Chapter 31
Although Toni had never driven to the house herself, she easily found the end of the road, with the parked motorini – and the little blue Fiat that had been one of many unexpected things about Gabriele Orzati she’d learned on that first day.
Good – he was home. Or maybe not so good, since that meant she was doing this, whatever ‘this’ was.
She was not going to beg him to visit – or write to her (that sounded very Jane Austen). She just wanted an uninterrupted moment to file this relationship away somewhere that made sense – somewhere she could perhaps enjoy it later.
Making her way up the stone steps, her fingers brushing the geraniums in their pots, she made it as far as the terrace before she realised she wasn’t the only woman visiting Gabriele Orzati at his home.
She’d been so busy cataloguing her memories of that blue Fiat that she hadn’t processed the fact that there had been another car parked where the asphalt ran out and the clifftop footpath began.
And anyway, nothing could have prepared her for the sight of a pretty, pale-haired woman on his doorstep with a sun hat on her head and a clearly pregnant belly.
Toni froze, struggling to wind back her thoughts enough to move her feet in the opposite direction – quickly. Whoever this woman was – and she had a strong suspicion – Toni didn’t want to intrude. Her own goodbye was doomed anyway.
But as she managed her first step backwards, she upset a terracotta pot of blooming echinacea and the scrape and clang drew the other woman’s eyes to her.
Surprise registered first, then suspicion.
Toni didn’t want to believe Gabri might have lied to her in any way – she didn’t believe it – but this woman obviously had a greater part in his life than Toni had – or ever would.
‘Ciao,’ the other woman began.
‘Ciao,’ Toni parroted, but quickly fended off the impending barrage of words she couldn’t understand with a clumsy defence. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian.’
More surprise. ‘You’re a tourist?’
‘Not exactly.’ The hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention, she deflected, ‘I work with Gabri – on the weddings. We held one at Innamorata yesterday and he did the flowers. But I’m leaving the island today and I can just send him a message, if you need to—’
Disappointment that she wouldn’t be able to say the goodbye she wasn’t even sure she’d wanted landed on her like an unexpected blow. Urgh, these teenage feelings were ridiculous and inconvenient and preposterous in her situation.
‘He’s not here anyway,’ the other woman explained. ‘I’ll have to come back later. I just need a signature from him, actually, although I was hoping to see how he was. I’m… his ex-wife,’ she explained.
‘A signature?’ On divorce papers? Toni was already tied up in her own assumptions and the next slid into her mind unimpeded.
‘It’s a little messy,’ the woman – Rosalba was her name, Toni remembered – continued. ‘We’re still the co-owners of our company. He wanted to give me legal powers even after we divorced, but… I don’t know. I think he might need the connection to the outside world sometimes.’
The small woman sighed, her obvious concern for Gabri loosening Toni’s discomfort a notch.
‘The baby’s not his, you know,’ she added with a quirk of a smile.
‘Oh, I— Of course not. It’s been five years, right? But congratulations.’ Toni knew how much this woman had wanted the child.
‘Have you worked with him long?’ Rosalba made little effort to conceal her curiosity.
‘About a year.’ A year and two intense weeks to rewrite their friendship.
‘I can’t really imagine him making floral arrangements. He used to build computers in our living room.’
‘He has a wonderful feeling for flowers,’ Toni defended him.
‘I’m sure he does. When Gabri puts his mind to something, he masters it. That’s the pressure he puts on himself.’
Toni recognised him in Rosalba’s words.
The other woman’s hand strayed to her belly in that futile protective gesture soon-to-be mothers made that did nothing but soothe themselves. ‘But life isn’t a puzzle or a challenge, unfortunately, and people don’t function as cleanly as mathematics.’
Toni remembered him brushing his fingertips over ferns in the forest and realised he would have been seeing fractals – order in nature. Using the wind and the sunlight – all of it was striving for order in life because chaos had brought him to his knees.
‘Does he know?’ Toni couldn’t help asking, gesturing loosely to Rosalba’s stomach.
She nodded, giving Toni another stab she didn’t want. He hadn’t mentioned to her that his ex-wife was pregnant. She knew him well enough to suspect he would have been thinking about it during their unexpectedly probing discussions.
‘He brought me an enormous bouquet of flowers – at twenty-four weeks, when everything was fine. It’s a bit strange that he understood my feelings about this better than my partner, but life is mess.’
‘That’s true,’ Toni said emphatically. ‘And that makes sense, after everything you went through—’
The way Rosalba’s eyes widened made Toni regret her words. Perhaps it was best not to mention just how much she’d heard about this woman.
‘I mean, he told me a little – about why he quit his job and came to the island.’
‘“Quit his job”?’ Rosalba repeated quizzically. ‘He wanted to sell his share in the company at one stage, but none of us had the funds to buy him out, so he’s still the majority owner.’
‘The majority… what?’
‘It’s been a wild ride. We started the company together when we were fresh out of university and everything happened so quickly.
We couldn’t get the staff to keep up with expansion, so he just took it all on himself – piled it up high.
Then I got it into my head that we needed a family as well and… Allora, you know.’
‘Not everything, apparently.’
