A Dangerous Solace

Across the road Ava could see women in tiny scraps of nothing much going happily into the popular nightspot. She shoved money at the driver, took a breath and launched herself out of the cab. The cool air licked around her legs and she almost dived back in.

She knew she was being silly. The burgundy red cocktail dress came to her knees and covered her shoulders and arms. It was perfectly acceptable. Perhaps it clung to her long thighs as she moved, and her calves in black stockings felt exposed as she made her way across the road, heels clicking on the pavement, but nobody was going to laugh at her and point.

As she approached the glass front of the upmarket nightclub she began to feel a little differently. The pulsing blue and gold neon lights gave a dreamlike quality to the atmosphere, and far from feeling on show she realised for once that with her hair and her dress and her heels she fitted right in. There was nothing show-offish about her appearance.

She had a very real fear of making a spectacle of herself in public. Growing up, she had seen her mum’s illness provide far too many opportunities for that to happen. She had set up her life to avoid social situations as much as possible, but tonight she didn’t have much choice.

The doorman said something pleasant to her in Italian and Ava found herself inside, waiting behind the other patrons, relieved she had dressed up. For the umpteenth time her fingers went to the ends of her hair.

This afternoon she’d taken her long brown plait to the hairdresser, and after a process of a great deal of pointing and gesturing her hair was now swinging with more bounce and life than it had ever had around her shoulders. She’d left that hairdresser feeling as chic as any Roman woman, very modern, and in control of her own destiny once more.

As with cutting several inches off her hair, it had been her choice to wear a cocktail dress. That it was brand-new, bought today, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a frock had absolutely nothing to do with a man this morning telling her she had forgotten how to be a woman.

She couldn’t see him anyhow as she came down the steps and made her way slowly through the crowded bar. Confusion assailed her. Should she wait? Should she ask for his table? Worryingly, the place seemed to be full of beautiful women not wearing very much clothing. She couldn’t possibly compete.

As if to hammer this home a glamorous blonde slunk past her on stab-your-heart-out heels, scantily clad in a dress that looked sewn on. Ava followed her progress, along with every man in the vicinity, although her thoughts—She must be cold—probably didn’t align with theirs.

Perhaps she’d over-estimated the transformative powers of a new hairstyle?

Feeling her confidence slipping away, Ava scanned the room, spotted the winding stairs at either end. There was another level. She caught sight of the blonde making her wiggly way up and up. Should she go upstairs? Should she ask for his table?

For the first time it occurred to Ava with a stab of unease that the invitation had been general, more along the lines of come along—enjoy yourself. Not specific—not I find you attractive, perhaps even on some subliminal level remember you, and I want to spend some time with you. It was entirely possible she had misinterpreted him.

Yes, Ava, you’ve got it wrong again...

But in that moment she caught sight of a dark-haired woman in a burgundy dress staring back at her across the room. Her eyes were made up with kohl and lashings of mascara, dark and mysterious, her mouth was a vivid splash of red colour like a full-blown rose, explosive and passionate. She was something other than beautiful. She was dramatic.

It wasn’t until she lifted her fingertips once more to her hair that Ava experienced the little shock of recognition. It was a mirrored wall. The woman staring back at her was—well, her.

She ignored the thundering voices that told her she was lining herself up for a fall and made her way upstairs.

* * *

Marco handed him a fresh beer. ‘To the future.’

This was the first time Gianluca had been able to catch up with his cousin since the massive wedding back in Ragusa. They’d played professional football together in their early twenties. Marco had been dropped due to injury; Gianluca had cut his contract at the height of his career and fame to perform the military service expected of a Benedetti male.

He was still feeling the reverberations of that early shot at sporting immortality. Soccer was his country’s religion, and for two short years he had been its idol—Rome’s favourite son—and nobody let him forget it.

‘Your future,’ he amended, and scanned the room for the bride. Sure enough she was nearby, deep in a huddle with her girlfriends. She was also noticeably pregnant. She saw them and made her way over.

