‘But if something were to happen...’
‘Like what? Like a baby, you mean? I’m hardly going to fall pregnant. Not twice to the same man. I’m not that stupid.’
Her mother shrugged and stood, looking around the room. ‘It’s lovely you dropped by, but I should do some more sorting, I suppose. Luca is sending an army of men to do the chandeliers, but I don’t want them touching my precious ornaments and there’s such a lot to do.’ She looked up at her daughter, a decided gleam in her eyes. ‘I don’t suppose you could help?’
Tina blinked, not really surprised that her mother would ask for help, more surprised she wanted her to help with her precious glass. ‘Are you sure? I’m hardly going to be able to decide what you want to keep.’
‘Oh, I’ll decide what to keep,’ she said, handing over a bundle of tissue. ‘You can wrap.’
Tina smiled in spite of herself, liking her mother’s succinct and pointed delineation of their duties.
And because it wasn’t as if she didn’t have time on her hands and because maybe it would offer them a chance to talk, maybe even to get to know each other a little better than they did, she agreed. ‘You’re on.’
* * *
Two hours later they’d barely made a dent on the collection and there was still precious little in the ‘sell’ box. Lily gave a sigh of contentment as if she’d just cleared an entire room when all they’d touched was a couple of side tables. ‘Well, I think that’s more than enough for the day.’
Tina looked around at what was left. At this rate it would take six months to clear the room, and then there was still the rest of the palazzo.
‘Oh no,’ her mother said, passing an ornament across. ‘This one can go.’
Tina took it from her, a strange shivery sensation zipping out along her nerve endings. It was a prancing horse, just like the one the glassmaker had made at the factory. ‘Luca took me to Murano this morning,’ she said, holding the horse up to the light. ‘They made one of these there while we watched.’
‘I suspect that’s probably where it came from. You might as well throw that one away. Nobody will buy it. They’re a dime a dozen.’
Tina held the fragile glass horse. Thought of the boy with big brown eyes. Thought of another child who would have grown up with horses on the property, who would have ridden before he could walk, who would never get the chance to have his own horse.
Her son should have his own horse.
He deserved it.
‘Can I have it?’
‘Of course you can have it. But I thought you didn’t like glass.’
‘Not for me,’ she said, already wrapping it carefully in layers of tissue. ‘It’s for...a friend.’
Carmela appeared, brandishing a tray with drinks for them both, and it was only then, thinking about the trip out to Murano, that she remembered what she had meant to tell her mother. And what she most wanted to ask. ‘Oh, I meant to say, Luca’s cousin asked him to drop off some flowers on the way home from Murano at Isola di San Michele. I took the opportunity to pay my respects to Eduardo.’
‘Oh poor Eduardo,’ Lily said on a sigh, looking wistfully out of the window. ‘I do wish he hadn’t left me like he did. None of this would be happening if he was still around.’
‘Do you miss him?’
‘Of course I do.’ Lily sounded almost offended. ‘Besides which, it’s such a difficult business trying to find a new husband at my age. It’s not easy when you’re over fifty.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘And that’s why you should take your chances while you have them. You’re young and pretty now, but it won’t last, let me tell you.’
In spite of herself, Tina smiled. ‘The World According to Lily’ would make a fabulous book if her mother ever thought to write it. It wouldn’t be a thick book, certainly, but part fashion advice, part self-help, with a big dollop of how to marry into money, and all put together by someone who had lived by its principles and—mostly—prospered, it would be a guaranteed bestseller.
But just right now she didn’t want her mother’s advice. What she wanted was her knowledge to answer a question that had been burning away in the back of her mind ever since her visit to the cemetery island.
‘I visited the crypt, of course. I couldn’t help but notice Luca’s parents were both dead. I had no idea and he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. What happened to them?’ she ventured cautiously. ‘Do you know?’