‘It was terrible,’ Rosalba continued. Toni was inclined to insist it was none of her business, but the other woman went on and she didn’t have the heart to stop her.
‘I was certain he was having a heart attack from all our arguments, but at the hospital, they said everything was fine and the only thing they could give him was anti-depressants. But do you know the interesting part?’
‘No idea.’ Toni was still unsure about whether she wanted to hear this.
‘He’d decided to step back from work to be there for me. The week before he collapsed, he’d just found an interim CEO for the company and handed over. He held out until the only thing that collapsed was himself and the rest of us were provided for.’
‘That definitely sounds like Gabri,’ Toni murmured, thinking about last night.
The burn in her chest flared up, remembering him ambling up the path with Cillian, injured and obviously shaken.
He was so afraid of failure, convinced of his own limitations, but last night, he’d been so far from failing her.
He’d put her world back together. Even before he’d found Cillian, he’d stayed with her, kept a level head.
Frustration rose in her throat. It would have been so much easier to leave if she’d never listened to his ex-wife singing his praises.
He emphasised his flaws to her, but she’d grown attached to most of those flaws and now she discovered he had depths of capability and strength he himself didn’t appreciate – and he was the owner of a company that was probably worth more than I Do Destinations and Great Heart Adventures combined and he’d never mentioned it.
She had a few choice words for him brewing – if he turned up to hear them before she had to return to Portoferraio for the ferry.
‘Did you…?’ Rosalba bit her lip and hesitated, before continuing. ‘Forgive my curiosity, but are you and Gabri…?’
‘Toni!’
She turned at the sound of his voice, coming from farther along the path. He jogged in her direction, shirtless, a few droplets of water still clinging to his tanned skin – and a puzzled smile on his face.
Before she’d decided how to react, he’d slipped an arm around her waist and pressed an emphatic kiss to her forehead – after hesitating for a moment, deciding where to place it.
Despite everything – including the presence of his ex-wife – she wished he’d aimed for her mouth instead.
‘That’s an answer to my question,’ Rosalba said drily.
Only then did Gabri spring away, sending Toni’s stomach plummeting again. ‘Rosa?’ It was her turn to accept kisses – on the cheeks this time. ‘Wow.’ He said something in Italian, which Toni guessed was a compliment on her pregnancy glow.
After exchanging a few more words, she patted his arm and said in English, ‘I’ll come back later, hmm? Or we can meet in town when you’re finished? Looks like you have goodbyes to say… or something.’
Toni bit her lip as those words reminded her of her mother’s hinting. As tempting as it was to just tackle him to the bed instead of exchanging actual words, she wasn’t sure she could leave things like this between them.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, not waiting for her answer before heading into the kitchen to brew it.
He took his time – as he did with everything – but he knocked over the grounds and spilled the water as he was filling the moka pot.
While the water boiled, he fetched a shirt, disappointing Toni by slipping it on, although he didn’t bother with the buttons.
‘Are you okay? After last night?’ she began.
‘Yes,’ he answered in a clipped tone as he fetched two espresso cups from the high cupboard. ‘Cilli?’
‘He’s fine. Swimming at Sottobomba with my mum.’
He paused, leaning heavily on the kitchen counter. ‘And you’re here. To say goodbye? I thought we’d done that part.’
‘Gabri, anyone else would think you’re not happy to see me,’ she grumbled.
His gaze snapped up. ‘But you don’t think that?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I think you don’t want to say goodbye.’
‘It would have been so much easier if we didn’t have to,’ he said bitterly.
She shook her head. ‘It’s not really fair, you know,’ she began quietly. ‘You want to make me admit that I have feelings for you, that this,’ she gestured between them, ‘means something, but you’re still going to say goodbye forever, without even writing to me any more.’
He whirled to face her. ‘Maybe I will one day, when this time isn’t so close to the skin.’
‘You should have let me pretend this was just a fling, some kind of friendship with benefits,’ she muttered.
The frustrated sound he made in the back of his throat was familiar. ‘The memories would be wrong.’
She scowled, annoyed by how his words resonated. ‘Memories are always wrong – including yours.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Rosalba – your company. You let me believe you’re a… beach bum with no ties, that responsibility strangles you. But you own a company – which you took care of, at great cost to yourself – and you gave everything you could to your marriage, even though you weren’t sure you wanted children.’
‘I left. How is that is giving everything I could? And I don’t want to own the company. It’s just that nobody had enough money to buy it off me and I don’t want to introduce a stranger into the partnership.’
‘God,’ Toni said with a huff, ‘you really don’t see it. It’s fair enough that you needed to retreat here to recover from an incredibly stressful time in your life, but nobody thinks you failed them – certainly not me. You’re more resilient than you think.’
‘And you think I’m resilient enough to keep writing to you, even when I miss you in my blood?’
Damn dramatic Italians. Toni allowed a few breaths to penetrate deep into her lungs before she dared respond with the words that were bubbling up. ‘Well, you could visit.’
He straightened. ‘Visit?’
‘Yes, you take a boat to Piombino and then drive to Pisa airport, where you can get a flight to Bristol.’
Gripping the back of one of the chairs around the dining table, he leaned close, his expression tight. ‘Toni, do you really believe the reason we’re saying goodbye is only because of me?’