‘We were just toasting the Benedetti heir,’ Gianluca informed her, kissing each warm cheek she proffered gently.

‘That’s your son, not mine,’ Marco reminded him.

‘There aren’t going to be any, my friend. So drink up.’

‘According to Valentina there will be.’

‘You’ll fall in love, Gianluca,’ said Tina Trigoni, fitting herself into the curve of her husband’s arm. She barely came up to his shoulder. ‘And before you know it you’ll have six sons and six daughters. You’d better,’ she added. ‘I have no intention of sacrificing my children to the Benedetti legacy.’

‘Valentina—’ began Marco, but Gianluca gave her a faint smile.

‘Glad you’ve been paying attention, Tina.’

‘Although you’ll never settle down while you date these bubbleheads.’

He lifted a brow.

‘Women with bubbles over their heads—like in the cartoons,’ said Tina, making an illustrative gesture. ‘Blank bubbles for other people to fill the words in.’

Gianluca privately acknowledged she wasn’t far off the mark. But then he wasn’t looking for a mother for his children.

‘You’ve been talking to my mother.’

‘God, no. I’m not that brave. You do know she thinks a twenty-year-old Sicilian virgin would fill the nursery? I heard her talking to your sisters about it.’

Marco snorted. ‘Does your mother know you at all?’

Did his mother know him? Hardly. And that was the point. The Benedettis threw their boys out to be raised like Romulus and Remus in Rome’s foundation myth, to be suckled by the she-wolf of the military until they came of age.

His mother had conformed to the Benedetti traditions like all the women who came before her and expected him to do the same.

No, his mother didn’t know him—at all.

‘Find me a wife then, Tina,’ he said derisively. ‘A good, plump Sicilian virgin and I’ll follow all the customs.’

‘Find you a wife and thousands of hopeful women will weep,’ Marco observed, swigging his beer.

But Valentina looked interested. ‘I don’t know about virgins—are there any left over the age of twenty-one?’

Completely out of nowhere his mind reverted to a pair of unusual green eyes. There were some, he thought. Once. A long time ago.

‘But frankly, Gianluca, I don’t know if I should introduce any of my friends to you. It’s not as if you’re ever serious about a woman.’

‘Her friends are queuing up to be introduced,’ inserted Marco. ‘I’m glad I don’t make the kind of money you do.’

‘Yes, because then I would have married you for your money,’ said Valentina lightly, ‘instead of for your charm.’ She gave her husband a smart look. ‘Besides, I don’t think they’re entirely after his money, caro.’

Gianluca listened to Marco and his wife banter and for a moment acknowledged that this was what he would miss. All going well, Marco and Tina would grow old together, nurse grandchildren on their laps, reminisce about a life well lived.

In forty years’ time... He came to a dead stop. The way he was going he’d be a rich man in an empty castle. He looked past the happy couple and saw only his parents’ screaming matches, their empty lives performed on the stage set that was the Palazzo Benedetti. One of the most admired pieces of private real estate in Rome. If only people knew the generations of unhappy women who haunted its corridors.

His own mother had been a stunningly beautiful hot-blooded girl from the hills outside Ragusa. Maria Trigoni had married into the social stratosphere and contorted herself into the role of Roman principessa. She had played fitfully at being wife and mother when she hadn’t been completely taken up with her lovers or her much-desired role in society.

Her only real loyalty was to her family in the south—the Trigonis. Marco’s father was her brother. She would vanish down there for long periods of time. He remembered each one of those disappearances like cuts to his back. The first time it had happened he’d been three and had cried for a week. The second time he’d been six and had been beaten for his tears. When he was ten he’d tried to telephone his mother in Ragusa but she’d refused to take his call.

Privately Gianluca suspected the moment a woman put on the Benedetti wedding tiara she lost a bit of her soul. So sue him—he wouldn’t be passing on that little tradition.