Page 104 of Winter With You

‘Do you wanna skate?’ Luca asked. ‘Steffi and Phoebe are getting churros.’

‘I’m starting to think that Phoebe won’t remember what food is like without it being rolled in sugar when we get back to the UK.’ She smiled. ‘But maybe that’s what she needs, at least for now, for Christmas.’

Luca took her hand. ‘Is this OK?’ he asked, lacing their gloved fingers together.

‘Well,’ Gabriella said, looking at their hands. ‘I like it. And Team GB really aren’t going to be wanting me in the ice skating team any time soon so, yes, it’s OK.’

She loved feeling his hand in hers, loved having him near her, physically, and also the kind of crazy inner sensations he seemed to give her mind when they were together. It was like being with him was making her think further, imagine harder, long beyond the emotional boundaries she had set herself. But what happened next? There was so much to continue to navigate with her own life and with Phoebe who she had always put first. She pushed on her skates and pulled Luca with her.

‘Hey, a little warning would have been good,’ he said, falling forward momentarily, before quickly seeming to gain his balance. ‘No one is putting me on Team USA either.’

She laughed as his feet finally caught up and he was moving alongside her to the schmaltzy festive soundtrack.

‘So, I’ve never been skating here before,’ he said.

‘No? Not taken all your dates here at Christmas time?’

‘Not one. I mean they begged but I just said no… because, I guess, I was waiting for the right one to share it with.’

She started to feel the sentence creeping deeper inside her, crawling towards her barricaded heart. She needed to do one of two things. Let it in or shut it out. The easy, well-trodden route? Or the never-before-tested trail? Before she could say anything though, Luca spoke again.

‘Gabriella, there’s something I want to tell you. About my father.’

‘There’s something I want to tell you too,’ she said. ‘About my sister.’

‘OK,’ he said as they stopped skating near the fountain, beneath the big spruce lit up in every colour of the rainbow.

‘You first,’ she urged.

He nodded, squeezing her hand in his. ‘OK.’ He took a breath, looking into her eyes, a whole vault full of emotions flickering in amid those dark irises. ‘So, I went to see him, my father, in prison. For the first time.’

‘Oh, Luca,’ Gabriella exclaimed, her grip on his fingers tightening.

‘Yeah, I swore that I would never do that, but I knew if I didn’t I was never really 100 per cent owning the decision I made.’ He took a breath. ‘Gabriella, the reason he’s in jail for all those crimes I told you about is because… I put him there. I went to the police and I told them more than enough to find the evidence they needed to put him away for many years. And I did it because what he was doing was wrong, what he was doing was getting worse and what he had always done was damaging my mother, my sister and me.’

‘Luca,’ she breathed, unfastening their hands.

‘And with all these things happening to you and Errol and Sybille I needed to see him, face to face, eye to eye and tell him that if this was down to him then it had to stop, no matter what it took. And I knew I had to admit to him that it was because of me he’s living his life in a prison cell.’

‘What did he say?’ Gabriella asked, the cold air stinging her lips a little.

‘He said that he knew it was me who had informed on him. That he had always known.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘And then he told me that it wasn’t him personally arranging any bad shit to happen to the people I care about but… it was down to him in some way. It was his adversaries sending a warning shot. But he’s come up with a plan.’

‘Tell me,’ she said, her hand palming the side of his face.

He took another breath. ‘So, any day now, he’s going to make a confession. Many confessions actually. My father is going to take responsibility for crimes he did not commit, crimes his adversaries are culpable for. And these crimes, if he’s convincing enough, if enough evidence is found, which he is confident there will be, will see him spend not just a couple more years in jail but the rest of his life.’

‘Luca,’ she breathed.

‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding. ‘It’s the first time I’ve kind of said it all in one go like that and really felt it was real, you know.’ He paused. ‘I mean, I had to tell my mom and Steffi and I knew it was going to devastate them, and Steffi, she took it really hard.’ He blinked away forming tears. ‘But I’ve never had respect for my father until now. It’s the best gift he’s ever given our family… and the irony of that is it’s because of more dishonesty.’

‘Ah,’ Gabriella said. ‘Well, I might have served nothing but honest words tonight but there are occasions, when, if you’re using a lie for good, it has to be OK, right?’

‘I don’t know, Gabriella, lying, it’s not my bag at all, yet I’m the one who’s been doing it the most for as long as I can remember.’

‘Then, tell me a truth to, I don’t know, to balance it out,’ she suggested, slipping a bit on her skates.

‘A truth? Like I think if we leave Steffi and Phoebe together for too long my sister will have coloured Phoebe’s hair and got her a henna tattoo.’