He had returned half prepared to set a distance between them, but now the distance was there and it hit him like a blow in the face.
Berta came in to find him staring around at the bare room, his face ashen.
‘Did she leave me no message, Berta?’
‘She wants you to see this man,’ Berta said, holding out a card bearing the name Emilio Varini, partner in a firm of lawyers in Amalfi.
‘That’s all?’ he asked, aghast. ‘She sends me to a lawyer?’
Berta nodded.
‘I’ll go now,’ he said grimly.
Signor Varini’s office was on the waterfront. He was a small man, precise in physique as well as in manner. Vittorio had met him before when arranging a sale to one of his clients.
‘I’ve been expecting you, Signor Tazzini,’ he said. ‘I have something to give you.’
‘Where is Signora Clannan?’ Vittorio asked without preamble.
‘She did not inform me of her destination. She only asked me to talk to you, and give you this.’
He handed over a large envelope full of papers, which Vittorio spread on the desk. But the words danced before him and at first he could make no sense of them. When they did begin to form a pattern they conveyed a message so monstrous that his mind refused to recognise it.
‘What is this all about?’ he demanded.
‘I think the meaning is clear,
‘What do you mean, signed it over to me?’
‘She has given it to you. The property is now entirely yours once more.’
Still his mind refused to function.
‘But she can’t just-how much does she want for it?’
‘She wants nothing. If you examine the documents you’ll see that you are now the legal owner of the estate.’
‘And you just let her do it?’ Vittorio demanded, outraged. ‘You let her give away everything she had?’
‘I naturally advised caution, but I couldn’t change her mind, and the property was hers to dispose of as she pleased.’
‘But didn’t she explain why?’
‘Yes, she said she didn’t need it any more.’
Now that Sam was dead, he thought with a sinking heart. Why hadn’t he seen this coming?
‘It was an emotional impulse,’ Vittorio said. ‘How can anyone do business that way? Of course I cannot accept. Please contact her at once and tell her that.’
‘But I can’t do that. I don’t know where she is.’
‘Call her mobile.’
‘She has changed the number.’
‘Then send her an e-mail.’
‘She’s changed her e-mail address. I have no way of contacting her at all.’
‘But that’s impossible. What happens if there’s an emergency?’
‘That’s what I said to her. But she said that she was cutting all ties with this place, and then it would be as though she had never existed. And if she didn’t exist, there could be no emergency.’
The phrase ‘cutting all ties’ caused a dreadful sinking in his stomach. To avoid it Vittorio grew angry.
‘Varini, listen to me. I will not accept this, and you must tell her so. You
‘I have no way of doing so,’ the lawyer said with slow deliberation.
‘I don’t believe you. I will not accept that. After today I won’t return there again. Tell her that.’
‘Signor Tazzini, let me make the matter plain to you. If you don’t accept the estate, then it will go into limbo. If nobody owns it, nobody can care for it. Nobody can buy seed or fertiliser, nobody can plant, nobody can harvest. The place will go to rack and ruin.’
‘Harvest,’ he said slowly.
‘It’s about now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, we should be starting soon.’
He thought of the orchard, heavy with ripe fruit, waiting for loving hands to pluck the lemons, waiting in vain, rotting, useless.
‘I’ll take it back,’ he groaned, ‘but only temporarily. Find a way to contact your client and tell her to get back here.’
‘If you’ll just sign these papers,’ the lawyer said.
When the last signature had been completed and witnessed, Emilio Varini reached into his desk and produced another sealed envelope.
‘This is also for you,’ he said. ‘Signora Clannan said it was to be given to you only when you had formally accepted the estate.’
‘Thank you,’ Vittorio said in a dead voice.
Mechanically he put the envelope in his pocket, took his copy of the papers and left the office. He drove home slowly, his mind refusing to accept what was happening. Not until he was in the house and safely alone did he pull out the envelope and sit staring at it.
For a while he did nothing else. As long as he didn’t read the letter it wasn’t true, and with all his soul he longed for it not to be true.
When he couldn’t find an excuse to put it off any longer he opened the letter.
My darling,
By the time you read this the estate will be yours again, as really it always was.
I think we both knew how it was bound to end. I love you, but I can’t live on one side of an abyss with you on the other. Nor can I cross the abyss to find you, because you won’t let me. I can’t reach the enclosed place where you live, and I can’t spend my life beating my head against the wall. I would only end in hating you, and I don’t want to do that. What we had only lasted a short time, but it was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me, or ever will, and it must not end in bitterness.
This way there doesn’t have to be bitterness, only the recognition that we didn’t really have a chance. That’s true, isn’t it? I owned something that was rightly yours, and we could never get past that. I’d gladly share with you, if only you’d let me. But you won’t, so there’s only this way left.
I’ve tried to make you understand that I trust you totally, but you’ll never believe it, and that gives us no hope.
The past few years have left me not knowing who I am. Now I want to go back to the turning in the road, and find my true self again.
I’ve left Toni with you. I can’t take him with me, and I know you’ll love him and care for him.
He crumpled the letter in his hand, turning around sharply as though he could discover a way out. She was wrong, he thought passionately. He knew her true self. It was the loving, generous woman he’d found in his arms, and then been fool enough to throw away.
But, whatever she said, it wasn’t too late for them. Somehow it would be possible to find her, and make her see that they belonged together.
He spread out the letter again, smoothing the creases, and it was only then that he saw the last lines.
My darling, please don’t try to find me. This is something I need to do. I shall love you always. Thank you for everything.
It was signed ‘Angela’. Not ‘Angel’.
As he read the last lines again and again, Vittorio knew that he had no choice. He must give her the peace she asked for. It was the only thing left that he could do for her.
Hardly knowing what he did, he went out into the hall and began to wander through the house, trying not to hear the empty way it echoed around him. A thousand times he’d told himself that he would never rest while the usurper was there. Now she was gone, driven out by harsh words and ruthless pride, and the place was his again in a triumph so total that he could never have imagined it.
He shivered.
