The Secret That Changed Everything

‘Ah, waiter, a bottle of my usual wine, and sparkling water for the lady.’

‘And suppose I would have liked wine,’ she demanded when they were alone.

‘Not for the next few months. It wouldn’t be good for you or the person you’re carrying.’

His use of the word person startled her. How many men saw an unborn child as a person, still less when it had been conceived only a few weeks ago? She knew one woman whose husband referred to ‘that thing inside you’. But to Lucio this was already a person. Instinctively she laid a hand over her stomach.

Then she looked up to find him watching her. He nodded. After a moment she nodded back.

Now she’d had a chance to get her thoughts in order she found her brief hostility dying. She could even appreciate his methods.

When the waiter returned with the drinks Lucio ordered a snack, again without consulting her. But it was hard to take offence when he was ordering the same things she’d enjoyed in the outdoor café at the Trevi Fountain, a few weeks and a thousand lifetimes ago. How had he remembered her taste so perfectly? The discovery made him look slightly different.

Studying him, she discovered another change. The man in Rome had been a flamboyant playboy, handsome, elegantly dressed, ready to relish whatever pleasures came his way. The man in the vineyard that afternoon had worn dark jeans and a sweater, suitable for hard work on the land.

The man sitting here now wore the same clothes but his eyes were tense. His manner was calm, even apparently light-hearted, but there was something else behind it. She sensed apprehension in him, but why was he nervous? Of her? The situation? Himself?

When the waiter had gone he turned back to her.

‘I’m sorry for the way this happened, but I never dreamed you’d just leave like that.’

‘And I thought my leaving was what you wanted. Your silence seemed rather significant.’

‘My silence was the silence of a man who’s been knocked sideways and was trying to get his head together. You tell me something earth-shattering, then you vanish into thin air, and I’m supposed to just shrug?’

‘I guess I thought you were more sophisticated than this.’

‘What you thought was that this kind of thing happened to me every day, didn’t you?’

‘Nonsense,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘Be honest, admit it.’

‘How can I? I don’t know the first thing about you.’

‘Nor I about you,’ he said wryly. ‘That’s our problem, isn’t it? We’ve done it all back to front. Most people get to know a little about each other before they—well, anyway, we skipped that bit and now everything’s different.

‘I didn’t contact you earlier because I was in a state of shock. When I’d pulled myself together I picked up the phone. Then I put it down again. I didn’t know what to say, but I had to see you. I had to know how you feel about what’s happened. Tell me frankly, Charlotte, do you want this baby?’

Aghast, she glared at him. ‘What are you saying? Of course I want it. Are you daring to suggest that I get rid of it? I’d never do that.’

‘No, I didn’t mean—it’s just—’ He seemed to struggle for the right words. ‘Do you really want the child or are you merely making the best of it?’

She drew a slow breath. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it like that. From the moment I knew, it felt inevitable, as though the decision had been taken out of my hands.’

He nodded. ‘That can be a strange feeling, sometimes bad but sometimes good. You get used to planning life, but then suddenly life makes the plans and orders you to follow them.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

‘And maybe it can be better that way. It can save a lot of trouble.’

‘You’ll have me believing that you’re a fatalist.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said quietly. ‘Things happen, and when you think you’ve come to terms with it something else happens and you have to start the whole process again.’

‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Nothing is ever really the way we thought it was, is it?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s true, and somehow we have to find our way through the maze.’

She turned to meet his eyes and saw in them a confusion that matched her own.

‘I can hardly believe you’re pregnant,’ he said. ‘You look as slim as ever.’

‘I’m two and a half months gone. That’s too early for it to show, but it’ll start soon.’

‘When did you know?’

‘A few weeks ago. I was late, and when I checked—’ she shrugged ‘—that was it.’

She waited for him to demand why she hadn’t approached him sooner, but he sat in silence. She was glad. It would have been hard for her to describe the turmoil of emotions that had stormed through her in the first days after the discovery. They had finally calmed, but she’d found herself in limbo, uncertain what to do next.

When she’d discovered his likely location she hadn’t headed straight there. Her mind seemed to be in denial, refusing to believe she was really pregnant. Any day now it would turn out to be a mistake. She’d continued her trip around Italy, heading back south but avoiding Rome and going right down to Messina, then crossing the water to the island of Sicily, where she spent a month before returning north.

At last she faced the truth. She was carrying Lucio’s child. So she went to find him, telling herself she was ready for anything. But his response, or lack of it, had stunned her. Now here she was, wishing she was anywhere else on earth.

From the river below came the sound of a young woman screaming with laughter. Glancing down Charlotte saw the girl fooling blissfully with her lover before they vanished under the bridge. Lucio watched her, noticing how the glittering yellow burnished her face, so that for a moment she looked not like a woman but like a golden figurine, enticing, mysterious, capable of being all things to all men, or nothing to any man.

‘So tell me what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘Tell me how it looks to you, and where you see the path leading.’

‘I can’t answer that. I see a dozen paths leading in different directions, and I won’t know which one is the right one until we’ve talked.’

‘If I hadn’t turned up just now where were you headed?’