‘We had no idea you were coming,’ he said, appalled at how stupid the words sounded. But stupid was exactly how he felt.
‘No, I thought I’d drop in and pay my old lady an unexpected visit,’ Sol said cheerfully. ‘I thought she’d only be here for a couple of days. When she didn’t return I decided to come and see what mischief she was up to.’ His ribald glance made it clear that he’d already formed his own opinion.
Carlo decided that he could dislike Sol very much if he put his mind to it. But he forced himself to say politely, ‘I hope you’ll stay long enough to visit my family? We’re having dinner with them tomorrow night, and of course you must join us.’
‘Love to. Fine-I’ll be off now.’ He kissed Della’s cheek. ‘I’m in the room opposite yours. See ya! Oh-yes…’ He seemed to become aware that the staff were nervously eyeing his new shirt.
‘It’s all right,’ she told them. ‘You can put it on my bill.’
‘Bless you,’ Sol said fervently. ‘Actually, I found a few other-’
‘Put them all on my bill,’ she said, amused and resigned. ‘Now, be off-before I end up in the Poor House.’
‘Thanks!’
Halfway to the door, he stopped. ‘Um…’
‘What now?’
‘I hadn’t realised what an expensive place this is-’ He broke off significantly.
‘You’ve got a new credit card,’ she reminded him.
‘Ye-es, but-’
‘You can’t have hit the limit already. Even you.’
His response was a helpless shrug, topped off by his best winning smile. Carlo watched him closely.
‘Here,’ Della said, reaching into her bag and producing a handful of cash. ‘I’ll call the card company and underwrite a new limit.’
‘Thanks, Mum. Bye!’
He vanished.
‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ Della said, and went into the changing room.
After a moment she emerged in her street clothes, paid her bill, and gave her room number for the dress to be delivered.
‘And the other things, for the young man?’ the assistant asked.
‘Oh, yes-deliver them to me, too.’
A brief glance at the paperwork showed Carlo that she had spent about ten times as much on Sol as on herself.
They left the boutique and headed for the coffee bar next door. Carlo seemed thoughtful, and she guessed that he now had a lot to think about.
‘Does that dress really suit me?’ she asked. ‘Or did Sol merely say so to get me to pay for his stuff?’
‘Why would he bother?’ Carlo asked wryly. ‘He knew you were a soft touch, whatever he said.’
‘Well, of course. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he looks grown-up. He’s only twenty-one, and has only just left college. Who’s going to pay his bills if I don’t?’
‘He could get a job and start paying his own way,’ Carlo suggested.
‘He will, but he had to visit his father first.’
‘Fair enough. But does it occur to him to curb his extravagance for your sake?’
‘Why should he? When he sees me book into one of the most expensive hotels in Naples he probably reckons I can afford a few shirts.’
He shrugged. It was a fair point, but he still didn’t like it.
‘Does his father help?’ he asked after a while.
‘His father has three other children by various mothers-the first one born barely a year after we broke up.’
‘So you’ve always worked to support Sol?’
‘I’m his mother.’
‘And some woman is always going to have to be,’ he pointed out, with a touch of grouchiness.
‘What a rotten thing to say!’ she flared. ‘It’s not like you.’
It was true, making him annoyed with himself.
‘Ignore me,’ he said, trying to laugh. ‘I just got a nasty shock when I first saw you together. I thought you had another guy. He looks older than he is.’
‘Twenty-one-I swear it. And I’m thirty-seven,’ she said lightly. ‘Thirty-seven!’
‘Why do you say it like that? As though you were announcing the crack of doom?’
‘We’ve never talked about my age before.’
‘Why should we? There were always more interesting things to do.’
‘But sooner or later you had to know that I was middle-aged-’
‘Middle-aged? Rubbish!’ he said, with a sharp, explosive annoyance that was rare with him. ‘Thirty-seven is nothing.’
‘I suppose it may seem so, if you’re only thirty.’
Suddenly his face softened.
‘You’re a remarkably silly woman-do you know that?’ he asked tenderly.
‘I’ve known it ever since I met you.’
‘And just what does that mean?’
‘A sensible woman would have taken one look at you and fled before you turned her whole life upside down.’
‘So why didn’t you?’ he asked curiously.
‘Maybe I didn’t mind having my life turned upside down? Maybe I wanted it? I might even have said to myself that it didn’t matter what happened later, because what we’d had would be worth it.’
He frowned. ‘But what do you think is going to happen later?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m not looking too far into the future. There’ll be some sadness there somewhere-’
‘You don’t know that-’
‘Yes, I do, because there’s always sadness.’
‘Then we’ll face it together.’
‘I mean after that,’ she said slowly. ‘When it’s over.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re talking about leaving me, aren’t you?’
‘Or you leaving me.’
‘Dio mio! You’re planning our break-up.’
‘I’m not planning it-just trying to be realistic. Seven years is quite a gap, and I know I should have told you before-’
‘Perhaps,’ he murmured. ‘But I wonder exactly when would have been the right moment.’
As he spoke he raised his head, looking at her directly, invoking a hundred memories.
When should she have told him? When they’d lain together in the closeness that was life and death in the same moment? When they’d walked in the dusk, arms entwined, their thoughts on the night ahead? When they’d awoken together in the mornings, sleepy and content?
He didn’t speak, but nor did he need to. The questions were there, unanswerable, like a knife twisting in her heart.
‘We didn’t have to talk about it,’ he said, more gently, ‘because it doesn’t matter. It can’t touch us.’
‘But it has to touch us.’
‘Why? I knew you were older-’
‘Just a little. Not that much older. And, darling, you can’t pretend it didn’t give you a shock. There was a moment back there when you were looking from Sol to me as if you were stunned.’
He stared at her, wondering how two people who loved each other so much could misunderstand each other so deeply. What she said was true. He had been totally stunned, reeling like a man who’d received a shattering blow.
But it wasn’t her age. It had been the moment when he’d seen her in Sol’s arms and thought she’d betrayed him. The extent of his pain had caught him off-guard, almost winding him. Nothing else had ever hurt so much. Nothing else would ever do so again.
