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‘What do you need for…?’ He hesitated. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘A boy,’ Aurora said. ‘Gabe.’ She swallowed. ‘Well, he’s Gabriel, but he’s become Gabe.’
‘What does Gabe need?’
‘Everything,’ Aurora said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I just have this bag…’ It was enough to get him through the next six hours at best.
‘I will call Marianna,’ Nico said, and Aurora guessed that was often his solution to irksome things. ‘What happened, Aurora?’
‘I already told you,’ she said, taking a seat on one of his plump couches. But instead of sinking into it she perched on the edge. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘Perhaps…but you have a bruise on your cheek.’
‘He didn’t mean to do that.’
She looked up and saw Nico’s face stretched into a grim smile.
Sheknewthat look.
For she had seen it the night they had first made love. She had seen it when he had lifted her hips from his body and told her to go to bed, and she had said no.
It was the look he gave as his patience slipped away. It was the look he gave just before that steely control dissolved.
‘Okay,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll tell you.’
And so she told him—about the job she had taken, and how wonderful Louanna and the children had been.
And then she watched his jaw quilt in tension when she told Nico about the husband.
‘Things were fine when he was not there, but then…’ Aurora said. ‘I was desperate, Nico, and so I stayed.’
She saw that black smile which was not really a smile return to his face. Whatever she had said had clearly displeased him, so she moved on swiftly.
‘This morning, at about two, I was putting Gabe back in his crib after feeding. I live in the summerhouse…’
‘In winter?’
‘It’s heated. I was so happy there. Anyway, I saw a light, I saw them fighting—or rather I saw him hit her—and I…’ She swallowed. ‘I intervened.’
Silence from Nico.
‘I couldn’t just do nothing.’
‘So you ran across the garden—I assume it is snowing there too—and stepped into a house where there was a raging man… Did he hit you?’
‘No—no! I was trying to get him off his wife and he pushed me, and then he told me I was not welcome in his home and that I’d caused too many problems with his wife. Then he pushed me again and I fell.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’
‘Fair enough,’ Nico said. ‘It will be exhausting enough going over things again with thepolizia.’
‘I’m not speaking to thepolizia,’ Aurora said urgently.
‘So you want me to go round there and kill him?’
‘Nico, it’s a bruise.’
‘Get it photographed while it’s visible, and tell the police the details while they’re fresh in your mind. Or,’ Nico repeated, ‘I will go round there now and I kill him.’
‘Oh, grow up!’ she sneered. ‘What’s that going to solve?’
