‘Thanks but, no thanks, for the reprieve,’ she said, and he went and sat in a chair as she got up from the bed and roamed the room.
She saw a bottle of wine and picked it up.
‘Open it,’ Matteo said.
‘I thought you said that you wanted a clear head.’
‘It’s the last thing I want now.’ He felt ill seeing the mark on her cheek. Her cheap dress was torn and the fear he had heard in her voice had Matteo’s heart still pounding.
Not that he showed it.
She poured two glasses, though with far steadier hands than she had downstairs, and as she passed one to him their fingers met, and so did their eyes. Bella gave him a small nod, perhaps of thanks, because she knew he had only been trying to help.
There was no help to be had, though.
She wandered out to the balcony and stood there, gazing at the darkening night, and after a few moments he joined her. She turned just a little and gave him a pale smile before returning to the view she loved so. ‘Africa is less than a hundred miles away...’ Bella said. ‘Right there...’ she pointed into the darkness, knowing the exact direction ‘...is Kelibia. I used to practise swimming, thinking I could escape to there if I had to.’
‘You can,’ Matteo said. ‘Well, you couldn’t swim to Kelibia but everyone is in the bar, people think you are here, and so you could leave tonight, and be in Rome by morning.’
‘I can’t leave my mother,’ Bella said, and then she rephrased it because she had had offers to do just that tonight. ‘I don’t want to leave my mother,’ she corrected.
‘You’d rather this life?’
‘Nobody wants this type of life,’ she said, and then threw him a look. ‘What would you know? You’re one of them.’
Matteo never gave away what he was thinking, he never really said much at all unless he had to. He saw her place the wine glass on her burning cheek to cool it and, no, he would not tell her that he knew plenty. Neither would he reveal that he had a one-way ticket out of hell in the morning. But tonight he decided to tell her a little of his past instead, in the hope it might make her leave. ‘I do know, though.’
She turned and looked at him.
‘I tried to leave once,’ Matteo admitted. ‘It was a couple of years ago—the night of the Natalia street party—and I hoped Malvolio would be too busy to notice I had gone until it was too late...’
‘I remember that night,’ Bella said, though she did not tell him yet just why she remembered it.
‘Earlier in the week I had told my brother that I’d had enough and that I was getting out.’
‘What did Dino say?’
‘Not much. Well, not much to me. He said plenty to Malvolio, though.’ Matteo was quiet for a long time before he spoke again. ‘There’s one road out of this place, Bella, and I used it. I got out of town and I made it to just past the river. I tried to hitchhike as I walked but no one stopped until...’
‘Malvolio?’
Matteo nodded, and, just as on that night, his face did not betray the fear that had gripped him as he’d watched that large red car pull up beside him. How, as Malvolio had opened his window to speak with him, he had glimpsed the gun beneath his jacket and Matteo had thought he would be left dead in the street.
‘What did he do?’
‘He told me to get in and we went for a drive.’ Every moment of that drive he had known that it might well be his last. ‘He took me to dinner—you know how he likes to pretend he is a reasonable man?’
Bella nodded.
‘I can think on my feet faster than anyone, Bella. I knew that if I told him the truth, I was finished. I knew that if I started grovelling and apologising then I’d be done for so, instead of showing him my fear, I showed him my anger...’
Bella frowned. She couldn’t imagine him scared, yet he had just admitted to fear, and neither could she imagine anyone getting angry with Malvolio and getting away with it.
‘I told him I was sick of being treated the same as all the others. I told him I was older than Dino, smarter than Dino and that I was more loyal to him than all the rest. I said that I wanted more respect, I wanted to be paid more than the others and to look smarter than the rest.’
‘He bought it?’
‘In part,’ Matteo said. ‘Now he gets some tailor from Milan over once a year and that is why Malvolio dresses like a golf player and that is why I look like a soccer star out on the pull.’
She laughed and he realised he was smiling as she did so.
‘I like how you dress,’ Bella said. ‘But, then, I love fashion.’
She looked at his smile and the shiver that ran down her arms wasn’t from fear or the slight cool breeze, it was that she was alone with him and his deep voice was beautiful.
‘He doesn’t fully trust me, though,’ Matteo admitted, and then he looked at Bella. ‘With reason.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I’m telling you because I do know how hard it is to get out of this place. There are few chances to do so—the night of the Natalia party I hoped was mine, but this night could be yours.’
‘That night, at the party, I was waiting for you...’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve liked you for a long time,’ Bella admitted, and she watched a small frown line form between his eyes. Matteo was used to women liking him but it was the way she admitted it so openly, so honestly that had him a touch taken back. ‘Didn’t you already know that?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘You think my cheeks are always this pink?’ Bella laughed. ‘Then you must also assume that I have a stammer.’
‘I’ve never...’ He was about to say that he had never given her that much thought but then he found himself smiling again as he nodded. ‘Yes, I did notice you blush and mess up your words but I just thought you were very shy...’
‘No, I’m not in the least shy,’ she said. ‘I just get a little tongue-tied whenever you are around.’
‘Well, you’re certainly not tongue-tied now.’
She wasn’t, she realised. Perhaps because she was speaking now with the man she had always somehow known he was.
‘I’m still blushing, though.’
Her small provocation was unexpected, both welcome and unwelcome. Welcome to his body but not to his head, for he had brought her up here so that she could avoid all that.
‘You don’t have to
