readying herself to enter the house.
She had to put her own anguish aside and get to grips with the love and duty she owed to her mother. Without Aunt Jeanne’s presence, she reminded herself, she would have been unable to attend Claudia’s birthday dinner party this evening, an event which had helped her to finally make up her mind about ending her affair with Cesare.
And without her aunt’s promise to keep an eye on her sister, Bianca’s mother, she would have had to have asked her boss, Stazia, for an extended period of leave, at least until her mother’s problems had been resolved.
Expelling a short sigh, she turned to face the house that wouldn’t be theirs for much longer.
The steps up to the white-painted door sheltered by a stone pediment, the empty window-boxes on either side that she really should have planted up weeks ago, the elegantly curtained windows. The desirable façade proclaimed respectability but hid anything but.
As if to reinforce her wry observation the door in front of her was flung open and a golden-skinned youth wearing a singlet and boxer shorts half fell, half hurtled down the steps followed by sundry articles of clothing accompanied by her mother’s cut-glass tones, now raised in ringing, withering scorn, ‘Damned sprog! What do you think I am? Desperate?’ Her tone lowered scathingly. ‘And a word of advice—polish up your wares before you attempt to sell them.’
Backlit by the hall illumination Helene Jay’s tall, bone-thin figure, wrapped in a filmy, ruffled robe, was bristling with outrage, her carefully tinted copper hair writhing about the ageing beauty of her far too heavily made-up face.
Ignoring the youth who was scrabbling around for his scattered belongings, Bianca mounted the steps. Her heart was somewhere near the soles of her feet and she wanted to collapse into floods of tears. To weep for what she had thrown away tonight and what she faced in the immediate future.
But letting go was out of the question. For the larger part of her twenty-five years she had had to be the stronger part of the mother-daughter relationship and now her mother needed every bit of support she could give her.
Two weeks ago her mother had been having the contents of her stomach unceremoniously pumped out. An overdose of sleeping pills and vast quantities of alcohol. ‘One teeny drink too many and I forgot I’d already taken my pills—too silly of me, darling,’ had been the excuse she’d feebly proffered.
But Bianca wasn’t so sure. Approaching her fiftieth birthday, no regular man in her life, her once fantastic looks fading rapidly, Helene Jay was pitifully vulnerable. Her always volatile temperament was daily growing more brittle. Anything could happen.
Reaching her mother’s side, Bianca took her arm, inwardly flinching at the extreme thinness of the flesh beneath her fingers, and turned her gently back into the hall, closing the door behind them.
‘Helene—don’t—’ she exhorted, her voice riven with compassion as a sudden storm of sobs shook the older woman’s frame. She couldn’t bear to see her mother like this, her thick black mascara smudged into panda-like circles, her scarlet lipstick gravitating into the fine lines around her mouth.
‘That little creep was a gigolo! I had no idea! How could I have?’ she wailed brokenly. ‘He assumed I had to pay for male company!’
‘Then he’s obviously either completely stupid, or blind.’ Bianca did her utmost to soothe the already battered ego, her shaking fingers reaching a tissue from her bag to mop the mascara-streaked tears from her mother’s face, murmuring with what she hoped was the right balance of humour and concern, ‘I thought you and Jeanne were settled for the night, watching television.’
Helene jerked her head away, her recent humiliation momentarily forgotten. ‘That programme you said was unmissable was deadly boring and Jeanne’s got no conversation to speak of—discussing knitting patterns and recipes is her idea of sparkling repartee—and do stop treating me like a child, darling. I know you mean well, but it can be stultifying! I needed a drink and as this house has become a positive temperance hall I went out to get one.’
And unknowingly picked up a gigolo, Bianca thought despairingly. Years ago her mother had never lacked attentive male company but as time had crept inexorably onwards adoring lovers had become demeaning one-night stands, her spending on the latest fashions more incautious, her drinking habits more injurious.
This latest incident with the golden youth who had wanted payment for services about to be rendered could be the final nudge that could tip the fading, once fabulously beautiful woman clear over the edge.
And where the heck was Jeanne?
As if in answer to Bianca’s unspoken question a stout, elderly woman descended the stairs, tying the belt of a serviceable fawn dressing gown around what passed for her waist.
‘I heard shouting—such a commotion! I came as soon as I could.’
As soon as she’d located her false teeth and removed her curlers, Bianca translated wearily. To Aunt Jeanne respectability was all.
‘I heard a man’s voice, calling you names—and you screeching.’ Her mild blue eyes hardened as she took in the ravaged state of her younger sister’s face. ‘You told me, Helene, that you were tired and fancied an early night. So I went up early, too.’ She vented a long sigh. ‘You tricked me. I didn’t come all this way to look after you to be made a fool of.’
Cesare bade his sister and brother-in-law goodnight, impatient to end the evening that had dragged so slowly since Bianca’s departure carefully concealed behind a bland smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
The caterers had left half an hour ago and Denton was doing some unnecessary clearing up in the kitchen. Curtly dismissing him for the night, Cesare turned off the lights and headed for his study.
Normally, the quiet, book-lined room was a peaceful oasis in his hectic working life. No fax machines, computer screens or telephones to spoil the relaxing atmosphere. Whatever the pressures, he made it a rule never to bring his work back to whichever home he happened to be using at the moment.
But tonight, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to relax anywhere on earth until he could get his head round what had happened.
Dumping an inch of malt whisky in a squat crystal tumbler, he paced the room, his stride rapid and edgy, anger holding his shoulders rigid.
She had said it was over. Just like that.
In his experience it didn’t happen that way. His occasional affairs had been ended by him, the demise carefully signalled weeks in advance. The parting was amicable with gentle words of regret, a lavish gift—a car, jewellery, an exotic holiday—according to the lady in question’s preferences.
But never like this. Never!
And never before he was ready to end it!
Slamming his empty glass down on the leather-topped desk, he scowled at the spines of the books on the shelves, not seeing them. The anger that raged through him in a roaring torrent demanded release.
And where in the name of all that was sacred had that proposal of marriage come from? Porca miseria—his mind must have gone walkabout! The words had slipped out without any direction from his brain, shocking him.
His hands balled into fists and his jaw clenched until his teeth ached. She had simply ignored what he’d
