The Mermaid Garden (61 page)

had, at times, seemed so haunted by loss.

“So, when I finally saw Dante, I realized that I couldn’t ask him for

money. I just couldn’t.”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her temple. “Of course you

couldn’t.”

“It would have reduced everything else to dust. He would have

thought it a cynical ploy to exploit him. But what we had was precious, and the son we made together is out there somewhere and so much

more important than the Polzanze.” She turned round and smiled at

him. “You see, it all became very clear to me in Italy.
You
are important to me, Grey. You, Jake, Clementine, Harvey, Mr. Potter—
you
are my family and I carry you in my heart wherever I go. So, it doesn’t really matter whether we continue on here, or start again somewhere else. As

long as we’re together we’ll be okay.”

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“But your son, darling.”

“I might never find him.” She turned away and her eyes glittered in

the reflection of the sea. “I hope he’s happy. I hope he knows nothing

about me.”

“I know it’s late, but I think you should tell Jake and Clementine,” he said as they walked back up to the house.

“You’re right. I hope they are as understanding as you are.”

“I’m glad you told me. You make more sense to me now. I think

you’ll find you make more sense to them, too.”

Clementine and Jake reacted very differently to her confession. Clem-

entine was fascinated by the romance and tragedy of it. She felt every

bit as desperate as Marina as she described her love affair and the loss of her son, while Jake found the emotions hard to comprehend. As a

man who had never been in love, who had never suffered, he failed to

grasp the enormity of it all. The fact that she had withheld it gripped him far more than the story itself. It seemed little more than a great adventure. However, he admired her for not asking Dante for money, and

vowed that wherever Grey and Marina chose to begin again, he would

go with them and support them one hundred percent.

Rafa paced his room while Biscuit lay uneasily on his bed, watching

him stride back and forth as if the floor were made of hot coals. Sud-

denly, he was unsure. When he had set out from Argentina he had been

so certain of the validity of his quest. He had set about his search with the enthusiasm and curiosity of a young detective on his first case. But he hadn’t considered the emotional consequences of the truth, once

discovered. He hadn’t imagined he would fall in love with Clementine;

he hadn’t considered that he might love Marina, too. He hadn’t antici-

pated the terrible fear the answers would expose.

He wanted to call his mother. He wished he could speak to his fa-

ther. He wished he had never set out in the first place. The cowardly

part of him wished things could go back to the way they were, before

his head had grown muddled and confused, before his heart had taken

it upon itself to get involved.

He began to toss his clothes into his suitcase.

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The following morning he awoke late. He looked at his watch. It

was ten o’clock. He hadn’t slept that long since his university days. He showered and dressed and began to finish what he had started the

night before. He’d make up some excuse and leave as quickly as pos-

sible; that way he could put this whole business behind him. When he

thought of Clementine, he felt a sharp pain in his chest—the thought

of never seeing her again was unbearable.

He was interrupted by a soft knocking on the door. He glanced at his

case lying open on the bed and then back at the door. He was left no alternative but to open it. There, standing on the landing, was Clementine.

“Do you mind if I come in?”

He shrugged. “You might as well, now you’re here.”

She was surprised to see that he was packing. Her heart lurched with

panic. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Today.”

She gazed at him, horrified. “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“But I thought you were going to stay the whole summer?”

“My plans have changed. It’s complicated.”

“Not as complicated as the story Marina told us last night. Or should

I say Floriana Farussi from Italy.”

He sat down on the window seat and rubbed his temple.

“Did you know?” she asked.

“What did she tell you?”

“Everything.” She sat beside him and hugged her knee against her

chest. “I had a lot of time to think while you were away. I’m sorry I ran off up the beach and didn’t give you time to explain. It was cowardly

of me. I’m ready now, if you still want to tell me.” She looked at him

intensely. “Why are you running away, Rafa?”

Marina was gathering herbs from the trough outside the stable block

when the shiny black Alfa Romeo pulled up in front of the hotel. The

engine stopped and footsteps could be heard on the gravel, but her at-

tention was on the job at hand. There followed a brief conversation in

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low voices and then the footsteps grew louder. She looked up to see

Grey striding towards her with Dante. Her heart leapt in surprise, and

she dropped her secateurs.

“Dante?”

“Floriana. I couldn’t wait, and I didn’t want to tell you over the telephone,” he said in English. “Besides, I wanted to be here with you when I told you.”

“Told me what?” But she knew, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Our son.”

Her fingers shot to her lips. “You know where he is?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“He’s here.”

She felt her head spin. “Here?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“His name is Rafa Santoro.”

Marina was speechless. Her emotions rose in a great tidal wave, and

she let out a loud wail. Both men rushed forwards to catch her as her

knees buckled. But Dante saw her reach out to Grey and caught him-

self. He stood back as her husband helped her inside and settled her in the sitting room on the sofa.

“I’m fine,” she said as he released her. “Please go and get him. Bring

him to me.”

Grey strode out, his own head whirling as the final piece to the puz-

zle had now snapped into place.

She patted the sofa. “Dante, how did you find out?” He sat beside

her. She took his hand and smiled, although her eyes were streaming.

