There was no judgement in Dimitri’s eyes, but in a way it only served to enrich the last memories he had of Emma and all the emotion he had seen in her eyes.
‘Do you love her?’
‘Yes. I do,’ he replied—without thought, without pause.
He’d known it when he’d gone to the hotel suite that last night in Buenos Aires—known it as he’d allowed her to walk away from him. Had known it because it had hurt more than any other single thing in his life.
She had offered him everything. Love, acceptance, a way forward—a way other than the path of his revenge—and he had refused it all. He had refused her.
‘Then you do what it takes, Antonio.’
‘Even if that means letting go of the feud I have with my father?’
* * *
Emma pulled the cotton robe around her shoulders as she sank into her mother’s sofa in the small house in Hampstead Heath. She had flown back into London four days ago and had slept for practically all of them, as if her body’s learned response to trauma—emotional or physical—was rest.
So much had changed since she’d last left this house. Not only for her, but for her mother. Her old bedroom was now the spill-over storage area for Mark’s hobby—his cars. Spare bits of machinery, cases of tools, several worn, torn and oil-stained clothes hung over the corners of barely held together boxes.
She was surprised to find that it didn’t upset her. She was glad that her mother had found Mark—a kind man who loved her deeply. How could she begrudge her mother the very thing she wanted for herself? But every time she thought of Antonio her heart ached a little more. She knew that she was feeling grief—grief for him, for herself. But even through that pain, the exhaustion and the upset, she knew that she should get up every day and fight for the future she had once closed herself off from.
The sitting room was still just how she’d remembered it. Books lining two sides of the room, paintings framing the windows on the front wall, and covering the back wall completely, as if they were puzzle pieces, separated by only the thinnest of gaps of wall. It felt familiar—but not as soothing as it had once been.
Her mother entered the room, her jeans and loose shirt covered in mismatched blotches of cast-off paint, thin lines from where she had cleaned the pallet knife she used against her thighs.
Louise Guilham was beautiful. Emma had inherited her mother’s thick dark hair and slender form. But it wasn’t her physical appearance that made her beautiful. It was her happiness in following her dream of painting, in her love for Mark. It glowed from her skin and Emma felt sallow and shadowed in comparison.
She mustered a smile as her mother looked momentarily confused to find Emma curled up on the sofa at five in the afternoon, a robe wrapped around clothes she had slept in, not having had the energy to change. That was her mother’s way when she was locked into a painting. The world could descend into Armageddon and she’d still be considering which colour to put where.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Louise asked.
‘I don’t suppose you have any whisky?’ Emma replied, memories of a conversation with Antonio so very close to the surface of her thoughts.
Her mother raised an eyebrow, but disappeared into the kitchen, returning with two glasses full of ice and amber.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked Emma, pressing the glass into her hands and taking a seat beside her on the old, battered but comfortable sofa.
Emma turned, resting her back against the sofa’s arm, stretching out her legs. Her mother took Emma’s feet in her hands and put them on her lap, passing soothing strokes over her bare skin as she had once done so many times when Emma had been ill.
Over the last four days, between hours of sleep, Emma had unfolded the story of her and Antonio, opening her heart and her mind to the mother she wouldn’t hide a thing from—ever. But now Emma felt the stirrings of the question she had always wanted to ask and never had the courage to.
Until now.
‘Not about Antonio, no. But I want to talk to you about Dad.’
‘Oh? Okay.’
Mark hovered in the doorway. He must have heard Emma’s question, and now he sent them both a gentle smile. He announced that he was ‘just going to pop to the pub’, and left them alone, free to talk openly.
Yet another thing for which she was grateful to Mark.
‘Mum, was it my fault that you and Dad split up? Was it because I got ill?’
‘Oh, Em,’ her mother said. ‘How long have you thought that?’
‘Since it happened,’ Emma admitted guiltily.
‘Oh, my love. No. No, it wasn’t your fault at all—and neither was it because of the cancer,’ she said, both sincerity and sadness in her voice.