Kitabı oku: «Pregnant with His Baby!», sayfa 4

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WELL, what do you think?’ the man at the head of the table asked, lifting his dark head from the spreadsheet he had been studying.

There was a silence in the room as he allowed his hooded gaze to rest on each face in turn. He could read panic in several faces as the executives frantically tried to decide what he wanted to hear.

Gianfranco felt a flash of irritation—he did not surround himself with yes-men or -women.

‘Does nobody have an opinion?’ Or a backbone?

It seemed that nobody had, or if they did they were unwilling to express it. Gianfranco felt his frustration escalate in the growing silence.

‘Perhaps there is somewhere else you want to be?’ he suggested with silken sarcasm.

The trouble, he mused, with people was they couldn’t separate their personal life from their professional life. It was a fatal mistake and one that he couldn’t understand. He had always compartmentalised his life, it was simply a matter of discipline.

His lashes lowered as his dark glance brushed the metal-banded watch on his wrist. He wondered if his assistant, who seemed less than her usual efficient self today, had remembered to relay the message to everyone concerned that he wanted all personal calls to be immediately diverted in here.

The sound of a phone ringing broke the lengthening silence. Gianfranco began to count, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists as he resisted the urge to immediately pull it from his jacket pocket.

Nobody else reached to check if the call was for them. Gianfranco Bruni’s dislike of such interruptions was well known and nobody would have dreamt of not switching off their mobiles before going into a meeting chaired by him.

It was Gianfranco himself who, after the second ring, pulled a phone from the breast pocket of his jacket and, after glancing at it, rose abruptly, excusing himself.

‘The wife,’ the only woman present at the high-powered meeting predicted, unwittingly echoing Gianfranco’s first thought when he had heard the ring.

No one disagreed.

Before his marriage the previous year Gianfranco would not have disregarded his own rule concerning interruptions. Since the wedding to which no one, least of all media cameras, had been invited there had been some significant changes. It was rumoured that Gianfranco even took a day off occasionally, but that was only a rumour.

‘Well, I hope she says something to put him in a less vile mood.’

‘Yes, our leader is not his usual sunny self this afternoon, is he?’ someone agreed drily.

There was a generous noise of assent around the table.

‘Have you met her? The wife, that is?’ one of the executives asked curiously.

The gentle chatter around the table stopped and a couple of people nodded to confirm they had.

One said, ‘My mother got me to take her to the opening of the new children’s hospice. It turns out to be his wife’s brainchild.’

‘I suppose even a lady who lunches needs something to put on her CV.’

‘That’s what I thought, but it turns out she’s really hands-on. Literally actually,’ he recalled with a reminiscent smile. ‘She was down on her hands and knees rolling around on the grass barefoot with some of the kids.’

‘She doesn’t sound like a Gianfranco Bruni girlfriend.’

‘She’s not—she’s his wife. Maybe that’s the difference. You’re not wrong, though. She really isn’t his usual type.’

‘Presumably not hard on the eye, though?’

‘She’s pretty,’ the speaker agreed. ‘A redhead, green eyes, freckles.’ He gave a reminiscent smile. ‘Really great, sexy laugh.’

‘Sounds like Ricardo was smitten,’ someone said slyly, and there was laughter as the middle-aged man in question flushed but didn’t deny the charge.

‘I’ve never even seen a photo of her.’

Another result of his sudden marriage had been that Gianfranco, who had once supplied the gossip columns with acres of copy, had pretty much slipped off the photo-opportunity map and retreated behind the sort of security that people who were as rich as he was could.

‘Not exactly a party girl, then, the redhead?’

‘She is English, though?’ The person who asked the question glanced at the closed door before he spoke. Being caught gossiping about the boss would do his promotion prospects no good at all.

‘I’m not sure. Her name doesn’t sound English … Der something …?’

‘Dervla.’ It was the sole female who supplied the bride’s name.

‘Wasn’t she a model?’

‘Doubt it. She’s not tall enough,’ one person who had met her said.

