Her Last Night of Innocence

by India Grey

  ‘No. Right.’ Going into the bathroom for her toothbrush, Kate caught sight of her face in the mirror above the sink. Her eyes were two dark pools in a face that was waxen with horror.

  ‘G-give him my love, won’t you?’ She watched her bloodless lips form the words. ‘Tell him I—’

  She stalled as the panic closed up her throat and tears suddenly spilled from her eyes.

  ‘You can tell him yourself in a few hours,’ Dominic said gently. ‘I’ll see you at the airport.’

  Nodding mutely, Kate let the phone fall from her ear and closed her eyes as the tears ran down her cheeks. Alexander’s face swam in the darkness in her head: his smile, and the way it made dimples show in cheeks that were as smooth and brown as caramel, his dark, dark, expressive eyes…

  ‘Here.’

  She jerked her head up and found herself looking straight into another pair of bitter-chocolate-coloured eyes. Cristiano was standing in front of her, holding out a mug of steaming coffee.

  ‘Thank you.’ She took it quickly and ducked past him, out of the confined space of the bathroom, and back into the bedroom where she started to pull things out of her bag again, looking for something to wear.

  ‘I have to get home.’

  ‘So I gathered.’ He was leaning against the doorframe, his voice cool and neutral.

  Kate’s teeth were chattering. ‘I need to get to Nice airport. My flight is at nine, so I need to check in at eight, which means…’ She went to look at her watch, blinking stupidly at her wrist for a moment before she realised she wasn’t wearing it.

  Picking it up from the bedside table, Cristiano handed it to her. His face was shadowed with stubble, which gave a sexy, dishevelled edge to his beauty—or would have done if it wasn’t for the mask-like blankness of his expression.

  ‘Impossible, I’m afraid. We’re at least five hours from Nice.’

  ‘But I have to get there,’ she gasped, feeling as if she was hanging by the slenderest thread over a vast, dark, churning abyss. ‘My son is in hospital!’

  Her anguished outburst was interrupted by the sound of Cristiano’s mobile phone. Answering it, he turned away, talking in husky, rapid Italian that at any other time would have made Kate’s blood quicken. Now she could feel nothing but agony at his indifference. Vaguely she wondered if he was talking to a woman—making arrangements for a replacement as soon as she was gone.

  This was the man she had left her son behind for, she thought in horror. He had his back to her, his head bent, and as she looked at his broad bronzed shoulders, the clearly defined muscles beneath the satin skin, she felt as if her heart had been torn from inside her and thrown out into the snow. She had known that there would be no happy-ever-after for them, but she’d thought that the last twenty-four hours had brought some sort of closeness between them…

  It was just sex, she thought hollowly. And to her that meant closeness, but to him it meant nothing.

  She stumbled forward, grabbing her bag and reaching into it for something to wear. Because her jeans were wet, that just left a knee-length black dress that she had brought in case they went somewhere smart for lunch in Monaco. Putting it on, she felt as if she was going to a funeral.

  Oh, please, no…

  She had to press her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out as panic winded her. She had to get home. She longed for Alexander with a desperation that felt like knives in her flesh.

  Cristiano finished his conversation. She was aware of him turning back to face her, but couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Instead she busied herself with putting on the boots she had been wearing when she’d arrived here, beneath the blue satin dress.

  It seemed like a thousand years ago.

  ‘That was Suki,’ Cristiano said tonelessly from the doorway. ‘The good news is that she’s arranged a private jet from Lyon airport.’

  Kate jerked her head up, not quite trusting herself to have understood what he was saying. ‘Wh-what? You mean I am going home this morning?’

  ‘The plane will be waiting for you. You’ll save time on check-in, so in the end the journey will probably end up being quicker than it would have been flying out of Nice.’

  ‘Thank you.’ It was a cracked whisper. Cautious hope and gratitude were beginning to flutter inside her. ‘What’s the bad news?’

