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‘Yes, Big Brother is watching,’ Soren said drily.
As the four-wheel drive crunched on the gravel the gates closed behind them with a clanging finality. In the fading light the road cut into the tall pine trees that stretched out as far as she could see, looking like a dark river lit by regularly spaced illuminated bollards along the winding length.
‘Light at the end of the tunnel.’ He brought the car to a halt and turned the engine off even though they were several hundred yards away from the forecourt.
‘Oh, my!’ Anna had reasoned that to boast a library of any size the palazzo was not going to be a farmhouse but the sheer scale was a shock.
‘Baroque, neoclassical and Sicilian rococo,’ he listed, anticipating her reaction. ‘The place took so long to build the fashions kept changing.’
‘It’s just so vast! And the colour...?’
‘Pompeiian red. It makes an impression, hence the white pillars, all a bit...phallic.’
‘I thinkthatmight be in the eye of the beholder.’
His lips quivered. ‘As for the size, back in the day the entire extended family would have lived here. Now...well, I am the family.’
Until he had children, she thought, her heart sinking a little as she pictured him with his arms around an adoring tall, beautiful blonde, a gaggle of assorted gorgeous children around them.
‘I remember the first time I saw it.’
She shook her head and banished the blonde. ‘I forget you were not brought up here.’ His blue eyes were the only thing that marked him out as not being totally Latin. How old were you when you...?’
‘I was seventeen.’
Her heart ached for him. He’d only been a boy when his family had been hit by tragedy. ‘And you’d never met your grandfather?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s sad it happened that way, but at least your family were reconciled.’
He gave a strange laugh. ‘Reconciled?I suppose that is one word for it. I came to ask for a place for my mother to stay...he set the dogs on me!’
Anna’s eyes widened. ‘He didn’t know who you were?’
‘Of course, he knew who I was. Biagio was testing me. He just wanted to see if I’d come back. He said I wouldn’t be worth keeping if it was that easy to get rid of me.’
‘That’s terrible!’ she gasped. ‘You came back?’
‘I had no other option. I was in no position to take care of my mother, we were broke, therefore no choice, and no grown-ups to come and rescue us, and she was... She is fragile and my father’s death and scandal, it all affected her badly.’
‘Scandal?’
He nodded. ‘My father’s partner emptied the pension fund and absconded, leaving my father to carry the can.’
‘That’s why you’re helping me—because your father was falsely accused too!’
‘It has taken me some time, but I am about to clear his name.’
‘That’s marvellous. Your mother must be so proud.’
Soren suspected that at the moment she would not be at all proud of him. ‘My mother does not do hate... She is into forgiveness. Whereas Idodo hate. I hated this place with a... I hated it and Biagio.’
‘And now?’
She watched him staring at the magnificent building. He was very easy to watch; even his frown was beautiful.
‘More of a love-hate thing these days. There came a point, I don’t know when, that I found I was happy to be returning. Now I spend more time here than is strictly necessary. People make a place and some good people live and work here, and Biagio has removed himself, which is a plus.’
