‘You knew when we married that I did not want children. I haven’t changed.’
‘That’s the problem!’
‘Don’t play cryptic word games with me, Dervla.’
‘I’m not playing anything any more. I’m leaving.’
He could see her slim back shaking as she fumbled opening the big oak-banded door. He focused on his anger to stop himself taking her in his arms to wipe away the tears he knew were pouring down her cheeks. He walked up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder.
‘I admit you have a flare for drama, but this is enough, Dervla.’
She didn’t turn around, just whispered, ‘Goodbye, Gianfranco.’ And walked through the door.
And he stood there watching, never quite believing that she would go … expecting her to run back through the door at any moment admitting that she had been totally in the wrong.
But there had been no running and no Dervla.
She had left him and their home. The home she had put her indelible mark on. Gianfranco pushed aside the disturbing thought that the mark she had put on him was much more indelible.
Having learnt the hard way that romantic love was a sham, a form of self-hypnosis, Gianfranco had never expected to marry again.
The fact was he had married because the woman he’d wanted would not accept less.
And you tried so hard to persuade her otherwise …?
Gianfranco’s eyebrows twitched into an irritated frown at the mental interruption. His decision to marry had not been based on anything as unreliable as emotions. Like all the decisions he made, he had weighed the pros and cons and come to the conclusion that marriage was something he could live with.
And Dervla was something he did not wish to live without—at least for the moment—though he did not doubt that the overwhelming compulsion he had to bind her to him would fade.
The intensity of it had shaken him, but he did not read any magical significance into it. Feelings of that sort of intensity were not durable; they did not signify a meeting of soul mates. The problems began when you started to believe they did.
He had not changed his opinion of marriage. He still pitied the fools entering into it with a lot of unrealistic phoney, sentimental expectations.
The trouble was people forgot that basically marriage was a legal contract. He had every intention of fulfilling his end of that contract, a contract that could be dissolved if the balance of those pros and cons shifted.
Marriage was like Christmas—people expected too much and were inevitably disappointed.
His expectation had been more realistic the second time around—but he didn’t think it was realistic to expect your wife to change the rules a year in. It wasn’t as if they had not discussed the subject—he had never even imagined she felt that way.
Not strictly true, said the voice in his head as an incident he had mentally filed as insignificant popped unbidden into his head. He had been giving her the grand tour of her new home at this time.
‘This was my nursery … I thought you could use it as a study. The view is really magnificent.’
He pretended not to see the pain and hopeless longing in her face as she touched the carved wood of the antique crib in the corner. Guilt gnawed at him, he hadn’t wanted to see it.
‘A study would be nice,’ she agreed quietly.
‘Of course, you can redecorate just as you please. I’ve got the names of some very good interior designers.’
‘What would I want with an interior designer?’ she asked, shaking back her tawny curls.
Gianfranco was relieved to see no trace of the previous sadness in her eyes as she looked up at him with that half-quizzical teasing look of hers.
‘An interior designer isn’t going to live here, silly, we are. A home should evolve …’ she explained earnestly. ‘Be filled with memories.’
Gianfranco was pretty sure that by memories she had meant some of the curious and totally valueless objects she took pleasure in discovering and producing for his admiration, and not the memories that were causing him torture of an unbearable kind.
At the time making love to his wife in every room of their large and many-roomed home had seemed an excellent idea, but now that good idea had come back to haunt him. Quite literally! He couldn’t walk into a room without being assaulted by sweet erotic recollections.
‘We thought she seemed a little … quiet …?’
Gianfranco shook his head to free himself from the images playing in it. He dragged his eyes up from the floor, where presumably he had been staring like some catatonic moron, until his friend’s face came into frame.
He gave a careless shrug and ignored the question in his friend’s eyes.
If he had been going to confide in anyone it would have been Angelo, but it was not his way to offload his problems on others.
‘She was a little tired.’
Angelo grinned. ‘Nine months ago Kate had some similar symptoms.’
Gianfranco’s jaw clenched. ‘Dervla is not pregnant.’
Angelo stepped into the lift, his expression openly speculative. ‘Sorry, my mind is a bit one-track at the moment.’
Gianfranco unclenched his fists and struggled to respond appropriately to the social cue. ‘How is Kate?’
‘Fine. Give Dervla our love, Gianfranco, and I hope she’s feeling less … tired soon.’
Gianfranco nodded absently, thinking that this message would take lower priority than many things he needed to say to his wife when he saw her.
He was mentally polishing the more personal messages as he walked into the office and dialled his son’s number. As he was not fully concentrating on what Alberto said he assumed initially he had misheard him.
‘What did you say, Alberto?’
‘I said I’m running away.’
CHAPTER SIX
OF COURSE you are.
Gianfranco dragged a hand through his hair and glanced at his reflection in the mirrored surface of a wall cabinet. Despite the concerted efforts of his nearest and dearest there were no white streaks in the hair of the man who looked back at him.
But it could only be a matter of time.
‘I’m assuming this is some kind of joke?’
It seemed a safe assumption. Having broken family tradition, he had sent his son to a day school in Florence. Alberto was on a school field trip to Brussels to see the European Parliament in action, safely supervised by teachers.
‘I’m in Calais at the moment, but the ferry leaves in a few minutes.’
Staring out of the window at the traffic below, he shook his head, still feeling slightly more irritation than concern. ‘You’re in Brussels.’
‘No, Calais.’
Gianfranco felt the concern versus irritation dip towards concern.
‘Calais?’
‘I told you—I’ve run away.’
Gianfranco’s stomach muscles clenched in icy dread as he realised this was no warped teenage sense of humour he was dealing with, but a genuine situation.
‘You are actually in Calais …?’ Gianfranco struggled to get his head around it.
How could a thirteen-year-old schoolboy