will you do if I don’t turn up?’
‘Nothing,’ Luka said. And it was, for Sophie, the darkest response he could deliver. ‘If you don’t show for our wedding then nothing will happen, not ever. I will wish you luck for the future, I will accept that our love could not survive. I’ll be proud of you for having the guts to admit it and,’ he added, ‘I will get on with my life.’
He left her on the rocks.
He left her spinning like a Catherine wheel.
There was a retort she could deliver.
A proud last word, perhaps.
There was comeuppance still to be had.
Or there was a shiny new future?
‘YOU LOOK WONDERFUL,’ Bella said.
It was possibly the most beautiful dress in the world and might, Sophie knew, remain unseen.
He had left her with seven hours to grow up.
She was down to twelve minutes.
‘Are you scared he won’t show up?’
It was no longer a town of secrets but what had happened on the beach Sophie had kept to herself.
This was between her and Luka.
She was scared that she might not. Scared that her rapid tongue could not hold its fire.
Sophie pulled out the necklace.
I love you, she said in her head to her mother. I come from you but I am not you.
‘It looks like the one in the photos that your mother wore,’ Bella said, as she helped her to put it on.
‘It is the one my mother wore,’ Sophie said, and she felt Bella’s hands pause on her naked shoulders.
Bella knew, Sophie realised.
Here there were secrets even amongst the very closest of friends.
Her mother would probably have known and would have told Bella the truth long ago. The whole town would have been able to see what a small child could not.
Rosa had gone and confronted Malvolio.
A few days later she had died.
‘Why didn’t my father insist that they run?’ Sophie asked. She knew the answer—Rosa, with her stubbornness and pride, had been right to want to stay.
Dead right.
‘Can you ever forgive him?’
‘Malvolio?’ Sophie scoffed. ‘Never.’
‘I mean can you ever fully forgive Luka for what Malvolio did?’ Bella asked, but hushed as Paulo walked in.
‘Their names don’t belong in the same breath,’ Paulo said, his eyes filling with tears when he saw that Sophie was wearing Rosa’s chain.
‘But they do belong in the same breath,’ Sophie corrected. ‘Just as I belong in the same breath as my mother. Just as I look like her and act like her at times. I’m not her, though.’
‘I know that.’
‘Even if she’s not here, I’ve learnt from her...’
‘The cars are here,’ Bella said.
‘Go,’ Sophie said to Bella. ‘I will see you at the church.’ She gave her friend a hug. ‘Good luck with Matteo.’
She stood alone with her father.
‘You are your mother’s daughter. That is not always a compliment. I wanted to leave here, to get away. She told me to stand up to him, to fight for what was right.’ Sophie stood as her father shook his head. ‘So I did. I had our tickets booked to leave. I wanted to get out of here...’
‘You were right.’
‘I would rather have been wrong.’
‘Malvolio is Luka’s father,’ Sophie said. ‘At times they will belong in the same breath. I don’t want a marriage where there are things that cannot be discussed or names that can never be mentioned. I nearly lost Luka, not once but twice. I am not going to do that again. I shan’t make the same mistakes as...’
‘Me?’
‘As so many people did,’ Sophie said, more aware than ever how words could hurt so very much. ‘You did the best that you could for me. I know that.’
‘Not really.’
‘Yes, really.’ Sophie smiled at her father. ‘You got one thing very right—you chose the perfect husband for me.’
‘You and Luka belong to each other.’
‘We do.’
* * *
It wasn’t just the bride who was nervous on a wedding day, Luka was finding out.
The groom stood at the altar when, for the longest time, he had thought that he never would.
Luka had long ago accepted that he and Sophie were over and, given that he had known he would never love like that again, he had decided he would remain single.
Until this morning.
This morning he had chosen for their sakes to take the biggest gamble of his life and to reveal the truth.
Her own father thought that Sophie could never forgive him and Matteo too was tense.
And so he stood on his wedding day not even knowing if Sophie would show up.
He didn’t care about the public reaction if the bride didn’t show.
He cared only about them.
‘Whatever happens—’ Matteo started, but Luka halted him.
‘She’ll be here.’
He had confidence in them, in the love they had found that long-ago afternoon.
And he was right to.
He turned around and there was Sophie, dressed in a simple white dress that reminded him of yesteryear. Today her black hair was worn down, as he preferred, and dotted with summer jasmine. In one hand she loosely held a bunch of wild Sicilian poppies and they were as sexy and as decadent and as heady as her.
The delighted, stunned look on her face when she saw the packed church was something he would remember
