style="font-size:15px;"> After all, Damiano’s brother, Nuncio, and his sister, Cosetta, had given up hope of his survival within a month of his disappearance. Damiano had been in the South American republic of Montavia when a military coup had taken place. In the street violence which had followed in the capital city that day, Damiano had simply disappeared. He had checked out of his hotel and climbed into a limousine which should have taken him to the airport and his flight home. But that had been the last reliable sighting of him alive. The bodyguards in the car behind had been blown off the road by an explosion. Unhurt but with their vehicle wrecked, they had lost the limousine. Damiano and the limo and the driver had all vanished without trace.
During the subsequent enquiries, the new dictatorship had not been particularly helpful, but then by that time opposition to the coup had been spreading and a full-scale civil war had been threatening Montavia. The overstretched authorities had had little interest in the disappearance of a single foreign national and had pointed out that, during the fighting which had raged a full week in the city, many people had died or disappeared. There had been no trail to follow and no witnesses had come forward. But neither had there been any evidence found to actually prove that Damiano had been killed. It had been that appalling lack of proof of any kind which had tormented Eden for more years than she could bear.
‘Please sit down, Mrs Braganzi,’ some one of the three prompted her.
Didn’t the police always ask a person to sit down when there was a nasty shock coming? Or was that only how actors portrayed the police in television productions? Still finding it impossible to concentrate, but slightly irritated at being ordered around in her own home, Eden sat down in an armchair and watched the two men settle themselves on the small couch opposite. The frown-line on her brow deepened. Their faces were taut, flushed, almost eager.
‘Constable Leslie was telling you the truth, Mrs Braganzi. We’re not here to break bad news but to give you extremely good news. Your husband is alive,’ the police superintendent informed her with firm emphasis.
Frozen within the armchair, Eden stared at him in shaken disbelief. She parted dry lips. ‘That’s not possible…’
The other man, Russell, from the Foreign Office started to speak. He reminded her that at the outset of Damiano’s disappearance a kidnapping had been suspected. But only along with every other possible crime or reason under the sun, Eden recalled, her dazed mind momentarily straying back five agonising years.
‘After all, your husband was…is,’ Russell corrected himself at speed and continued, ‘a very wealthy, influential man in the international banking fraternity—’
‘You said alive…’ Eden broke in shakily, her face stricken as she surveyed the men in instinctive condemnation that they should dare to try to raise hopes she did not believe she could stand to have resurrected. ‘How could Damiano still be alive after so many years? If he’s alive, where has he been all this time? You’ve made a mistake…a dreadful, dreadful mistake!’
‘Your husband is alive, Mrs Braganzi,’ the superintendent spelt out with measured care and confidence. ‘Naturally coming out of the blue as it has this is a considerable shock for you. But please believe what we are telling you. Your husband, Damiano Braganzi, is alive and well.’
Eden trembled, searching their faces and then suddenly shutting her eyes tight. She was struggling to overcome disbelief and simultaneously offering up a prayer of desperate hope to God. Let it be true, let it be real, please don’t let me wake up if it’s a dream—for over the years there had been many such dreams to torment her.
‘Your husband surfaced in Brazil almost two days go,’ the Foreign Office advisor divulged.
‘Brazil…’ Eden echoed shakily.
‘He has spent over four years in prison in Montavia and on his release he had the good sense simply to slip quietly out of the country again.’
‘P-prison?’ Eyes shattered, Eden stared at the younger man with ever-mounting incredulity. ‘Damiano’s been in prison? How…why?’
On the day on which Damiano had disappeared, he had been kidnapped and taken to a military camp in the countryside. A military camp? She frowned at that unexpected information. A few days later, with civil war raging through the tiny republic, rebel forces had attacked the camp and in the ensuing battle Damiano had received serious head injuries. Finding a wounded prisoner in the aftermath, the rebels had quite naturally assumed that he was one of their own.
‘Your husband is a fluent Spanish speaker. That and his quick thinking saved his life. He received treatment at a field hospital in the jungle. He was only just beginning to recover when he was picked up by the government soldiers, cleaning up the last pockets of resistance. He was imprisoned for being a member of the guerrilla forces.’
Damiano was alive…Damiano was alive! Eden was beginning to put faith in what she was being told although still every sense screamed at her to be cautious. She was fighting so hard to concentrate but she found that she just couldn’t. She felt stupid, numb, disbelieving.
‘Naturally you are wondering why your husband didn’t immediately identify himself when he was captured,’ the bland-faced Russell continued. ‘He believed that admitting his true identity would be signing his own death warrant. He was aware that he had originally been kidnapped by soldiers loyal to the current dictatorship in Montavia. He knew that the kidnapping had been bungled and that, from that point, there had never been any intention of letting him go alive…’
Eden blinked, struggling to focus on the Foreign Office advisor and absorb what she was being told. Her blood was chilling in her veins, her tummy turning queasy. Damiano had been kidnapped, hurt… Her own worst imaginings had come true.
‘Appreciating that his survival would be a severe embarrassment to the Montavian government, your husband decided that he would be safer retaining his assumed identity and accepting the prison term. On his release, he headed for the border with Brazil and from there to the home of a businessman called Ramon Alcoverro—’
‘Ramon…’ Eden whispered, slowly shaking her pounding head, lifting her hand to press her fingers against her damp, taut brow as if to aid her thinking powers. ‘Damiano went to college with someone called Ramon.’
‘About an hour from now, your husband will be landing on English soil again and he is keen that his home-coming should be kept from the media for as long as possible. For that reason, we have been discreet in our approach to you.’
Damiano alive, Damiano coming home. Home? To his family, of course, but not to her! In sudden, raw, shaken turmoil, Eden sat there, experiencing simultaneous joy and agony. These people had come here to make their announcement because she was still legally Damiano’s wife and next of kin. But Eden was painfully aware that her marriage had virtually been over by the time of her husband’s disappearance. Damiano had never loved her. He had married her on the rebound and lived to regret the impulse.
When had she forgotten that reality? When had she begun living in her own imagination? For Damiano would never return home to her. Had circumstances not cruelly intervened, he might well have come home to ask her for a divorce five years ago. Hadn’t his own brother suggested that? And now, after the ordeal he had suffered, he would be anxious to get on with his life again. Indeed, in all likelihood, after hearing what had happened during his absence, Damiano would make no attempt to see her and any contact made would be through a divorce lawyer.
‘Mrs Braganzi…Eden, may I call you Eden?’ the superintendent enquired.
‘His
