Lucy Gordon - The Italian's Christmas Miracle

‘It’s a very tiny apartment. They were probably looking for something larger.’

‘And his things would be stored in England until he was ready to send for them,’ Alysa said. ‘Only he never had the chance. I wonder what became of them?’ She gave a sigh. ‘Oh well!’

‘I couldn’t find anything on the internet about him. What did he do for a living?’

‘Nothing for the last few months. He used to work in a big city institution—that’s how we met. I’m an accountant and they hired me. He hated the job—being regimented, he called it. Then he came into some money and he said he was going to fulfil his real ambition to be a photographer. He left the job, bought lots of expensive equipment and started taking pictures everywhere, including several trips abroad. He asked me to go with him, and I promised I would when I could get some time off.

‘But that never seemed to happen. I should have gone with him to Florence, but at the last minute I couldn’t get away. I had several new clients.’

‘And they mattered more than your lover?’ Drago asked curiously.

‘That’s what he said. He said I couldn’t even spare him a few days. But I’d worked so hard to get where I was—I knew he didn’t really understand, but I never imagined—I thought James and I were rock-solid, you see.’

He didn’t reply, and his very silence had a tactful quality that was painful.

‘I should have gone with him,’ she said at last. ‘Maybe no love is as solid as that. So he came to Florence without me, and that’s probably when he met Carlotta.’

The picture show had started again in her head, and she watched James’s return to England, herself meeting him at the airport although he’d told her there was no need.

Now she noticed things she’d missed at the time: the slight impatience in his face when he saw her, showing that he really hadn’t wanted her there. Nor had he been pleased when she accompanied him to his apartment, although he’d cloaked his reluctance in concern for her.

‘Shouldn’t you be at work? They won’t like it if you take too much time off.’

Laughing, she’d brushed this aside.

‘I told them I wasn’t going back today. When we get home, I’m going to cook you supper, and then… And then, anything you want, my darling.’

‘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.

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