‘Is everything good with you?’ Sybil asked, her keen gaze probing Jo’s strained smile.
‘Everything’s marvellous,’ Jo swore.
After telling that lie, Jo couldn’t face going inside Belvedere when she got home. That would mean dealing with the fallout from her bitter exchange with Gianni. It was a pleasant light evening and she decided to walk down to the lake instead of going directly indoors.
The lake path was shaded by trees, and she was glad of her cardigan because it was cool. The waning light left long stretches of the lake in darkness and it was a little eerie. In daylight it was beautiful though, a tranquil expanse of water surrounded by trees and leafy water plants. A duck fluttered up out of the undergrowth at her approach and she flinched and gasped. Her invasion caused a noisy exodus of birds and a bunch of them surged across the path and into the water. She sat down on the bench her grandfather had installed for his fishing.
The faint thud of steps on the grassy path made her look up as a long, tall shadow blocked her view of the lake. ‘Gianni?’ she wheezed in surprise.
‘I saw you walk down in this direction and wondered where you were going. You never come down here,’ he murmured with a frown. ‘Yet when you think about it, this is virtually where we started. Not the best of memories but the experience created a bizarre link between us, didn’t it?’
Her stomach hollowed as she remembered him walking into the lake that day and she looked up at him with wide, troubled eyes.
‘You never betrayed me. You never told my secret,’ Gianni mused reflectively. ‘It makes me wonder why I’ve been so reluctant to trust you.’
‘I didn’t really understand what I’d seen you do until I was a bit older. I just thought you were being foolish.’
‘Iwasfoolish...and out of my mind with grief,’ Gianni sliced in heavily. ‘My mother provided the only warmth and softness in my life and I couldn’t face the future without her. I was angry and bitter that I didn’t get to be with her at the end. When I walked into the lake, I didn’t want to come out of it again. I was very intense, an all-or-nothing teenager.’
‘Yes,’ Jo agreed ruefully. ‘After you rescued me, you looked at me like you hated me because I’d stopped you in your tracks.’
‘I would have drowned if it had not been for you. What on earth possessed you to go into the lake to try to reach me?’
Jo tensed, for she had often asked herself that same question. ‘It was instinctive. I felt so desperately sorry for you because you’d lost your mum. I was a good swimmer, only unfortunately I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing. I only knew that you walking into the lake like that was very dangerous and I wanted to stop you.’
‘So, you got into the water yourself and almost drowned before I contrived to fish you out.’ Gianni groaned as he crouched down fluidly in front of her, his stunning dark golden eyes alight with emotion. ‘Jo, you have too much heart...it was a crazy but very brave thing for a little girl to do.’
‘I wasn’t expecting the weeds and I got all tangled up and then I panicked,’ Jo recalled hoarsely.
‘You made such a commotion in the water that I realised I wasn’t alone and struck out to see what was happening. I saw you sinking below the surface, that red jacket you were wearing ballooning up round you.’
‘You saved my life,’ she whispered.
‘But you saved mine as well,’ Gianni pointed out levelly, closing a lean hand over her knotted fingers. ‘It must’ve been fate... How else can you explain us being together now?’
Jo lifted her head, faint amusement dancing in her eyes. ‘Careful, Gianni...you almost sound romantic.’
‘Why did you never tell anyone about what you saw me do that day?’ he asked wryly.
‘I didn’t want to get you into trouble. I mean, I knew what you did was stupid, but I found your father scary back then and I assumed you’d be punished even though you’d lost your mother.’ Jo sighed. ‘It was just easier all round to let everybody believe that you’d seen me in the water and gone in to rescue me.’
‘The last thing I wanted that day was to be christened a hero when I didn’t deserve the accolades.’
‘But you did deserve them because youdidsave me,’ Jo contended gently. ‘We kind of saved each other.’
‘Yet, right now, it feels like I’ve blown everything apart with you,’ he breathed tautly. ‘That’s not what I intended when I married you. I did want to make a go of this.’
‘We both do,’ she conceded gently as he vaulted upright and pulled her up with him. ‘So,talk...fill in all the blanks for me.’
‘It was first love,’ Gianni explained flatly as he walked her back in the direction of the house. ‘I don’t know if Felicity—Fliss—was the love of my life exactly, because I was only nineteen and in my second year at uni when I met her and her sister. Fliss and Fiona were identical twins. She was studying art history. I fell madly in love with her. We hung around in a group.’
‘Most of us do at university,’ she chipped in, disconcerted to learn that the Fiona he was still in touch with was his ex-girlfriend’s identical twin sister. ‘I bet you were really popular because you’re clever, rich and sporty.’
‘I did have a lot of friends,’ he conceded.
‘What was Fliss like?’
‘She was tall with long dark curly hair, obsessed with art, always dragging me off to exhibitions. I faked my interest. I’m not particularly into art,’ he confided. ‘She liked to cook, she liked to feel that she was looking after me. She thought I worked too hard, but then I had Federico at home, questioning even a hint of a lower grade in any subject.’