She kept that smile on her face as she too clapped and cheered the Queen of the Island. No one watching would be able to say that she looked devastated by Santino having practically ignored her. The viewers might even, hopefully, think that he and she had discussed this before she left the island, agreed that he would initially give all his attention to the children with whom he was being reunited after nearly a month. If only that were the case! But she could tell herself, as she smiled and smiled till her jaw started to hurt, that he would assume she knew this, that he would be ringing her room later, once the joyful father/son reunion was complete, just as Louise had said . . .
So as soon as Jamie-Lee had led the triumphal procession back to the hotel and started a round of victory interviews, Caroline shot back to the room she and Louise shared and sat down by the phone, willing it to ring. She wouldn’t leave until the last moment, when it was time to attend the celebration party that evening. In her fantasies over the last few days, she had entered the party on Santino’s arm, his acknowledged companion, her smile stretching almost from ear to ear.
When she heard a knock on the door, she was sure it was him, come to collect her. Jumping to her feet, Caroline practically ran down the hallway – the hotel room was as big as a barn; space was definitely not at a premium in this part of Australia – only to see a production runner standing there, tasked with bringing her down to the party. Her heart sank; a huge lump formed in her throat. And she knew, too, that the runner was there to make sure she didn’t duck out; everyone was waiting to see if Santino did more than nod at her this time.
Caroline’s only consolation was that, because the clothes she had brought with her were now too loose, she had borrowed a sexy, clinging dress from Debbi that showed off her slim figure and made her breasts look spectacular. She held her head high, laughing and joking with Veronica and Debbi, and when Santino came in she was careful not to move in his direction, even though her every nerve was jangling as she waited for him to come over.
He did, of course. He made his way around the room, greeting everyone; he hugged and kissed her, Veronica and Debbi with the same enthusiasm, keeping up a steady stream of talk to cover any awkward silences; how tired he had been by the end, how great it had been to have a proper bath, how much he had missed his boys, how the one glass of wine he had drunk so far was going to his head. Then Jamie-Lee was triumphantly carried in on the huge shell, borne by topless young men dressed in loincloths, the way every winner of Celebrity Island Survivor entered the celebration party, and all the attention was upon her. Santino was summoned to play the runner-up’s role, helping Jamie-Lee out of the shell, escorting her to her throne, placing the crown on her head and giving her the papier-mâché orb and sceptre.
Caroline stood stock still as the pantomime was enacted in the centre of the ballroom. She barely knew how to process the shock. After all their kisses and endearments and passionate embraces, Santino had treated her like any another contestant. As if she hadn’t felt his hard cock pressing against her, whispered with him about what they would do together when there were no cameras around; as if he hadn’t been practically glued to her side for the fortnight they’d been on the island together!
She knew better, however, than to confront him once the photos were over. What if he rebuffed her in public? That would be manna from heaven for the media. Already, she knew that Santino’s rejection of her would be a major headline tomorrow, a twist that no one had seen coming.
Or had they? she suddenly wondered. While Santino was on the island without her, had someone – Jamie-Lee, most likely – told him stories about Caroline, chosen the word ‘homewrecker’ to turn him against her? And if that had happened, was it possible that the editors had deliberately chosen not to use that footage, so that Santino’s treatment of her would be entirely unexpected, a spectacularly dramatic shock to Caroline and the viewers?
On the few occasions their eyes met, Jamie-Lee seemed, Caroline thought, to be smirking at her. Was Jamie-Lee relishing Caroline’s humiliation because she had caused it herself? This was, for Caroline, a desperately needed ray of hope. If Santino had been misinformed – okay, maybe not precisely misinformed, but if he had been given the facts in the worst possible light – then surely there was a chance for her to put her side of the story?
So, when Caroline saw him leave the party without another word to her, she waited ten minutes, told Debbi and Louise that she was going to the toilet, and made her way, in a very roundabout fashion, to a set of lifts on the far side of the hotel. Hopefully from here she could reach the penthouse floor without anyone spotting her and reporting gleefully that she was chasing after him. It was common knowledge that Santino was staying in the penthouse suite so that his entire extended family could be accommodated all together.
As Caroline rang the bell, she was feeling calm for the first time that day. She had managed to convince herself that once she was alone with Santino, she would be able to turn things around; the powerful physical attraction between them would spark once more. As long as it wasn’t his mother or sister-in-law who answered the door, and promptly slammed it in Caroline’s face because she too had heard about her reputation . . . oh God, Caroline was getting hysterical, this wasn’t an episode of an early evening soap opera . . .
The door swung open, and to her immeasurable relief, it was Santino standing there. His strongly defined black brows drew together over that familiar beaky nose, even more prominent now because of the weight loss. Caroline felt faint, her legs buckling, at the sight of him, so handsome, so close to her.
‘Carolina,’ he said, looking at her very seriously. He stood back, holding the door open. ‘Yes, I thought you would come.’ And then he added those words that never fail to strike dread into the heart of anyone who hears them:
‘We need to have a talk.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Legs still trembling, Caroline walked inside. The hallway of the suite was as large as the room she shared with Louise, the lounge beyond so gigantic that the furniture arrangements looked dwarfed in the enormous space. Her heels skidded a little on the elaborately inlaid marble floor. As she got her balance, she noticed that Santino did not turn back to help her, as he had always done on the island if she tripped in her flip-flops.
