The Marriage Surrender

CHAPTER ONE

‘COULD I s-speak to Alessandro Bonetti, please?’

The public call box smelled of stale cigarettes. Pale-faced, the full length of her slender body muscle-locked by the mettle she needed to make this telephone call, Joanna barely noticed the smell or the unsavoury mess littering the floor beneath her black-booted feet as she stood there clutching the telephone receiver to her ear.

‘Who is calling, please?’ a coolly concise female voice enquired.

‘I’m...’ she began—then stopped, white teeth pressing into her full bottom lip as the answer to that question stuck firmly in her throat.

She couldn’t say it. She just could not bring herself to reveal her true identity to anyone but Alessandro himself when there was a very good chance that he might refuse to speak to her, and in the present state that she was in, she didn’t need some cold-voiced telephonist listening to that little humiliation.

She had been there before...

‘It—it’s a personal call,’ she temporised, closing her eyes on a faint prayer that the reply was enough to get her access to the great man himself.

It wasn’t. ‘I’m afraid I will have to have your name,’ the voice insisted, ‘before I can enquire if Mr Bonetti is available to speak to you.’

Well, at least that stone-walling response placed Sandro in the country. Joanna made a grim note. She had half expected him to have gone back to live and work in Rome by now.

‘Then put me through to his secretary,’ she demanded, ‘and I’ll discuss this further with her.’

There was a pause, one of those taut ones, packed with silent pique at Joanna’s rigidly determined tone. Then, ‘Please hold,’ the voice clipped at her, and the line went quiet.

The seconds began to tick slowly by, taking with them the desperation that had managed to bring her this far. A desperation that had kept her awake last night, trying to come up with some other way to get herself out of this mess without having to involve Sandro. But every which way she’d tried to look at it, it had always come down to two straight choices.

Arthur Bates or Sandro.

A shudder ripped through her, the mere thought of Arthur Bates’ name enough to keep her hanging onto that telephone line, when every self-preserving instinct she possessed was telling her to cut loose and make a bolt into hiding somewhere rather than resort to this.

But she was tired of hiding. Tired of—being this person who stood on her own, isolated by her own inability to reach out to another human being and simply ask for help.

So, here she was, she reminded herself bracingly, ready to ask for that help. Ready to reach out to the only human being she felt she could reach out to. If Sandro said No, get lost, then she would. But she had to give him one last chance—give herself this chance to put her life back together again.

After all, she consoled herself, against the fretful doubts rattling around inside her head, she wasn’t intending dumping permanently on him, was she? She was simply going to put a proposition to him, get his answer, then get the hell out of his life again.

For good. That would be part of her proposition. Help me this one time and I promise never to bother you again.

Easy. Nothing to it. Sandro wasn’t a monster. He was, in actual fact, quite a decent human being. He couldn’t still be feeling bitter towards her, surely? Not after all this time.

Then the telephone suddenly began demanding more money and her self-consolation died a death as a much more familiar panic soared abruptly into life, gushing through her system like a raging flood.

What am I doing? she asked herself frantically. Why am I doing this?

You’re doing this because you’ve got no damned choice! her mind snapped back, so angrily that it jerked her into urgent movement. Her trembling fingers reached out towards the small stack of coins she had piled up in front of her ready to feed into the pay box. She made a grab for the top coin in the stack—and stupidly sent the rest of them scattering so they fell in a chinking shower to the ground.

‘Oh, damn it,’ she muttered, starting to bend to pick up the scattered coins as a voice suddenly sounded down the earpiece.

‘Good morning, Mr Bonetti’s secretary speaking,’ it announced. ‘How may I help you?’

The voice made her shoot upright again. ‘Just a minute,’ she muttered, struggling to feed the only coin she had stopped from falling into the required slot with fingers that decidedly shook. The line cleared and Joanna took another few moments to pull her ragged nerves together. ‘I w-would like to speak to Mr—to Alessandro, please.’ She quickly changed tack, hoping the personal touch might get her past this next obstruction.

It didn’t. ‘I’m afraid I must insist on your name,’ Sandro’s secretary maintained.

Her name. Her teeth gritted together, eyes closing on a fresh bout of indecision. Now what did she do? she asked herself pensively. Tell the truth? Let this woman bear witness to the full depth of Sandro’s refusal, instead of the other cool voice she had spoken to before?