.

the phone began to ring.

      Sue moved towards it and Dervla cried out urgently, ‘No, leave it!’

      Her friend shrugged and settled back in her seat.

      Teeth clenched, Dervla stood ten more seconds before she broke and picked it up.

      ‘Hello.’

      ‘Dervla.’

      His deep honey-timbred drawl was more frayed around the edges than normal but Dervla would have been able to distinguish it in the middle of a male voice choir.

      Her mind went blank.

      ‘Is that you or a heavy breather?’

      She expelled the air trapped in her lungs in one gusty sigh and wiped her wet palm against her thigh.

      ‘Hello, Gianfranco, how are you?’ How are you? Why stop there, Dervla? Why not sound like a complete moron and ask him how the weather is there?

      ‘How do you think I am, cara?’

      She winced at the acid in his biting response and felt her anger and resentment stir. As if he were the only one suffering here; as if she hadn’t spent two days of hell.

      ‘How would I know? Silence is kind of hard to interpret. I couldn’t even read between the lines, because there weren’t any. I’m actually feeling fairly honoured that you spared a moment to pick up the phone.’

      There was a protracted silence that was more than adequate for Dervla to regret her hasty comments.

      ‘So you missed me, then.’

      He sounded so smug that if there hadn’t been several hundred miles separating them she’d have hit him. Acknowledgement of the distance between them drew a desolate little sigh from her. How could you feel lonely in a place that until recently you had called home? But she did, her home was not here any longer, it was wherever Gianfranco was.

      ‘Actually I’ve been too busy to miss you. There’s been no time. I’ve been shopping and to lunch, catching up on old friends. We’re on out way our now, actually. You only just caught me.’

      At the other end of the phone Gianfranco snapped the pencil he was threading between his long fingers in two. ‘So should I expect to see photos of you staggering out of nightclubs to appear in the tabloids?’ he wondered in a sub-zero tone.

      ‘Don’t be absurd!’ she snapped, conscious that nothing he said could be as absurd as her trying to convince anyone she didn’t miss him.

      God, the ache for him went bone deep.

      ‘Well, if you could spare a moment out of your busy social diary …?’

      Dervla nibbled on the sensitive flesh of her full lower lip. If he’d rung to say come back what was she going to do? Of course, he might have rung to say let’s call it a day. The second possibility almost tipped her over the edge into total panic.

      ‘If you’ve got something to say, Gianfranco, just say it.’ Whatever he said, she told herself she could deal with it.

      ‘We have a problem, Dervla.’

      She closed her eyes, sure she knew what was coming: it was the second possibility. He was going to say let’s call it a day—this relationship is more trouble than it’s worth.

      She had always wondered what she’d feel like when this happened. Now she knew—she wasn’t going to feel anything at all.

      She was numb.

      ‘Well, it could be worse—you could have sent me an email.’ Perhaps one day you’d be able to legally end a marriage that way, neat and clinically without any need for even looking at your partner.

      Anger swelled inside her. She wanted to see Gianfranco. She wanted to tell him to his face what he was throwing away. She wanted to tell him that he was damned lucky she loved him and it was his loss.

      Her chest tightened … Oh God, and mine, she thought, thinking of her life stretching ahead, a life of days when she would not hear Gianfranco’s voice or see his face.

      ‘Email? What are you talking about? No, don’t tell me, there’s no time. It’s Alberto.’

      ‘Alberto?’ she echoed. ‘Not a divorce?’

      ‘Divorce?’ A volley of Italian words they didn’t teach in the polite surroundings of her language class came down the line. ‘Have you been talking to Alberto?’

      ‘No,’ she said, turning her back on a wildly gesticulating Sue so that she could concentrate on what he was saying.

      ‘Alberto has run away.’

      It took several moments for the blunt statement to penetrate. When it did the blood drained from Dervla’s face. She swayed.

      ‘Oh, my God, no, is he …? How long? The police …’ She sank into the chair that Sue placed behind her knees and whispered, ‘I feel sick.’

      Sue took the phone from her limp grasp and with a marshal light in her eyes waded right in.

      ‘What the hell have you said to her? No, she damned well isn’t all right!’

      ‘I’m fine, Sue, will you give me—?’

      ‘You’re not fine,’ Sue contradicted. ‘She nearly passed out, you blithering idiot.’

      Dervla, struggling to contain her nausea, groaned; with the best intentions in the world Sue was making matters worse. She could just imagine how Gianfranco would react under normal circumstances to being called a blithering idiot, but these were not normal circumstances—his son was missing.

      If anything happened to Alberto she could not bear to think of how Gianfranco would react. He adored the boy. So did she.

      I should be there with him.

      Consumed with guilt that she wasn’t there when he needed her most, Dervla got unsteadily to her feet. This was not a moment for wimpy fainting.

      The next blistering instalment of Sue’s indictment came to an abrupt halt as she said, ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. When … how …?’ And began to listen.

      ‘He’s all right, Dervla. He rang his dad from Calais.’

      With a gasp of relief Dervla snatched the phone from her friend’s hand. ‘Is it true? Alberto is safe?’

      ‘He’s fine, cara, though he won’t be when I get my hands on him.’ This grim observation drew a weak laugh from Dervla. ‘He took a slight detour from the school excursion and ended up in Calais. You’ve got to admit the boy has ingenuity. He rang from the ferry. Apparently he’s on the way to England.’

      ‘Here! Well, at least you know he’s safe. I wonder what on earth made him do something like that?’ she puzzled. Alberto was about the most unmixed-up adolescent she had ever met. He was a total stranger to teenage angst. ‘It’s just so unlike him.’

      ‘Who knows why a teenager does anything?’

      Something in Gianfranco’s voice made her wonder if he knew something that he wasn’t telling her. It hurt that he was excluding her again.

      ‘Can I do anything?’

      ‘Yes, that’s why I rang.’

      Not because you needed to hear my voice. For a moment she longed with every fibre of her being for Gianfranco to want and need her as much as she did him. She wanted him to feel the same aching emptiness she did at this moment. She wanted him to love her.

      Then on the heels of the thought came guilt. What a selfish, self-centred cow I am, she thought in disgust. Gianfranco was already feeling as bad as he could. His son was out there alone and, no matter how mature he seemed, Alberto was still a child and he was the only part Gianfranco had left of the woman he had loved—so Gianfranco already knew about the aching emptiness.

      ‘Anything.’