‘I love you. You know that,’ he began, kissing both of her peachy cheeks in reassurance.
She instantly rewarded him with a joyful hug. ‘I love you, Papà!’ she cried in triumph, clearly expecting victory.
Luc groaned inwardly. He was handling this badly! ‘Listen. I am sorry, Gemma. You can’t come,’ he said, his eyes warmly adoring as he tried to soften the blow. ‘You are a big girl of six and have started school—’
‘No school!’ she cried in alarm.
‘Sweetheart, I can’t look after you in England. I will be too busy working. Occupato. Understand?’
‘Ellen!’ she cried, wriggling in agitation. ‘I go to Ellen!’
He froze, astounded by her suggestion. All her life she’d hated her mother. The last time he’d prepared Gemma for a visit to England, she’d cried all the way to the airport! What the hell was going on here?
‘No, Gemma! You have school; I told you!’ he said sternly, before he could stop himself.
Gemma flinched as if he’d hit her, and he winced too, kissing the top of her head in earnest apology and cursing Ellen for causing him to speak roughly to his child.
The woman brought out the worst in him. She’d ripped him apart by walking out. Taken his trust, his love, commitment, hopes and dreams… Dammit. It hurt to remember. He clenched his jaw hard.
He’d ruthlessly banished her from his thoughts. That was the only way he’d been able to cope. Ellen’s rejection of Gemma had turned his child into an emotional mess and he’d never forgive Ellen for that.
Sometimes he burned to take his revenge. But he didn’t want to be dragged down to Ellen’s level again. Better to stay away, to keep his dignity and not go brawling in the gutter.
‘Papà! Papà!’
Gemma was looking at his grim face nervously. Trembling, she flung herself into his lap and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. To his dismay, she began to weep. Choked with emotion, he stroked her incredible mass of corn-coloured curls and kissed her small forehead.
‘I am going for three days, no more. Three days. Very quick!’
Gemma refused to be consoled and the tears continued to cascade down her face. Hell, he thought bleakly, it was tough being the only parent. Every time he left home for a few days he went on a guilt trip too. Yet he had to make a living.
And the purpose of this trip was special, something he’d been working for ever since Ellen’s father had sacked him for being presumptuous enough to love his daughter. Somehow he must convince Gemma that he had to go.
With a heavy heart, he rose, while Gemma clung to him like a limpet. Deftly he slipped a few lire notes beneath his saucer and negotiated the crowded tables. People stared when he went by, his dark and handsome head bent to the small fair one, his achingly sensual mouth close to the child’s pale cheek as he spoke in low, lilting murmurs.
Luc was oblivious of everyone and strode purposefully through the medieval arch which led from La Piazzetta into the narrow, cobbled street of Via Vittorio Emanuele.
Crying and pleading at the same time, she began to hyperventilate. Appalled that her distress was quite out of all proportion, Luc sat on a wall opposite a row of designer boutiques and cuddled her, hating Ellen with all his heart, wanting to wound her as he and Gemma had been wounded.
After a moment or two, he found it impossible to stand her misery any longer. The child had suffered enough and so had he.
‘All right. You can come. I will ask your mother,’ he said, defeated by her sobs and the inconstancy of the whole damn female race. Gemma’s body relaxed, but she still clung to him like a drowning man to a rock.
He felt very worried about her. On the long walk home he tried to work out why she had become so possessive. Every morning, since starting school a month ago, she’d complained of pains in her stomach, but nothing was physically wrong and the teachers had said she was a model pupil. Why, then, was she having nightmares?
He racked his brains. Something to do with Ellen… Gemma’s insecurity… The answer came to him in a blinding flash. She might be afraid that he wouldn’t be there when she got home.
His eyes blazed with pain and anger. Poor, frightened little scrap! Seething with suppressed fury, he pushed open the huge iron gates of his villa. It perched high on wooded slopes above the sea and normally the view gave him a sense of joy. Today he was indifferent to it.
He had decisions to make. Grimly he strode down broad steps shaded by tall pines and hibiscus shrubs, reshaping his life as he went with ruthless zeal. Gemma must be protected and reassured at all costs. This must be his last business trip abroad.
The lines on his brow smoothed out. He’d make use of Ellen as a babysitter on this brief and final trip because it suited him. Then he’d tell her point-blank that she’d never see his daughter again.
The flat door was warped. She’d forgotten this. With a grimace, Ellen dragged it open as far as it would go and sucked in her breath so that she could do a kind of vertical limbo through it, simultaneously thanking her lucky stars that poverty had made her slim.
Once in the room, she blinked in momentary confusion. She’d only moved in a few days ago and everything still seemed strange and new.
‘New!’
She giggled, and her spontaneous peal of laughter rang around the under-furnished room. Everything in the flat, she mused, her eyes brimming with merriment—the vile yellow wallpaper and lino the colour of hippo mud included—must be coming up for its quarter century.
‘You too, ducky,’ she reminded herself drily.
Almost twenty-five and a daughter without parents. Married, but minus a husband. A mother without the love of her child.
She stopped herself hastily. There she went again! That was her old, maudlin way of thinking. Being sorry for herself wouldn’t change her age or marital status. It wouldn’t make her part of a happy family or bring her daughter back.
Ellen bolted the door firmly, as if she were finally closing it on the nightmare of her past. She’d resolved to stop wishing her life away and intended to enjoy each day to the full. New job, new flat, new her. Life was on the up and she was happier now than she’d been for a long time.
Heading cheerfully for the shower, she clambered out of her clothes as she went. Habit made her gather them up and fold them neatly on a chair.
It wasn’t habit, however, which made her slip on a simple top and body-hugging skirt fifteen minutes later. That was part of the conscious attempt to re-create herself. She loved her new clothes and felt liberated in them—which was exactly the attitude she was aiming for.
Sandwich in mouth, mug of tea to hand, Ellen flopped, exhausted, on the bed-settee and hooked her bare legs over its shabby brown back.
‘Oh, bliss, oh, rapture!’ she murmured in exaggerated appreciation, through a mouthful of wholewheat and organic cheddar. ‘Best part of the day!’
She slipped one smooth ankle over the other and smiled with some affection at the familiar roughness of uncut moquette on the backs of her legs. In the last six ghastly years she’d moved five times. And there’d been a tatty fox-brown sofa with wooden arms in every single flat she’d occupied!
This version won the prize for discomfort, with two twanging springs and an itchy patch beneath her back, where her top had ridden up. She squirmed ineffectually.
She’d have to stir herself. Her evening job depended on her having a flawless skin—but if she stayed put much longer she’d turn up with all the symptoms of some infectious disease across her back! She smiled to think of the problems that would cause.
Stretching