Second Marriage

'Listen to me—listen.' He shook her gently, his eyes mirroring her agony. 'One day you will meet someone else. You are young—you have your whole life before you.' She would have spoken then but he said, 'No, listen to me, Claire. You will meet someone else, fall in love, get married, do all the right things. I did not want…I did not want you to go away thinking that it was you, or to allow anything that this Jeff had said to you in the past to continue to haunt you. You are beau­tiful—incredibly, breathtakingly beautiful. I did not think it was possible for someone to be so beautiful in­side and out.'

'But I'm not beautiful enough to make you change your mind,' she said wretchedly, unable to stop the tears coursing down her cheeks. 'That's what you're really saying, isn't it?'

'You will always have my heart, Claire, always. I shall never marry and I shall never love again—'

'Stop it.' She jerked away from him now so fiercely that she almost overbalanced. 'Do you think that makes it better? Do you? Because it doesn't,' she hissed angrily as her temper rose at what he was putting them both through. 'I don't want just your heart, I want you—flesh-and-blood you—every day. I want to see you in the morning when I wake up, be with you at night, make love with you, feed you, laugh with you, have…have your children…' She couldn't speak now, her sobs chok­ing her.

'Goodbye, Claire.' His voice was husky and strained, and as he turned to leave her throat constricted with fear. He was really going to leave. What could she do? God, help me, give me the words, make him see…

'Romano?' She stood there stricken, despair squeez­ing her heart so tightly she couldn't breathe, and watched him walk out of her life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

July. Claire stared out of the window into the driving rain outside and sighed wearily. No one could believe it was the middle of July; the month had had the worst weather on record. Day after day of torrential rain, sharp winds and it was cold. She had even brought her winter jumpers out.

She turned now, surveying her bedroom in the early-morning light that was grey and sombre. Not that she minded really, if she was honest. She felt so bad inside, so wretched, so utterly, utterly hopeless… The tears started and she blinked them away furiously, scrubbing at her face with her hand before walking over to her wardrobe and selecting leggings and a long baggy jumper in bright red, in total defiance of her mood.

The nights were for crying, the days for getting on with life—painful though that was. It was a decision she had

made her first night home after that awful journey from Italy, when she had felt she was going mad with pain and grief and rage as she had howled her misery into her mother's ample bosom while her father had forcibly prevented her brothers from getting on the first plane to Italy. She had realised then, after that initial letting down of the floodgates, that for the sake of the rest of the family she had to at least give the appearance of coping with this thing.

It wasn't easy, but she was managing it, and certainly the overwhelmingly generous cheque she had found tucked away in her luggage from Donato and Grace had helped. It meant she wasn't desperate to find an immedi­ate job in England and that she could do something she had wanted to do for a long time: work voluntarily at the home for mentally and physically handicapped chil­dren that was situated on the outskirts of the town in Kent where she lived.

She had rung Grace the minute she had found the envelope, protesting that it was too much, that what she had done she had done for love, that she didn't want any payment at all. But when Grace had begun to get upset at her refusal to accept the cheque she had ca­pitulated, and Grace had been thrilled when she'd learnt what the money was indirectly being used for.

So now, as she dressed quickly after a warm shower, fixing her hair into a high pony tail at the back of her head and not bothering with any make-up, she checked that no trace of the tears was left. The children she worked with had problems, enormous problems, and for them she had to be seen to be bright, cheerful and posi­tive, whatever she was feeling like inside. Strangely, when she was with them it wasn't too difficult—her re­spect and admiration for their bravery in the face of sometimes impossible odds causing her to put her own misery to the back of her mind.

But the nights—the nights were a different matter. Once she was alone in her room, and the rest of the house was sleeping, she lay for hours tossing and turning as she conducted endless post mortems that served no useful purpose at all, and her pillow was always wet when she eventually drifted into a troubled and restless slumber.

Romano loved her, but the prospect of making any pledge, however small, was beyond him. She hadn't de­manded a ring on her finger, or vows of undying eternal love, but she had wanted a deep, emotional commitment before getting physically involved with him. She couldn't have coped with the light affair he had wanted at first; she just wasn't made that way. It would have destroyed her, feeling as she did, never to know from one day to the next if their relationship was over, to be unable to ask anything of him, not to have the right to get close.

