LUCY GORDON: The Italian’s Miracle Family

‘So today your time’s all mine?’ he’d asked.

Had she been insane to have missed the note of irony?

‘When we met at the airport he wasn’t pleased to see me,’ she murmured now, to Drago. ‘Of course he wasn’t. He’d met her , and his heart and his thoughts were full of her. The last thing he wanted was me. He tried to dissuade me from going home with him.’

‘Did you go anyway?’ Drago asked.

‘Oh yes. I was that stupid. I tried to take him to bed, and believed him when he said he was too tired after the journey. I didn’t even get the message when he wouldn’t let me help him unpack.’

‘We can be frighteningly blind when we don’t realise that things have changed for ever,’ Drago said quietly. ‘And perhaps we fight against that realisation, because we’re fighting for our lives.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes.’

James had put his suitcases in the wardrobe, insisting that he would unpack them later. There had been no need for her to worry herself. But he’d kept out the bag where he kept his cameras.

‘I’m dying to see the pictures you’ve taken,’ she’d said, opening the side of one of them, ready to take out the little card that fitted into the computer.

It had been gone.

‘I’ve removed them all,’ he’d said quickly. ‘If anything happens to the cameras on the journey, at least I’ve got the cards.’

‘But you always keep the cameras with you. You’ve never bothered taking the cards out before.’

He’d shrugged.

It was obvious now that the cards had been full of pictures of Carlotta, and he’d made sure she wouldn’t see them.

Reaching into the bag, she’d found a small metal object, which she’d drawn out and studied curiously. It was a padlock, but unlike any padlock she’d ever seen, with tiny pictures on each side. One side had showed a heart, and the other side depicted two hands clasped. The shapes had been studded with tiny, gleaming stones that had looked as though they might be diamonds.

‘How charming,’ she’d said.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he’d said heartily. ‘I thought you’d like it.’

‘Is it for me?’

‘Of course.’

She’d felt for the key in the rucksack. Then she’d smiled at him, all fears removed.

‘I shall keep you padlocked in my heart,’ she’d told him. ‘See?’

But the key hadn’t fitted into the lock.

‘Sorry,’ he’d said. ‘It must be the wrong one. I’ll sort it out later.’ He’d kissed her cheek. ‘Now I’m going to collapse into bed. I’ll call you in the morning.’

That memory returned to her now, but she didn’t mention it to Drago, because she didn’t know what it meant. James had never given her the right key, and had taken back the padlock in the end.

‘When did this happen?’ Drago asked.

‘About September.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I remember Carlotta suddenly started spending a lot of time away from home. She was gone for a whole week in September, then she was at home for a while. There were weekends, then another week in November. I found out afterwards that she’d spent that week in England.’

‘The tenth to the seventeenth?’ Alysa asked, dazed.

‘Was he away then?’

‘He said he was. He said he was going to drive north and get pictures of some wild scenery, immerse himself in the landscape, talk to nobody, even me. I tried to call him once but his phone was switched off. Then someone mentioned seeing him near his home in London. I said they were mistaken, but I guess they weren’t. He must have spent the week at home-with her.’

‘She was more shrewd than him,’ Drago said. ‘She never turned her mobile phone off. She used to call me every day and talk as though all was well with us.’ He drew a sudden, sharp breath.

‘Just like the other time, when you eloped,’ Alysa said, reading his mind.

‘Yes, just like then. It’s so easy to see it now.’

‘Did you never suspect anything?’

‘No. I trusted her totally. I went on being blind right up until the moment when she told me she was in love with someone else, and was leaving me for him. And do you want to hear something really funny? I didn’t believe her. I thought it wasn’t possible. Not my Carlotta, who’d been so close to me that she was like a second self. Only I’d been deluding myself. There was no second self. I’d been alone all the time and never known it.’

‘You felt that too?’ she asked quickly. ‘That’s it exactly-as though you’d imagined everything. And suddenly the whole world seems full of ghosts.’

‘And you feel as though you’re going mad,’ he confirmed. ‘In a strange way, my other self is you. I can say things to you that I could say to nobody else, and know that you’ll understand them.’

‘And even the words don’t always have to be said,’ she mused. ‘It’s a bit scary. To me, anyway.’

‘You think I’m not scared?’ he asked with grim humour. ‘Do I do that good a job of hiding it?’

‘Not really. Not from me.’

‘Exactly,’ he said in a quiet voice.

She had a fatalistic sense that she was being drawn onwards by powers too strong for her. She’d neither wanted nor sought this alliance, but there was no escaping it.

‘HOWdid you find out?’ he asked.

‘I suppose the first hint was at Christmas, although I didn’t see it. We were going to spend the time together, and I got everything ready-tree, decorations, new dress.’ She gave him a faint smile of complicity, as if to say, ‘I do wear them sometimes’. He nodded, understanding.

‘Then he rang to say he wouldn’t be coming. A friend had suffered a tragedy and was suicidal. James didn’t want to leave him. It sounds a weak story now, but it might have been true. At any rate, I trusted him. I suppose you think that sounds stupid.’

Drago shook his head. ‘My own credulity strikes me as stupid, not yours. There’s no limit to what we can believe when we want to believe.’

‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘And I wanted so much to believe.’

She still couldn’t bear to speak of her dead child, but unconsciously she laid a hand over her stomach. Drago, watching her, frowned slightly, and a sudden question came into his eyes.

‘How long was he away?’ he asked.

‘Until the first week in January. I guess he came here and spent time with Carlotta, but she couldn’t have seen much of him at Christmas.’

‘She was with us on Christmas Day, but the rest of the time she did a lot of coming and going. In Italy we also have another big occasion-Epiphany, January sixth, when we celebrate the coming of the three wise men. Carlotta was there for Epiphany-loving mother, loving wife-’ He broke off.

After a moment he resumed. ‘She played her part beautifully. When it was over Tina left with her grandmother to visit Carlotta’s sister and her family. Elena wanted her to go too, but Carlotta said she wanted to stay with me, that we needed some time together. I think that was one of the happiest moments of my life. I’d seen so little of her, and I was overjoyed that she wanted to be with me.

‘But as soon as we were alone she said she was leaving me for another man, and there was no point in discussing it. I’d never heard her sound so much like a lawyer.

‘I reminded her that she was a mother, but it was like talking to a brick wall. She knew what she wanted, and nothing else counted. I said I wouldn’t let her take my daughter. I thought that would make her stop and think. But I discovered that she’d never meant to take Tina.’

‘Would you have taken her back?’ Alysa asked curiously. ‘Knowing that she’d been unfaithful?’