But, two weeks after Amelia had turned up on his doorstep, Cameron came home from school with a torn shirt pocket.
‘What happened?’ Santos reached out and ran his finger over it, something in the little boy’s demeanour instinctively leading him to understand the seriousness of this.
‘Nothing.’ Cameron crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Cameron?’ Santos’s voice was unintentionally sharp. He softened it with effort. ‘I cannot help you if I don’t know—’
‘Just leave me alone.’ Cameron burst into tears and stormed down the corridor, slamming his bedroom door shut.
Great.
He listened to the little boy’s sobbing and pressed his head against the wall. Everything was falling apart. A year ago his life had been ordered and neat. He’d been absorbed by his work, his commercial success a blinding light, and he’d enjoyed his social life too—sex, friendships; easy. He’d been happy.
He pushed up from the wall a little, his chest straining. No, he hadn’t been happy. He’d been existing. The only time he’d ever really been happy was on the island, over the summer. That beautiful, enormous mansion that was his connection to his heritage, a place where he was most at home, had suddenly felt like a real home. Returning each evening to Amelia and Cameron had become what he’d lived for. Knowing that within minutes of his helicopter touching down he would see Amelia, that he would be able to steal a kiss when Cameron wasn’t looking.
His stomach clenched. Her smile had become the most important thing in his life. But she wasn’t smiling now. She was miserable, and all because she’d fallen in love with him.
Just like the women who’d loved his father.
Pain was the inevitable cost of love. How could she fail to see that? Why hadn’t she protected herself better? Even her own parents had failed her, so why the hell had she put her faith in him? How could she have thought loving him was a smart idea?
Because she couldn’t help it; a voice in his head demanded to be heard. Love isn’t like that.
He listened to Cameron’s sobs subsiding a little, and then went into the kitchen, pulling out a box of ice-creams and opening one. Even that filled him with memories.
Maybe if he’d been stricter from the start, enforced tighter caps on what they were, rationed Amelia to being a ‘sometimes’ lover... Perhaps if he’d come home later, made sure that while they’d been sleeping together they weren’t also dining together, working side by side, doing all the things that might in different circumstances have characterised a real family...
He felt like he’d been punched in the chest. He didn’t want a real family. But he did want Amelia. He wanted her in his life, smiling, happy, pursuing her dreams but at his side.
But then what? another voice niggled at him. What if in a year’s time they wound up in this exact same position? What if he was even more like his father than he realised? What if he promised her the world and then changed his mind?
He knocked on Cameron’s door.
‘Go away.’
‘I have ice-cream.’
A pause. A sob. Then the door handle opened to reveal his son’s tear-stained face. Santos felt an anguish unlike anything he’d ever known. He wanted Amelia on a lot of levels but there was this, too. With her at his side, everything made sense, and he knew he was a better parent with her support. It was only a small part of why he needed her, but it was the straw that had brok
en the camel’s back.
He wanted her, but this time he’d be more careful. He’d protect her better. What he needed was a contract, a document that spelled everything out in black and white, a way of ensuring she wouldn’t get hurt this time around.
* * *
This had been a mistake. Amelia was a scientist first and a teacher next. She was, as it turned out, definitely not a cook. She stared at the front of her apron, covered in a pale yellow goo, and turned the tap on with her elbow. Water spurted out too hard, splashing her face. She ground her teeth together and eased the tap off, pushing her hands beneath the stream then adding some soap and lathering them up.
‘Make pasta, they said. It will be easy, they said.’ She cast an eye over the tragedy of her chopping board. Whatever the heck she’d assembled, it more closely resembled some kind of blobby sea creature than it did anything edible.
When her hands were clean, she moved back to the chopping board—the mess wasn’t contained to one patch of timber, though. It had spread over the kitchen bench. Flour, broken eggs, a rolling pin that would probably never look the same. The television chef with his cockney accent and roguish smile had made it look so easy.
He’d lied.
It wasn’t easy.
Grimacing, she lifted the chopping board, preparing to throw the evidence of her failure away, when the doorbell sounded. Casting a glance at the clock, she replaced the board and wiped her hands on the sides of the apron, making sure they were dry.
The supplies she’d ordered for her pupils were already two days later than expected. That had to be them. She moved through her home, not stopping to check her appearance in the mirror—she knew she must look a mess, with flour on her cheeks and in her hair, wearing a sloppy jumper and loose-fitting jeans, but what did she care?