‘Well, from what I’ve heard …’

The men leaned forward to catch the woman’s words as her voice dropped to a confidential hiss. ‘I don’t know how true it is, you understand, but my friend’s cousin—he works at the hospital in London where she was apparently working when they met.’

‘She’s a doctor?’

‘No, a nurse … she looked after his son when they were caught up in that terrorist thing.’

There were murmurs as the people present recalled the horrific incident she spoke of.

‘I think it’s so romantic,’ she added dreamily.

One of the men, the youngest there, who had been struggling to defend a business decision earlier to his critical boss, laughed and said scornfully, ‘Gianfranco Bruni doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body. A couple of years’ time and he’ll probably trade her in for a new model.’

When Gianfranco had reached for his phone and not seen Dervla’s name he had needed to dig deep into his seriously depleted reserves of self-control to maintain a semblance of composure.

At least until he was out of the room.

In the corridor he gritted his teeth and ground one clenched fist into the other. It had been forty-eight hours and not a word—not one word!

For all he knew she could be lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Fighting against the swell of crushing anxiety in his chest, he pushed his fingers deep into the ebony hair that sprang from his temples and inhaled deeply, forcing the air into his lungs before expelling it in a gusty sigh.

Get a grip, man, he counselled himself as he smoothed back the tousled hair from his brow and adjusted his tie.

Damn the woman!

‘Gianfranco!’

Gianfranco turned his head at the sound of the familiar voice and forced his lips into a semblance of a smile. Normally he would have been genuinely pleased to see Angelo Martinos, who had been his closest friend since the days when they both shared the distinction of being the only ‘foreigners’ at the English prep school they had been sent to at the ages of nine and ten respectively.

‘Angelo, what brings you here?’ he asked without enthusiasm.

‘Called on the off chance. They told me you were in a meeting.’ He raised an interrogative brow as he scanned his friend’s face. ‘Not a good one, apparently …?’

Now this was one of the reasons why Angelo was the last person to see right now. It wasn’t easy to pull the wool over his eyes, and he thought being his best friend gave him the right to pry.

‘You know how it is,’ he returned, doubting that his happily married friend knew the first thing about being put through an emotional meat-grinder by his wife.

Angelo’s wife apparently thought that his every word was a pearl of wisdom, whereas Gianfranco’s own bride never lost an opportunity to challenge him.

‘Feel like a coffee?’ Angelo wondered, his glance lingering briefly on the razor cut on Gianfranco’s angular jaw. When a moment later he noticed the mismatched socks his eyebrows hit his hairline—impeccable and effortless elegance were descriptions frequently ascribed to his friend.

Gathering his straying attention and wishing his friend would take the hint and go, Gianfranco shook his head and said, ‘Not really,’ in a discouraging way that would have made ninety-nine people out of a hundred back off, but not Angelo.

‘I’m at a loose end. Kate and her mum are baby shopping. I was getting in the way.’

‘Sorry, I’m pretty snowed under today. I just ducked out to take a call from Alberto. I should ring back.’

‘I hardly recognised Alberto when I saw him. Thirteen and he must be nearly six feet. At this rate you’ll be looking up at him before long.’

‘Maybe,’ said Gianfranco, who at six five rarely had to look up at anyone.

‘I don’t envy him puberty. It was hell.’

Gianfranco choked off a bitter laugh. ‘For you? I don’t think so, unless adolescent hell involved every girl you wanted and—’

‘I only got them because you knocked them back, Gianfranco,’ Angelo, ever the pragmatist, cut in. ‘Your problem, my friend, was you put women on a pedestal.’

Gianfranco had been approaching his twentieth birthday when he thought he had found one who belonged on that pedestal. By the time he realised that beyond the perfect face the innocent-eyed woman he had woven his romantic fantasies around—a barmaid who worked in the local hotel—had actually been not so innocent and rather more interested in his sexual stamina than his philosophical reflections and pathetic poetry, it had been too late.

She had been pregnant and to his family’s horror he had married her and become a father at twenty.

‘I was intense.’ Gianfranco cringed now to think of the boy he had been. ‘And an idiot.’

