‘I’m not being crazy. You think this is easy for me? I loved every moment that we were together...’ She stopped suddenly, tears spilling from her eyes.
‘Turn your back!’ It was an order this time. ‘You think I can look into your face and do this?’
The quiver of her mouth, the way she seemed to need this, made him turn. ‘Rose, please...’
He heard her twist the catch on the door, and his heart broke. It was a terrible, tearing feeling, as if some fatal flaw line had just cracked it in two, leaving him unable to breathe and certain that nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Matteo waited, standing stock still, long after he heard the door close behind her. As if not looking round could somehow unmake what had just happened. It wouldn’t be real until he turned and saw that Rose was gone.
Walking back out onto the patio, without looking behind him, he picked up his glass and filled it. Tonight, just for once, the wine wasn’t about the taste or about how well it went with the food, it was about dulling the pain a little. He walked down the stone steps and onto the beach, sitting down in the sand. Feeling in his pocket, he brought out the ring, the diamond glistening in the moonlight.
The only thing that stopped him from throwing it into the sea was that it was a family heirloom. His grandfather had given it to him, telling him that one day he’d give it to the right girl.
‘Wrong day. Wrong girl.’ He didn’t even know why he’d taken the ring out of its box and put it into his pocket now. It had been an impulse, formed from not wanting to part and hoping that somehow things would just work out.
But there was no going back now. He knew that Rose didn’t want to leave, and he’d begged her to stay, but she’d left all the same. And maybe she’d had the courage to do the right thing, because for the life of him Matteo couldn’t think of a way to jump over that impossible hurdle of moving from an agreement not to commit straight into an agreement to commit everything.
He drank a mouthful of wine, staring out across the dark sea. A shooting star arched across the sky and Matteo repeated the words of the old rhyme in a whisper that was drowned out by the crash of the waves. ‘“Stella, mia bella Stella, desidero che...”’ Star, my pretty Star, I wish...
But tonight wasn’t La Notte di San Lorenzo, and there was no guarantee that anyone who wished on a shooting star would be granted their heart’s desire.
Only he had been granted exactly what he’d wanted. He’d wanted yet another fleeting affair, believing that Rose would be like all the rest. Next time he would be a lot more careful what he wished for.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘MUM?’ WILLIAM HAD the tone of voice that announced a question.
‘Yes, sweetie?’
‘When are we going to Sicily?’
It was the question that Rose dreaded. ‘I don’t know, William. I have work to do here in London at the moment.’
‘But how am I going to play football?’
‘You can play with the others at kindergarten, can’t you?’
‘They’re no good at it.’ William put one finger to his brow, as if he’d just had a brainwave. He hadn’t quite mastered the art of working his way round to what he wanted to say yet, and pretending he’d just thought of it. ‘I’d quite like to play football with Matteo.’
‘Yes, I know. But he’s in Sicily and...’ Even after six weeks, her eyes still pricked with tears whenever she had to say it to William. ‘He’s in Sicily and we live in London.’
‘He could come to London.’
‘But they need him at the hospital, sweetie. All the people who are sick and he makes better.’
‘What about the weekend?’
‘It’s too far to come.’ Rose tried to inject a note of finality into her voice.
‘I like Sicily...’ William dragged on her hand, kicking his feet on the paving ston
es. ‘I like Matteo.’
‘Yes, so do I.’ Rose fixed her eyes on her own front door, two hundred yards down the street, and settled her heavy bag on her shoulder. It had been a long week. A long six weeks. All she wanted to do was to get home, give William his tea, and not have to answer any more questions.
‘Did you kiss him?’
‘What?’ Rose’s mental picture of the evening ahead had just progressed as far as curling up with William to read a bedtime story, and she was suddenly propelled out of that cosy warmth and into altogether more dangerous territory.