But Keira was already pushing her way out of the shop, the cold air hitting the tears which had begun streaming down her cheeks. Her vision blurred and she stumbled a little and might have fallen if a steady arm hadn’t caught her elbow.
‘Are you okay?’ a female voice was saying.
Was she okay? No, she most definitely was not. Keira nodded, looking up at a woman with platinum hair who was wearing a leopard-skin-print coat. ‘I’m fine. I just need to get home,’ she husked.
‘Not like that, you’re not. You’re not fit to go anywhere,’ s
aid the woman firmly. ‘Let me buy you a drink. You look like you could use one.’
Still shaken, Keira allowed herself to be led into the bright interior of the Dog and Duck where music was playing and the smell of mulled wine filled her nostrils. The woman went up to the bar and returned minutes later with a glass of a brown mixture resembling medicine, which was pushed across the scratched surface of the table towards her.
‘What’s this?’ Keira mumbled, lifting the glass and recoiling from the fumes.
‘Brandy.’
‘I don’t like brandy.’
‘Drink it. You look like you’re in shock.’
That much was true. Keira took a large and fiery swallow and the weird thing was that she did feel better afterwards. Disorientated, yes—but better.
‘So where did you get the money from?’ the blonde was asking. ‘Did you rob a bank or something? I was in the charity shop when you came in and handed it over. Pretty dramatic gesture, but a lovely thing to do, I must say—especially at this time of the year.’
Afterwards Keira thought that if she hadn’t had the brandy then she might not have told the sympathetic blonde the whole story, but the words just started tumbling out of her mouth and they wouldn’t seem to stop. Just like the tears which had preceded them. It was only when the woman’s eyes widened when she came out with the punchline about how Matteo had left her a stack of money and done a runner that she became aware that something in the atmosphere had changed.
‘So he just disappeared? Without a word?’
‘Well, he left a note.’
‘May I see it?’
Keira put the brandy glass down with a thud. ‘No.’
There was a pause. ‘He must be very rich,’ observed the blonde. ‘To be able to be carrying around that kind of money.’
Keira shrugged. ‘Very.’
‘And good-looking, I suppose?’
Keira swallowed. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
The blonde’s heavily made-up eyes narrowed. ‘Hunky Italian billionaires don’t usually have to pay women for sex.’
It was hearing someone else say it out loud which made it feel a million times worse—something Keira hadn’t actually thought possible. She rose unsteadily to her feet, terrified she was going to start gagging. ‘I... I’m going home now,’ she whispered. ‘Please forget I said anything. And...thanks for the drink.’
Somehow she managed to get home unscathed, where her cold, bare bedsit showed no signs of the impending holiday. She’d been so busy that she hadn’t even bought herself a little tree, but that now seemed like the least of her worries. She realised she hadn’t checked her phone messages since she’d got back and found a terse communication from her aunt, asking her what time she was planning on turning up on Christmas Day and hoping she hadn’t forgotten to buy the pudding.
The pudding! Now she would have to brave the wretched shops again. Keira closed her eyes as she pictured the grim holiday which lay ahead of her. How was she going to get through a whole Christmas, nursing the shameful secret of what she’d done?
Her phone began to ring, the small screen flashing an unknown number; in an effort to distract herself with the inevitable sales call, Keira accepted the call with a tentative hello. There was an infinitesimal pause before a male voice spoke.
‘Keira?’
It was a voice she hadn’t known until very recently but she thought that rich, Italian accent would be branded on her memory until the end of time. Dark and velvety, it whispered over her skin just as his fingers had done. Matteo! And despite everything—the wad of money and the blandly worded note and the fact that he’d left without even saying goodbye—wasn’t there a great lurch of hope inside her foolish heart? She pictured his ruffled hair and the dark eyes which had gleamed with passion when they’d looked at her. The way he’d crushed his lips hungrily down on hers, and that helpless moment of bliss when he’d first entered her.
‘Matteo?’
Another pause—and if a silence could ever be considered ominous, this one was. ‘So how much did she pay you?’ he questioned.