  Cristiano’s ironic smile wrenched at her ravaged heart. ‘The weather’s too bad for a helicopter transfer. I’m afraid I’m going to have to drive you.’

  The magnificent flaming skies of last night were a distant memory—like something from a dream. Overnight the weather had done an alarming volte face, and the new day was one of dense iron-grey fog that blanketed the mountains and turned the landscape into a gloomy monochrome oil painting.

  Not only was it grim to look at, it was lethal too. Cristiano steered the car down the mountainside with rigid, tense-jawed focus. Yesterday’s sun had thawed the top layer of snow, which had then frozen again overnight, turning the roads to glass. Not exactly the kind of terrain the Campano had been designed to handle, but with the snow chains it was coping surprisingly well.

  Which just went to show that appearances could be deceptive, Cristiano thought bitterly. He’d thought he was the one with things to hide, but all the time she had been keeping some fairly major secrets of her own.

  ‘How old is your son?’

  She started slightly at the directness of the question. Or maybe it was the tone of his voice, which sounded harsher than he’d intended in the silence of the car.

  ‘Just three.’

  ‘And are you still married to Dominic?’

  He was aware of her turning her head to look at him. Glancing across, he saw that her blue eyes were wide and bewildered in her ashen face. ‘Dominic? No…God, no, you’ve got it all wrong. Dominic’s not his father, he’s my boss, and he and his wife Lizzie are my friends. Their daughter is a similar age to Alexander. He was staying with them while I—’

  She stopped, her mouth open, her expression suddenly stricken.

  ‘This isn’t your fault,’ Cristiano said harshly, wondering why he felt so relieved that this Dominic person wasn’t the father of her child. Someone was, and he couldn’t think of any reason why the identity of that person should matter to him. It was the fact that she had a child that was important, he thought savagely. The fact that she was a mother. You didn’t screw around with women who had children. Children meant involvement. Commitment. And he didn’t do commitment.

  Dio, why the hell did he feel as if he was trying to convince himself?

  Automatically he pulled out to overtake the line of cars in front, and made use of the Campano’s impressive acceleration. It was only as he roared away that he remembered her fear of speed.

  ‘Do you want me to slow down?’

  She shook her head, looking out of the window at the dingy landscape. ‘No, please…I just want to get there.’ They were lower down now, but the fog still lay heavily—a grimy curtain shutting out the mountains in the distance. The roads were busier now, with people going to work on an ordinary day. Queues of traffic were building up behind unhurried tourists in camper vans.

  ‘It’s stupid, isn’t it?’ Kate said in a low, aching voice. ‘I wasted all that time being scared of things that never happened. Plane crashes and freak accidents. I wanted to remake the world for him and make it safe. And now this…’ She took a little gasping breath. ‘I should have stayed with him. I should never have left.’

  The tendons in Cristiano’s forearms ached with tension from gripping the steering wheel. ‘Don’t say that.’ The words were forced from between his gritted teeth. ‘Guilt just makes everything worse.’

  He was aware of her turning towards him again, and had to force himself to keep his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Experience.’

  The needle edged round the speedometer. Beside him he sensed her stillness, as if she was hardly breathing, just w
aiting for him to elaborate. Acid burned in his chest. She’d be waiting a long time—he’d never told anyone about his past, and he didn’t intend to start now. His own private condemnation was hard enough to bear, without having the judgment of others to deal with as well.

  The wail of a siren cut through his thoughts. Cursing quietly, Cristiano checked the rearview mirror and saw a police car some distance behind, lights flashing as it pulled out to pass the line of traffic and catch them up. He looked down at the speedometer and swore again.

  It was a stupid mistake to make. The Campano was ostentatious enough to attract police attention if it was being driven by a ninety-year-old learner. He shouldn’t have pushed his luck.

  Pulling in to the side of the road, he got out of the car. The noise of the siren whined into silence as the police car came to a halt behind them, but the lights stayed on, sliding crazily over the polished wood of the dashboard. In a kind of frozen stupor Kate watched them until she felt dazzled and dizzy.

