‘I’ve treated you abominably.’
‘Yes.’ When he didn’t fill the silence, she said, ‘Well...?’
‘Well?’
‘Your apology?’
‘I thought I had...’
She shook her head.
He nodded as if to himself then met her stare. ‘I’m sorry for how I treated you. It was cruel and I behaved as you rightly called me, as a pompous ass. I make no excuses. I didn’t think you were right for Marcelo or for our family.’
The mention of Marcelo’s name made her bruised heart flutter. ‘Does he know you’re here?’
‘No. I thought it best not to tell him. He’s not in a good place. He still hasn’t cancelled the wedding. He can’t let go of the hope that you’ll come back to him.’ His eyes narrowed and his speech slowed. ‘I thought he was in denial, but now I see you, I think I’m the one who’s wrong. You look terrible.’
Her heart was fluttering madly now.
‘Thank you,’ she croaked.
A faint glimmer of a smile appeared. ‘He looks terrible too. You have matching eye bags.’
‘Have you finished doling out the compliments?’
She almost caught a glimpse of white teeth.
‘Yes, I am done, but I do have one more thing to say. Against my best advice, which did result in him punching me in the stomach, Marcelo will be at the altar tomorrow, waiting for you. If you come to your senses and decide to marry him, you will find no objection from me. I will welcome you into our family as I should have done from the start.’
Clara kicked the bedsheets off for the hundredth time that night. The sun filtering through the cheap curtains told her it was now morning. She didn’t know why she’d bothered going to bed at all. Far from feeling any better, she felt decidedly worse.
Bleary-eyed, she threw some clothes on, took Bob, who’d been just as unsettled throughout the night, outside, then went into the restaurant for a cup of strong coffee. She couldn’t stomach the thought of food, but Bob needed to eat and the hotel was good enough to provide meals for dogs. Once he’d wolfed his food down and she’d downed another coffee, she took him for his walk and tried to muster some of her old enthusiasm.
Heading towards the sprawling woodland park that all the local dog walkers seemed to favour, she was passing one of Ceres’s many churches when it turned ten a.m. Each peel of the bell made her heart shudder and her brain leap to the person whose face had kept her from sleeping.
He would, at this moment, be getting ready for their wedding.
It was a thought that made her feel wretched.
The church clocks struck eleven as she headed back to the dreary hotel.
One hour.
When would he arrive at the chapel? How long would he stand there before he gave up and understood in his heart that she wasn’t coming?
It was the thought of Marcelo standing at the altar waiting for the bride that would never come that filled her head as she trudged up the hotel stairs to her room. It made her heart hurt, made it bleed, and as she opened her door she stepped into a pool of strong sunlight filtering through the window.
Her life before Marcelo had been happy. She’d been relentless in her happiness, a state of mind she’d forced herself to inhabit. She’d had her job and her dogs. She’d been content with a future that consisted of being a grey-haired spinster. She hadn’t felt that she’d been missing out on anything.
She’d been in denial.
Sinking onto the bed, she lifted Bob onto her lap and ran her fingers through his soft fur.
Like her canine friends, Clara had lived for the moment.
Many of the dogs at her sanctuary had been mistreated and, while they too lived for the moment, thinking no further than their immediate needs, the mental scars of their mistreatment would show themselves whenever they felt threatened. One Labrador’s owner had worn black boots whenever he kicked him. That Labrador was the sweetest creature but the sight of a pair of black boots would make him cower.
Isn’t that what she’d been doing? Hiding herself from all the emotional blows, cowering from anything that could truly hurt her again because Marcelo was right; she’d had to navigate the grief of her mother on her own and, not having the tools to deal with it, she’d swallowed it down deep inside her and smothered it, and then dealt with every blow and rejection that came after in the same way.