Alice turned away from Cristiano’s satirical expression. ‘Yes, it’s all happened very quickly and—’
‘See?’ Her mother sounded smug. ‘I told you love hits you out of the blue. When you meet the right one you just know. When’s the wedding? I’ll have to get something flash to wear. Will you be able to help me pay for something? I don’t want to look frumpish. But for God’s sake don’t invite your father. You’ll have to get someone else to walk you down the aisle. Not that he’s been a proper father to you anyway, running off with that woman when you were barely out of nappies and carrying on about paying maintenance for all those years. Why you have to have a relationship with him now after all those years of no contact, I will never know. I won’t go if he’s there.’
‘Mum, there’s not going to be a big wedding,’ Alice said, mentally rolling her eyes at her mother’s usual tirade about her father. Twenty-six years was a long time to be bitter, especially as her dad hadn’t had an easy time of it since, bringing up a disabled child with his most recent partner. ‘We’re having a low-key ceremony. We don’t want a lot of guests. We just want to keep things simple to make it more...meaningful.’
‘Oh, well, if you’re too ashamed to have your own mother at your wedding then so be it,’ her mother said in a wounded tone. ‘I know I’m not posh like some of your precious clients, but I’m the one who brought you into the world and made every sacrifice I could to give you a decent childhood.’
A decent childhood?
Alice wanted to scream in frustration. Nothing about her childhood had been decent. Her mother was the type of woman who didn’t feel complete without a man in her life. Any man. It didn’t matter how bad he was, as long as he fulfilled the role of male partner. During her childhood Alice hadn’t known who would be at their flat when she got home from school. There had been a revolving door on her mother’s bedroom in her quest to find ‘The One’.
There had been numerous partners over the years, two of whom subsequently became husbands. The second husband after Alice’s father had been a financial control freak and heavy drinker who used his fists and filthy tongue when he didn’t get his own way. The third had made a pass at Alice the day her mother introduced her to him, and stolen money from her purse on two other occasions. Alice refused on principle to attend their wedding as a result. And since the wedding, her mother had been subjected to constant put-downs and fault-finding, and such financial hardship she regularly called on Alice for handouts. But if ever Alice said anything about her mother’s partner she would defend him as if he were Husband of the Year.
‘Mum, I really can’t talk now,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you when I get back from my...holiday.’ She hung up and slipped her phone back in her bag.
Cristiano was looking at her with a thoughtful expression. ‘You okay?’
Alice relaxed her stiff frown but she could see he wasn’t fooled for a second. She blew out a breath. ‘My mother and I don’t agree on some things...lots of things, actually.’
‘She didn’t ask to meet me?’
Alice gave him a wry twist of her mouth. ‘As long as you’re male you tick the box as far as she is concerned.’
His frown formed a crevasse between his dark eyes. ‘But you’re her only child. Why wouldn’t she insist on meeting the man who’s going to be your husband?’
‘She’s not the overprotective type. Anyway, I’m an adult. I’m old enough to make my own decisions.’
‘Did you tell her about us when you came back from Italy after we broke up?’
Alice thought back to that time, how angry she had been, and how that anger, once she had cooled down, had turned to a deeper hurt. But her mother had been in the process of separating from her second husband who had found another partner—a woman only a year older than Alice.
Alice had spent hours and hours listening to her mother lament the loss of another marriage—how she was losing the love of her life and how she wouldn’t be able to survive without him, blah, blah, blah. Alice had suppressed her feelings about her own breakup and channelled her energies into getting her mother through the divorce process, and then on starting up her own beauty business. There hadn’t been time to examine too closely how she felt about Cristiano.
Maybe that had been a mistake...
‘We don’t have that sort of relationship,’ Alice said. ‘Not all mothers and daughters are best friends.’
‘What about your father? Do you ever see him?’
‘I didn’t use to,’ Alice said. ‘But he tracked me down a couple of years ago. We meet up occasionally. Mostly when he needs money.’
Why did you tell him that?
His frown deepened. ‘You don’t give it to him, do you?’
Alice didn’t want to go into the complex details of her relationship with her father. Charles call-me-Chas Piper was a happy-go-lucky charmer who, in spite of everything he had done and not done as a father, she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for. He was a hobby gambler and a regular drinker, but to his credit—after years of abandoning partners once he got bored—he had stayed with the young woman he’d married a few years ago. They had a son with severe autism and money was always tight on getting little Sam the support and care he needed.
Alice was a soft touch when it came to people with special needs. She told herself the money she gave to her father was for Sam, even though deep down she knew some of it would be spent on other things. But she figured her father and his partner Tania surely deserved something for themselves after everything they had been through. ‘He’s my father. He’s not a bad person—just an unlucky one.’
‘Unlucky in what way?’
Alice shook her hair back and readjusted the strap of her bag over her shoulder. ‘Are we done? I have to get back to work. I have back-to-back clients this afternoon.’
Cristiano held her gaze for a long moment. ‘I’ll be around tonight. I’ll bring dinner.’
Alice sent him a reproachful look. ‘Here’s a lesson in manners for you. What you say is: Would you be free this evening? I would like to bring you dinner. See? Not that hard, is it?’