  From outside she could hear snatches of conversation in quick, fluent French. The ache beneath her ribs flared, and she found herself remembering back to the night in Monaco when, rigid with tension, Cristiano had told her how much he’d hated school, how his lack of academic ability had been an acute disappointment to the mother who had made huge sacrifices to give him an education. She should hear him now, Kate thought with a twist of black humour. He was brilliant.

  Through the square of window she had a view of him from mid-thigh to waist—his narrow hips and the flat, hard-muscled sweep of his midriff. She looked away quickly, her dry throat aching, her hands knotting together in her lap. Through the anaesthetising horror she felt as if her numb body was crying out for him, desperately craving his strength. His certainty and reassurance.

  But since he had discovered she had a child he had withdrawn from her completely. For a moment there, when he had said that about guilt, the dying embers of hope had glowed a little brighter and she had thought that maybe he might be going to let her in again. But then he had slammed the door in her face.

  She looked down at her hands. Her skin had a greyish tinge, like the landscape around them, as if all the colour and life had been leached from everything. Unconsciously her fingers had slotted themselves together in an attitude of prayer. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Oh, dear God, please let Alexander be OK, she mouthed quickly. Please let me get to him soon.

  Opening her eyes, she saw that the policeman had bent down and was peering in at her, obviously thinking she was utterly unhinged. There had been a time when all her prayers had been for Cristiano, but that seemed so foolish now. Foolish and selfish. If Alexander gets better, she added silently, I’ll never ask for anything for myself again.

  She unclenched her fingers, stretching them out until the tendons screamed. What was taking so long? Through the driver’s window she could see Cristiano signing something, the muscles in his bare forearm flexing beneath the tanned skin as he wrote with a flourish. Handing the piece of paper to the policeman, he shook his hand.

  A moment later the door opened and he got in, bringing the scent of outside into the warm fug of the car. There were snowflakes in his hair. Kate felt a wrench of gratitude and compassion as she realized that he was only wearing yesterday’s T-shirt. He must be freezing. Thrusting her hands under her thighs, so she didn’t give in to the temptation to touch him, she looked out of her window.

  ‘Was that a speeding fine?’

  ‘No.’ The engine fired with an almighty shudder. ‘An autograph—and the promise of some tickets for the grandstand in Monaco.’

  The next moment the throb of the Campano’s engine was almost drowned out by the rising note of the siren starting up. Kate whipped her head round in time to see the police car pull past them and accelerate away. As Cristiano followed, the procession of commuters heading into Lyon, and the holiday-makers with cars laden down with skis and luggage, moved aside to let them past.

  They covered the remaining distance quickly, but the wail of the police siren made coherent thought difficult and conversation impossible. That was probably a good thing, Kate told herself, staring straight ahead with aching eyes. What was there to say now?

  At the turn-off to the airport the policeman gave a gloved salute through his lowered window and the car fell away, although the sound of the siren still echoed around Kate’s head. Avoiding the queues of cars waiting to get into the main terminal car park, Cristiano took a deserted service road, the roar of the Campano’s engine echoing off the warehouses and hangars on either side as they sped towards a high fence topped with barbed wire.

  Security guards carrying radios leapt forward to open gates set into the fence. Beyond them, on the tarmac, a small plane waited. Kate felt her chest tighten as if concrete were setting in her lungs as Cristiano drove up to it.

  He switched off the engine.

  The silence rushed in on her, flooding her head. It was like being underwater. The moment had come to leave him, and there was so much she still had to say. But no time to say it. No words.

  ‘This is it.’

  Cristiano’s voice was cool and grave. For a few seconds they both sat motionless, not looking at each other. Kate opened her mouth to speak, but then he was opening the door, getting out, and it was too late.

  With stiff fingers she fumbled ineffectually at the doorhandle. She felt paralysed, torn between her desperate need to get to Alexander and her sudden horror at the prospect of leaving Cristiano. Coming around to her side of the car, he opened the door and stood back for her to get out. She did so awkwardly, swaying slightly as she stood up so that he had to grasp her shoulders to steady her.

