‘You should go,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s bad luck to see me on the morning of the wedding.’
‘We’ve had our share of bad luck,’ he said. ‘How is your father this morning?’ he asked, and this time she didn’t accuse him of not caring.
She knew that he did.
‘He will live to see his daughter jilted.’
Luka sat down beside her.
Paulo would know why he could not go through with the wedding. It should not be her father who would have to explain things to Sophie. It was for that reason he sat down to tell her, and braced himself for the most difficult conversation of his life.
‘Why do you hate me, Luka?’
‘As I said before, there are many reasons.’ It should be odd that he took her hand to break her heart, but to Sophie it wasn’t. ‘Remember the night we parted? How angry you were, how you refused to give me a chance to explain? How you compared me to my father?’
‘I was nineteen years old then.’
‘No, Sophie, that’s my excuse when I go over that time,’ Luka said. ‘I was younger, I was just out of prison, I had no idea what was going on. I had said things in court that I regretted, things I know I would handle better if they happened today. I’d run rings around that barrister now.’
‘I know that you would.’
‘I’ve changed,’ Luka said. ‘You haven’t.’
‘You mean I’m not sophisticated enough for you?’
‘I mean your fire remains.’ He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes. ‘That is how long it takes for you to make up your mind, Sophie—you decide things in an instant and nothing will change your mind.’
It was true, Sophie knew, for almost the second he had opened the door to her she had fallen in love and nothing had dimmed that.
‘Almost nothing changes my mind,’ Sophie refuted. ‘I regret the words I said. I was confused, I was hurting...’
‘I know that,’ Luka said. ‘How long did it take for you to see things from my side? To calm down?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nearly five years,’ Luka said. ‘It has taken you until we are on our knees, till we are all but over, for you to see things from my side.’
‘No, I knew almost straight away.’
‘What did you do about it?’ Luka challenged. ‘Did you try to look me up in London? Did you do anything to let me know that you were wrong?’
‘No.’
‘Only now will you admit that you can see things from my side, that you were wrong.’
‘Are you saying that I have to be perfect?’
‘No,’ Luka said, ‘I love your stubbornness. You would argue the sky was purple. I love your fire and that you are pure Sicilian yet it is what will ultimately tear us apart.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Is it because I lied?’
‘Tell me your lies,’ Luka said. ‘Let’s do this once and for all. Tell me your lies and secrets and I’ll tell you mine.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the truth can’t hurt us any more than this does.’
‘I’m poor,’ Sophie said. ‘Bella and I are as poor as church mice and we fooled you with my wardrobe and phone.’
Luka just smiled.
‘You knew that?’
‘Not really. Though I did wonder about you being an events manager,’ Luka admitted.
‘I’m a chambermaid.’
‘You were when I met you.’
She loathed that she hadn’t moved on but he melted that fear with four words. ‘I loved you then.’
‘You don’t care?’
‘I don’t care about money and things. I admit that I like not having to worry about it and, yes, I like nice things but, at the end of day, if it all falls into the ocean I would survive without it. My father had more money that a team of accountants can trace and yet he was the poorest man I have ever known.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For not being there for his funeral.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does. My father has done a lot of things wrong but I still love him.’
‘My father did worse.’
‘The hurt is more, then,’ Sophie said. ‘I don’t think you can ever remove love. Even when by others’ standards it deserves to be removed, even by your own... Love is not a whiteboard, Luka, it doesn’t come with an eraser.’
‘I can’t make a good man out of him,’ Luka said, ‘but there were times when my mother was still alive that I remember with some affection. After that...’ He shook his head. ‘So what are your other lies?
‘I feel like I trapped you that day we first made love. That you didn’t see the real me. I am the peasant you despise. When you opened the door I was dressed in my finest with my mother’s earrings, some make-up that I was trying out for our engagement, the dress...’
‘Sophie, I hate that I said that to my father about you. I can’t take it back, just explain that it was a row between him and I. It should never have been replayed in court. As to trapping me, well, I spent six months in prison, and within that time I spent two very long months alone when I thought about that day a lot... Do you think, when I replayed that time, I recalled that you were wearing your mother’s earrings?’
He moved his head and he kissed the lobe of her ear, kissed it with such tenderness that it was as if it was the most important layer of skin that had ever existed. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘when I touch you that I remember the make-up?’ His mouth moved to her eyelids and again he was so gentle and Sophie started crying because she knew, she just knew that right here, right now, he was kissing her goodbye; she just didn’t understand why. ‘I promise you, Sophie,’ he said, his mouth moving down her neck, ‘when I recalled that time, not once did I think of the dress you were wearing. I thought of these...’
He slipped the knot from her top and her breasts were naked to the morning sun and to his mouth.
‘When I go over that time,’ Luka said, and his fingers moved up her dress and to the silk of her panties, which were damp as he slid them down. She moaned as his fingers slipped into her. ‘I remember you naked... I remember taking you for the first time, and the noises you made.’
He pushed her slowly down and onto her back. It was Sophie who slipped off her panties as Luka unzipped. Half-dressed but naked to the very soul, she stared into his eyes.
‘When I come, every time I remember this...’
He seared inside her, and his face was over hers, and Sophie didn’t try to hold back the tears as together they revisited that day.
‘I remember you coming. I remember how I tried so hard not to.’
He moved up on his elbows and looked down at her. ‘I don’t want to come because when I do...’
‘You’re going to leave me, aren’t you?’
How could he be making love to her while nodding that, yes, they were over?
She had lived in the moment just once in her life. That afternoon when the dog had ceased barking, when the surroundings had faded, Sophie had glimpsed the present,