The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

She felt her hand being taken. Loosened from her clenched grip on her bag.

‘Loved him so much,’ echoed Rafael, in that same gentle voice that was a torment to hear, ‘that she wanted to go back to Australia to die in the same place he had.’

His eyes went to the death certificate for Celeste’s mother. Forty-two years old. No age to die. His eyes shadowed. But then cancer found its victims at every stage of their lives. His eyes lifted to Celeste. There were tears in her eyes now.

Gently he squeezed her hand, and she could feel his warmth, his strength running into her. Giving her the strength to speak at last.

After so many years.

‘She was diagnosed when she was already terminal,’ she said. ‘Ovarian cancer is like that—the silent killer, it’s called, because its symptoms are so hard to spot. Especially if, like Mum, you ignore them.’ She swallowed. ‘It’s the reason I have routine ultrasound scans every year—to spot it early if it starts in me, too. Mum made me promise—she dreaded the same thing happening to me as had to her.’

Her voice was low and halting, but she went on. Forcing herself to speak. To relive the fear and the anguish and the grief and the loss. ‘She left Australia straight after my father’s funeral. She couldn’t bear to be there any more, without him. But after she was diagnosed, and knew she could not survive, she wanted to go back—to die in the place he’d loved so much that had killed him in the end. And she wanted to do what they’d done for their honeymoon—backpack all around Australia, seeing everything, thinking they had all the time in the world to live together for all the years to come. But all they got was a bare three years.’

‘So you took her back there, didn’t you?’ said Rafael quietly. ‘You took her back and went with her all around the country, retracing the journey she’d taken with your father. And then you went to the surf spot he loved so much, when she got weaker and weaker, and she died there. And you buried her next to him. And they lie there together, Celeste—side by side, at the sea’s edge.’

She was weeping now, the tears running silently down her cheeks. He brushed them with his fingers and her face buckled more.

‘It was to pay for all of that that you did what you did. That you became a summer bride.’

She was silent. She could not speak.

‘You said...’ He spoke carefully, for this was very, very important. ‘You said that you did it because you wanted money fast. But what you did not say was why.’

She looked at him. ‘What difference does it make?’ she said, and her eyes had that deadened expression in them now. ‘You asked if I regretted doing it—and I don’t. I made the decision I needed to make, and I would do the same again. And I have no remorse, or regret—not a single shred! If I could have done it differently, I would have. But this was the only way.’

He dropped her hand. Got to his feet in a jerking movement. Stared down at her.

‘What difference does it make?’ he echoed. ‘How can you even think that, let alone believe it?’ His eyes flashed. ‘It makes all the difference in the world!’

‘No, it doesn’t!’ Her own eyes flashed now, with hatred—hatred for herself and what she had done, for what she would do again without the slightest hesitation or remorse or regret. ‘I still did it! I still sold myself for sex! A summer bride. I was driven out to some villa at the edge of the city and I went through a travesty of a ceremony, in a language I didn’t understand and didn’t need to, because all that was required of me was that I did what I had been paid to do—paid to do!’

She took a ragged, ravaging breath.