He was heading for the terrace: the sliding glass doors were standing open, and she remembered his often-expressed, vehement views about how Italians considered air-conditioning terrible for the health. If she had been feeling on stronger ground, she would have joked at the contradiction of the soft, humid, warm air around them, so much better for the lungs, and the fumes he was about to inhale; he was picking up a cigarette packet from the rattan table on the terrace.
But she couldn’t. She was too nervous to joke about anything.
There was a bottle of red wine on the table. Without asking, Santino poured Caroline a glass of wine and handed it to her, and that made her even more nervous, because it was as if he knew she was going to need it.
‘Sit,’ he said, gesturing at the white-cushioned armchair. As she did so, he tapped a cigarette out of the packet, lighting it with a Zippo he pulled from his pocket.
‘I want to tell you a story,’ he said. ‘Listen, please, for it is very important.’
There was no need for him to tell her that; she couldn’t have spoken a word. Her throat had closed up. She couldn’t even manage a sip of wine; she set the glass down on the table so that he would not see her hand shaking with nerves.
‘So six years ago, I am on holiday in Barbados, with Ilaria and Giova,’ he began.
Ilaria, Caroline knew, of course, was his dead wife. Instantly, Caroline assumed, at the mention of her name, that Santino was going to say that he needed time; that the passion on the island had been wonderful, crazy, but that now they were in the real world and he was back with his kids, he had realized that he needed to slow things right down. It dovetailed exactly with what she had been telling herself, the story she had created to
explain his behaviour. Of course she would follow his lead, not introduce herself to the kids until he was ready, stay in the shadows if that was what he wanted, do anything not to lose him, not to be humiliated by the gleeful media coverage of her romantic downfall . . .
‘And one night at dinner at the hotel,’ Santino was continuing, ‘we feed Giova some of our food. Ilaria and I are very Italian, we believe that children should not eat different food from the adults, they must learn to have good palates. We teach that to all our boys.’
He was leaning against the terrace rail, not looking at Caroline as he talked and drew on his cigarette, but off into the night, over her shoulder.
‘But one bite that we give him – I will never forget, it is some mashed potato, and it has little bits of hazelnut in it – cazzo, a stupid thing, why would they do that? Ma lascia stare – so yes, there is hazelnut. And it turns out that Giova is allergic to nuts. He gets red, a rash, itchy, he starts to scratch his face. He’s only two and a half, he’s frightened, we are frightened. Ilaria starts to cry. I hold Giova’s hands to stop him scratching, but he cries and fights me and the rash is growing – it happens so fast, so fast – and Ilaria is calling for a doctor. We are screaming now, both of us, screaming for help – we don’t want to leave Giova but we need a doctor, we are desperate, we don’t know what to do –’
The terror of those moments could clearly be heard in Santino’s voice. Caroline had no idea where this was going; she knew Giovanni had survived, of course, but she was still on tenterhooks because she didn’t understand why it was so important for Santino to tell her this story now, of all times.
‘And then,’ Santino continued, ‘another hotel guest runs over to us, holding a pill for Giova to take. But she says the dose is too big, so she gets a steak knife and she cuts it up and gets some Coca-Cola so that he will want to swallow it and gives it to him. We are hysterical, sobbing. He is our only son, so young, and we are in panic, and she does everything. Everything.’
He drew a long breath, remembering the fear and panic of that evening, shaking his head in disbelief at how fast it had happened.
‘A doctor comes at last, but by that time Giova is breathing better and he doesn’t want to scratch his face so much any more. He tells us that the lady has saved Giova’s life by giving him an antihistamine. There is an injection the doctor can give, but Giova is still small, the injection is for adults, not children, and maybe it would have been too late, because with this allergy, the throat closes up very fast and Giova maybe chokes to death.’
Santino’s free hand clenched into a fist as he said these last words. He took another long breath, then slowly opened his fingers again, running his hand through his black silky hair. Only a few days ago, Caroline had been able to do that herself, twist her fingers into his thick mane, the sense of privilege so delicious it was almost overpowering. Now she would not have dared to touch him; there was a cold aura around him, a force field repelling contact, and that hurt like a bandage wrapped tightly around her torso, a pressure squeezing her lungs.
‘So, this woman, this hotel guest we do not know, she has saved our son’s life,’ he finished softly, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I wonder if you can guess who this lady is, this angel from heaven who Ilaria and I will never be able to thank enough?’
Caroline actually jerked as if she had been punched in the ribcage, realization dawning on her.
‘Yes, I see you have guessed,’ Santino said. ‘She is called Lexy O’Brien. And a month ago, she rings me and she says she is trying to pull strings to get you on this show, and she asks me, if she manages it, will I do her a big favour? And before she tells me what it is, I say, Anything. I will do anything for the angel who saved my Giova’s life.’
