Her Last Night of Innocence (16 page)

K
ATE
went back to work.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. It was part of picking up the pieces. Getting on with life. Dominic had been brilliant about giving her as much time off as she needed while Alexander was recovering, but following his energetic display on the beach with Cristiano she could hardly fool herself that he needed her constant attention any more. Besides, he was probably better off with her mother at the moment—or any random stranger who would be able to hold a conversation with him without snapping his head off or bursting into tears mid-sentence.

Even on a sunny March day the Clearspring office was gloomy. Kate sat at her desk, miserably aware of people’s curious stares and the fact that the entire office seemed to suddenly have a reason to walk past her desk. Word had clearly got out that Kate Edwards, the mousy copywriter, was actually the secret mistress of racing legend Cristiano Maresca and mother of his love-child.

Sooner or later she would have to disabuse them of the first notion.

In the kitchen the Campano calendar had been replaced by one from the Healthy Schools account, featuring Alice Apple and Percy Pear. Waiting for the kettle to boil, Kate picked up a newspaper someone had left on top of the microwave, letting her eyes move dully over the headlines without really taking them in.

She had totally lost touch with what was going on in the world, she realised with a stab of guilty misery. In the shiny side of the kettle her gaunt face stared back at her, the surface curve distorting her reflection so her red-rimmed eyes looked huge and the dark circles around them even bigger. Impatiently she turned her attention back to the paper, intending to check out her horoscope and the television listings for tonight, when a photograph on the back caught her eye.

At first she thought her mind was playing tricks on her, imprinting the face she longed to see onto every dark-haired man her eyes fell on. And then the headline above the picture filtered into her numb brain.

MARESCA’S ERRATIC PERFORMANCE CAUSE FOR CAMPANO CONCERN.

Her heart stopped, then started up again with a jolt that felt as if crash pads had just been pressed to her chest. Her mouth was dry, her hands shaking so much it was difficult to hold the paper still enough to read.

Cristiano Maresca’s much anticipated return this season looks like it could be causing one or two headaches for the Campano Team. The thirty-two-year-old Italian, who suffered massive head injuries in a crash at Monaco four years ago, has been reported to have performed ‘erratically’ in pre-race time trials this week, after missing two days entirely.

‘Cristiano is well aware of the demands of the forthcoming season, and has taken some time out before it begins to resolve some personal issues,’ said Suki Conti of Campano. ‘When he takes his place on the grid this weekend it will be with one hundred per cent focus and commitment.’

‘Ah. There you are.’

Kate looked up with a little gasp. Dominic was leaning
around the doorway, his face lined with concern. ‘I’ve just been to your office to find you.’

Kate attempted a kind of laugh. It came out as a sob.

‘I came to hide from the onlookers. You know, I’d heard that there were people who stop to look at c-car accidents, but until today I never really thought it was true.’

As she’d said the bit about car accidents her voice had cracked, and suddenly Dominic had crossed the room to her and was putting his arms around her rigid shoulders. Taking the newspaper from her, he glanced down at the page she’d been reading.

He sighed, looking at her with an expression of infinite compassion.

‘Something tells me you’re not quite ready for all this yet. Look, why don’t you take the rest of the week off? The Healthy Schools account is all up to date at the moment, so there’s not much for you to do here.’

Kate was just about to argue that she was fine, when it dawned on her that he was saying she was more of a hindrance than a help in the office right now.

In a daze, she drove to her mother’s. Margaret Edwards came to the door, wiping her hands on an apron, a familiar expression of alarm crossing her face when she saw Kate.

A shaft of sadness pierced Kate’s numbness. Grief had dominated her mother’s life for twenty years. Having lost both her husband and her son in road accidents, there was a part of her that expected every knock at the door to be a kindly female police officer bringing bad news.

‘What is it, love?’ she said worriedly, standing aside to let Kate in. ‘Alexander’s having his afternoon nap upstairs—I wasn’t expecting you until five, as usual. Has something happened?’

Kate took a ragged breath, leaning against the familiar faded wallpaper of the hallway for a moment.