‘You were a romantic,’ Angelo retorted indulgently. ‘And I was shallow, but now we are both older and wiser, not to mention happily married, men. It was a great weekend, which is what brings me here. We’d love to return your hospitality. Kate wants to know if you’re both free on the eighteenth, always supposing nothing has happened on the baby front …?’

‘Eighteenth … I probably, yes … no … I’m not sure.’

Angelo’s scrutiny sharpened as he stared at his friend. In the twenty-five years he had known him, Gianfranco had never to his knowledge been not sure about anything.

‘Well, when you are just get Dervla to give Kate a ring. And how is Dervla?’ Angelo asked casually.

Gianfranco met his friend’s eyes and lied unblinkingly. ‘She’s fine.’

Well, it wasn’t actually a lie. She might well be fine. She might be totally fine after walking out on her husband. Gianfranco’s sense of outrage and the throbbing in his temple swelled in unison as an image of her standing at the front door of their home flashed into his head.

‘You’re being ridiculous, Dervla.’

She stuck out her chin and glared at him through tear-misted eyes, emerald eyes, so intensely green when they’d first met he had assumed she was wearing contact lenses, shimmering.

‘There’s no need to work yourself up, Gianfranco. After all, it doesn’t really matter what I do.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, I’m not important. I’m just a temporary someone who’s passing through, someone who isn’t good enough to take responsibility for your son … and don’t give me that guff about our ready-made family because you shut me out totally. Bottom line is I’m good enough to have sex with but not good enough to be the mother of your child!’

‘That’s totally ludicrous. There’s nothing temporary about our marriage.’

Eyes narrowed, she lifted her chin in challenge. ‘So you want a baby?’

He ground his teeth and reminded her, ‘You were the one that said that you didn’t need children to have a fulfilling life.’

She glared at him with withering scorn. ‘That, you stupid man, was when I thought I couldn’t have any!’

‘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 meant to be in Brussels in the care of teachers be in Calais?

Thoughts of abduction and kidnap flashed into his head to be almost immediately dismissed. Alberto’s voice was not that of a scared victim. Like someone coming out of a trance, he dragged a hand down his jaw and exhaled.

‘You’ve run away? From me?’ Why not? It was becoming quite a fashionable thing to do. If this was true Alberto wouldn’t be sounding so chirpy once he got his hands on him, Gianfranco decided grimly.

‘Yes, I just said so, didn’t I? So if the school contacts you tell them I’m fine. They might have noticed I’m missing by now.’

‘Might have noticed!’ Gianfranco choked. He pushed aside the thought of what he would say to the teachers who had failed so miserably in their duty. There were more important things to think about. ‘How did you get to Calais? Are you alone?’

‘I hitched.’

His teenage son’s explanation made Gianfranco’s blood run cold. ‘You hitched a lift?’

Impervious to the horror in his father’s voice, the teenager added tetchily, ‘You’re not usually this slow, Dad. I know what you’re thinking but the lorry driver was a really nice guy, not a pervert or anything. I told him I was seventeen and he believed me.’

Gianfranco bit back a curse and rolled his eyes heavenwards. He was having a nightmare, that was the only explanation, he decided.

Every parent knew it was a delicate line—the one between wrapping your children up in cotton wool and letting them run around oblivious to the dangers that lurked for the unsuspecting.

Like every other parent he wanted to keep his child safe. He had always been conscious that there was also a danger that an overprotective parent could stifle any sense of adventure in a child. In his efforts not to quash the spirit of adventure in his son he might, Gianfranco acknowledged grimly, have gone a little too far the other way.

‘Listen to me very carefully,’ Gianfranco said slowly.

‘I can’t. My battery’s low and, don’t worry, I can look after myself, you know, Dad.’

‘Would it be pushy of me to ask why you’re running away?’

‘You might be divorcing Dervla, but I’m not.’

‘Divorce!’ Gianfranco yelled down the line. ‘There will be no divorce.’

‘That was my eardrum you just perforated. And if anyone asks I’ll tell them I’d prefer to live with her.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Gianfranco inserted drily in response to this warning. ‘Let me remind you again, nobody has mentioned divorce.’ And nobody will.

