And with each tiny, baby step she took back into the world, it faded incrementally.
The first step was putting the house on the market. If she was going to put the past in her rear-view mirror once and for all, she needed to pay Ettore back. It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to be beholden to him.
There couldn’t be that connection between them even if it was just a three-digit amount next to the word ‘monthly’ and Ettore’s name.
It was his name that was the problem. Seeing it written down, saying it inside her head, was enough to make her spiral.
To make her yearn.
To make her hope.
In short, to do what she’d done in the hotel off St Pancras.
She needed to move forward.
Before the agents had put up the For Sale sign, the house was under offer. The buyers had no chain and were desperate for the house, the agent said. More importantly, they were cash buyers.
So, this morning she had gone to the bank and asked for a bridging loan to tide her over until the sale went through. The bank had agreed, and twenty minutes ago she’d sent the balance of what she owed to Ettore and closed her standing order.
And now she had done it, she felt so many differing and conflicted emotions. Relief. Pride. Astonishment. And sadness, because selling the house hadn’t just broken the connection with Ettore. It was her last link with her dad. He had given her the deposit for her original flat in London before he’d severed all ties with her.
Strangely, splitting up with Ettore had given her closure with her father. For so long, she had feared him, then she had hated him. But now she knew that he must have acted how he had because he was damaged. She would never know what or more likely who had inflicted the harm, but it made it easier to forgive him.
As for her mum, she had forgiven her a long time ago.
The house was still hers but she had decided to move out so she was renting a room from one of the professors at the college. She would sort out something more permanent in a couple of weeks. But for now, she liked the smallness of her situation. She felt like a snail, carrying everything she needed on her back. She had just one bill to pay, one bedroom and a bathroom to keep clean and tidy. It meant she had less to think about.
More time to think about the big picture. And the big picture was taking shape. Incredibly, she had come up with a business plan for working with country estates to bio-diversify their lands. She had even come up with a name: The Green Canvas Collective.
It would start small but if she had even a tenth of her dad’s brain for business and her mum’s energy, it would work. That was part of the bigger picture too: remembering her mother from before she became ill. They were snapshots. But she knew they were true because they chimed with the way Oscar was now.
He was still in the clinic. But she could see the progress he was making in the photos he sent and hear it in his voice when they spoke. There were setbacks, but he was inching towards that calmness and certainty she had longed for in Paris.
Paris.
Ettore.
It was only a sliver of time since she’d last seen his face or touched his skin or felt her body soften beneath his steady gold gaze, and yet it felt like a lifetime.
It felt like yesterday. Would the pain ever disappear completely? She was shocked by how much it hurt. More so even than the first time because a part of her had never quite let go of him then. Now, though, she knew they were over.
She had left him high and dry.
Not quite. Despite what she’d said in Paris, she hadn’t told her solicitor to get in touch with Carlo Biondi for the very good reason that she didn’t have one.
Whether Ettore was her husband or not, he was the best man to run the estate. To oversee the vineyard and the charitable trusts.
She pictured him on the floor at thecasa-famigliaplaying that game with the teenager in the hoodie. In another life, in another country, that boy was Oscar. What would happen to him if Ettore was forced to step down and hand the reins over to Checco?
It would be a disaster. Everything would fall apart. The money would evaporate, and people would get hurt, damaged children like Oscar.
But married was still married even if you were separated. And she would stay married until Ettore inherited the estate.
And then she would divorce him, or he could divorce her. Her ego could survive either. Her pride demanded that she prioritise the lives of people who had done nothing to deserve the consequences of her and Ettore’s actions above her personal pain and the need for absolute closure.
She pressed her hand against her chest.
The pain changed on an hourly basis. Sometimes it was sharp like now when she was stupid enough to think about Ettore. But even when she was busy or distracted, the pain remained. A constant, dull ache, and with it a longing, a yearning for him that was so persistent and ridiculous that sometimes she would start laughing.
