it was interesting to read that Shandy got suspended from school when she was sixteen for drinking.’
Matteo swallowed. His throat was suddenly dry; he knew what was coming.
‘They pay a lot of attention to your past, don’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it is just as well that we’re not together because they would have a field day with mine,’ she said. ‘I remember that you said, you would hate my past to bring you down.’
‘Bella—’
‘But aside from your embarrassment about me and my past and perhaps my mother, I could not stand to be discussed like that by the press, Matteo.’
‘I know.’
‘I would not want the scrutiny.’
Bella stood up then. It was easier to walk and keep her distance, to remind herself why she could never belong by his side.
They walked and then sat on the Spanish Steps, still not touching, back safe behind dark glasses, even though she knew the questions were going to come.
‘You said to your manager that you had worked at the hotel for five years...’ There was a slight huskiness to Matteo’s voice, a rare nervous edge as they approached the most difficult of subjects. ‘That would mean you came to Rome soon after...’ He didn’t finish the sentence.
‘Nearly three months after...’ Bella said, not completing it either—they both knew they were discussing that night and the plans that had been made that morning. ‘My mother had a stroke that morning. I came home and found her on the floor. She died three months later.’ Bella could see the shock in his expression. After all, Maria had only been thirty-four when she’d died. ‘Did you never think to find out why I wasn’t there?’
‘I gave you money to leave...’ Matteo said, and then let out a tense breath as he looked back on the time. ‘I spoke with Dino a few weeks after I left. He never mentioned that your mother was sick. He said you were enjoying working in the bar, that he was enjoying...’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. Even now the thought of Dino with Bella made him feel ill.
‘Your brother is a liar,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you worked that out yet? I never set foot in the bar after that night with you. On the night before my mother’s funeral, just after Paulo’s sentencing, I ran away to Rome and because of that she lies in a pauper’s grave.’
‘Bella—’
‘I got to Rome. Sophie had found a flat and...’ She hesitated. As honest as she had been, she chose not to tell him that Sophie had been working at the hotel when she had arrived. That was for Sophie to share with Luka if ever she chose to. ‘I got a job as a chambermaid at Hotel Fiscella and I’ve been there ever since.’
‘So you haven’t...’ He didn’t quite know how to voice it and Bella got up then and walked away briskly. He came up behind her but she just kept right on walking till they stood at the Trevi Fountain. Tourists were jostling for position, throwing in coins in the hope they might one day return.
‘Sometimes I think of the baths back home,’ Bella said. ‘You know they say that a young girl led Roman soldiers to a source of pure water...’ She looked at the magnificent structure and still, magnificent as it was, the most famous fountain in the world, it wasn’t home.
She went into her bag and took out a coin and kissed it but then, instead of throwing it in the fountain, she handed it to him and closed his fingers around it.
‘Please put it in your pocket so that you don’t come back, Matteo. Let’s get through this wedding but, please, don’t come back because if you do, if you buy the hotel, I’ll leave and I will have to start my life over again when I’m tired of starting over.’
‘Bella?’
She could not avoid it, there could be no more changing the subject. It was here that she must face her past because Matteo was turning her to look at him as he addressed the painful topic of her other line of work. ‘Are you telling me that you never...’ It was still a sentence he could not finish. The thought of her with Dino had made him vomit in the past, the thought of her being used still made him feel ill and so, when words failed, he took her hand, but that just angered her.
‘Oh, I pass your test now, do I? I’m suddenly respectable because you were my only client?’ She was bitter, she was angry, but more than that she was so, so ashamed of the very hand that he had tried holding that it actually burnt as she took it back. ‘Well, before you get your hopes up, know that I don’t pass your test, Matteo. Sometimes you do what you have to to survive. It’s not always pretty.’
‘Bella...’
She didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t want to try and justify things.
She was here.
With her shame perhaps.
But she was here and alive.
Even if it had cost any chance for them.
Bella did a terribly cruel thing then.
To herself.
She reached up and took off his glasses and even if Matteo did his best to mask it, he didn’t quite and she saw not just the disappointment there but something else.
Bella took it to be his disgust.
BELLA LEFT HIM THEN.
She didn’t want his attempts at a normal conversation after her revelation. She just wanted to be alone and so, without a further word, she tossed his glasses back at him and then pushed her way through the crowd and headed for home.
And Matteo let her go.
For Bella, the rest of the day was long and spent trying not to think of him so she chose to escape from her thoughts the best way she knew how.
She still couldn’t quite take in the news that Sophie and Luka were to marry this Sunday.
She knew she would hear it first-hand soon but if it was true, if they really were about to wed, then there was one thing she could do other than pace their tiny apartment, trying not to dwell on a night that had taken place five years ago.
She went through to the small kitchen, knelt under the table and pulled out two bricks and then put her hand in.
Oh, she had done her best not to touch the money she had saved for her mother’s stone but sometimes it was a matter of taking care of the living and Bella wanted to help her friend in the best way she knew how.
Bella headed to the market and to her favourite stall, where she spoke at length with the owner as she examined the bundles of fabric and the little boxes of beads.
‘This is beautiful,’ Bella said, running her hand over a length of ivory tulle that was affordable but they both knew she was trying to convince herself for her eyes kept going to the back of the stall and a roll of fabric that was close to four times the price of the one she was looking at. ‘Let me see that one again,’ she said.
It was chiffon, the texture similar to that of the engagement dress she had once made for Sophie, though that had been a cotton chiffon and this was in silk. And that had been coral. This, though, was a parchment white.
‘It would be very difficult to work with,’ Bella said, still trying to dissuade herself from spending so much, ‘and I don’t have much time.’
There would be no time for beading, Bella thought, but then again her best work had been the most simple cuts. And the challenge of working with such an exquisite fabric, to create for a relatively small price a dress that might cost thousands, even tens of thousands in a bridal store, had her heart beating with excitement.
The thought