Chapter 16
ENZO
We follow Penelope to the same plot of land I visited yesterday.
She points out the boundaries, the access road, and the neglected remains of the old glass pavilion.
“What would you do to create a dream place for the children you teach?” I hear her ask Molly.
There’s silence.
“Molly?” Penelope asks.
I force myself to look at the woman who betrayed me. I’ve tried to avoid doing that since she walked into the headmistress’s office.
Seeing her again reminds me too much of Venice. Of the woman who made me laugh. The woman I danced with. The woman I couldn’t stop thinking about when I woke up the next morning.
Until I found out what she’d done.
It’s easier to stay angry when I don’t look too closely.
She’s different now. She’s not that woman. Normally I’d expect at least twenty answers from her. Now she can’t summon one. She blinks, as if she’s snapping out of something.
“What would you change first?” Penelope asks. The Molly I met in Venice never struggled with words before. This has hit her as hard as it’s hit me, but for different reasons, I suspect. She probably thought she’d never see me again. That she’d never have to explain what she did.
“I … uh … the …. children would love to … uh … to…”
A phone rings somewhere. It’s not my ringtone. Then Penelope pulls out her phone.
“I’m sorry. I need to take this.” She steps aside.
While she’s dealing with the call I get a chance to examine Molly. She avoids eye contact with me. I don’t know what to say. How to be. As we navigate the painful silence I try to think of ways I can break the ice, but Penelope soon returns.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I need to go.” She waves her hand at me and Molly. “Mr. Knight, once you've had time to look over the site, please send me your initial thoughts. Nothing formal yet.”
She turns to Molly. “And if you could show Mr. Knight around and talk him through how you think the school and families might use the space, that would be useful.”
Molly doesn’t even look at me. “Yes, of course.”
“I'll speak to you both once Mr. Knight is back in New York. Also, please could you both exchange contact details with one another so that we can all communicate easily.”
Penelope walks back toward the street, already on her phone again. Suddenly, it’s just Molly and me, but it feels so different this time.
Molly folds her arms across herself and stares down at the broken concrete between us, then at me. There’s something painful in her expression.
“Enzo—”
“Don’t.” I cut her off, because, if she starts apologizing, I don’t know whether I’m going to believe her. A part of me thinks, how could she do that? How could she leak private footage of me? And another part of me will want to believe her.
I started doubting myself when the media frenzy broke.
Was Venice even real?
Did she recognize who I was and then lie that she didn't know me?
She’s no better than most of the women I meet.
She used me.
She sighs. I’ve never seen her look so sad before.
“I'm sorry for the video going viral,” she says, after a while. “I wish I could go back and fix things. I tried to fix things but …” Her voice peters out.
My jaw clenches. Is she lying, even now?
“I asked my friend to take the video down, but she refused.”
It’s been over a week since Venice, and the video is still everywhere, circulating around the internet like a virus.
“I doubt that you can. It’s too late. The damage is done.”
The video is still going strong, in part, I suspect, because Molly unleashed something else unwittingly—the curiosity into the Knight family’s past.
I'm used to people wanting more from me but that's when they know my name. I have a feeling she knew who I was all along.
I stand, my hands fisted into my pockets. There will be nail imprints in the palms of my hands. Our eyes meet and lock and the magic of that evening seems like it belonged to two other people.
Not us.
We’re standing on the plot of land and we’re supposed to be discussing ideas. She’s supposed to tell me what the school wants. But the redevelopment is the last thing on my mind.
The chill between us feels unbearably cold. I should leave, but a part of me doesn’t want to. A part of me wants to believe what she’s just told me.
“The … the children would probably want somewhere they can run around,” she says eventually.
I swallow and bite down on my molars. “Okay.”
“And somewhere not too exposed. Winters here are—”
“Cold?”
“Yes.”
“Enzo, please believe me,” Molly blurts out, like she can’t keep it in any longer. “I didn’t upload those clips. I meant to send them to Miss Turlington, but I sent them to Kiki by mistake. She uploaded them to her followers.”
Her eyes well up and she looks like she’s going to burst into tears.
“Is that what happened?” My tone is light, like I’m not sure what to make of this. I want to believe her, and it sounds probable, but that’s exactly what a woman who has betrayed me would say.
“I feel so bad.” She touches her chest like she can feel the pain.
