Matteo repeated the words shakily to the boy, who seemed a lot less tongue-tied than he was, asking him if he’d play football with him and only letting his mother have the phone back when he promised he would. Then Rose’s voice came again.
‘Thank you. I really appreciate it.’
‘Don’t be crazy. It’s my pleasure. Give me a call next week.’ Matteo ended the call and put the phone down on the table, before either of them got the chance to say anything else.
She could so easily have let her child get caught up in the fall-out from their relationship. But she hadn’t. If Rose was backing off, then she seemed to have resolved to do it differently from the way that Angela had.
He did what he’d done a thousand times before. Wished Rebecca and Joe well and sent that out onto the breeze, wondering if they’d ever know. Hoping that they’d forgotten all about him, and that they were happy. Then he put the photograph back into his wallet, to lie undisturbed until the next time.
* * *
Rose wasn’t answering her phone, so he called the house and spoke with Elena. She told him that Rose was working late tonight, but that William was looking forward to seeing him in the morning.
Suddenly he knew. Matteo stared out over the sea, his toes digging into the wet sand as he allowed the idea to form in his head. He turned it, examined it, and found that it made sense.
‘Why, Rose?’ That was the only thing he couldn’t fathom. But he was going to find out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DARKNESS WAS FALLING as he drove up to the site, parking his car next to Rose’s. The offices looked as if they were empty, the windows shuttered and locked, and when Matteo tried the door, it didn’t budge. Walking back over to her car, he leaned on the front wing, rocking it, and the alarm obligingly started to screech.
Almost immediately a light showed inside, and a door opened and then closed again. Then the shutters moved at one of the windows, and Rose peered out. Matteo waved at her and heard the sharp snap of the shutters closing again.
‘What are you doing?’ She came running down the steps, pointing her remote at the car, and the alarm cut off suddenly, leaving only the rustle of night creatures that had been disturbed by all the commotion.
‘I came to see you.’ Hanging back wasn’t going to get Matteo anywhere, she would just smile and tactfully send him back the way he’d come, and he strode to the door of the office and walked inside.
He could feel Rose getting more and more agitated as he walked through the darkened main office and through to the corridor beyond, aiming for the strip of light shining beneath the door at the far end. He opened it, wondering what he’d do if it turned out that he was wrong.
But he wasn’t wrong. Sitting on a stand, next to an array of modelling knives and a chunk of modelling clay, sat a model of Aemilia’s skull, obviously produced by a 3D printer from the CT scans. Rose had already started the model, and blobs of clay were positioned around the skull to show the depth of the soft tissue that would have encased it.
‘So you decided to do it.’
‘Yes. But I’m about to go home.’ She bit her lip nervously, and when Matteo turned to look at her it seemed as if she’d been crying. His heart almost burst at the thought of her here alone, weeping over a task that was too hard for her.
‘That’s a shame. I’d have liked to see how this is done.’
She stared at him for a moment. ‘Matteo, what are you doing here?’
He almost relented. Almost told her that he’d just come to see whether she wanted a nightcap, and would she like to go to one of the cafés in town for half an hour, before she went home. But that would have been a wasted journey.
‘I just want to know...’ He took a step towards her and she almost flinched. ‘I’d really like to know why you think that you couldn’t share this with me.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
He laid his fingers lightly on her arms. She was trembling.
‘Rose, this is hard for you, I can see that. But we’ve done this together up till now—won’t you let me give you a little support?’
‘I don’t need...’ Suddenly one tear rolled from her eye and she brushed it away almost guiltily.
‘Don’t lie to me, Rose.’ It was just a little lie, the kind that people told every day. I’m okay. I don’t need you to help me. But with Rose they’d become a smiling mantra, which seemed to douse the delicious spark in her eyes.
‘I’m not lying.’ Outrage shone from her face. That was better than nothing. ‘I’m just... I get tied up with my work, and I get tired and...well, I’m not that great to be with.’
‘Ah. Tired and snappy, eh?’
She frowned at him. ‘Something like that.’