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Alessandro didn’t say anything for a while, then, ‘It’s safe to look now. I’m fully dressed.’
‘So why have you come here?’ Megan could feel the pulse in her throat beating, mirroring the steady, nervous thump of her heart. She’d been reading in bed, almost ready to switch off the bedside light, when the thumping on the front door had had her flying into her dressing gown. Now she felt wide-awake.
Alessandro strolled over to the sofa and sat down heavily.
‘Have you been drinking, by any chance?’
‘Stop hovering by the door. I told you. I don’t bite. I’ve come here because I need to talk to you, and I can’t talk to you when you’re standing there like a sergeant major on duty.’
‘I should put your wet clothes in the drier. It’ll only take twenty minutes for them to dry.’
She tentatively took a few steps towards the pile of soggy clothes, snatched them up, and then fled to the utility room, where she stuck them in the drier. Twenty minutes on the highest setting. For a few seconds she leaned against the tumble drier, eyes closed, then she took a few deep breaths and headed back to the sitting room.
This time she saw him sprawled on the sofa. He looked bone weary. Megan walked across and stood over him, until he opened his eyes and looked back at her.
‘Victoria and I are finished,’ he said.
‘You’re what?’
‘And, to answer your previous question a few minutes ago, yes, I’ve been drinking—but I’m not drunk. Two whiskies—admittedly in rapid succession.’
‘So you’ve come here to carry on drowning your sorrows?’ Megan said with heavy sarcasm.
‘Don’t you want to know why Victoria and I have broken up?’
‘I don’t want to get wrapped up in your personal life, Alessandro.’ She did. Her voice was saying all the right things, but her head was singing a different song. It was telling her that she wanted to sit down and hear every grisly detail of why he had broken up with the perfect woman.
‘Well, you don’t have much choice. Because you need to know.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Sit down.’
Megan looked around her and pulled up the closest chair to the sofa. It was an ancient nursing chair, with a low seat and a buttoned back, covered in the worst possible shade of mustard-yellow. It had been donated to her by an aunt. Unsightly, but very comfortable.
‘That’s better.’ Alessandro looked at her and wondered where to begin and how much he should say. ‘Did you miss me?’ he asked, staring at her and watching the colour climb into her cheeks—watching, too, her pointless efforts to appear in control. ‘After we’d broken up? Did you miss me?’
‘What’s the point of these questions?’
‘Just answer.’
‘What do you think? Yes. I missed you. Is that what you wanted to hear?’
Alessandro gave her one of those smiles that had always been able to make her toes curl.
‘It’ll do. Did you ever imagine that we’d meet again?’
‘No, of course I didn’t.’ The shadows cast by the side light played lovingly on the hard angles of his face, softening them. His eyes were lazy and watchful. Lying there in his old university clothes, Megan could almost believe that time had moved backwards.
‘Nor did I,’ Alessandro admitted roughly. ‘Not that I didn’t wonder what you were up to. I never imagined that you would have come down to England, and definitely not to London.’
‘I know. Because I was a country bumpkin meant to stay in the country.’
‘Because you always made such a big deal about the horrors of city living. If you’d wanted a change, you could have chosen anywhere else—any green and pleasant pasture somewhere on the outskirts of a city. I never imagined you’d dive right in at the deep end.’
‘Blah, blah, blah, Alessandro. I’ve heard it all before. If you came here to offload, then go ahead. Tell me what happened between you and Victoria, and then you’ll have to go. How did you get here anyway? You didn’t drive, did you?’
‘My driver’s gone.’
‘So you mean you came here and got rid of your driver, so that now you’re at the mercy of finding a cab? At this time in the night?’
‘We’re getting off topic.’
He reached out and took hold of her hand, curling his long fingers around hers. It was a simple, spontaneous gesture that made her freeze. His fingers were softly stroking hers and his eyes were on her face, staring at her with unblinking intensity.
‘What are you doing?’ Megan whispered. This indistinct question should have been accompanied by her whipping her hand out of reach, setting out once and for all her basic ground rules, which were that she wanted nothing to do with him. Instead, her hand refused to budge.
