hair; both had been blue-eyed. What were the chances of them producing a brown-eyed, dark-haired child—one with olive skin that didn’t burn, rather than an English rose? Whereas Bartolomeo Conti, the man whose initial had been at the bottom of the love letter she’d found among her mother’s things, had hair, skin and eyes the same colour as her own. Coincidence? Or was he her biological father?
‘Have you had breakfast, Eleanor?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I was too nervous to eat.’
‘Me, too. Let’s go and have a late breakfast and watch the world go by.’
He took her to a little caffè-bar and ordered them both coffee and sfogliatelle. ‘You will like these, Eleanor—they are a Neapolitan speciality. Sweet pastry shaped like a shell and filled with sweetened ricotta cheese and candied orange rind.’ His smile was full of memories. ‘I bought these for your mamma, the first time we went to a caffè together.’
She had so many questions. But they had time.
‘I thought you might like to see these,’ Eleanor said when they’d sat down, handing him an envelope.
Bartolomeo leafed through them. ‘Yes, this is how I remember my Costanza,’ he said softly. ‘And she grew into a very, very beautiful woman. This one of her in the garden…’ There was a catch in his voice. ‘And this is you as a bambina?’ He smiled. ‘You look so much like my sisters Luisella and Federica when they were bambini. Those dimples…May I borrow these to make copies?’
‘Keep them. I did this set for you,’ Eleanor explained.
He reached over the table and hugged her. ‘I never thought I would be blessed with children. And now…’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘And now it seems I have a daughter. A daughter I would very much like to get to know. If your papà does not mind?’
She appreciated the fact he’d asked. Even though strictly speaking it didn’t matter any more. ‘Dad had a stroke the year after I graduated as a doctor.’ Though at least Tim Forrest had been there for her graduation. He’d shared that particular triumph with her. ‘There’s only me now.’
‘You are alone in the world?’ Bartolomeo looked shocked. ‘What of Costanza’s famiglia? Her mother, her father?’
‘I never knew them.’
He frowned. ‘Are you telling me they disowned Costanza because she had you when she was not married?’
Eleanor shook her head. ‘I don’t really know anything about them. The only grandparents I remember were dad’s parents, but he was twenty years older than Mum and they died when I was in my early teens.’ She’d often wondered about her grandparents but hadn’t wanted to hurt her mother by asking. And, thirty years ago, being pregnant and unmarried had still had a bit of a stigma. So maybe Bartolomeo’s theory was right. ‘You really had no idea I existed?’
‘None,’ he said firmly. ‘Had I known my Costanza was carrying my baby, I would have flown straight to England and married her.’
‘So what happened?’ She needed to know. Why had her mother gone back to England alone?
Bartolomeo sighed. ‘I don’t come out of it very well, but I want to be honest with you from the start. I fell in love with your mother, but I wasn’t really free to do so.’ He looked awkward. ‘I wasn’t formally betrothed to Mariella, the daughter of my father’s business partner, but we’d grown up together and our families both expected us to get married. Except then I met Costanza. She was on holiday. It was springtime. I drove past her and caught her in a shower from a puddle. I stopped and took her for a coffee to apologise and that was it. Love at first sight.’
Something she didn’t believe in—in her view, you had to get to know someone properly first—so why couldn’t she get Orlando de Luca out of her head?
Memories softened Bartolomeo’s face. ‘Your mother was so warm, so vibrant—nothing like the cool English rose I thought she would be when I first heard her accent. She made me laugh, and I fell in love with her smile. We were inseparable in the days after that. Everything happened very fast, and I knew I wanted to marry her. I told my parents that I could not marry Mariella, that I wanted my bright English girl. And it was made very clear to me that I would have to choose between my family and Costanza.’
‘So you chose your family.’ Eleanor could understand that. She would’ve hated being cut off from her parents.
‘Not at all. I told them if they were going to insist I had to choose, then I would choose my Costanza.’ Bartolomeo’s face tightened. ‘But she had already made the decision for me. I went to her hotel and she was gone. She’d left me a letter, saying she would not come between me and my family. She was going back to England and she wasn’t going to see me again. And I was to marry Mariella, as everyone expected, and be happy.’
Which had given him a neat get-out. And even though Bartolomeo had warned her he didn’t come out of it well, disappointment seeped through her. ‘Didn’t you even try to get in touch with her?’
‘Of course I did. But I didn’t have a telephone number for her, only an address.’ He frowned. ‘I wrote to her but my letters were returned unopened.’
‘And that was it? You just gave up?’
He smiled wryly. ‘You have to remember, I wasn’t that old. I was twenty-two. So I did the impulsive thing and flew over to England. I thought that I could make her change her mind if I saw her—but when I arrived your grandparents told me she had moved out and they wouldn’t give me a forwarding address. I didn’t know who her friends were, where she worked, where even to start finding her. And then I thought, clearly, she meant it. She really didn’t want to see me again or she would have left me clues.’ He looked sad. ‘And now I know I was right. She decided to keep it a clean break. Otherwise she would have told me about you. My Costanza was never a liar.’
‘But she never told me about you. I grew up thinking Dad was…’ She shrugged. ‘Well, my dad. I only started wondering when I bought my house and the bank queried the fact my birth certificate had my surname as Firth. Mum said it was just an admin thing. Then, when I was clearing out her things afterwards, I found the papers: they changed my name from Firth to Forrest by deed poll after they married.’
‘So her husband brought you up as his own.’ Bartolomeo looked anxious. ‘She was happy with him? He treated her well? Treated you both well?’
There was a lump in Eleanor’s throat as she remembered. ‘They loved each other very, very much. And, yes, they were happy. We were happy. We were a family.’ The perfect family. And how she missed them.
‘I am glad.’ Her surprise must have shown on her face because he said, ‘I would not want my Costanza to be sad. And I would want your childhood to be full of smiles.’
‘It was. Tim obviously wasn’t my biological father, but he was my dad. He read me bedtime stories, taught me to ride a bike and drive a car, grilled my boyfriends and grounded me when I was late home, helped me with my homework and opened the champagne when I got my exam results. He was always there any time I needed to talk—always there with a hug and a smile and sheer common sense when I was full of teenage angst. Mum was, too.’ She swallowed back the tears, the aching loss. The knowledge that Tim would’ve seen through Jeremy and gently made her see the truth. ‘And you? You were happy with Mariella?’
‘We