‘Not yet,’ his son said darkly. ‘But it doesn’t take a genius to see where things were heading left to you two. So I decided you needed some help.’

‘This form of help involves you running away?’ Gianfranco tried to control his temper as he made a rapid mental calculation of how soon he could get to England before his son got into any more trouble.

‘But where, or rather who, am I running to? I mean as a responsible parent you have to come get me, it’s totally legit and there’s no question of you chasing after her. I reckon you’ll be all over each other about twenty seconds after you see each other.’

Not many things shocked Gianfranco to silence, but this nonchalant prediction did.

I’m being manipulated by a thirteen-year-old. A reluctant laugh was torn from his throat. If he’s like this now, what will he be like by the time he’s eighteen?

Hearing the laugh, the boy gave a sigh of relief. ‘I knew you’d like my plan. Cool or what? Which reminds me, Dad, would you ring Dervla and ask her to pick me up at the ferry terminal? I think the boat gets in around six. Look, my battery really is low. I’ll be in touch later …’

The line went dead and after a short pause Gianfranco keyed in a number.

Dervla took another doughnut from the bag that Sue had dumped on the tea tray. ‘I don’t usually like these,’ she said, taking a large bite.

‘You need a sugar hit. Trust me, I’m a nurse,’ Sue said, helping herself. ‘Look, Dervla, I think things have just got out of proportion. You two are meant to be together. Give him time and I guarantee he’ll come around about the baby thing. He loves you.’

‘You’re totally wrong. Gianfranco doesn’t love me. He never pretended to be in love with me, not even when he proposed,’ she admitted in a voice that cracked with emotion.

In fact he had made it pretty clear that romantic love was an encumbrance that had no place in his life.

Sue looked sympathetic but unsurprised. ‘Some men find it hard to articulate their feelings.’

Dervla’s eyelashes swept upwards. Her green eyes were bleak as she gave an odd little laugh. ‘Not Gianfranco,’ she promised.

Gianfranco could be very articulate, especially when it came to exposing romantic love for the sham he believed it was. His feelings on the subject were clear and Gianfranco had no problem when it came to clarity.

Clarity was his thing, she reflected bitterly. Her husband was not a man for whom grey areas existed.

‘He just doesn’t have the feelings to express … not for me, at least,’ she added bleakly.

Dervla had suspected early on that it wasn’t love that Gianfranco didn’t believe in, it was the possibility of him ever finding the love he had shared with his first wife, the love of his life, with anyone else.

Being a woman in love, she had ignored the deafening warning bells and decided she would be the one to teach him he could love again.

Feeling the frustrated resentment building inside her, she defiantly reached for another doughnut. It would serve Gianfranco—who had likened her to a sleek and supple little cat—right if she gained twenty pounds! She was definitely beginning to see the attraction of comfort eating.

‘He told me when he proposed that he wasn’t in love with me.’

The older girl shook her head in disbelief. ‘And I thought Italian men were meant to be romantic,’ she exclaimed, looking disillusioned.

‘He still loves Alberto’s mother. She was beautiful and perfect and—’

‘I hate to point out the obvious, but this paragon is also no longer with us, Dervla.’

Dervla’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Have you ever tried competing with a ghost?’

Sue’s expression softened with sympathy. ‘Is that how you felt?’

‘She was beautiful.’

‘So are you!’ Sue protested.

Dervla gave an exasperated shake of her head. ‘Not pretty—beautiful.’

‘Does he mention her a lot?’

Dervla gave a sniff and shook her head. ‘Never. See,’ she said when she saw Sue’s expression. ‘You think that’s a bad sign too.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Carla says he finds it too painful. She says Sara was his soul mate, they never argued and she—’

‘I get the picture,’ Sue intervened quickly. ‘The man has baggage and a son.’ She chewed worriedly on her lower lip as she studied her friend’s unhappy, downcast features. ‘God, Dervla, did you have to marry him? Couldn’t you have just had sex?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Sue’s eyes went saucer-wide. ‘And you said …?’

