ran a cloth over black ballet pumps and then brushed and retied her hair and headed out, locking the iron gate behind her. She walked back up the narrow hilly street to where he waited.
‘That was quick,’ Matteo said.
‘Did you want me to make a little more effort for you?’
‘I meant,’ he said as they walked, ‘that that was quick.’
There was tension between them.
Bella was still furious at the sight that had greeted her this morning and Matteo had been less than impressed by her crude seductive taunt.
But aside from that there was a different tension, once-upon-a-time lovers trying to act as polite, distant friends who were merely catching up and wondering how the hell to adapt to that.
‘How about here?’ Matteo suggested as, instead of a corner café he stopped by a fashionable restaurant, and Bella nearly turned and ran.
She had once tried to apply for a waitressing job at this very restaurant and hadn’t even made it past the doorman.
She knew that she wasn’t glossy enough even to wait on tables here, let alone sit at them, but Matteo was already asking for a pavement table.
She saw a couple of sideway glances—and she knew they were for him. Here amongst Rome’s elite and most beautiful he still stood out.
The frowns, though, the double takes, well, they were for her.
Amongst Rome’s elite and most beautiful Bella stood out, but for all the wrong reasons.
They took their seats and as the waiter arranged the shade cloth, for once Bella thought Rome looked beautiful.
‘How do you find Rome?’ Matteo asked.
‘Busy,’ she said.
‘Do you miss home?’
‘This is home,’ she said, glad for dark glasses. ‘What about you—do you miss Bordo Del Cielo?’
‘No.’ Matteo shook his head. ‘I have nothing there to miss.’
‘Your mother?’ she asked.
‘She and her new husband moved away after Malvolio died. The property prices went up and they sold out. They spent all the money they made, of course...’ He didn’t elaborate, he was tired of his mother’s dramas.
‘Do you keep in touch?’
‘She rings for money, I send it. That’s it.’
‘You don’t see her?’
He gave a very brief shake of his head.
‘Do you ever wonder about her?’ Bella asked, though the lump in her throat meant she was asking more about herself.
‘I don’t let myself,’ he said.
‘What about your brother, Dino?’ Bella asked, and she watched his jaw tense. She knew what Dino had told him about her.
‘Dino is in prison. Once Malvolio died there was no one who wanted his ways. He is in the same prison that Paulo was.’
‘Do you visit him?’
‘No,’ Matteo said. ‘I do everything I can not to think of him.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sure he’s the same, people don’t change.’
‘They don’t,’ Bella said. The poor stay poor, she thought. The rich get richer and the beautiful age well.
She looked at the living proof.
There he was, immaculate and completely at ease.
And there was her image in his glasses and when she saw that she was nibbling on her nails she moved them from her mouth and sat a little straighter.
‘Do you like your work?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I love to make beds.’ Bella’s voice dripped sarcasm. ‘And sometimes, when I am shining a sink, I feel so blessed, but that doesn’t compare to cleaning a rich drunk’s toilet.’
‘What about your dressmaking?’
‘What about it?’ She shrugged. ‘I am not as good as I thought I was. I have applied to many design schools...’
‘You don’t need a design school,’ he said. ‘You could start up now.’
Behind her glasses Bella’s eyes narrowed—clearly he did not understand that even buying fabric proved hard, that she worked ten-or twelve-hour shifts at the hotel just to stay afloat. Alfeo was wrong—she wasn’t some magpie, she didn’t crave nice things, she just ached to make them, to bite her scissors into fabric, to create, to sew, but that was a dream that was fast fading. ‘You have never seen my work.’
‘I saw it last night,’ Matteo said. ‘Sophie was wearing one of your creations. She pretends to be rich...’
Bella’s breath tripped. She and Sophie had done everything they could so that she could be proud of herself when she asked Luka to do her this one favour.
‘I know that she lies,’ Matteo said, and it was the strangest thing because even with the most private of conversations, even with her best friend’s secret on her shoulders, there was somehow trust that the discussion taking place was between them.
‘Does Luka know that she lies?’
‘I don’t know,’ Matteo admitted. ‘We really don’t speak about our pasts. All I know is that Sophie contacted him and asked him to go along with a fake engagement to appease her father. Now she wants marriage.’ His lips curled a little. ‘I have warned him it will be an expensive divorce.’
‘This isn’t about money,’ Bella swiftly retorted. ‘This is about giving Paulo peace in his final days.’
‘We shall see.’ Matteo shrugged. ‘Why else would she lie and make out that she is wealthy?’
‘Perhaps she needed to feel some pride to look an ex-lover in the eye and ask for help,’ Bella said from behind her dark glasses.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘whatever game Sophie is playing, if what she was wearing last night was one of the dresses you made, then your work is amazing.’
‘It would take just one beautiful woman to make the headlines wearing one of my gowns.’ A smile finally came to her face. ‘Perhaps you could ask Shandy to wear one at one of the functions you attend...’
‘I don’t think so.’ Matteo’s own smile was wry. The waiter came and Bella glanced through the menu as he ordered a panino.
‘Brioche with a side of pistachio and cherry gelato,’ she said.
‘That sounds a lot like home,’ he commented.
‘I don’t eat
