‘I’ll see myself out.’
There was another pause, a whitening around his mouth.
‘Look after yourself, Carla.’
Then he was gone, and she could hear him walking across her living room, reaching her front door. For a second, an infinity of horror, she froze. Then, muscles bunching, she hurled herself from the bed like a tornado, tore after him. Naked—completely naked. As naked as her soul.
Her eyes blazed like furnaces. A single word shot from her.
‘Why?’
He turned. There was no expression in his face. It was tight and closed as the great oaken doors of his castello. Guarding him against all who might invade. He had not let her invade. Would not permit her to do so.
He answered her now, his voice steady, unemotional. As it had to be. As it was essential for it to be. He would tell her what he had had to tell himself. Rigid discipline held him to his course, as if he were urgently steering his car out of an aquaplane that would otherwise send him crashing down into a bottomless crevasse.
This had to be done. It had to be said—had to.
‘You said yourself, Carla, that you’ve always known the score with me. As I said, I gave you full credit for that.’ He took a breath. ‘Full credit for understanding “why”.’ His mouth thinned. ‘I have to marry. I’ve always had to marry. I’ve always had an
...understanding...’
Was there irony in his repetition? He was beyond irony—beyond everything right now except knowing that his only urge was to get away, not to see her standing there, her body naked—the body he had possessed. Still wanted to possess...
‘An understanding,’ he said, ‘for many years. And whilst my...my fiancée...’ He said the word as if it were alien to him, in a language he did not comprehend, had never needed to speak till now. ‘My fiancée has shared that understanding, she has had her own interests to pursue till now. She’s been living in America, but now she needs to decide whether to stay there...or come home. To fulfil the...the understanding...we have always had.’
He took another breath. Every word he was speaking seemed to be impossible to say. It was a clash of worlds and he was crushed between them.
‘She’s now made her decision, and it is to return to Italy. Therefore...’ he swallowed ‘...I must part with you. I apologise that I could not give you more warning, but...’ He took another heavy breath. ‘She’s flying to Italy tomorrow, to visit her parents, and naturally they will want to hear her decision. And then...’ His expression changed again. ‘Then they will all be visiting me at the Castello Mantegna, where our engagement will be formally announced.’
She stared at him.
Her eyes were stretched, distended. ‘Do you love her?’
It seemed the only question she could ask. The only one in the entire universe.
Her voice was thin, like wire pulled too fine. It grated—grated on him. What place had ‘love’ in his life? None that he could permit.
A look of impatience, of rejection, passed over his face. ‘Love is an irrelevance. Francesca and I are...well-suited.’
For a second—just a second—his eyes searched hers. He took a breath, forcing himself to say what he did not want to say, did not want to face.
‘Carla, if you have ever fancied yourself to feel for me anything at all...’ His mouth tightened, his hand on the doorjamb clenching. ‘You must know I never invited any such feelings from you—never consciously or unconsciously sought them. I never, Carla, gave you any indication whatsoever that there could be anything between us other than what has been. Acquit me of any accusations to the contrary. We had an affair. Nothing more. It could never have been anything more. You knew that as well as I.’
Long lashes dipped over his lidded, expressionless eyes—eyes that slayed her like a basilisk’s lethal glance.
‘I must go,’ he said.
And he went.
Walked through the door. Leaving her. Closing the door behind him.
The noise seemed to echo in the silence. A silence that spread like toxic waste after the deadly poison of his words to her. That lasted until, timeless moments later, a strange, unearthly keening started in her throat...
* * *
‘Carla! Open the door!’
Her mother’s voice came on her voicemail. Continued loudly.