by Lucy Gordon
‘I’ve told you. But well done for being honest! None of that stuff about pretending to be glad to see me.’
He bit his lip. So often in the past he’d snagged himself on her sharp wits, and clearly nothing had changed.
‘Is there any reason why I should be glad to see you?’ he growled.
‘None that I can think of.’
‘Good. Then, as you say, honesty is the best policy.’
‘I expect you’ve got someone else by now,’ she said casually. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not here to make trouble.’
‘There’s no—’ He checked himself but it was too late. Now she would know.
‘Then I’m not causing you any problems by being here?’ she said.
‘No problem at all,’ he agreed briskly. ‘I’m glad to see that you seem to be on top of the world.’
‘Right on top,’ she agreed. ‘I love your country.’
She repeated the last words in Italian, for the benefit of Hope, whose footsteps she could hear. Delighted, Hope explained in Italian that her husband was here, too, and introduced him.
Celia responded with a few more words in Italian, which made Toni tease, ‘Ah, but can you speak our dialect?’
He proceeded to teach her a few words of Neapolitan, which she mastered at once, and demanded to learn more.
‘You learn very fast,’ Toni said admiringly. ‘I expect you’re good at that?’
‘Yes, I depend on my mind a lot more than sighted people have to,’ Celia said calmly. ‘My parents, who are blind, too, used to teach me all sorts of memory tricks when I was a child. I’m still proud of my memory, but, of course, now there are all sorts of gadgets to make life easy.’
‘Easy?’ Toni echoed, smiling at her kindly. ‘Well, perhaps.’
Hope drew Francesco aside.
‘I think she’s marvellous,’ she said. ‘What possessed you to leave her?’
‘I didn’t leave her, Mamma. She threw me out. She actually said, ‘I don’t want to see you here again.’ She talks like that—like a sighted person—because she almost doesn’t realise that she’s any different to anyone else. And I can’t make her realise it.’
‘Perhaps you’re wrong to try,’ Hope says thoughtfully. ‘Why do you want to force her to realise something she doesn’t want to know?’
‘Because she can’t live for ever in a fantasy. I only wanted her to be a little realistic—’
‘Realistic?’ Hope echoed, aghast. ‘Do you think you have anything to teach that girl about realism? I don’t wonder she threw you out. I’d like to do the same.’
‘You’ll probably get around to it,’ he said with a wry grin.
Before she could say any more there was a small buzz from Celia’s wrist.
‘It’s my watch,’ she explained. ‘I set the alarm to go for six o’clock. I have to get back to town and meet a customer.’
‘But I want you to have supper with us,’ Hope mourned.
‘I’m sorry, I’d have loved to, but I’m still making my mark in a new job, so I have to try to impress people.’
‘But you will come another night?’ Hope asked anxiously.
‘I’ll look forward to it. Can you call me a taxi?’
‘I’ll take you,’ Francesco said at once. ‘I’ll be home later, Mamma.’
‘Thank you,’ Celia said. ‘Jacko?’
Hope saw Francesco lean forward, as though about to take her arm, then check himself and pull his hand back quickly. Something told Hope that Celia was fully aware of this, although she showed no sign of awareness.
‘Until we meet again, signora,’ she said to Hope, before following Jacko out of the door.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHERE are we going?’ he asked as he started up the car.
‘It’s a little café called the Three Bells.’
‘I know it.’
Silence. This was the first time they’d been alone together since the split, and suddenly there was nothing to say. Francesco, taken totally by surprise, was full of confusion.
When he first arrived in Italy he’d been sure she would contact him, but as the silence had stretched out he’d begun to realise that she’d really meant their parting to be permanent.
But parting was too light a word for it. Celia hadn’t left him, she’d cruelly dismissed him, tossing him out of her home as though desperate to rid herself of all traces of his presence.
Even then he hadn’t believed in the finality of what had happened. How could he when their love had been so total, so overwhelming? For him it had been unlike any other love. Transient affairs had come and gone. Women had spoken to him of love and he had repeated the words with, he now knew, only the vaguest understanding of their meaning.
Real love had caught him off-guard, with a young woman who was awkward, provocative, annoying, difficult for the sake of it—it had often seemed to him—unreasonable, stubborn and full of laughter.
Perhaps it was her laughter that had won him. He wasn’t a man who laughed often. He understood a good joke, but amusement hadn’t formed a major part of his life.
She, on the other hand, would never stop. With so much stacked against her she would collapse with delight at the slightest thing. Often her laughter was aimed at himself, for reasons he could not divine. At first it had been an aggravation, then a delight. Let her laugh at him if she pleased. He was her happy slave. Nothing would have made him admit that to anyone else, but within his heart he had known a flowering.
In her arms he’d become a different man, shedding the tough outer shell like unwanted armour and being passionately grateful to her for making it happen.
He’d known what had happened to him, and had assumed it was the same for her. He’d tried to take reassurance from this, reasoning that the sheer violence of her feelings meant that she was bound to change her mind about their parting. She would calm down, understand that their love was worth fighting for, forgive him whatever he’d done wrong—for he still wasn’t quite sure—even, perhaps, apologise.