“When you told me that Father Ascanio had sent you to England

because he feared for your life, it suddenly occurred to me that this was
not
my father’s doing. You see, my father would never have involved a priest, and his ways of dealing with problems such as ours were way

more brutal. If my father had promised to look after you, there would

have been nothing to fear. You wouldn’t have been sent away, and our

son would never have been adopted. So, it got me thinking, if not my

father, then who? Father Ascanio would never have had the means to

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set you up in England and arrange for your passport and change of

identity. The only man I know capable of all that is Zazzetta.”

“Zazzetta?”

“I took the helicopter straight back to Milan and confronted him.

All these years he kept the secret, surreptitiously sending money when

needed to an old flame of his who had agreed to look after you here.”

“Katherine Bridges was an old flame of Zazzetta?”

“She worked as a governess in Milan when Zazzetta first started

working for my father. You owe your life to him, Floriana. When my

father received the letter from Elio, blackmailing him, he told Zazzetta to make the problem go away. He told him to make it look like an accident.” Marina blanched. “But Zazzetta is a religious man, and it was

more than he could do to kill a young girl and her unborn child. So,

he arranged everything in utmost secrecy with Father Ascanio, whom

he knew he could trust, and sent his own brother to fetch you. You see, Floriana, they couldn’t tell you the truth, they couldn’t trust anyone, because their lives depended on it, too. Were my father to find out that his most trusted aide had betrayed him, he would have done away with the

lot of you. He would have tracked you down, and he would have buried

Zazzetta without so much as a backward glance.” He lowered his eyes.

“I cannot begin to tell you the wickedness of that man. I’d like to say that money and power corrupted him, but I think he was just born wicked.”

“Don’t tell me, Dante. He’s dead now. He can’t hurt anyone ever

again. And you have found my son.
Our
son.”

“All the time you were looking for
him
, he was looking for
you
.”

“And he found me. I just didn’t know it.”

Dante grinned. “There is a small slice of justice, however.”

“What’s that?”

“My father entrusted his whole life to Zazzetta. He did everything for

him. Therefore, it was easy to take money from my father to pay Lorenzo Santoro in Argentina and Katherine Bridges in England. So, you see,

my father financed your new life and our son’s without ever knowing.”

“And here we are, after all these years, reunited. That is justice,

God’s way.”

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36.

You’re Marina’s son, aren’t you?” asked Clementine. Rafa nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Because I wasn’t sure it was her. The only information I had was a

letter signed ‘Floriana,’ a bracelet, a ring, and the box of personal items belonging to Father Ascanio, my father’s brother, sent out after he

died.”

“Father Ascanio was your uncle?”

“Yes. I’m Italian Argentine, don’t forget.” He walked over to the suit-

case and pulled out a file. “Here are the letters. There are countless ones from Costanza in Rome, written to my uncle in Herba, begging to

know Floriana’s whereabouts, and letters to Floriana which she asks

him to forward. Of course, he never did, for here they are, bundled up

with a half-written letter to Floriana that he wrote but never sent.

“It gave me my first lead. You see, he mentions Beach Compton,

a little seaside town here on the coast, so that is where I started my

search. I knew she was about seventeen when she left Italy, so I pre-

sumed she would have gone to school. There is only one school in the

town, and the old headmistress still lives there. However, Floriana

didn’t go to school, but the headmistress knew her foster mother, Kath-

erine Bridges, well, for she had taught English there and they had be-

come friends. She remembered Floriana, although of course she wasn’t

called Floriana. That’s why I couldn’t be sure. And when I met her, she was so English, she wasn’t at all what I was expecting.”

“Did you find Katherine Bridges?”

“She married and moved to Canada fifteen years ago.”

“I never even knew she existed. Do you think she kept her hidden

away on purpose?”

“Possibly.”

“So how did you find Marina here?”

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“The headmistress, Christine Black, keeps scrapbooks on every-

thing. She showed me a magazine article on the Polzanze, written not

long after it was opened.”

“So, why are you leaving?”

He rubbed his temples. “Clementine, does Marina really want the

past dug up? Does she want Grey to know her secret? Does Dante even

know she had his child? She returned to Italy to save the Polzanze, not to unearth painful memories. Perhaps I’m a painful memory she would

rather not remember.”

There was a knock on the door. Clementine huffed irritably; she

didn’t welcome the intrusion. She was surprised when her father peered

around the door.

“Rafa, will you come over to the stable block? There’s someone

I think you ought to meet.”

Rafa glanced at Clementine, who raised her eyebrows, as baffled as

he. Grey saw the open suitcase on the bed, but said nothing. They fol-

lowed him down the stairs, past reception, where Rose was watching

the mysterious comings and goings with curiosity, and across to the

stable block, where Jake had now joined them.

Rafa noticed the Alfa Romeo on the gravel and the driver in uni-

form who was proudly polishing the bonnet. He did not expect to see

Dante. When he entered, the sitting room fell quiet. The air grew sud-

denly still. Dante and Marina stood up. Rafa could see that Marina had

been crying. He realized then that she knew who he was, and the relief

was unexpected.

She looked at him with such tenderness that he was caught off

guard. “My son,” she said.

Rafa was too overwhelmed to reply. He had suspected she was his

mother, then in Italy all doubt had been erased—and yet, hearing it

said out loud made it real.

He looked at Dante.
“Mio figlio,”
he said, and reached out his hand.

“You came looking for me?” Marina whispered as she moved hesi-

tantly towards him. All he could do was nod dumbly as the two people