But Catherine had never felt less like laughing in her life. For he meant it. He truly meant to run away because he believed that nobody loved him.
And if Marietta had done Catherine the favour of walking in here right now she would have scratched her wicked eyes out.
She went to go to him, needed to go to him and simply hug him to her, wrap him in as much love as she could possibly muster.
Only Vito was there before her—and he was wiser. He didn’t so much as attempt to touch the little boy as he hunkered down on his haunches in front of him. Instead, he began talking in a deep and soft husky Italian.
Santo responded by allowing himself brief—very brief—eye to eye contact with his papà. ‘English,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t speak Italian any more.’
To Vito’s deserving credit, he switched languages without hesitation, though the significance of his son’s rejection must have pierced him like a knife.
‘But where will you go?’ he was asking gently. ‘Have you money for your trip? Would you like me to lend you some?’ he offered when the little boy’s eyes flickered in sudden confusion because something as unimportant as money hadn’t entered into his thoughts while he had been drawing up his plans to run away.
What was in his bag didn’t bear thinking about unless Catherine wanted to weep. But she could hazard a fairly accurate guess at several treasured toys, a couple of his favourite tee shirts and his new trainers, since he didn’t have them on. And tucked away hidden at the bottom of the bag would
be a piece of tatty cotton that the experts would euphemistically call his comforter, though only she was supposed to know about it and he would rather die than let his papà find it.
‘I don’t want your money.’ Vito’s son proudly refused the offer.
‘Breakfast, then,’ Catherine suggested, coming to squat down beside Vito, her eyes the compassionate eyes of a mother who understood exactly what a small boy’s priorities would be. ‘No one should run away without eating a good breakfast first,’ she told him. ‘Come and sit down at the table,’ she urged, holding out an inviting hand to him, ‘and I’ll get you some juice and a bowl of that new cereal you like.’
He ignored the hand. Instead his fiercely guarded brown eyes began flicking from one adult face to the other, and a confused frown began to pucker at his brow. Vito uttered a soft curse beneath his breath as understanding hit him. Catherine was a second behind him before she realised what it was that was holding Santo’s attention so.
And now the tears really did flood her eyes, because it wasn’t Santo’s fault that this had to be the first time in his young memory that his parents’ two faces had appeared in the same living frame in front of him!
An arm suddenly arrived around her shoulders. Warm and strong, the attached hand gave her arm a warning squeeze. As a razor-sharp tactician, famed for thinking on his feet, Vito had few rivals; she knew that. But the way he had quickly assessed the situation and decided on expanding on the little boy’s absorption in their novel togetherness was impressive even to her.
‘We don’t want you to leave us, son...’ As slick as that Vito compounded on the ‘togetherness’.
Santos’s eyes fixed on Catherine. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked, so pathetically in need of reassurance that she had to clench her fists to stop herself from reaching out for him.
‘Of course I do. I love you.’ She stated it simply. She then extended that claim to include Vito. ‘We both love you.’
But Santo was having none of it. ‘Marietta says you don’t,’ he told his father accusingly. ‘Marietta said I was a mistake that just gets in the way.’
‘You must have misunderstood her,’ Vito said grimly.
The son’s eyes flicked into insolence. ‘Marietta said that you hate my mummy because she made you have me,’ he said. ‘She said that’s why you live in Naples and I live here in London, out of your way.’
Vito’s fingers began to dig into Catherine’s shoulder. Did he honestly believe that she would feed her own son this kind of poison when anyone with eyes could see that Santo was tearing himself up with it all?
‘What Marietta says is not important, Santo,’ she inserted firmly. ‘It’s what Papà says and I say that really matters to you. And we both love you very much,’ she repeated forcefully. ‘Would Papà have gone without his sleep to fly himself here through the night just to come and see you if he didn’t love you?’
The remark hit a nerve. Catherine saw the tiny flicker of doubt enter her son’s eyes as he turned them on his father. ‘Why did you come?’ he demanded of Vito outright.
‘Because you would not come to me,’ Vito answered simply. ‘And I miss you when you are not there...’
I miss you when you are not there... For Catherine those few words held such a wealth of love in them that she wanted to weep all over again. Not for Santo this time, but for another little person, one who would always be missed even though he could never be here.
Maybe Vito realised what kind of memory his words had evoked, maybe he was merely responding to the tiny quiver she gave as she tried to contain what was suddenly hurting inside her. But his arm grew heavier across her shoulders and gently he drew her closer to his side.
With no idea what was passing through his mother’s heart, Santo too was responding to all of that love placed into his father’s statement. The small boy let out a sigh that shook mournfully as it left him, but at last some of the stiffness left his body—though he still wasn’t ready to drop his guard. Marietta had hurt him much too deeply for her wicked words to be wiped out by a couple of quick reassurances.
‘Where’s Nonna?’ he asked, clearly deciding it was time to change the subject.
His father refused to let him. ‘I promised her I would bring you back to Naples with me, if I could convince you to come,’ Vito said.
‘I don’t like Naples any more,’ Santo responded instantly. ‘I don’t ever—ever—want to go there again.’