But none of it had happened. She’d been there when he’d cleared out his things from the apartment, had made him a coffee and told him she was sorry it had ended this way. But that was all. The long, heartfelt discussion that should have marked the end of their relationship had simply never happened. Night after night he’d sat by the phone, waiting for her to call and say they must meet just once more, to clear the air. But the phone hadn’t rung. He’d sat there for hours, until the silence had eaten into him and he’d been close to despair.
He hadn’t called her after that. Not even when he was leaving for Naples. Why bother? It was over.
And now, when he’d just about taught himself to believe that they would never meet again, here she was, tearing up his preconceptions, stranding him in new territory, as awkward and unpredictable as ever. He wanted to bang his head against the steering wheel.
Sitting next to him in the car, Celia tuned in to his agitation and distress. That was easy—because she shared it. She had come to his home knowing she might meet him, thinking herself prepared. She had even congratulated herself on her well-laid plans, but they had all vanished the moment she’d heard his voice. In the surge of joy at being near him again she’d almost forgotten how carefully she had arranged everything, and for a wild moment had almost thrown herself into his arms.
But that would have been a disaster—as she’d recognised when she’d forced herself to calm down. In his arms, in his bed, she would forget the things that had driven them apart—but only for a little while. Soon it would all happen again, and the second parting would be final. At all costs she must prevent that.
She had come to Italy with a set purpose. She would reclaim him, and this time it would be for ever—or never.
Per sempre, she mused, practising her Italian. For ever. Per sempre e eternità. And if not—finita.
‘We’re just entering Naples now,’ he said at last. ‘Have you been to the Three Bells before?’
‘Y
es, several times. I’ve got a favourite table in the garden, under the trees.’
As he drew up she said, ‘Thank you for the lift. There’s no need for me to trouble you any further.’
‘Don’t speak to me as though I was a stranger,’ he growled. ‘Let me escort you to the table. I won’t try to take your arm. That’s a promise.’
He spoke roughly, but she knew him well enough to hear the pain that would have escaped anybody else.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, also speaking roughly, to cover the fact that his unhappiness wounded her. ‘I’d like you to escort me. Then,’ she added, hastily recovering her self-possession, ‘I can buy you a drink and show off my Italian.’
‘It’s a deal.’
He opened the door for her, and there followed an awkward moment when she reached out for his hand, but it wasn’t there. Swearing, he lunged forward, trying to put things right, and stumbled over Jacko, who’d got himself into position. Celia instinctively tightened her hand on his, almost saving him from falling.
He swore again, louder this time, and with real fury.
‘I’m sorry,’ he snapped. ‘The hell with everything. I’m sorry.’
‘Let’s go and sit down,’ she said hastily.
He went ahead, followed by Jacko, with Celia walking afterwards. When they were seated at the table under the trees she was as good as her word, speaking to the waiter in Italian and ordering drinks for them both.
‘You did that very well,’ he conceded when they’d been served.
‘You’re a good teacher. I took your lessons to heart.’
‘Some of them,’ he remembered. ‘Some you tossed back in my face.’
‘Not about Italian.’
‘No, just everything else. It got so that everything I said was wrong—’
‘Only because you started every sentence with, “I’ll do that for you,” or “You shouldn’t be doing that.”’
‘And you ended up wanting to kill me,’ he remembered. ‘I suppose I’m lucky to still be alive.’
‘Yes, we were going downhill fairly fast,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry about what happened at the car. I thought I knew what you wanted, so I didn’t reach out my hand to you—’
‘But why not? You’d have assisted a sighted woman as a matter of courtesy, wouldn’t you? So why not me?’
He drew a slow breath of frustration.
‘Excuse me while I bang my head on the tree,’ he said at last.
Celia gave a sudden chuckle. ‘It’s like old times to hear you take that long breath. It always meant that you were clenching and unclenching your hands.’
Goaded, he spoke without thinking. ‘I don’t know what you’d do with eyes if you had them. You see everything without them.’
She beamed. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘Now you’re confusing me again.’
‘It’s the first time you’ve ever made a joke about my eyes,’ she explained.
‘It wasn’t exactly a joke.’
‘Pity. I thought you were improving. Anyway, don’t apologise about what happened at the car. If we’d both fallen it would have been my fault.’
‘Or your new friend’s, for moving when I wasn’t expecting him to.’
‘Don’t blame poor Jacko,’ Celia protested, instinctively reaching down to caress the dog’s head. ‘He was only doing his job.’
‘But who is he? Last time I saw you, you had Wicksy.’
‘Poor Wicksy was getting old, and it wouldn’t have been fair to bring him to a strange country. He’d earned a comfortable retirement, and that’s what he has. Remember how he liked children? There are three in his new home to make a fuss of him. I went to say goodbye before I came to Italy, and I could tell that he was happy.’
She stopped suddenly.
‘What is it?’ he asked gently.
‘As I left I could hear him playing with the children, barking with excitement, as though he’d forgotten me already. I’m glad of that, truly. I’d hate to think of him pining for me, but he was the best friend I had.’