‘No…Yes…
Oh, Mum…
’

And then she was in her mother’s arms, and the racking sobs she had been holding back since Cristiano had walked
away from her were gripping her, the tears that she had been too numb to cry pouring down her face and soaking into Margaret’s cotton cardigan.

‘Kate, love?’

‘I’m in here.’

The door opened and Margaret appeared, carrying two floral china mugs of strong brown tea. She set them down on the bedside table. Will’s bedside table.

Sitting on the bed, Kate moved up a little to make room for her mother. After the storm of weeping she had come upstairs to wash her face and check on Alexander, and for the first time in years had found herself opening the door to Will’s old room.

‘Do you mind me coming in here?’ she asked quietly now, picking up a mug and blowing on the steaming surface.

Pulling her cardigan across her thin chest with red, work-roughened hands, Margaret looked around. Everything was exactly as it had been on the evening that Will had left it, dressed in his new jeans for a night out with friends. His black towelling robe still hung on the back of the door, the bed was still made, the posters of his favourite models and pop stars and sports heroes still lined the walls—some of them looking a little dated now.

Except Cristiano. He looked younger and more wicked, but just as gorgeous.

‘No, love, I don’t mind. I often come in here myself—to dust and that—but just because it makes me feel better as well. Closer to him, I suppose.’

The tears had left Kate feeling scoured out and oddly calm, as if she could think about things more clearly now. ‘How did you manage after Dad died?’ she asked.

‘There’s many would say I didn’t manage at all.’ Picking up her tea, Margaret absent-mindedly wiped away the wet ring left by the mug with a tissue. ‘The doctor gave me pills, and they did help take the edge off the guilt, and people were very kind…’

Kate frowned. ‘Guilt? Why guilt? Dad was killed in an accident on the way to work.’

Margaret took a sip of tea and put her mug down carefully. ‘We’d had an argument that morning before he left. Something daft that blew up over nothing, but it haunted me for years.’ She gave Kate a watery smile. ‘Still does, if I’m honest. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that I’d caused the accident by distracting him, so his mind wasn’t on the road.’

‘It was the other driver’s fault, Mum,’ Kate said gently. ‘They said so at the inquest, didn’t they?’

Margaret shrugged her thin shoulders in the washed-out blouse and threadbare cardigan, her fingers twisting her gold wedding band. ‘That made no difference to me. To me it’s always felt like my fault, and even if it wasn’t—’

She broke off, staring down at her hands for a moment. ‘Even if it wasn’t,’ she continued quietly, ‘I still can’t forgive myself for not telling him that I loved him that day. It’s only after someone’s gone that you realise what a rare and precious thing it is—love.’ She shook her head dismissively. ‘Everything else is just details.’

‘Oh, Mum…’

Kate sighed. While Margaret had been talking she had got to her feet had gone to stand in front of the picture of Cristiano. His dark eyes stared out at her, narrowed, inscrutable, and looking into them, listening to her mother’s voice—so wistful and full of regret—suddenly she found everything seemed very clear.

Turning round, she said, ‘Mum, could you possibly have Alexander for me this weekend?’

Margaret blinked, taken aback but clearly pleased at the question. ‘Yes love, you know I always love having him. But why?’

‘I think…I’m going to Bahrain.’

Cristiano kept his gaze fixed on the pair of perfectly painted lips an inch from his.

He was very still, gritting his teeth as Francine Fournier
shone the light into first one eye and then the other. He could feel her breath feathering the bare skin of his chest, and when he breathed in his head was filled with her perfume, and while it was all so different from Kate’s, it still reminded him of her.

Like everything else.

‘OK, you can get dressed now, Cristiano.’

Clicking off the miniature torch, Francine straightened up, her silk-lined skirt rustling as she went to sit down at the desk.

‘It’s all looking great,’ she said neutrally, beginning to scribble rapid notes in a file. ‘And in view of the fact that you haven’t had any recurrence of the problems you were having previously, I’m perfectly happy to pass you fit to drive today.’

‘Buono.’