‘Obviously we’d already—’ Dervla broke off, blushing, and Sue repressed a grin. ‘He made this ridiculously big thing of me being a virgin at twenty-six.’

‘You were a virgin!’

Sue’s astonished exclamation brought Dervla’s head up with a jerk.

‘Gianfranco was your first lover?’

Dervla bit her lip and nodded.

‘Wow!’

They both reached in unison for another doughnut as the phone began to ring.

Sue moved towards it and Dervla cried out urgently, ‘No, leave it!’

Her friend shrugged and settled back in her seat.

Teeth clenched, Dervla stood ten more seconds before she broke and picked it up.

‘Hello.’

‘Dervla.’

His deep honey-timbred drawl was more frayed around the edges than normal but Dervla would have been able to distinguish it in the middle of a male voice choir.

Her mind went blank.

‘Is that you or a heavy breather?’

She expelled the air trapped in her lungs in one gusty sigh and wiped her wet palm against her thigh.

‘Hello, Gianfranco, how are you?’ How are you? Why stop there, Dervla? Why not sound like a complete moron and ask him how the weather is there?

‘How do you think I am, cara?’

She winced at the acid in his biting response and felt her anger and resentment stir. As if he were the only one suffering here; as if she hadn’t spent two days of hell.

‘How would I know? Silence is kind of hard to interpret. I couldn’t even read between the lines, because there weren’t any. I’m actually feeling fairly honoured that you spared a moment to pick up the phone.’

There was a protracted silence that was more than adequate for Dervla to regret her hasty comments.

‘So you missed me, then.’

He sounded so smug that if there hadn’t been several hundred miles separating them she’d have hit him. Acknowledgement of the distance between them drew a desolate little sigh from her. How could you feel lonely in a place that until recently you had called home? But she did, her home was not here any longer, it was wherever Gianfranco was.

‘Actually I’ve been too busy to miss you. There’s been no time. I’ve been shopping and to lunch, catching up on old friends. We’re on out way our now, actually. You only just caught me.’

At the other end of the phone Gianfranco snapped the pencil he was threading between his long fingers in two. ‘So should I expect to see photos of you staggering out of nightclubs to appear in the tabloids?’ he wondered in a sub-zero tone.

‘Don’t be absurd!’ she snapped, conscious that nothing he said could be as absurd as her trying to convince anyone she didn’t miss him.

God, the ache for him went bone deep.

‘Well, if you could spare a moment out of your busy social diary …?’

Dervla nibbled on the sensitive flesh of her full lower lip. If he’d rung to say come back what was she going to do? Of course, he might have rung to say let’s call it a day. The second possibility almost tipped her over the edge into total panic.

‘If you’ve got something to say, Gianfranco, just say it.’ Whatever he said, she told herself she could deal with it.

‘We have a problem, Dervla.’

She closed her eyes, sure she knew what was coming: it was the second possibility. He was going to say let’s call it a day—this relationship is more trouble than it’s worth.

She had always wondered what she’d feel like when this happened. Now she knew—she wasn’t going to feel anything at all.

She was numb.

‘Well, it could be worse—you could have sent me an email.’ Perhaps one day you’d be able to legally end a marriage that way, neat and clinically without any need for even looking at your partner.

Anger swelled inside her. She wanted to see Gianfranco. She wanted to tell him to his face what he was throwing away. She wanted to tell him that he was damned lucky she loved him and it was his loss.

Her chest tightened … Oh God, and mine, she thought, thinking of her life stretching ahead, a life of days when she would not hear Gianfranco’s voice or see his face.

‘Email? What are you talking about? No, don’t tell me, there’s no time. It’s Alberto.’

‘Alberto?’ she echoed. ‘Not a divorce?’

‘Divorce?’ A volley of Italian words they didn’t teach in the polite surroundings of her language class came down the line. ‘Have you been talking to Alberto?’

‘No,’ she said, turning her back on a wildly gesticulating Sue so that she could concentrate on what he was saying.

‘Alberto has run away.’

It took several moments for the blunt statement to penetrate. When it did the blood drained from Dervla’s face. She swayed.