  He let her go quickly. His face was blank, but in that second as the wind caught his hair it was painfully like Alexander’s.

  Kate stifled a sob.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said flatly. A steward was coming down the steps of the plane towards them.

  ‘Can I have your number?’ she said desperately. ‘I need to see you again, to talk…’

  Cristiano took a step backwards. His expression was glacial, haughty, his jaw set hard. He didn’t have to say anything. Everything about him screamed ‘keep away’.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ He nodded almost imperceptibly at the steward to take her bag from the car. His eyes were dark slits in his hard face. ‘It’s over, Kate.’

  The words sliced into her like razorblades, reducing her faith and hope and her memories of that other goodbye—the one four years ago, when he had told her to wait for him—to bleeding ribbons. Somehow she made it to the steps of the plane without looking back, and it was only as it rose into the leaden sky ten minutes later that the tears started to fall.

  Closure—that was what Dominic had told her she needed.

  And that was exactly what she had got.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘MENINGITIS is a nasty illness, but the most crucial thing in fighting it successfully is early diagnosis.’

  From across the desk, the sister of the children’s ward smiled kindly. Kate felt she ought to smile back, or give some kind of reply, but it was taking all her strength just to sit there without howling. Fixing her gaze on the collection of cartoon character badges pinned to the front of Sister Watson’s navy blue uniform, Kate tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

  ‘Alex has been very lucky. Thanks to the prompt actions of Mr and Mrs Hill we were able to perform a lumbar puncture and find out what strain of the disease your son has before it got too much of a grip. We’ve started him on a course of intravenous antibiotics and he seems to be responding well. We should begin to notice an improvement in his condition over the next twenty-four hours.’

  The cheerful matter-of-factness of her tone seemed to belong to another situation altogether. In Kate’s shocked, grief-numbed mind it seemed to be entirely inappropriate in view of the fact that Alexander was lying in a small room down the corridor, with tubes coming out of his arms and
nose, surrounded by machines.

  ‘That’s good,’ Kate responded weakly.

  ‘Of course it is.’ Sister Watson beamed. Her hair was scraped back from a plump, slightly shiny face. ‘Alex is a very strong little boy, Mrs Edwards. He must get that from you.’

  She was trying to be kind. Encouraging. Positive. It would be rude to tell her how wrong she was, or to snap that he wasn’t called Alex. He was Alexander—like Alessandro. Cristiano’s middle name.

  ‘Not from me. From his f-father.’

  A wave of clammy nausea washed over her as she wondered where Cristiano was now, and what he was doing. Sister Watson stood up briskly, signalling that the conversation was over and that she had more important things to do than get involved with the personal dramas of feckless single mothers who left their sick children and disappeared abroad.

  ‘Well, whoever it comes from, it’s a very good thing,’ she said firmly, bustling round the desk to open the door and guide Kate out. ‘He’s not out of the woods yet, but there’s every sign that he’s on the way. And having Mum with him is going to make all the difference. I’m sure he’ll come on in leaps and bounds now you’re here.’

  Kate’s boots squeaked on the green linoleum as she walked along the corridor to Alexander’s room. From the walls the painted eyes of the Little Mermaid and various implausible-looking sea creatures seemed to follow her, wide with silent reproach.

  Dominic got to his feet from the chair beside Alexander’s bed as she went in.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That I’m a neglectful mother and if I’d been here earlier he would be much better by now.’

  ‘Kate, don’t.’ Dominic sighed.

  ‘OK, so maybe she didn’t say that exactly.’ Kate walked over to the bed, her heart lurching sickeningly as she tried to find a place on Alexander’s body where she could touch him without disturbing the jungle of tubes and wires. ‘I don’t know what she said. Stuff. Words. “Responding well…not out of the woods…” What do those things mean, Dominic? He looks so…’ Her voice cracked. ‘So…ill’