up for dinner that night then she would have known that.
Nico called her. ‘What’s all this?’
‘Scusi?’ Aurora asked.
She was sitting in her little pink bedroom as she awaited a taxi to take her to the station.
Her parents had not taken the news of their daughter’s pregnancy well at all—especially as Aurora refused to name the father. A terrible row had ensued.
Nico had been right: her parents did snoop, and they had gone through her phone and found the dating app she had downloaded in Rome.
And now she had Nico on the phone.
It was too much for her nerves today.
‘Why have you resigned without speaking first with me?’ he demanded.
‘Nico, I resigned and I have left. I don’t have to answer to you when you are no longer my boss.’
‘All right, then. Forget that I was once your boss and tell me. Why did you resign?’
‘So from what standpoint are we talking, Nico? As friends?’ Aurora’s voice was incredulous and angry, though she struggled to keep the hurt from it. ‘Because we are not friends, Nico. You yourself told me we could never be.’
‘Aurora—’
‘Or are we speaking as lovers?’ she interrupted. ‘But that can’t be because you have so many—surely you don’t expect them all to give you career updates?’
‘Aurora!’
She would not let him in. ‘Or are we in a relationship, Nico? Oh, but that’s right—no. Because you don’t want one. You told me—’
‘And you told me you would never leave Silibri.’
‘I was sixteen years old when I said that. Tell me, Nico, is that the only reason you decided not to marry me?’
Silence.
As always, his silence killed her.
She wanted to curl up on her bed and weep into the phone.
Tell him. Tell him about the baby. Tell him that you have never felt so lonely nor so scared.
No!
And Aurora knew why she did not.
‘I have to go, Nico. The taxi will come soon.’
It wasn’t a lie.
She went downstairs. Her case stood at the front door and her parents sat at the table, looking at the photos the estate agent had taken of her nonna’s home.
The home meant for her and Nico.
‘The part I don’t understand,’ Aurora said now, as she stood by the window, still awaiting her taxi, ‘is why you would have been happy for me to live there, with a husband who did not love me and did not want me, but you would rather sell that house than give your pregnant daughter a home for her child.’
But they just wanted the problem to go away. By withdrawing their support her parents were assuming that Aurora would be forced to give her baby away.
‘Aurora is career-minded,’ her mother would declare in the village shop as she chatted to her friends. ‘And she’s making better money than Nico Caruso paid…’
And then, a few months later, Aurora would return to the village, minus the family shame, and pick up where she’d left off.
That was the unspoken plan in her parents’ heads, but deep down they knew Aurora.
She would not be giving her baby away.
‘You’ve bought shame to this family, Aurora,’ her mother said. ‘How do we hold our heads high when you don’t even know who the father is?’
Aurora gave a soft mirthless laugh, for though her mother spoke in anger, it was half true all the same: Aurora didn’t know who Nico was. Not really.
An ex?
That would mean they had actually been a couple at some point.
A family friend?
Sort of.
Her boss.
Not any more.
‘We trusted you to go to Rome,’ her mother said, her voice thick with tears. ‘We trusted you to behave.’
‘It wasn’t a school trip, Mamma.’
‘Less of your cheek,’ Bruno stood. ‘While you’re under my roof—’
‘But I’m not under your roof any more,’ Aurora said as the taxi finally pulled up outside. ‘You’ve asked me to leave, remember?’
‘Because you don’t even know the father’s name.’ Mamma’s lips pulled in disgust, as they had when Aurora had first revealed the news that she was expecting a baby.
Tell them. Tell them who the father is. Tell them that you love Nico, your baby’s father, with all your heart.
No!
And again Aurora knew why.
There would be shocked gasps, then shouts of anger, but eventually it would be all smiles and delight.
Because Nico would do the right thing by their daughter.
And Nico would.
You could take the man out of Silibri, but you could not take Silibri out of the man.
Oh, Nico might snub some of the village codes, but the basic ones were ingrained.
He would marry her for the sake of their child.
Aurora knew that down to her bones.
Beyond her bones, she felt it in her womb, and she felt it in the place low between her ribs—a little knot that tightened when she imagined their wedding.
Only not the way she had once envisaged it.
Now she saw the villagers’ smiles, and heard their cheers, and she could even see the large bouquet she carried to cover her surprise pregnancy—but only for the photos.
Everyone would know about the baby and how delighted the villagers would be. Nico Caruso was putting down roots—back where he had always belonged. And she and Nico would wave and smile and kiss for the cameras, and that night they would lie in bed and have sex because—well, it would be their wedding night.
She could almost feel his resentment as he thrust into her. For Aurora Eloise Caruso had got exactly what Aurora Eloise Messina had always
