‘And where did the money to pay for it all come from? I assume she wasn’t working?’
‘Benefits. The flat was paid off so she had little in the way of overheads.’
‘She owned the flat?’
‘Yes. She inherited it from her father before I was born. Don’t ask me where her mother was. I never met her. From the little my mother told me about her family, they were a bunch of drunks too.’ A bunch of drunks who’d had no interest in meeting Marnie. A whole family she’d never met, as invisible to them as she was to her mother and as forgotten by them as she was by her father.
‘Have you tried to trace any of them? Or trace your father?’ he asked quietly.
‘Why would I? If they wanted me in their lives, I would be in their lives. As for my father, he chose to cut me from his life. I know he only stayed as long as he did for my sake, but he could have taken me with him. He could have checked that I was okay. I’m sure he’s got his reasons for turning his back on me, but I don’t care what they are. Not now. I feel our baby move inside me, and I feel such love in my heart for it that it hurts to breathe. I would never abandon it or do anything to harm it.’
Her father had never felt that love for Marnie. He’d done his duty by her for as long as he could endure and then left with no forwarding address. The only person in her life who’d ever seen her as a whole person and valued her was the man whose arms were wrapped around her.
Domenico kissed the top of her head and tightened the wrap of his arms around her.
With wistfulness rising in her, Marnie quietly continued. ‘I know my mother must have felt a similar love for me when she was pregnant because she managed to cut down on her drinking. I was able to access my health records when I turned eighteen, and I learned I was evaluated for foetal alcohol syndrome when I was a toddler. I’d had no idea…’ She closed her eyes, trying to capture an image of her mother sober. Nothing came. ‘That she had me tested means she was already an alcoholic when I was conceived. That I was given the all-clear means she didn’t drink enough to harm me when she was pregnant—it means she managed to control it for my sake.’ It meant, Marnie suddenly realised, that had motherhadloved her. Had truly loved her. That Marnie hadn’t just been this child living in the same flat as her. Her mother had loved her as much as her disease would allow. She’d loved her from conception and had held on to life until Marnie had been old enough to go out into the world as an adult.
She’d never looked at it that way before.
She could feel Domenico’s heart thudding against her back. Could hear the heaviness of his breathing, and remembered how he’d said he wanted to know her history so he could understand what drove her. What he would take from her story, she didn’t know, but speaking it aloud for the first time was giving her so much of a fresh perspective on it all that it felt like she’d always looked at her past and recent history through a murky lens that was now suddenly clearing. Pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was her life were slotting into place, and those pieces were brightly coloured.
Her own heart starting to thud, Marnie twisted her head and kissed his shoulder. ‘The water’s getting cold,’ she said softly.
Chapter Twelve
WHEN THEY LEFTthe bathroom, it was still dark outside. Domenico knew it wouldn’t be long until the sun began to rise. They needed to sleep.
But when he lay down and spooned himself to Marnie, sleep still felt very far away.
He could not get her story out of his mind. It filled every crevice of his brain.
He’d long ago intuited that her childhood had been far from the idyllic one he’d enjoyed, but he’d never imagined it was that far removed. Left and possibly forgotten by her father, invisible to her alcoholic mother, Marnie had essentially raised herself.
Knowing from the way she was breathing that she was still awake too, he said, ‘Were you still at school when your mother died?’
‘Only just. She died a month before my first A-level exam. I’d turned eighteen a few months before that.’
An answer that made him feel sick to the pit of his stomach. ‘How were you able to get such good grades?’ Good? Curiosity had driven him to read Marnie’s file years ago. She’d earned straight As.
‘Studying was my escapism.’ She wriggled out of his hold and rolled onto her back. Through the dawn starting to filter through the drapes, he could see her eyes were open, her gaze fixed on the ceiling. ‘My grades were the one thing that was entirely in my hands. I wasn’t even thinking about them for my future, just for the now, because I always assumed my future would be me taking care of Mum. When she died…’ Her slender throat moved as she swallowed. ‘I always knew she’d die early, but when it happened… It was devastating. She was a terrible mother, but she wasmymother, and I loved her, and suddenly she was gone, and I was all alone in the world, and that was terrifying, so I did what I’ve always done and concentrated on what I could control, which was my exams. I also had to deal with my mother’s estate, which wasn’t easy, but it gave me something else to focus on, and it turned out I was good at it.’
She turned her head to him and gave a small smile. ‘It was dealing with Mum’s probate that made me think of a career in law. It was the first time I’d ever thought of a career for myself. I’d planned to get a job waitressing or something like it, just to pay the bills, but I started searching for jobs in law firms that only required A levels, and found the advert for a receptionist at Cannavaro Law International. I applied the day I took my final exam, and the rest is history.’
The sickness in Domenico’s stomach had spread; risen all the way up his throat. He had to clear it to hoarsely say, ‘That was a lucky day for Cannavaro Law.’
‘It was a lucky day for me.’ She twisted onto her side and nuzzled her face close to his. ‘You have no idea what your praise and belief in me meant to me. The way you took me under your wing…’ She palmed his cheek. ‘I was desperately lonely and ripe for falling in love, and there you were, this powerful, successful, drop-dead gorgeous man who saw something in me that no one else had seen before…’ Her shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. ‘I made you my life. If you’d told me to throw myself in front of a train for you, I would have done it without question.’ She sighed again, her chin wobbling. ‘And then you asked me to marry you.’ She swallowed, then whispered, ‘It took a long, long time for me to accept that the marriage you wanted was nothing like the marriage I’d dreamed of for us…’ She smiled tremulously. ‘I dreamed of you proposing to me every night from the day I met you.’
The image of Marnie as she’d been as a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old flashed in his mind. She’d been soyoung.
He’d become aware of her crush as the years had passed, much in the same way he was aware of the weather. It just was. A fact of life that didn’t merit talking about. He’d had no idea it had set root that early.
‘Instead of telling you how unhappy I was, I retreated further into my shell, just like I did when I was a little girl,’ she continued quietly. ‘When my parents’ arguments escalated and I became frightened, I would hide in my wardrobe with my hands over my ears. I guess my childish reasoning was that if I couldn’t see or hear them, it wasn’t happening, and that’s what I did with you. I never learned how to manage confrontation.’
Blood pounded in Domenico’s ears as he envisaged the little girl in the photo hiding in a dark wardrobe, covering her ears tightly and blocking out the world. ‘You were scared of me?’
‘Never.’ She rubbed her thumb over his jawline and gave another tremulous smile that turned into a wide yawn. ‘It’s just how I’d learned to cope with bad stuff. Hide and pretend and hope it goes away.’
Shuddering a breath out of his tight lungs, he pulled her into his arms so her head was on his chest, and held her tightly.