He looked at Caroline directly for the first time since he had opened the door to her. There was compassion on his face now, and that was worse than anything. Much worse, say, than anger or contempt.
‘In Italy, the family is the most important thing,’ he said. ‘La mamma è sempre la mamma. I would have done this for Lexy in any case, but when she tells me that you have tried to come between her and Frank, parents of two children, I am horrified. How could you do that? You do not seem like a bad person, Carolina. But you have done this. You tried to take a husband away from a wife. And that is what I will say when they ask me in the interviews why I don’t want to see you any more. That I did not know, I did not understand, what you had done. But now I do.’
Lexy had thought of everything, including the simple and devastating explanation for Santino’s rejection of Caroline. She couldn’t even deny the truth of what he had just said. She dropped her eyes to the table to avoid his gaze, but what she was seeing was the television footage of Lexy trying to get into her own house, surrounded by paparazzi, entering the gate code over and over again before realizing that Frank, at Caroline’s very delicate but effective prompting, had changed it to bar his wife. Caroline remembered vividly the moment that it had dawned on Lexy what was happening, the sag of her shoulders, the paling of her cheeks, the long pause before she eventually turned back to her waiting car.
Without Caroline whispering in his ear, Frank would never have locked his wife out. They would almost certainly have reconciled that day. But Lexy, clearly, had spent the time since then not just drying out, giving up smoking and taking care of her own children, but analyzing her downfall and plotting to undermine Caroline just as Caroline had undermined her.
Caroline had been so flattered to be invited on Celebrity Island Survivor! She had thought it meant that she was becoming famous enough for people to know her name! But no, not at all. Even that had been taken away from her. She hadn’t got the show on her own merits, but through Lexy’s clever manoeuvrings.
‘Was any of it real?’ she heard herself ask the table in a tiny thread of a voice.
He was reflected in the glass top; she saw his shoulders rise and fall in one of the exaggerated Italian shrugs with which she was achingly familiar.
‘You are an attractive woman,’ he said. ‘It was not difficult to make love to you.’
‘Well,’ Caroline managed, still looking at the table. ‘That’s something, I suppose.’
She must have sat there for a whole minute before she realized that the conversation was over. Santino had nothing left to say, and nor did she. It took a little more time for her to gain the strength to push back her chair and stand up, and even then she used the edge of the table for support, her sweaty fingers leaving marks on the glass top.
‘Addio, Carolina,’ Santino said, stubbing out his second cigarette, watching her go with the same mortifying look of compassion in his black eyes.
He did not see her out. He left her to cross the sprawling expanse of living room on her own, the sound of her heels small, lonely clicks in the huge space, as if underlining her single status. From a door on the far side of the room Ilaria’s sister emerged, slim and tanned in an orange linen dress, her black hair pulled into a bun, her arms stacked with gold bracelets. Behind her were the two younger boys in pyjamas, clutching soft toys, clearly getting ready for bed. Giving Caroline the most cursory of glances, they bounded across the room in the direction of the terrace, calling:
‘Papa! Papa! Dove sei?’
The sister-in-law remained where she was, looking at Caroline, her silence indicating that she was waiting for Caroline to leave. As she resumed the long walk to the door, behind her she heard a happy family, the giggles and chatter of the small boys, Santino’s deeper voice laughing with them, his sister-in-law speaking in quick, beautifully articulated Italian, sounding indulgent but reproving: clearly, she was trying to get the children to bed, while they wanted to stay up and play with the father they hadn’t seen for weeks.
It sounded joyous, cosy, warm. With every step Caroline took, she felt more and more alone. She had been trying, she realized, first with Frank and then with Santino, to enter an already established family, to have the benefits without having done the wor
k, to walk in and warm her hands at a fire someone else had built.
It was very cold, leaving that fire behind. Very cold indeed.
Her hotel room was empty. Louise was still partying happily downstairs, soaking up as much free food and booze as she could cram in. The air conditioner was running, the chilly room a perfect metaphor for Caroline’s current mental state. The door closed behind her, and she stood there in the dark, her key card in her hand, not reaching out to slide it into the slot that would activate the lights.
For a long time, she didn’t move at all. She just stood there, silently, in the darkened room, slowly, painfully, absorbing the full extent of the revenge which Lexy had inflicted upon her.
Chapter Forty
Three days later
Lexy was so relaxed that it was all she could do not to start snoring. The heated marble lounger on which she was lying in the sheer luxury of the spa at the Corinthia Hotel was the culmination of two hours of total rest and relaxation. Not even a four-handed massage in the Maldives with the sea lapping softly beside her was more restorative than visiting the thermal suite floor.
She had swum in the pool, sweated in the amphitheatre sauna, sunk her hands wrist-deep into the ice fountain and scattered chips of ice all over her heated body, curled up in one of the tiled recesses of the steam room and done two circuits of the ‘vitality pool’, where you sat or lay on various underwater seats or beds through which powerful jets pounded different parts of you into dazed and happy submission. The heated lounger was the final stage, an ergonomically designed chaise that looked cold and oddly space-age, until you lay down: the warmth of the stone and the cleverly angled shape cradled the body in an instant embrace.
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