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But by then Aisling was being fuelled by adrenaline and at the airport she leapt into a taxi with her nerves in shreds, knowing she couldn’t go on like this. That she was living her life the wrong way and sooner or later it would drive her insane.
Yet even as these thoughts were racing through her head she was aware that she was plotting like a master-criminal, knowing that she wanted to arrive at the house early and unannounced. To surprise Gianluca. To find him doing … what?
The taxi crunched its way up the hillside and Aisling had it stop outside the main entrance. Thrusting a note into the driver’s hand, she slipped in through a side gate and went running inside, throwing open the door with a shaking hand, but there was nobody to be seen in the vast hallway.
‘Hello?’ she called, and then again as she closed the door behind her, only this time louder. ‘Hel-lo!’
There was nothing but the ominous sound of silence and a cold, sick feeling clamped round her stomach until she heard the distant sound of a sonorous voice coming from upstairs—and she took the stairs two at a time, heading for the direction of the voice, which seemed to be coming from the nursery bathroom.
She burst into the room with all the urgency of a firefighter and then halted in her tracks to see the vision which greeted her.
Gianluca was on the floor with the sleeves of his shirt all rolled up, tickling the tummy of a newly bathed Claudio, who was lying on a big, fluffy dry towel beside him. He’d dressed the baby in a new Babygro festooned with blue bunnies, which Aisling had bought in Rome only last week, and Claudio was gurgling with delight at the attention. They both turned their heads at the sound of the door and Aisling stood there, blinking back stupid tears of shame and remorse.
How could she have thought that Gianluca might have been up to no good—when he was all splashed with water and laughing at his son and looking like a leading contender for a Father of the Year award?
‘Gianluca,’ she said, her voice shaking with emotion as he sat back on his heels, his black eyes narrowing with an expression she couldn’t quite work out.
This, he thought, was Aisling as he had rarely seen her. Her hair was falling out untidily all over her shoulders, her tights had a run in them and her face was pink and shiny, as if she’d been sprinting. But the difference was about more than her dishevelled physical appearance. He could see her face working, like someone who was trying very hard not to cry. Aisling crying? Surely not. ‘You’re early,’ he observed.
‘Where were you?’
His eyes hardened. ‘Do I have to give an account of my movements every time you’re away?’
‘I couldn’t get through all day and I was worried!’ ‘About what?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Presumably not about leaving your son with his father or with the nanny whom you helped vet? So what’s to be worried about, Aisling? Maybe you just couldn’t bear the thought of losing control—of the world functioning perfectly well without you always being in the driving seat. Isn’t that closer to the truth?’
She stared at him. She had been tightly gripping onto her handbag, but now it slid unnoticed from her fingers as she registered his caustic tone. What sort of monster was he describing? ‘What are you saying?’ she whispered.
He shook his head. ‘Not now, Aisling,’ he said harshly. ‘And not in front of the baby. If there has to be some kind of showdown, then let’s do it by upsetting as few people as possible.’
Showdown?
Aisling felt dizzy as he picked up Claudio and carried him into the nursery. ‘Where’s Carmela?’ she questioned breathlessly as she followed him.
‘I gave her the evening off.’ He turned his head and she could see the mirthless line of his mouth. ‘Or maybe should I have run that past you first?’
Aisling stared at him and a slow, steady thump of fear began to work her heart into a different beat. She had been planning to tell him that she thought things needed to change, but now it looked as if Gianluca had come to a similar sort of conclusion himself and suddenly she was scared.
‘Can I put him to bed? I haven’t seen him all day.’
‘Of course.’ He kissed Claudio’s head and handed him over—barely meeting her eyes.
‘I’d better feed him, too.’
He was going to say that Claudio had taken most of the bottle she’d left behind, but by then she was already lifting her shirt with trembling fingers and latching the baby to her. Was she doing that to emphasise the fact that the baby needed a mother in the way that it never could need its father? He heard Claudio’s little sound of contentment and then the glugging of him feeding and saw Aisling briefly close her eyes with relief.
And, God forgive him, but at that moment he felt excluded. An outsider. Hadn’t he seen articles about fathers sometimes feeling jealous of their babies and hadn’t he despised them? Yet now here he was, feeling something very close to envy. He turned his back on her with a gesture of finality. ‘I’ll be waiting for you downstairs,’ he said.
Had he meant that to sound like a threat? Aisling forced herself to relax while Claudio fed, but it felt as if a soft dark cloud of dread were waiting to descend on her shoulders. It should have been a glorious homecoming—her baby safe and happy—with a sense of achievement that she’d managed to do a day’s work. Except that she hadn’t, had she—not really?
The whole day had been a disaster from start to finish. She hadn’t been able to concentrate on her work properly and yet she hadn’t been there for Claudio either, and now Gianluca was waiting for her downstairs with a strange and sombre look on his face and she was terrified of what that might mean.
That life was better when she wasn’t around—and now that Claudio was entrenched in this rural paradise she would have the devil’s job ever prising him away from it.
She spent longer than she needed to cuddling her little boy and
then putting him down in the cot. As if she was trying to hold onto these last few moments of innocence before her world was shattered in a way which instinct told her it was about to be.
Flicking the mobile which hung over the crib with her fingertip, Aisling watched the tiger spinning round and round, its distinctive gold and black colouring blurring into something unrecognisable and indistinct—just as her life seemed to have done since meeting Gianluca.
