‘Just a tension headache,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
‘When did you arrive?’
‘Yesterday,’ he said. ‘I had a job to finish in Stockholm.’
‘I expect it must be difficult coming back,’ Miranda said, still watching him. ‘Emotional for you, I mean. Did you ever come back after your parents divorced?’
‘No.’
She frowned. ‘Not even to visit your father?’
His hands tightened another notch on the steering wheel. ‘We didn’t have that sort of relationship.’
Miranda wondered how his father could have been so cold and distant. How could a man turn his back on his son—his only child—just because his marriage had broken up? Surely the bond of parenthood was much stronger than that? Her parents had gone through a bitter divorce before she’d been born and, while they hadn’t been around much due to their theatre commitments, as far as she could tell Julius and Jake had never doubted they were loved.
‘Your father doesn’t sound like a very nice person,’ she said. ‘Was he always a drinker? I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it. It’s just, Julius told me you didn’t like it when your father came to London to see you. He said your dad embarrassed you by getting horribly drunk.’
Leandro’s gaze was focussed on the clogging traffic ahead but she could see the way his jaw was locked down, as if tightened by a clamp. ‘He didn’t always drink that heavily.’
‘What made him start? The divorce?’
He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘It certainly didn’t help.’
Miranda wondered about the dynamics of his parents’ relationship and how each of them had handled the breakdown of their marriage. Some men found the loss of a relationship far more devastating than others. Some sank into depression, others quickly re-partnered to avoid being alone. The news was regularly full of horrid stories of men getting back at their ex-wives after a broken relationship—cruel and vindictive attempts to get revenge, sometimes involving the children, with tragic results. ‘Did he ever remarry?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Did he have other partners?’
‘Occasionally, but not for long,’ Leandro said. ‘He was difficult to live with. There were few women who would put up with him.’
‘So it was his fault your mother left him?’ Miranda asked. ‘Because he was so difficult to live with?’
He didn’t answer for so long she thought he hadn’t heard her over the noise of the traffic outside. ‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘That was my fault.’
Miranda looked at him in shock. ‘You? Why would you think that? That’s ridiculous. You were only eight years old. Why on earth would you blame yourself?’
He gave her an unreadable glance before he took a left turn. ‘My father’s place is a few blocks up here. Have you ever been to Nice before?’
‘A couple of years ago—but don’t try and change the subject,’ she said. ‘Why do you blame yourself for your parents’ divorce?’
‘Don’t all kids blame themselves?’
Miranda thought about it for a moment. Her mother had said a number of times how having twins had put pressure on her relationship with her father. But then, Elisabetta wasn’t a naturally maternal type. She was happiest when the attention was on her, not on her children. Miranda had felt that keenly as she’d been growing up. All of her friends—apart from Jaz—were envious of her having a glamorous showbiz mother. And Elisabetta could act like a wonderful mother when it suited her.
It was the times when she didn’t that hurt Miranda the most.
But why did Leandro think he was responsible for his parents’ break-up? Had they told him that? Had they made him feel guilty? What sort of parents had they been to do something so reprehensible? How could they make a young child feel responsible for the breakdown of a marriage? That was the adults’ responsibility, not a child’s, and certainly not a young child’s.
But she didn’t pursue the conversation for at that point Leandro pulled into the driveway of a rundown-looking villa in the Belle Epoqué style. At first she thought he must have made a mistake, pulled into the wrong driveway or something. The place was like something out of a gothic noir film. The outside of the three-storey-high building was charcoal-grey with the stain of years of carbon monoxide pollution. The windows with the ragged curtains drawn were like closed eyes.
The villa was like a faded Hollywood star. Miranda could see the golden era of glamour in its lead-roofed cupolas on the corners and the ornamental ironwork and flamboyance of the stucco decorations that resembled a wedding cake.