soon for he had instructed his lawyers carefully.
He needed nothing from his father’s estate. It would take some work and a lot of unravelling but, in time, all the homes that his father had procured through less than honourable means would be returned to their rightful owners or their descendants. The locals would only find that out long after he had left Bordo Del Cielo, though.
They arrived at his car and Luka looked at Angela’s tired, strained face.
‘How long until I have to leave the house?’ Angela asked.
‘You don’t ever have to leave,’ Luka said. Yes, he was handing it over to his lawyers, but he did not want Angela spending another night in fear. ‘I will be transferring the house into your name.’
‘Luka!’ Angela shook her head. ‘Bordo Del Cielo is a popular holiday resort now, the properties are expensive.’
‘It is your home,’ Luka said. ‘Hopefully, now it can be a happier one.’ He gave her a small smile. ‘Can I ask you to keep it to yourself for a little while?’
Angela nodded tearfully.
‘Come back to the house,’ she said, but Luka shook his head.
‘There are few good memories there...’
‘Come back for a little while at least.’
There was one good memory, though, and after a moment of quiet thought Luka nodded.
He hadn’t been home since the night of the police raid.
On his release, after pleading with Sophie to join him in London, instead of going to the bar to celebrate his and his father’s freedom he had sat on the sand, going over and over Sophie’s words.
He went over them again now as he stepped into the kitchen and remembered her sitting on the bench and tending to his eye.
‘I might take a look around,’ Luka said, and took the stairs, trying and failing not to remember their frantic kisses there, and then went into his old bedroom.
It was like entering a time warp.
Angela must have dusted it but it was just as he had left it.
Luka closed his eyes as he remembered that afternoon before it had all gone so wrong.
He thought of the plans they had made and their hopes for the future. Now, with the wisdom the years had afforded and after so many fleeting relationships that never came close to what he had found with Sophie, he knew that what had been born that day had been a fledgling love. It had to have been for there had been nothing close to the same since. Not just the sex, but the conversation, the sharing, peering into the future with one another and picturing themselves there—not clearly, they’d had but a few hours together, of course, but there had been the chance of a future and it had been stolen from them that same day.
He opened up his bedside drawer, expecting nothing, an old notebook perhaps or a school report. He used to hide them from his father—they had never been good enough. What he found, though, made him sit on the bed with his head in his hands.
Her earring—just a thin gold loop with a small diamond where the clasp met, but it was the only tangible thing he had from that day and he examined it carefully as memories rushed in. He remembered her standing at the door and how that tiny stone and the sparkle it had made had brought attention not to the earring but to her eyes.
She should have been here today, standing beside him. If she cared at all she’d have made the effort, wouldn’t she?
‘Did you ever look her up?’ Angela asked a little later as they drank coffee.
‘Who?’ Luka attempted.
‘The woman you were promised to for half of your life,’ Angela said. ‘The woman who walked out of this house dressed only in your shirt as the whole town looked on. The woman you shamed in court. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you her name.’
‘I had no choice to say what I did in court.’
‘I know that.’
‘Sophie didn’t, though.’
‘She was young,’ Angela said, and Luka nodded.
‘She was more upset about what I said to my father about her being a peasant...’ Luka smiled as he rolled his eyes. ‘And so, to make things worse, I went and said it again on the beach, the night of my release...’
‘To Sophie!’ Angela exclaimed, but then smiled. ‘She is so like her mother. Rosa could skin you alive with her eyes... I remember the day she turned up here, shouting at Malvolio to leave her family alone...’ Her voice trailed off. Even if he was dead, some things still weren’t discussed, but Luka nodded.
He could remember that day just a little. Rosa had knocked on the door and had stood shouting down the hallway.
He’d forgotten that, Luka thought. He would have been eight or nine...
‘You were younger then too when you said those things and you were also just out of prison.’ Angela broke into his thoughts. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t the time for common sense.’
Again, he nodded.
‘So, did you ever look her up?’
‘I sat in a car outside Paulo’s jail day in day out for a month a couple of years ago,’ Luka admitted. ‘Then I found out that he was in hospital and not even there.’
‘You never visited him?’
‘I couldn’t face him,’ Luka admitted. ‘He took the fall for my father. When I found out that he had been sentenced to forty-three years...’ Luka gave a tight shrug. ‘The wrong man was put behind bars.’
‘Paulo wasn’t entirely innocent either.’
‘I know that. I don’t know what my father’s hold over him was but surely he could have said no at some point or just left.’ Luka gave a tight shrug, weary from thinking about it. ‘He didn’t deserve forty-three years, though, and for my father to walk free.’
‘You never saw Sophie after she left for Rome?’
‘Never,’ Luka said. ‘It is like she disappeared...’
‘I am sure she still visits her father.’
Luka nodded. ‘Maybe I should go and visit him.’
He was older now—he could face Paulo...
Perhaps he could visit him and ask after his daughter.
Maybe he and Sophie deserved a second chance because, as sure as hell, the years hadn’t dimmed the memory. Absence really did make the heart grow fonder because Luka was in the agony of recall again.
And still angry again at her words towards him.
He had never compared her to her father.
Paulo
