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‘Goodness, that was years ago. I can’t remember what happened to all the children. There have been so many of them...’
Dante stopped walking and turned to face her.
‘You remember my mother,’ Dante said, very slowly, ‘and you remember Alicia. So you remember the difficult one, and the disadvantaged one, yet not the star of the class?’
She was silent, but she did meet his eyes as he spoke.
‘I told you at the beginning, Reverend Mother, I don’t want to disrupt anybody’s life.’
‘Non destare il cane che dorme...’
She repeated what she had said to Alicia all those years ago, but Dante was not scared and he was not eighteen.
‘Reverend Mother,’ Dante said. ‘Sleeping dogs awaken stronger.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ITWASAdreadful morning.
He would not take her calls, and she was shaking and crying after her handling of things. She didn’t know what to do.
‘Dante, please call back,’ she pleaded when she got his voicemail. ‘Even if you’re cross, please tell me what is happening.’
Did she go to the airport? Ask for a hotel?
No.
She laid her dress out on the bed—a sophisticated grey, with a high waistband that fell into gentle ruches and was kind to curves, she’d been told.
She added wedged shoes that were pretty, but practical for walking on cobbles.
There was a heavy black pearl clasp for her hair, which matched the earrings he had given her.
But that was more for something to do than anything else.
Alicia didn’t need to be able to read to make out the writing on the wall, but she couldn’t leave and not know what had happened when he went to the convent. She didn’t want to have messed up this part of his life too.
So she lay on her bed and rang him again, and she even pulled the velvet rope and heard it ring in his room, but there would be no more games now.
Finally, late afternoon, he picked up.
‘Pronto.’
‘Dante, I am so sorry for the way I told you.’
He said nothing.
‘You might not believe me, but I was going to ask to go to the village tomorrow. I just wanted your family dinner to be perfect, and then I was going to ask Reverend Mother what to do.’
‘No need for that now. I’ve spoken with her.’
‘I’m not allowed to ask, am I?’
Again he said nothing.
‘Can I ask that you don’t mess up tonight?’
‘Do you really believe I’m thinking about some dinner?’