‘And now you’re pining for him?’ Francesco supplied.
‘Yes, I am. We were such a perfect team.’
‘Aren’t you a perfect team with Jacko?’
‘It’s too soon to say. His name is short for Giacomo, and he’s a real Italian dog. He’s always lived in Naples, so he knows it well and I can trust him completely. He even understands the Neapolitan dialect.’
‘But how long will you have him? He looks quite elderly, too.’
‘He’s nine, and he might have retired when his previous owner regained his sight. But I needed a really experienced dog, so they assigned him to me for a while.’
‘Then what? Will they give you a younger one?’ Francesco asked casually.
Celia shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
He understood. Maybe then she would go home. He wished she would go home now.
He wished she would stay for ever.
He wished she had never come here.
The waiter served their drinks, and they sipped in silence for a while.
‘You’re very quiet,’ she said. ‘Did I offend you by turning up?’
‘Of course not. I’m just a little surprised.’
‘You told me so much about Naples I wanted to find out for myself. I used to look forward to coming here with you, and visiting all the places you told me about, seeing if it had all the lovely smells. You were right about that. I walk through the streets here and I can smell the cooking. Mmm!’
‘But how did you get here?’
‘I went home to my parents for a while, and they said it was time I explored the world a little. Dad gave me a large cheque and told me to blow it on enjoying myself.’
‘But you said you have a job here. Aren’t you supposed to be just a tourist?’
‘I’ve invested the money. I fancy myself as an entrepreneur. That’s how I’m going to enjoy myself. You taught me that.’
‘I did?’
‘You used to talk a lot about finance. It was your great interest in life. I listened and learned at the master’s feet.’
‘Is that a way of telling me that money is all I know?’
‘Don’t be so touchy. You showed me that making money could be fun, so now I’m going to double mine. Or treble it.’
‘Or lose it?’ he suggested lightly.
‘Oh, no, that won’t happen,’ she assured him.
‘How can you be so sure?’
Celia turned her head so that her clear blue eyes were facing him, so full of expression that he could almost swear she saw him.
‘Because I never lose,’ she said simply. ‘When I want something, I make sure I get it.’
‘And when you’ve finished with it you throw it out, marked “No longer needed,”’ he said quietly.
‘Francesco, do you know how bitter you sound? I wish you wouldn’t. We promised each other that we wouldn’t be bitter.’
‘Did we? I don’t remember.’
‘The day you came to collect your things,’ she reminded him. ‘We had a chat then.’
‘Oh, yes, it was all very civilised, wasn’t it? But I don’t remember that we talked things over. Five minutes over coffee and that was that.’
‘Well, there wasn’t much to talk about, was there?’
‘Except you throwing me out.’
‘I asked you not to be bitter because I didn’t want you to hate me. Still, I guess that wasn’t very realistic of me.’
‘I don’t hate you,’ he said gruffly. ‘But neither can I pretend that it didn’t happen.’
‘I don’t want to pretend that, either,’ she said with a touch of eagerness. ‘It did happen, and I’m glad of it. You left me with some of the most wonderful memories I’ll ever have, and I want to keep them. Don’t you want to?’
‘No,’ he said with sudden violence. ‘I don’t want to remember any of it. What use are memories when the reality has gon
e?’
She gave a little sigh. ‘I suppose you’re right. We’re agreed, then. No memories. We never met before.’
‘Why did you come here?’ he growled. ‘To have a laugh at my expense?’
‘No. Why should you say that? Why should I laugh? I can tell you’re doing very well without me.’
He shot her a look so fierce that he was actually glad she couldn’t see. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. Unless, he thought, she’d been trying to provoke him. He only wished he knew.
‘Who’s your customer?’ he asked, for something to say. It was strange how the silences troubled him more than her.
‘He’s not really a customer. I said that so as not to bore your parents with involved explanations. We work together. His name is Sandro Danzi. He owns a firm organising trips for blind people.’
‘Is he blind himself?’ he couldn’t stop himself asking.
‘Does it matter?’ she flashed back instinctively.
‘For pity’s sake! Aren’t I even allowed to ask?’
‘Why is it always the first thing you ask?’
‘It isn’t.’
‘One of the first. As though nothing else mattered in comparison.’
It mattered, but not in the way she thought. Another blind person understood things that she understood, was potentially closer to her than he could ever be, and that excluded him.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said, wishing he could find the words to say that he was jealous. Why couldn’t she simply understand?
Celia clenched her hands, hating herself. How often had she lashed out at him, wounding him for something that she knew he couldn’t help? But she couldn’t let down her guard. She didn’t dare. It was part of her fight not to be swallowed alive by her blindness, and it seemed the cruelest trick of fate that he should be ranged on the other side.
She sat listening. Even in the bustle of the café she could sense the silence that belonged only to him. She had never seen him, but she knew what he looked like—not the details of his face and body, but the tension of his attitude that told of misery.
‘Don’t look like that,’ she begged.
‘How do you know how I look?’ he demanded.
