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His eyes flicked to hers. “With six of us and Yaya and Gianfelice, it felt pretty full. That’s a lot of testosterone. A lot of ego.”
“You think you have an ego?”
“Everyone has an ego. It just depends on how in check people keep it. Gianfelice encouraged us to believe we could be the best at everything we turned our hands to. He was tough on us, in many ways, but he had high ambitions for us. He expected us to do well at school, well at sports, and to show an interest in the business from when we were quite young.”
“It must have been nice to have someone take such an interest in you.”
His smile was wry, but his words spoke of a deeper pain. “Particularly given our parents didn’t care to know we existed.”
Yaya had spoken about this, when Lauren had first come to work at Villa Fortune. The older woman had been prone to over-sharing, a side effect of one of her medications. Her inhibitions had been lowered, temporarily, and she’d spoken a great deal of the disappointments of her children – sons who had chosen to live a life of spoiled indulgence rather than take an
interest in the business or their own children. A daughter she spoke of rarely, even then, and Lauren had understood that whatever had happened between Yaya, Gianfelice and their daughter, it was serious and had traumatised Yaya in some vital way.
“How come they passed custody of you over to Yaya? Was it really because they wanted to party?”
Raf’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Yaya spoke a lot when I first came here. Naturally, whatever she says to me is in complete confidence. I would never betray that.”
He nodded slowly.
“You don’t mind she mentioned it? That I know?”
“It’s not a secret,” he brushed aside. “It’s another fact you could easily Google about my family. My parents are famous for their abandonment, despite my grandparents’ best efforts to re-write it, at least so far as the press was concerned.”
“Your grandparents must have felt you were in some form of danger, to take such an extreme measure.”
His lips compressed into a grim line and she felt as though she’d reached a wall. His manner barely shifted and yet she sensed it – the tightening of his guard, his withdrawal. Lauren had to remind herself that was for the best. They weren’t supposed to be sharing their secrets, nor baring their souls. That wasn’t what they were.
She lay down on the ground beside him, signalling that the conversation was at an end, and instead pointed to a cloud overhead. “Look, do you see it?”
“The clouds?”
“No, that’s not a cloud. It’s an elephant. Can’t you recognise the trunk and tusks?” Her finger traced the pointed outline of two wispy shapes, and in between them, a thicker, curling line, just like an elephant’s trunk.
“You see an elephant? I see the stem of a flower.” His own hand lifted to point to the sky. “See, what you think of as the body is actually its bloom.”
“It’s drifting away,” she murmured.
He turned to face her, his eyes darker than usual, intriguing her with their silent depths. “Nothing lasts forever.”
Three words that spoke right to her soul because of how true they were.
“My parents loved us,” he said, as though the words were dragged from him. “But they weren’t capable of parenting.”
Lauren understood that. “Love and parenting are different skillsets.”
“You’re the first person who’s ever said that to me.”
“But it’s true; of course it is. Love is an instinct I think everyone feels. Knowing how to love someone – that’s a verb. It requires you to do and say what that person needs, in order to demonstrate that you love them. With children, my understanding is that there are only a few things that matter. Security, safety, presence, and patience. Obviously being fed and kept somewhere warm and dry – but I’ve looked after children from all different walks of life in the last few years. Some with lots of money and toys and everything they could ever want, and others with a tiny bedroom in an equally cramped flat, and none of that really mattered. The things that lit up their eyes and made everything seem okay again was when their mum and dad came in their room and wrapped them up in a bear hug, or picked up their favourite story book and read a chapter.” She reached over and ran her fingers through his hair absentmindedly. “I’m sorry if you didn’t have that.”
He caught her fingers, brushing them over his lips before dropping her hand to his side.
“Did you?”
She felt a brush of wariness. That was moving closer to the sort of conversation that spelled a hidden danger, and yet she ignored that spidery sense of premonition; they had boundaries, this was fine. “My parents were – are – great. Yes, I had that.”
“You’re close to them now?”
