her eyes never left his. She was angry and, yes, intimidated, but he could see that inside she was as steady as a rock and he wanted to shake her until the steadiness turned to water.
No woman had ever roused him as much. This was a contest and he sensed that he was losing.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ she finally said wearily, shaking her arm, which he released. ‘I’ll explain it all to you, but you’ll damned well stop calling me a liar and listen to what I have to say!’
‘No one speaks to me like that,’ he rasped.
‘Sorry, but I do.’ Julia didn’t give him time to contemplate that assertion. Instead, she turned on her heels and began walking through the dark flagstoned hallway into the kitchen, her backbone straight, refusing to be totally squashed by the powerful man following in her wake.
She could feel him and the sensation sent little shivers racing along her spine. It was a bit like being stalked by a panther, a sleek, dangerous animal that was waiting to pounce.
‘Sit down,’ she commanded as soon as they were in the kitchen and she had closed the door gently behind them.
This had been Martin and Caroline’s house and she wondered whether he would recognise any of the artefacts in the room. Doubtful. Caroline had sold their marital home almost as soon as the divorce had come through and had disposed of the majority of the contents, sending the valuable paintings back to him and selling the rest of their possessions, none of which, she had later told Julia, he wanted. She, along with her lover and every single thing in the house, could go to hell and stay there, for all he cared. The few things she had kept had been little mementoes she had personally collected herself, ornaments and one or two small paintings that had been passed on to her by her own parents when they had been alive.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘This is not your house, is it? Was it theirs?’
Julia looked at him, watched as his shuttered gaze drifted through the room, picking out the homely array of plates displayed on the old pine dresser, the well-worn, much-loved kitchen table with all its scratches and peculiar markings, the faded, comfortable curtains, now blocking out the dark, rain-drenched night.
‘Yes, it was. It belongs to me now.’
He began prowling through the room, divesting himself of his jacket in the process and slinging it on the kitchen table. The notice-board, pinned to the wall, was littered with Nicola’s drawings. He stared at them for such a long time that Julia could feel the tension searing through her body mount to breaking point. Abruptly she took her eyes off him and began making some coffee.
‘Your daughter’s works of art,’ she said with her back to him.
When she finally turned around it was to find him looking at her, his coal-black eyes narrowed. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
‘She started school in September and…’
‘Why do you insist on sticking to your ridiculous story?’
Julia didn’t reply. Instead, she moved to one of the kitchen drawers and with trembling fingers extracted a photo of her brother, which she handed to him. Martin had been the fair one of them. Even in his thirties, his hair had remained blond, never turning to the mousy brown that hers had. His eyes were blue and laughing.
‘That’s my brother.’
Riccardo glanced at the picture and very deliberately crumpled it and threw it on the table. ‘Do you imagine that I am in the least interested in seeing what your brother looked like?’ he asked in a frighteningly controlled voice. ‘I was not curious then and I am not curious now.’
‘I didn’t show you that picture because I thought you might be interested or curious,’ Julia told him. She walked towards the kitchen table and rested his cup of coffee on the surface. She had no idea how he took his coffee but somehow she assumed that it would be black, sugarless and very strong. And she was right. He took the cup, sipped and placed it back on the table, his eyes never leaving her face.
‘I showed you the picture so that you could see for yourself how fair Martin was. Almost as fair as Caroline. Of course, he was not nearly as striking as she was, but from a distance they could almost have passed for brother and sister, their colouring was so similar.’
‘Where is all this going?’
‘I want you to follow me. Very quietly.’ She didn’t give him time to question her. The more she tried to explain, the more obstinately dismissive he became, the more convinced that she wanted something from him. Money. She would reveal her trump card now and hope that proof of her words would make him see reason.
She put her cup on the counter and began walking back through the house but this time up the dark staircase, pausing only to turn on the light so that she could see where she was putting her feet. For a large man he moved with surprising stealth. She could barely hear his footsteps behind her and, once at the top of the stairs, she turned round just to check and make sure that he was still there. He was. His face grim and set. Julia placed one finger over her lips in a sign for silence and began walking towards Nicola’s bedroom.
Her mother, who was already asleep in the guest room, would have switched on the small bedside light on Nicola’s dressing table. Nicola had always been afraid of complete dark. Monsters in cupboards and bogey men lurking under the beds. The stuff of childhood nightmares which no amount of calm reasoning could assuage.
Julia pushed open the door to the room very quietly and went across to the bed and stared down at the child.
Nicola was a living, breathing replica of her father. Her hair, which had never been cut, was thick and long and very black and her skin was satiny olive, the colour of someone accustomed to the hot Italian sun, even though it was a place she had never visited. Her eyes were closed now, but they, too, were dark, dark like her father’s, who had joined Julia in contemplation of the sleeping figure.
‘You could take a paternity test, but look at her. She’s the spitting image of you.’
There was complete, deathly silence at her side, then Riccardo abruptly turned around and began walking out of the room. The sleeping child had aroused sudden, overwhelming confusion in him such as he had never felt before. It had instantly been replaced by rage.
Was it possible to feel such rage? He would have thought not, but he felt it now. Five years! Five years of being kept in ignorance of his own child’s existence! His own flesh and blood. Because the minute he had laid eyes on her he had known that the child was his. There could be no doubt.
He thought of his ex-wife and her husband, bringing up his child, laughing with his daughter, relishing the precious moments of watching those milestones, and his fingers itched with the desire to avenge himself for what he had missed. What had been his by right.
He heard Julia running down the stairs behind him and, in the absence of Caroline and her cursed lover, he could feel his body pulsating to unleash his terrible wrath on the slightly built woman following him.
She would have been party to the decision to keep him in the dark about the birth of his child. Whatever her motives for contacting him now, and those motives would surely have something to do with money, she had agreed with the plan to say nothing to him.
He reached the bottom of the
