Chapter 12
Will returned to Tuscany at the end of the week, physically and emotionally exhausted from the strain of his father’s funeral and its aftermath.
Eager to mend fences and for him and his half-brother, Paul, to get to know each other, Antonia had insisted he stay with them after the funeral.
She couldn’t have been kinder, and Paul had been sweet, taking Will under his wing as though he were the elder brother, going out of his way to make him feel comfortable and at home and to share memories of their father.
But Will struggled to recognise the father he had known in the indulgent, supportive parent Paul described, and no matter how hard he stared at the pictures of Philip, trying to conjure some feeling of connection, a stranger gazed back at him.
He couldn’t share Antonia and Paul’s desolating sense of loss and felt like an impostor.
He was glad to have had the chance to get to know Paul, but on further acquaintance, he found Antonia brittle and imperious.
It irritated him that she felt she had a claim on his sympathy; it angered him that she appropriated the entire bereavement to herself, as though Paul hadn’t lost Philip too – and kind and welcoming though she was now, he couldn’t forget that when it had counted she hadn’t wanted him around.
Not wishing to be cruel, but fast losing patience with her, he decided it was time to leave.
He was also anxious to get back to the villa and see Kate. He had tried phoning her while he was away but she had never answered, which worried him. But perhaps it was just as well – it would be easier to talk to her in person.
He was just settling in on the flight back to Italy when the stewardess inexplicably flung his paper at him, shooting him a filthy look.
‘What’s her problem?’ he muttered conspiratorially to the woman beside him, an elderly Irish matron.
‘Should have brained you with it,’ she growled, eyeing him coldly from beneath forbidding eyebrows.
‘What?’ Will was baffled – he had never seen either woman before in his life.
‘You’re no better than you should be.’ The woman buried her nose in Wow! magazine.
Mystified, Will kept his head down for the rest of the flight, not wanting to attract any more abuse but more anxious than ever to get back to Italy and find out what they had been saying about him in the press.
* * *
Returning to the villa in the early afternoon, he found Louise in the study, going through the mail. ‘Hi!’ he said.
‘You’re back!’ She smiled up at him as Will collapsed into the chair opposite her.
‘How was it?’ she asked.
‘Oh, you know.’ Will shrugged expressively. ‘Sad. Horrible. Antonia wants to be friends.’
‘I don’t imagine she’s the easiest person to get on with.’ Louise said sympathetically.
‘Very high maintenance.’ Will grimaced. ‘Paul’s great, though.’
‘Your brother? I’d love to meet him.’
‘You will. He’s going to come and stay with me some time.
He’s a huge fan of the band,’ Will smiled fondly.
They fell silent and Will sank into a reverie.
He was glad to be back with the people who really knew him, enjoying the fact that he could sit with Louise in companionable silence and neither of them felt the need to say anything.
A feeling of immense calm descended on him, and it came to him that everything was all right and as it should be.
He had made his peace with his father – too late, perhaps, but he no longer felt the need to rewrite the past. He had his own life now, a life that he had made for himself, with work, a home, even a family of sorts.
He had been happy – whether because of his father or in spite of him hardly seemed to matter any more.
Finally rousing himself, he got up and went to the door. ‘Where’s Kate?’ he asked casually.
Louise hesitated, and Will came back into the room.
‘She’s gone,’ Louise said shiftily, peeping up at him from under her lashes but not quite meeting his eyes. She made a show of getting back to work, standing up and shuffling papers around on the desk.
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘Home – to Ireland.’
‘Oh!’ Will was surprised. ‘When’s she coming back?’
‘She’s not. She’s left – for good.’
‘What? When did she go?’
‘The night before you left for England. The night Tina caught the two of you together.’
‘You know about that?’
‘Oh come on, Will,’ Louise snapped. ‘The whole world knows about that. You didn’t think Tina would keep the gory details to herself, did you?’
Registering the anger in her eyes and her accusing tone, Will suddenly became very still. He moved closer to Louise, his eyes flinty. ‘Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with her going,’ he said, sounding uncharacteristically menacing.
‘Only in that I drove her to the airport, booked her ticket and paid for it with the company credit card,’ Louise told him.
Will was momentarily lost for words. Then he hissed, ‘You’re fucking fired.’
‘I fucking quit!’ Louise flung back.
‘What?’ He blinked at her uncomprehendingly, completely taken aback.
Louise was taken aback too. Oh my God, did I really say that?
she thought, panicking. She loved her job.
She loved the band. Leaving them would be like abandoning her children.