Cristiano reached for his T-shirt and pulled it over his head, getting down from the couch. Francine looked up at him pointedly for a second, her pen hovering over the page.

‘I assume that that
is
good news?’ she enquired dryly.

‘Of course.’ Cristiano managed a sort of smile as he went towards the door. ‘Sorry. I’m just a little tense. I’ll be fine when I get out there.’

That was what he hoped, anyway. Driving—winning—was the way he’d always obliterated his problems. There was no time to think about anything but survival when you were hurtling along a track at two hundred miles an hour. No time to think about the fact that you couldn’t make the mother of your child happy. The only thing was, he wasn’t sure that the forty nine laps of the race would be long enough for him.

‘Just one more thing before you go,’ Francine said, taking a sheet of paper from her folder and studying it. ‘I know this has no bearing on your race fitness, but I thought you might like to know. I checked over the tests you did the other day—for dyslexia.’

Cristiano didn’t allow the merest flicker of emotion to pass across his face.

‘And?’

Francine frowned. ‘It appears that you’re quite severely dyslexic—to such an extent that I would certainly expect it to have been picked up at school. Was it never mentioned to you or your parents?’

‘Not as a medical condition,’ Cristiano said acidly. ‘My astonishing stupidity was mentioned often—to me, my mother, and the rest of the school.’

Francine nodded slowly. ‘Thankfully ignorance like that is pretty rare these days, but I’m sorry that you had to endure it. It can’t have been easy.’

‘No.’

So Kate was right. Straight away she had understood the problem that had confounded him his whole life. She had shone a clear, pure light into a darkness that he had thought impenetrable.

Francine watched him as he got to his feet and went to the door. Her sensible, scientific, happily married heart gave a little flutter. Indigestion, she told herself firmly.

‘Good luck for the race today.’

‘
Grazie.
’

‘Oh—and Cristiano? Thank you for the champagne. There was absolutely no need for you to do that. The chalet is empty far too much—it was my pleasure to let you use it.’

He turned to her with a smile that was as beautiful as it was poignant.

‘I can assure you, the pleasure was all mine.’

It was all a question of perspective, Kate observed numbly as she looked out of the plane window and down onto the desert below. A few years ago—hell, a few weeks ago—the thought of a seven-hour flight would have reduced her to a quivering mass of panic.

Now it barely even aroused a flicker of concern. In spite of electrical problems that had meant an extended stopover in Amsterdam, the vague potential for mid-air collisions and
engine failure was nothing compared to the very real horror she felt at living the rest of her life without Cristiano.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, following our delayed departure from Amsterdam we will shortly be landing at Bahrain International Airport.’ The captain’s voice over the speakers was indolent to the point of boredom. ‘If you look out of your window now you’ll see the Bahrain International Circuit, where the Grand Prix is due to start approximately forty minutes from now. The weather in Bahrain is a pleasant twenty-two degrees at the moment, with a light breeze…’

A ripple of interest ran through the plane and everyone craned to look below. The scene reminded Kate of Alexander’s toy racetrack—a strip of grey, winding in a series of improbably sharp turns through a landscape of arid sand. Sunlight glittered off metal, flags rippled in the warm air, and people moved around in an undulating mass, like a breeze across a field of multi-coloured grasses.

She felt sick.

Forty minutes to go.
Please let me get there in time
, she prayed.

If anything, it was the absence of nerves that worried him. All around he could see the other drivers, receiving last-minute instructions from team bosses and engineers, giving interviews, hopping from foot to foot with barely restrained energy and aggression, like boxers about to go into the ring.

Cristiano felt removed from all the frenzy and excitement. Tucked inside his overalls, right next to his heart, was the fossil Alexander had given him, and as he walked from the garages into the media circus on the grid he put his hand up to touch the hardness of it. It was madness, carrying it on him like that—if his car caught fire and he was stuck inside the wreck it would absorb the furnace-like heat instantly, burning through his skin.

The Campano team were clustered around the car, their emerald-green colours standing out vividly like an oasis. The desert lay all around…an endless vista of sand which
reminded him painfully of Alexander, running across the beach in Yorkshire…