A Whisper of Disgrace

‘I’m not the kind of woman you need, Kulal,’ she said quietly. ‘You need someone you can dominate. Someone who will do exactly what you want her to do. Some women might call that being masterful but I call it being a control freak and I’m afraid that I can’t live like that. Not any more.’

His body tensed. ‘You can have your TV slot back!’

‘No!’ Frustratedly, she shook her hands in the air. ‘You don’t understand! This is nothing to do with my TV slot.’

‘But isn’t that what drove you away?’

She stared at him. ‘That was the final straw, yes. But what really drove me away was the fundamental inequality of our relationship. I don’t want to live with someone who won’t let me do something—so that only when I push and push will he change his mind and give me his permission. I’m a grown-up, Kulal. I don’t need anyone’s permission to live my life. Not yours, nor my family’s. I’ve had that for too many years and I don’t want it any more.’

He saw the sudden fierceness on her face. ‘Why did you come back to Sicily?’ he questioned suddenly. ‘When you told me you would never return.’

There was silence for a moment as Rosa mulled over his question. ‘Because I thought about something you said and realised that you were right. That I had no right to try to fix you, when my own life was so unresolved,’ she said. ‘I knew I needed to speak to my brothers and to my mother. Especially my mother. I needed to hear her side of the story. I needed to hear what made her betray my dad with his own brother, but then I had to let it go. Because it’s her life, not mine.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘I’m meeting her for coffee tomorrow morning.’ She nearly said, ‘I’ll let you know,’ until she realised that she wouldn’t, because tomorrow he would be gone from here. She wanted him gone from here. She needed him gone from here.

He saw the new strain on her face and his heart twisted. ‘I’m sorry for what you’ve been through with your family, Rosa—’

‘Yes, I know that,’ she put in, hating the betraying little crack which seemed to have crept into her voice. ‘And that was one of the things I first loved about you—that you defied all my expectations. That once you’d got over the shock of my parentage, you supported me. And I was so grateful to you for that, Kulal. I thought you would judge me negatively, but you didn’t. And then, when you opened up to me on the night of our wedding, I felt something like hope about the future. It felt as if two people who had been damaged could find comfort and solace in each other. But then you clammed up—and even though there were moments when I felt as if a real passion and friendship was there, it was as if you wanted to keep it locked away from me.’

‘And I did,’ he said slowly, her words unlocking a conundrum he’d never really understood until now. He stared at her. ‘I guess I was terrified of getting too close to anyone. It felt like too much of a risk. Can you understand that, Rosa?’

She nodded as she heard the flicker of uncertainty in his voice and suddenly her man of steel seemed soft and vulnerable and she couldn’t seem to stop her heart from reaching out to him. ‘Of course I can understand,’ she said. ‘Your mother was torn away from you in a way which left you heartbroken. Worse still was that you blamed yourself. You still do.’

‘You know why I blame myself,’ he said quietly. ‘You know what happened that day.’

‘But you’re not even sure about the facts, are you?’ she whispered. ‘You’ve refused to look at the post-mortem report or speak to the doctors.’ She saw him flinch but she knew she had to carry on. Because even though Kulal was no longer a small boy locked in a nightmare of guilt and loss, he was a man still suffering as a consequence of that day, and he would continue to suffer unless he confronted it. ‘I think you should go back to Zahrastan and find out the truth. You told me that your mother was suffering from headaches prior to the picnic. Well, maybe the fall was a result of that. Maybe she would have died anyway—or maybe she wouldn’t. You have to know, Kulal. You can’t keep living your life burdened by guilt and neither can you keep avoiding risk, just because it’s safer that way. You have to learn to take a chance—on me, yes, but more importantly, on yourself.’

He swallowed, struggling to cope with the new and very powerful feelings which were beginning to emerge. And he wondered if it really was too late. ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘And I’ll face whatever truth awaits me there—but before I do, there’s something you need to know. Something I never told you before, but which I should have done.’ There was a pause as he looked down at the soft parting of her lips. ‘That the first time I saw you, you spoke to something in my heart. I looked across that crowded nightclub, little realising that I was about to meet a woman who would change just about everything.’