passport control. So I slipped across the Swiss-Italian border “unofficially”.’
He stared. ‘How?’
She smiled. ‘Never mind.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘As simple as that. Then I made all my journeys by train or bus, because if I’d hired a car I’d have left a trail.’
‘Is that why you have that incredible bike around the back?’
‘That’s right. I bought it for cash. No questions asked.’
‘I should think so. They must have been glad to get rid of it before it fell apart. What’s that thing at the back made of?’
‘You mean my trailer?’
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘Certainly,’ she said with dignity. ‘I’m very proud of it. I just got some boxes and hammered them together. There was an old pram in the little barn behind the house and I took the wheels off. I’m sorry, I know they belong to you.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t ask for them back. If it’s the pram I think it is, it was collapsing anyway. In fact, it was collapsing when my parents got it. My father won it in a card game when my mother was expecting me, and I gather she made him sorry he was born. I can’t believe that you actually use it.’
‘I only go short distances to the village for supplies, food, logs, that sort of thing.’
‘You’ve brought logs back in that little box?’
‘I did once, but I put in too many and it fell apart. I had to come back here for a hammer and nails, then go back, put it together and finish the job. The logs were just where I’d left them.’
‘Of course. People around here are honest. But why didn’t you have the logs delivered?’
‘Because then people would have known for sure where I lived.’
‘What about hotels when you were travelling? Didn’t they ask to see your passport?’
She shrugged. ‘I pass as Italian. I’ve been all over the country, never staying anywhere for very long.’
He drew a long breath. ‘Of all the wily, conniving…! I thought I was a schemer, but I’ve got nothing on you.’
‘Pretty good, huh?’ she said with a touch of smiling cockiness.
‘You could teach me a thing or two,’ he said, grinning back at her.
But their smiles were forced, and faded almost at once.
‘I kept meaning to stop awhile in this place or that,’ Rebecca continued, ‘but I never felt I belonged in any of them. So I always moved on to the next place.’
‘Until you came here.’ He left the implication hanging in the air, but she did not pick it up.
At last he said quietly, ‘You were very determined to escape me, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply.
He didn’t answer, and she looked up to see his face in the flickering candlelight. It might have been the distorting effect of the little flames, but she thought she had never seen such a look of unbearable sadness.
He didn’t turn away or try to hide it, just sat regarding her with a look so naked and defenceless that it was as much as she could do not to reach out to him.
‘Luca…’ She didn’t mean to say his name, but it slipped out.
Then emotion overcame her and she covered her eyes, letting her head drop onto her arm on the table. She didn’t know what else to do. What she was feeling now was beyond tears: despair for the lost years, the chances that could never be recovered, the love that seemed to have died, leaving behind only desolation.
And if there was a hint of hope, it was of a muted kind. She might yet have his child, but it was too late for them.
She thought she felt a light touch on her hair, and perhaps her name was murmured very softly, but it was hard to be sure, and she did not look up. She didn’t want him to see her tears.
She heard him go to the stove and put in some more logs, then sit down again.
‘That will keep it going until morning,’ he said. ‘Go back to bed and keep warm.’
She looked up to see him near the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to the van. I’ll put some dry clothes on in there, and let you have the towels back tomorrow.’
‘No, wait!’
She hadn’t asked herself where he would sleep, but it seemed monstrous for him to have to return to his bleak conditions while she had all the comfort.
‘You can’t go back to the van,’ she said.
‘Of course I can. I’m quite happy there.’
She jumped up, arm outstretched to detain him, but stopped abruptly at the weakness that came over her. For a moment her head was fuzzy and the kitchen danced about her. Then the giddiness cleared.
She wasn’t sure whether he’d taken hold of her, or whether she was clinging to him, but they were gripping each other tightly and she was furious with herself. Now he would know.
She waited for his exclamation, the questions: why hadn’t she told him? And at the end of it all she would feel cornered and trapped.
‘Maybe you didn’t have enough for supper,’ he said. ‘Hauling logs about on an empty stomach. Shall I get you something?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said slowly.
‘Then you should go straight back to bed. Come on.’
He kept a firm but impersonal hold on her all the way into the bedroom, held her while she sat down on the bed, then tucked her in.
‘All right?’
‘Yes. Thank you, Luca.’
‘Let’s get some sleep for what’s left of the night. There’s another heavy day tomorrow.’
He closed the door quietly behind him, and after a moment she heard the front door also close.
The darkness held no answers. She tried to conjure up his eyes in that brief moment when he’d steadied her, and to read what she had seen there.
But she had seen only what he’d chosen to reveal. Nothing. His eyes had been blank, their depths barred to her. It was as though he’d stepped back, giving her space, even space enough for a denial, if she wished.
She had thought she knew him through and through. Now she wondered if she had ever known the first thing about him.
She discovered in the following days that the space she’d sensed him offering her was no illusion. In a way it was what he’d done since the moment he appeared, sleeping outside in all weathers, never intruding or saying a word that could have come from a lover.
But now something was different, as though he too needed that space. Perhaps, she thought, he was doing this for himself. He would finish the house to keep her safe, but then he would drive away and never ask about the child. Because now he did not want to know. It was rather like living with a ghost. But above all it was peaceful, and peace was what she most valued.
Bit by bit the house was coming alive again. The completion of the roof would mean that another room, which had been completely open to the skies, would become inhabitable. Rebecca set herself to clean it out, sweeping soot from the floor and the walls.
Luca’s response was to vanish for nearly a day. When he returned he had a small portable generator and a vacuum cleaner.
‘I had to go to Florence to get these,’ he said. ‘The generator was the last they had. It’s not really big enough, but the bigger one had just been bought by someone else, and all my pleading wouldn’t make him part with it. Still, it’s big enough to scoop up the soot, and prevent you looking like a chimney sweep.’
She blew a stray lock of hair away from her forehead, but it settled back again. He grinned and brushed it back.
‘Is supper ready?’
‘Nope. I didn’t know if you were coming back, so I didn’t prepare anything.’
