She quietly closed the door and turned and walked back along the small corridor. She opened the bedroom door and saw that her mother’s side light was on. Bella would wish for ever that it hadn’t been, because she would always remember the agony on her mother’s features when she saw how her daughter was dressed, and she would be able to recall, with complete clarity, the sob of anguish that Maria made.
‘Please, no, Bella. You’re better than that. You don’t have to do this! Go with Sophie to Rome. I’ve heard you both talking. Please get away from here, rather than do this. I’m begging you to.’
It would be the easiest thing in the world to go with her friend tonight, to run to put her past behind her, but Bella knew it was impossible.
She knew Malvolio would take out his temper on her terribly frail mother, knew only too well the price her mother would pay—and she had paid enough in her time.
‘I’m not leaving you, Mum.’
‘I’m asking you to.’
‘Never.’ Bella shook her head and sat down on the bed. ‘I could never leave you behind.’
And she couldn’t afford to take her mother with her.
Even if she could somehow find the money for the flights, what would happen when they got to Rome? She and Sophie might be able to live rough for a few days or weeks till they found a job but her mother could not live on the streets.
‘Listen to me for five minutes,’ Maria said, as Bella stood to go. ‘I’m going to tell you something. I’ve had it tough but I’ve had some good times. Most of my clients were cruel, hard work but some I considered lovers. I know men, Bella. They moaned to me that they wished their wives would do things that I did, that they were more like me, yet for all their talk they would never take me as their wife. I can’t stop you, but I can tell you that everything will change if you go to work tonight. It’s a stigma that you can never escape from.’ And then Maria told her some information that had always been missing when Bella had tried to piece together her life.
‘Your father,’ Maria said, and she gestured to the photo. ‘I met him when I had just turned sixteen. Long before the hotel had been built there were a few cafés that lined the beach. You know that he was from France and a rich businessman?’
Bella nodded. She wasn’t sure she believed her mother but she listened to what she had to say. ‘He was here because he was looking into the possibility of putting a hotel here. It was going to be beautiful. Pierre wanted to keep the houses and cafés and blend it in with the mountain. Sicily was a tourist destination but not in the west. We are a bit of a mystery. But that was why he kept coming back, although I like to think he came back in part for me. I thought we were in love and looking back I think that we were.
‘Malvolio soon caught on that Pierre had plans for this place and saw to it that he left. I found out that I was pregnant after he had gone back to France. It caused a huge scandal. My parents were furious and devastated but I was sure Pierre would do the right thing.
‘I wrote to him as I didn’t have his phone number but I knew his business name and I told him that I was pregnant. It was then that I found out that he was married. I can’t tell you how much that hurt, Bella. I had always thought that the only thing keeping us apart was distance. I had hoped that when the hotel was built he would live here instead...’
Bella looked at the tears on her mother’s cheeks. She had never seen Maria cry, she was the strongest woman Bella knew.
‘Did he dump you?’ Bella asked.
‘Worse than that, or at least I thought so at the time—he suggested that I come back to France with him. He had no intention of leaving his wife but said that I could be his mistress. I’d have my own apartment and he would visit us when he could. Do you know what I said? I told him that I would never be a kept woman.’ Maria let out a hollow laugh at the irony of it all. ‘I told him I would never share a man and that it was her or me. He chose her and then I had you, Bella. You were the best thing that ever happened in my life but I couldn’t support you. My parents would have nothing to do with me and I was sleeping on the floor at Gina’s. Malvolio would often visit her and suggested that I could earn some money... I’m sure you can guess the rest,’ Maria said, and Bella nodded.
‘You haven’t guessed it, though,’ Maria said, and Bella frowned. ‘I had been working a few months for Malvolio when Pierre came back. He had left his wife and had decided that he was going to come and live here and build the hotel. Malvolio didn’t own everything back then and Pierre had it pretty much worked out. We would be together, he said, but then he found out how I had survived that year without him. Bella, I’ll never forget the look on his face, he was completely disgusted.’
‘He was cheating...’
‘Different standards,’ Maria said. ‘I lost the love of my life and I don’t want the same thing happening to you.’
‘I understand, but I don’t have a lover to lose,’ Bella said.
‘You will one day and when you do, how will you tell him about your past?’
Bella didn’t answer, she simply couldn’t think that far ahead.
‘And what about Matteo Santini? You’ve had a thing for him for ages.’
‘There’s nothing between us. I have liked him for a long time, yes, but word has it that he is now Malvolio’s second in charge. He’s busy arranging Malvolio’s party tonight. I thought he was different but I guess I was wrong about him—he’s just as bad as Malvolio or he will be soon.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Maria said. ‘I remember his father. He was a kind man and then when he died and that brute moved in...’ Maria shook her head as she recalled those times. ‘I was only young but I can still remember everyone talking about how he made Matteo’s life hell. Matteo started going around to Luka’s—he got food there, I guess, and time with his friend, but he paid the price with his friend’s father. I’ve told you what Matteo did for Talia?’
‘Many times.’ Bella smiled because her mother knew all the town secrets.
‘Get out while you can, Bella.’
‘I shall get out when I can,’ Bella said, and she was honest. ‘I’m here for as long as you are and then I’m done.’
‘Promise me that much,’ Maria said.
‘I do. One day I’ll be in Rome with Sophie and all of this I’ll leave behind, but I really do have to go now,’ she said.
She didn’t want to sit and dwell on Matteo and neither did she want to hear any more about her father who had left them both to this fate.
She gave her mother a kiss, and, not having to worry about being heard now, she strapped on her high sandals and then headed out into the night, painted and ready to do what she had to do.
THE FOYER HAD been rapidly dressed with pungent flowers and their scent was so sweet and sickly that it reminded Matteo of impending death.
He