She had regretted her stand at first through the anguish of the long, lonely, tear-soaked nights, feeling she should have taken anything, anything he offered rather than en­dure this misery. But in the cold light of day, when she examined her heart and the essence of what made her tick, she knew she couldn't have acted any differently.

Loving him as she did, she wouldn't have been able to bear the constant cycle of wild happiness when she was with him, nagging uncertainty when she wasn't, fear that any day he would tell her their relationship was at an end, anger, pain, contempt at her own weakness—oh, everything an affair with him would have involved. No, she had been right to hold out for more, even if that had resulted in his coming to terms with the fact that he loved her and the ultimate decision that had brought him to.

And that was that. Another stage of her life over and finished. The pale, sad-eyed girl in the mirror stared back at her, the expression in the velvety brown eyes belying the valiant stance, and she grimaced in disgust. 'Snap out of it, Claire, you've a job to do so get on with it,' she said aloud. And she was not going to wallow in self-pity and despair. She was not. Well, only for a bit longer anyway…

The day was hectic but she welcomed the fast pace, the constant challenges, the relentless pushing of mental and physical resources. It gave her less time to brood if every moment was occupied, and it certainly was at Grassacres. But, as always, when she left the big red­brick building and walked down the long pebbled drive bordered on each side by green sweeping lawns, she was so tired she could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Nevertheless she always walked home, Grassacres be­ing just a fifteen-minute stroll from her house, whatever the weather. It gave her a chance to build up a stockpile of determined cheerfulness and resolve for the evening ahead with her family, until she could legitimately es­cape to the sanctuary of her room and howl her eyes out for what might have been.

As she walked through the big, institution-style iron gates that were constantly left open, and onto the path beyond, her thoughts were on nothing more disturbing than the weather. In strict contrast to the rain and wind of the morning the evening was mellow and quiet, warm, even, with a shy, delicate sun peeping nervously through the clouds and the very English smell of woodsmoke flavouring the air.

It was so pleasant after the torrential rain of the last three weeks that she stood for a second just savouring the air, shutting her eyes and lifting her head to the shaft of sunlight glancing through the big oak tree to her right as she drew on the moment of natural tranquillity.

'Pardon me, but isn't this where I came in?'

She hadn't noticed the big car that had been parked a good way down the street and that at her exit from the home had edged rapidly forwards. But now, as the deep, heavily accented voice met her ears, she went deathly white, turning to face the big, dark man who was leaning out of the window. She stared at him for one endless moment—and then she ran, taking to her heels and fly­ing along the path bordering the walled grounds of Grassacres on one side and the main road on the other, as though her life depended on it.

She heard him call her name but she didn't stop, and then there was the sound of the car engine, a screech of brakes, and a moment or two later a steel hand locked on her arm, stopping the headlong flight and swinging her round to face him.

'Claire?' His voice was wretched now, deep, full of pain, and as she looked into his face, that dear, dear face she had never expected to see again, she lost the last of what little control she had.

'How could you? How could you?' She beat against his chest with her fists as she wailed her anguish out loud, without really knowing what she was railing against. It might have been the desolate vacuum of the last few weeks, the knowledge that she had lost him, that she would never marry, have children, be a half of a whole, or it might even have been just that lazy, as­sured greeting, when he had spoken as though the night­mare that had been her days and her nights hadn't af­fected him at all. Whatever, she was hysterical now and he recognised it.

'No more. No more, my love.' He held both her wrists in one hand as he folded her struggling body into the protection of his, his strength eventually subduing her frenzy until she collapsed against him and would have fallen to the ground but for his arms about her. She con­tinued to cry, helplessly and in total abandonment to the torment and suffering she had endured, as he lifted her up into his arms and carried her over to the car, placing her inside as though she were the finest Meissen porce­lain.

She shut her eyes and lay back against the seat, utterly exhausted, as he walked swiftly round the bonnet and slid into the car, and then her eyes snapped wide as it suddenly occurred to her what a fright she must look. She had never been able to cry prettily, the way some women could. From a little girl her nose had gone bulb­ous and red, her skin blotchy, and her eyes gave the impression she had done a few rounds with Mohammed Ali.