Clem even thought she could spot the family resemblance as Chiara swept her up in a delighted hug, chattering excitedly. In fact, with her lilac silk dress and upswept hair, Chiara was perilously close to upstaging her cousin, her eyes backlit, a flush in her cheeks.

  Everyone was in high spirits, laughing and greeting each other with wide smiles and even wider arms. Clem wished Gabriel would hurry up and arrive; she felt like a spare part standing on the sidelines. Even Tom, who had only been here a few weeks, looked more at home than her, although of course he was actively currying favour with Chiara’s extended family.

  Clem, feeling alone with only a football for company, turned away, pretending to take in the view instead. The yellow-striped church was at the top of the hill of the castle peninsula and had a commanding view of the area. She could see pinprick-sized people eating leisurely lunches on their roof terraces, their tablecloths flapping sporadically in the gusts, while those on their boats began scurrying about the decks as the water beneath them eased into a slow and heavy swell. A storm was definitely coming.

  She felt a small nudge in her ribs and turned round. Luca was standing beside her, looking at her with a beleaguered expression. ‘You look sad.’

  ‘Do I?’ she bluffed and gave a small half shrug. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You want to get married, too.’

  She gave a little laugh. Was that what he thought? ‘No, not really. That’s never been my thing.’

  ‘I thought all grown-ups wanted to be married.’ He pulled himself up and sat on the wall, his skinny legs dangling from beneath his smart shorts. She could see a deep yellowing br
uise on his shin – no doubt incurred from a particularly fearless tackle. She held out his ball and he gave that scampish, endearing grin she knew so well now as he took it from her and hugged it to him like a teddy bear.

  ‘Will you get married when you grow up?’ she asked, clutching her jacket tighter around her shoulders as the wind flew at her.

  Luca pulled a retching face – universal to little boys the world over – and she burst out laughing. ‘I’ll take that as a “no” shall I?’ She chuckled.

  ‘Rafa says he will not be marry so I won’t.’

  Clem cleared her throat, not sure what to say. ‘And do you want to be just like him when you grow up?’ she asked after a moment.

  Luca nodded, spinning the ball between his middle fingers like a basketball player.

  They both heard his name called and looked back towards the church. The photographs were being taken before the weather turned completely. He gave a weary sigh and she knew exactly how he felt: being on best behaviour was exhausting.

  ‘You’re on,’ she said. ‘I’ll look after this for you. Again,’ she groaned, rolling her eyes as she took the ball from him.

  He grinned and shuffled off, as she spun the ball between her fingers while she watched him go, being enfolded into the big, bustling group of his family. She watched as plump, sun-weathered, gnarled hands patted his head and ruffled his hair; thick, arthritic legs shuffling to make a space he could nestle into.

  ‘You never got over it, did you?’ said Tom. He was leaning against the wall to her right, his hands in his trouser pockets and his sand linen blazer slung over his shoulder.

  ‘Hey! Got over what?’

  There was a complicated pause before he said the words, as though he was scared of saying them out loud. ‘The abortion.’

  A vacuum opened up between them, swallowing time and space. She felt instant and intense pressure on her chest and she looked quickly away. Words weren’t even close to coming out of her throat.