Miranda didn’t even know if he was still in the villa or whether he had left to meet Nicole. The thought of him with the other woman was like a stone in the pit of her belly.
Would he tell Nicole of the pain he held inside him? Would he share the agony of his childhood? The terrible loss he had experienced? The guilt and torment he still felt? Would he tell her about the estrangement he had suffered from his father and the distant relationship he had with his mother?
Or would they just have monkey sex without any emotional connection at all?
Miranda decided to get out of the villa for a while before she went mad over-thinking about Leandro’s sex life. She bought some things for dinner and stopped for a coffee in a café that overlooked the stunning blue of the ocean. It was another mild day with soap-sud clouds gathering on the horizon. Although the late summer crowds had well and truly gone, she was surprised to see only a couple of people swimming in the sea, for the water temperature at this time of year was warmer than in many parts of England in high summer.
Miranda wondered exactly where along the shore Rosie had gone missing. The villa was only a few blocks back from the seafront. She didn’t know whether she should ask Leandro to show her. Would it be too painful for him to revisit that tragic spot?
As she walked back to the villa Miranda passed a mother with a baby strapped in a pouch against her chest with a little boy of about two in a pushchair. The baby was sound asleep with its little downy head cradled against its mother’s chest. The little toddler was holding a brightly coloured toy and smiled at Miranda as she navigated her way past on the narrow footpath.
Miranda resisted the urge to turn and look back at the little family. When she’d been in her teens, seeing mums with kids hadn’t been an issue. Even in the weeks and months after Mark had died she had put the thought out of her mind.
But now every time she saw a mother with a baby she felt a pang, like a nagging toothache.
She would never have a baby of her own.
Somehow that had seemed like a romantic sacrifice when she’d been sixteen, sitting at Mark’s bedside with his life draining away in front of her eyes. Now at twenty-three she felt as if the promise was a prison sentence—one without any possibility of parole. How was she going to feel at thirty-three? Forty-three? Fifty?
Miranda pushed the thought to the back wall of her mind. There were other things she had to concentrate on just now. Like how to get Leandro’s father’s collection safely shipped to London and the villa packed up ready for sale.
The villa was quiet when Miranda came in. She put her shopping away and then went up the stairs, but instead of going to her room as she had intended she found herself turning to Rosie’s instead.
She opened the door and stood there for a moment. The toys were as they had been last night. The bed was still neatly made, all Rosie’s things still on the dressing table.
Leandro had intimated he wanted the room to be packed up. Should Miranda do it to save him the pain? Could she do it?
Miranda wandered over to the cherry-wood wardrobe and, opening it, looked at the array of neat little hangers with toddler clothes. She ran her fingers along the different fabrics, wondering how any parent could ever navigate the loss of a child. Was there any way of dealing with such overwhelming grief? No wonder Leandro’s father had left Rosie’s things as they were. Packing them away was so final. So permanent.
Miranda closed the wardrobe with a sigh.
* * *
Leandro could smell something delicious as soon as he came into the villa. It was such a homely smell it took him aback for a moment. It had been a long time since he had felt as if this place was anything like a home. But with the sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen and Miranda moving about he got a sense of what the villa could one day be again with the right family. He imagined children coming in from the garden, as he and Rosie had done, their faces shining with exertion and sunshine. He could picture the evening meal with the family gathered around the kitchen table or in the dining room, everyone relating how their day had gone, the parents looking fondly at their children.
His parents hadn’t been one-hundred percent happy with each other but they had loved him and Rosie.
Life had seemed so normal and then suddenly it wasn’t.
Leandro walked into the kitchen to see Miranda popping something in the oven. She was wearing a cute candy-striped apron around her waist and her hair was tied up in a knot on top of her head. Her cheeks were flushed from the oven but they went a shade darker when she saw him standing there.
She swiped a strand of hair back from her face. ‘Dinner won’t be long.’
‘You didn’t have to cook,’ he said. ‘We could’ve eaten out or got takeaway.’