And how could she leave Rory? But she couldn’t work for someone who treated people as Will had treated Kate, she told herself staunchly, resolving to stand her ground.
She would never have believed him capable of such callousness.
They stood staring at each other, stunned into silence, both fuming.
Finally Will spoke. ‘You can’t quit,’ he said arrogantly – and irrationally, Louise thought, considering he had just fired her. ‘Just get Kate back here.’
‘No,’ Louise said, refusing to budge though Will was towering over her intimidatingly.
‘What is your problem with her?’ he raged.
‘I have no problem with Kate!’
Will raked a hand through his hair distractedly. ‘Oh come on, it was obvious you were against her being here from the start. But I thought you were getting on well.’
‘We were! I really like her.’
‘So why did you take the opportunity to get rid of her the minute my back was turned?’
‘I didn’t “get rid” of her! She wanted to leave.’
‘Well, she was on a contract,’ Will said, clutching at straws. ‘She can’t just waltz off whenever she feels like it. And why were you in such a bloody hurry to help her go?’
‘Because I like her and I didn’t want to see her get hurt. So when she came to my room that night crying her eyes out and desperate to get away, I was more than happy to help. I knew what was going on, Will.’
‘You know nothing about what happened between me and Kate,’ Will interrupted angrily, eyes blazing. ‘Christ, Louise, you of all people should know better than to believe everything you read in the fucking papers!’
‘I’m not talking about what I read in the papers,’ Louise stormed. ‘I’m talking about what I’ve seen with my own eyes.’
‘I don’t know what you think you’ve seen—’
‘I know what you’re doing, Will. I know all about your little mission,’ she spat.
‘What mission?’
Louise sighed. ‘I know why you asked Kate to come here. I know you’re pretending to be interested in her because her mother asked you to. I couldn’t believe you’d agree to do it. I never thought you could be so cruel.’
Will was stunned into silence. Eventually he said, ‘You heard that?’
Louise nodded. ‘I know Grace asked you to flirt with Kate to push her into breaking up with her boyfriend. I just can’t believe you’re doing it.’
‘I’m not,’ Will said dazedly. All the fight seemed suddenly to have gone out of him.
‘Oh come on, Will, you’ve been flirting with her since the moment she got here. The poor girl doesn’t know which way is up.’
‘But I’m not doing it for Grace.’
‘Why are you doing it then? Just to amuse yourself?’
‘No!’ Will protested vehemently, but a look of intense vulnerability flashed across his face.
‘Oh—!’ Louise stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said dropping into a chair.
Will’s face was shuttered.
‘You weren’t pretending,’ Louise stated.
‘No.’
‘Sorry,’ Louise mumbled. ‘But what was I supposed to think? I heard that, and the next thing I know Kate’s on the payroll and you’re all over her like a rash.’
‘You might have given me the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Okay, I’m sorry – but don’t worry, I’ll sort it out,’ Louise said, jumping up. ‘I’ll get Kate back here right away.’
‘She won’t come,’ Will said bleakly.
‘I’ll tell her the contract is binding and she has to. I’ll tell her she’ll never work again if she lets us down.’
Will sighed. ‘No,’ he said, rubbing his temples wearily, as if to stave off a headache. ‘Don’t do anything.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t do anything,’ he repeated, his shoulders slumped. ‘It’s probably for the best.’
Louise looked at him, aghast. ‘How can you say that when—’
‘Louise – drop it.’ His voice was as cold as ice.
‘Okay. But just for the record, I think you’re making a big mistake.’
‘Just for the record,’ Will said, ‘you’re probably right.’
* * *
‘What have you been saying to Louise?’ Rory demanded, marching into the kitchen.
Will was sitting at the table, soothing his frazzled nerves with a soft drink.
Evidently Rory was next in line to take a pop at him, he thought.
Some days he felt he ought to go back to drinking and embrace the ability to forget.
‘Nothing. We just had a bit of an argument, that’s all.’
‘She seems really upset. And I heard her saying she quit.’
‘She hasn’t,’ Will said. ‘Don’t worry, Mummy and Daddy love each other really.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Rory grinned. ‘One broken home is enough.’
He went to the fridge, got a beer, cracked it open and sat down opposite Will. ‘What were you fighting about?’ he asked conversationally.
‘Kate.’
Rory raised his eyebrows.
‘Louise is upset that I don’t plan to go haring off to bring Kate back,’ he said.
‘You don’t?’
‘No.’ He had hoped his tone would put an end to the discussion.