comment purely because she had Rupert standing in the wings of her carefully stage-managed social life. Isla glanced over to the bar and looked at Alessi, whose back was to her as he ordered her drink. He was wearing black trousers and had a white fitted shirt on that showed off his olive skin. Isla felt a flutter in her stomach as it dawned on her that she was actually checking him out. She took in the toned torso and the long length of his legs but as he turned around she flicked her gaze away and spoke with her colleagues.
‘Thank you for that,’ Isla said when he handed her her drink. She was a little taken aback when he came and sat on the low sofa beside her, and she took a sip.
Oh!
With all the functions that Isla attended she knew her wines and this was French champagne at its best! ‘When I said champagne …’ Isla winced because here in Melbourne champagne usually meant sparkling wine. ‘You must think me terribly rude.’
‘Far from it,’ Alessi said. ‘It’s nice to see someone celebrating.’
Isla nodded. ‘I’ve just been at the most amazing birth,’ she admitted, and then, to her complete surprise, she was off—telling Alessi all about Cathy and Dan’s long journey and just how wonderful the birth had been. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said when she realised that they had been talking about it for a good ten minutes. ‘I’m going on a bit.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Alessi said. ‘I think there is no greater reward than seeing a family make it against the odds. It is those moments that we treasure and hold onto, to get us through the dark times in our jobs.’
Isla nodded, glad that he seemed to understand just how priceless this evening’s birth had been.
They chatted incredibly easily, having to tear themselves away from their conversation to say goodbye to colleagues who were starting to drift off.
‘I can’t believe that we went to the same school!’ Isla said when Alessi brought it to her attention. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty.’
‘So you would have been two years above me …’ Isla tried to place him but couldn’t—they would, given their age difference, for the most part, have been on separate campuses. ‘You might know my older sister Isabel,’ Isla said. ‘She would have been a couple of years ahead of you.’
‘I vaguely remember her. She was head girl when I went to the senior campus. Though I didn’t really get involved in the social side—I was there on scholarship so if I wanted to stay there I really had to concentrate on making the grades. Were you head girl, too?’
Isla nodded and laughed, but Alessi didn’t.
Alessi was actually having a small private battle with himself as he recalled his private-school days. Alessi and his sister Allegra had been there, as he had just told Isla, on scholarship. Both had endured the taunts of the elite—the glossy, beautiful rich kids who’d felt that he and his sister hadn’t belonged at their school. Alessi had for the most part ignored the gibes but when it had got too much for Allegra he would step in. They had both worked in the family café and put up with the smirks from their peers when they’d come in for a coffee on their way to school and found the twins serving. Now Allegra was the one who smirked when her old school friends came into Geo’s, an exclusive Greek restaurant in Melbourne, and they realised how well the Manos family had done.
Still, just because they had been on the end of snobby bitchiness it didn’t mean that Isla had been like that, Alessi told himself.
They got on really well.
Isla even texted him an image she had on her phone of a school reunion she had gone to a couple of years ago.
‘I remember him!’ Alessi said, and gave a dry laugh. ‘And he would remember me!’
‘Meaning?’
‘We had a scuffle. He stole my sister’s blazer and she was too worried to tell my parents that she’d lost another one.’
‘Did you get it back?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Alessi grinned and then his smile faded as Isla pointed to a woman in the photo who he hadn’t seen in a very long time.
‘Do you remember Talia?’ Isla asked. ‘She’s a doctor now, though she’s moved to Singapore. She actually came all the way back just for the reunion.’
Alessi didn’t really comment but, yes, he knew Talia. Her name was still brought up by his parents at times—how wrong he had been to shame her by ending things a couple of days before their engagement. How he could be married now and settled down instead of the casual dates that incensed his family so.
Not a soul, apart from Talia, knew the real reason why they had broken up.
It was strange that there on Isla’s phone could be such a big part of his past and Isla now dragged him back to it.
‘She’s got four children,’ Isla said. ‘Four!’
Make that five, Alessi wanted to add, his heart black with recall. He could still vividly remember dropping by to check in on Talia—he’d been concerned that she hadn’t been in lectures and that concern had tipped to panic as he’d seen her pale features and her discomfort. Alessi had thought his soon-to-be fiancé might be losing their baby and had insisted that Talia go to hospital. He had just been about to bring the car around when she had told him there was no longer a baby. Since the morning’s theatre list at a local clinic he had, without input, no longer been a father-to-be.
Of course, he chose not to say anything to Isla and swiftly moved on, asking about Isla’s Debutante Ball, anything other than revisiting the painful past. She showed him another photo and though he still could not place a teenage Isla he asked who an elderly woman in the photo was.
‘Our housekeeper, Evie.’ Isla gave a fond smile. ‘My parents couldn’t make it that night but she came. Evie came to all the things that they couldn’t get to. She was very sick then, and died a couple of months later. Evie was going to go into a hospice but Isabel and I ended up looking after her at home.’
Isla stared at the image on her phone. She hadn’t looked at those photos for a very long time and seeing Evie’s loving smile had her remembering a time that she tried not to.
‘Would you like another drink?’ Alessi offered as Isla put away her phone, both happy to end a difficult trip down memory lane.
‘Not for me.’
‘Something to eat?’
She was both hungry enough and relaxed with him enough to say yes.
Potato wedges and sour cream had never tasted so good!
In fact, they got on so well that close to midnight both realised it was just the two of them left.
‘I’d better go,’ Isla said.
‘Are you on in the morning?’
‘No.’ Isla shook her head. ‘I’m off for the weekend. I’m pretty much nine to five these days, though I do try to mix it up a bit and do some regular stints on nights.’ They walked down the steps and out into the street. ‘So you start on Monday?’
