The Forbidden Ferrara

She knew that he was waiting for her to say, I love you. And she couldn’t. She just wasn’t ready.

The past hung between them, an obstacle to everything, including her ability to confide and his ability to understand her.

‘It wasn’t all your fault.’ Her cheek was against his shoulder, her hand resting low on his stomach. ‘I expect people to let me down so it’s better not to trust them in the first place.’

‘I did let you down.’

‘But I gave you one chance.’ The thought that she’d been too harsh knocked the breath from her lungs but his arms tightened as if he sensed her confusion.

‘You were protecting yourself. I understand that. You’ve been let down so badly in the past and I let you down again.’

The sting of guilt about her own part in their break up made her speak. ‘I’ve been there before. I’ve felt the excitement, the hope—that warm feeling of belonging that comes when you think someone wants you to be with them. And when that went wrong, when I wasn’t what they wanted me to be, I hurt so badly I promised myself that I wasn’t going to let it happen again.’

His hand stilled. ‘Are we talking about a man?’

Knowing how possessive he was, it was to his credit that his grip on her didn’t slacken.

‘You were the first man I’d slept with. You know that.’

‘Then who? Who hurt you?’ His voice was rough. ‘Talk to me.’

It was obvious that he wanted answers. And he deserved that much, didn’t he? ‘When I was little I was almost adopted.’

‘Almost?’ He was puzzled and of course he would be because someone like him would have no reason to know that it was even possible to be ‘almost’ adopted.

‘When I was in care a couple visited me several times. They thought I might be “the one”. They’d wanted a baby, but there was no baby and at least I was a girl. They really wanted a girl. For ten years they’d been trying to have their own. Spent a fortune on IVF and then turned to adoption and found that too many years had passed and now they were too old to be given a baby. They’d even prepared the house—done up a room especially. Painted it all in pink with tiny fairy lights. They needed a child to match the room and their dreams. They thought I was that child. I wasn’t blonde and blue-eyed, but I got to spend a weekend with them. They took me home.’ Remembering was hard, even after so many years. She remembered the perfume the woman had worn and her perfect clothes. Two cars in the driveway and space, so much space. ‘I didn’t care about all the pink, but I cared about the books. You should have seen the books.’ She could still picture them clearly in her head, rows of books, colourful spines facing outwards, as attractive as jars of sweets in a sweet shop. ‘Children’s books, fairy stories—everything. I’d never had a book of my own when I was young. Never read a fairy story in my life. And this couple loved books. He was an English teacher and she worked in a florists. There were books and flowers everywhere. And they picked me. They wanted me. I was so excited.’

‘You went to live with them?’

Pulling away from him, she rolled onto her back. ‘No. That first night staying with them I was so stressed at being in a strange place with strange people I really couldn’t breathe. I had an asthma attack. We spent the whole time in the emergency department, and after that—’ she paused, surprised that memories so old could still feel so new ‘—after that they decided that it was better to be childless than have me. They didn’t sign up for a sick child, midnight dashes to the emergency department, worry and anxiety. They wanted a child who was going to fit into that room, all golden curls, pink dresses and everything perfect. I wasn’t that person—which was a shame because I’d fallen in love with the room. Not the pink, but the books. I loved the idea of having a door I could shut with all the books on the inside. I was going to pretend it was a library. I was going to read every single one and it was going to be an adventure.’ Conscious that she’d revealed more than she’d intended, she lightened the tone as she turned her head to look at him. ‘So now you know why I’m such a mess. No books.’ And no family, but she didn’t mention that part. Didn’t mention the devastation and sense of rejection that had followed that traumatic experience. ‘Maybe if I’d read a few fairy tales I wouldn’t be such a disaster. The trouble is, I wouldn’t know a happy ending if I fell over it.’

The silence stretched between them and Cristiano raised himself on his elbow so that he could look at her. His eyes were dark pools of appalled disbelief. ‘You’re saying they changed their minds?’

‘It happens. That’s why they did a trial. It’s important that the adoption process is right for everyone. I wasn’t right for them.’ And that shouldn’t still hurt, should it? ‘It was hard for me because I was very young and I let myself trust them. When they said I was going to be their little girl, I believed them, which was stupid really because I already knew that adults usually didn’t mean what they said.’

His face was paler than usual. ‘And after that?’

‘After that I pretty much made myself unadoptable. It was better for everyone that way.’

‘Because you didn’t want to risk it happening again.’ His voice husky, he reached out and stroked her hair away from her face. ‘How old were you?’

‘Eight.’ She saw his expression change. ‘I was eight years old. But I’d spent all of those eight years between foster homes and care homes so I wasn’t your average eight-year-old.’ She felt his arms wrap around her and then he was pulling her against him again, and this time his grip was that much tighter.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I try not to think about it. It’s in the past. It isn’t relevant.’ Even as she said the words she knew they weren’t true. And so did he.

‘We both know it’s relevant. It’s the reason you protect yourself so fiercely. It explains a lot.’ His arms tightened possessively as if he wanted to make up for all those years of isolation and loneliness.

‘You’re right. It does still affect me in that it has influenced who I am. Because of that I made up my mind that the only person I was going to depend on was myself. I didn’t really have close friends because I didn’t trust anyone enough to form a bond.’

‘You made friends with Dani.’

‘Technically, she made friends with me. We were in the same accommodation at college and she’s like you—she’s so emotionally open, she won’t take no for an answer. Every time I closed the door to my room, she opened it. She was always dragging me out to various events. She wouldn’t let me hide and truthfully I loved her company. She was the first real friend I’d had. And she never let me down.’ Laurel’s eyes filled. ‘When I left you she should have ended our friendship, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t.’

‘My sister is fantastic, but don’t tell her I said that.’ Humour lightened the roughness of his voice and the hand that stroked her hair was gentle. ‘It’s no wonder that you left after what I did. And I know that this is a mess but we can fix it. We will fix it. I won’t accept a different option.’

‘What if we can’t? I’m so afraid of being let down it colours everything I do.’ It felt so good to be this close to him again that she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It would have been frighteningly easy to just close her eyes and let him decide for both of them. ‘Once you trust someone they hold the power to hurt you.’