I unclench my fist, as something pulls inside me. I know firsthand that people lie easily. Father is living proof of that.
“So you really are in real estate.” Molly looks at me.
“Excuse me?”
“You weren’t making that up.”
I’m reminded of us in Venice, when she told me she was a teacher and I told her I was in finance and real estate. It feels like a lifetime has passed between that conversation and where we were then and now.
“I don’t lie.”
***
MOLLY
Enzo doesn’t believe me, and I don’t blame him. Guilt wraps around me like an aura I can’t shake.
I can't think.
I can't focus.
Seeing him again was like a punch to my stomach and I’m not sure I’ve recovered. He’s in the same city as me. I don’t even know if he’s staying the night, or when he arrived. He just showed up, out of the blue. Meeting him has left me feeling worse than I already did.
He hates me, that is clear to see. He’s so different from how he was back in Venice. The man I met that night and danced with is no more.
A torrent of anxiety rips through me. Desperate to prove my innocence, I pull out my cell phone and start looking for the email I sent to Kiki by mistake.
“Journalists turned up on my mother's doorstep.”
I stop tapping my phone.
Oh God.
They got to his mother.
Something in my stomach sinks. “No.” I look at him, an overwhelming sense of guilt coming over me. “Because of the video?”
His jaw tightens. “Because people started asking questions about my family.”
I feel sick.
“I’m sorry, Enzo,” I whisper. “If I could turn back time, I would. I’m sorry for your suffering.”
“I’m not suffering anything. My mother is.”
My throat feels dry. “I’m sorry.” It’s all I can say, even though it doesn’t come close to making up for the pain I’ve caused. I finally find the email. “Here, look. This is proof.”
“Of what?” He sounds annoyed, like he wants me gone.
I show him my phone and the email. “See?”
He glances at it casually, then peers closer.
“Look at the timestamp. Look who I sent it to, and look what I said in the message.”
Miss T — I wanted you to experience the masked ball! This place is unbelievable. Here are a few clips I took for you.
He turns silent, his brow creasing. He reads it again, then he takes the phone from me and examines the email closely. His face changes, only slightly, but I see it. The hard press of his mouth eases.
“You did send it to the wrong person.”
My body starts to relax. He realizes. “Yes.”
He hands me my phone back.
I can't read his expression. I can't tell if he's still angry with me, if he still blames me, if he still hates me and never wants to see me again.
“Some friend,” he mutters. And then, “Even if she did take it down, it wouldn’t matter. People have shared and reposted so many times.” His eyes turn soft and hold my gaze. “I believe you. You didn't put those videos online. Your friend did.”
I forget to breathe. He believes me. The relief is instant, slamming into me so hard my knees feel weak.
Of all the people I needed to believe in me, it was him.
“I hate that it affected your life, and your mom’s.”
He doesn’t say a word.
“I wish I could go back in time and fix everything.”
“Time travel isn’t real, Molly.”
His shoulders relax a little, but I can’t work out whether he’s forgiven me a teeny-weeny bit, or a lot.
“You don't have to blame yourself so much.” His voice is gentler now, which makes me feel a little better.
“I've ruined your life.”
He frowns. “Are you always so dramatic?”
I blink. “Do you still hate me?”
“Hate is too strong a word.”
He doesn’t hate me.
It’s ridiculous that I feel so happy. That this is such great news. My standards have fallen so low that Enzo Knight not hating me now qualifies as the best thing that’s happened to me all week.
But although he’s softer, he’s still not the man I met that night. I remind myself that he’s here on business, and that this unwanted media attention—especially now that it’s affecting his mother—can’t be easy to deal with.
“It’s a silly video,” I say to him. “It will die down. Things like this always do.”
“They will, and in the meantime, my family and I must weather the storm.”
“If there’s anything I can do—” I start to say.
“You’ve done enough.”
His words sting and my body crumples into itself.
“Molly …”
But he looks away, his hands still shoved into his pockets, his body rigid and closed off.
“I wanted to show you, that’s all.”
I move away. Just because we walked here together doesn’t mean we have to walk back together.
“Goodbye, Enzo. I hope you get your peaceful life back.”
I knew that our friendship—whatever happened between us in Venice—was only ever going to be short.
But I didn't expect the memory of it to hurt this much.