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‘I was sixteen years old when I said that. Tell me, Nico, is that the only reason you decided not to marry me?’
Silence.
As always, his silence killed her.
She wanted to curl up on her bed and weep into the phone.
Tell him. Tell him about the baby. Tell him that you have never felt so lonely nor so scared.
No!
And Aurora knew why she did not.
‘I have to go, Nico. The taxi will come soon.’
It wasn’t a lie.
She went downstairs. Her case stood at the front door and her parents sat at the table, looking at the photos the estate agent had taken of hernonna’s home.
The home meant for her and Nico.
‘The part I don’t understand,’ Aurora said now, as she stood by the window, still awaiting her taxi, ‘is why you would have been happy for me to live there, with a husband who did not love me and did not want me, but you would rather sell that house than give your pregnant daughter a home for her child.’
But they just wanted the problem to go away. By withdrawing their support her parents were assuming that Aurora would be forced to give her baby away.
‘Aurora is career-minded,’ her mother would declare in the village shop as she chatted to her friends. ‘And she’s making better money than Nico Caruso paid…’
And then, a few months later, Aurora would return to the village, minus the family shame, and pick up where she’d left off.
That was the unspoken plan in her parents’ heads, but deep down they knew Aurora.
She would not be giving her baby away.
‘You’ve bought shame to this family, Aurora,’ her mother said. ‘How do we hold our heads high when you don’t even know who the father is?’
Aurora gave a soft mirthless laugh, for though her mother spoke in anger, it was half true all the same: Auroradidn’tknow who Nico was. Not really.
An ex?
That would mean they had actually been a couple at some point.
A family friend?
Sort of.
Her boss.
Not any more.
‘We trusted you to go to Rome,’ her mother said, her voice thick with tears. ‘We trusted you to behave.’
‘It wasn’t a school trip, Mamma.’
‘Less of your cheek,’ Bruno stood. ‘While you’re under my roof—’
‘But I’mnotunder your roof any more,’ Aurora said as the taxi finally pulled up outside. ‘You’ve asked me to leave, remember?’
‘Because you don’t even know the father’s name.’ Mamma’s lips pulled in disgust, as they had when Aurora had first revealed the news that she was expecting a baby.
