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‘So now you are his sole guardian?’
She nodded without looking at him.
‘Was there no one else?’
‘We are fine.’ Her defensive prickles were on full show as she met his stare head-on. ‘Sam is a good boy... He...he got in with the wrong crowd.’
‘Ah...!’ How many career criminal families said the same thing? He was thinking, quite a few.
Her chin snapped up as she fixed him with a glare, and behind the spectacles her eyes glittered dangerously. ‘What doesthatmean?’ she said, her tone daring him to say anything bad about her brother.
‘Your brother is still in hospital?’
With no warning, the tears filled her eyes again. She blinked rapidly to disperse the warm moisture as her glasses steamed up. ‘No, he’s home now.’
‘So it wasn’t serious.’
‘Serious,’ she echoed, her nostrils flaring. ‘I suppose it depends on what you call serious, but most people would think that an asthma attack that requires hospitalisation is serious. If he’d been alone... But he wasn’t, luckily. I wasn’t there because I was working late. I actually spend more time with you than my own brother and...’ She gulped and stamped her foot for emphasis. ‘And that ends here and now!’
‘You need some time...?’
‘I have all the time in the world. I’m sacked!’
‘You resigned, as I recall.’
She paused. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said, more for her own benefit than his. ‘Maybe I’ll rent our house out and Sam and I could find a smaller rental somewhere cheaper... Cornwall, maybe?’ she said, her expression lightening as she was struck by the option. ‘We used to go there every year on holiday. It was quiet and Sam...’ She stopped suddenly, pressing both hands to her mouth.
If she hadn’t been projecting mute distress, Ezio would have pointed out the flaws in this plan. He would have pointed out that rental property was limited in Cornwall, where the popularity of the holiday hot spot had priced so many locals out of the property market, but she didn’t look as though she could take even a gentle version of the truth.
A profound sense of helplessness crashed down on Tilda like a black cloud smothering her normally buoyant optimism. She simply couldn’t see a way out that had a happy ending. There was just a series of brick walls blocking her way.
Their house was worth a lot and they owned it outright, which was lucky, because there wasn’t much left of what little insurance there had been and she had set that aside for Sam’s future. She hated the idea of selling the family home that held so many memories but recognised now that there might be no choice. But, even if they did move, it wouldn’t matter where they went because Sam would always be the outsider, always trying to fit in, and for the life of her she didn’t know how to help him.
‘Take a sabbatical. Your job will be waiting.’
He looked as surprised as she felt at his words. She felt a sudden a glimmer of hope, along with a lot more wariness.
‘Why are you being so nice?’ There had to be a catch. ‘And it doesn’t matter, because I don’t need a sabbatical, I need for ever!’ Aware her voice had risen to a shrill level of panic, she made a conscious effort to lower it as she added, ‘I can’t work, you take too much, and...’ The wobble was back but this time there was no way of stopping it morphing into a long wail of distress. In that moment it felt as though she would never be all right again... She was alone and she had broken the promise she made to her parents at the funeral that she would keep Sam safe.
The sound horrified her but it just went on and on.
Finally she made it stop, and rammed her hands across her mouth as though to retain the control that she was leaking from every pore. Oh, God, just hold it together, you idiot.To lose it like that in front of anyone was humiliating...but in front of Ezio it felt a million times worse.
She flashed a look towards the tall figure who had not moved a muscle during her meltdown.
Ezio watched her almost visibly unravelling—she lookedbreakable.He felt something he could not put a name to tighten in his chest. That awful wrenching, feral cry of anguish had stopped, though he could still hear it,feelit. She was still crying behind her hands; he could hear the muffled sobs.
Female tears did not normally affect him. In general he viewed them with cynical objectivity. He didn’t have total immunity, but he was getting there. Normally he simply removed himself from any situation that involved them but this was different. This was not a generic female, it was buttoned-up, tightMatilda.And that visceral sound...
‘Perhaps it might be wise to talk to someone?’ His mother swore by therapy, and said that she would not have been able to cope with her undemonstrative, dogmatic, cheating husband without it. Ezio thought that leaving him would have been a cheaper option.
Matilda’s eyes lifted. She didn’t make the mistake of interpreting the comment as an invitation to share with him, more a push towards the door, and she offered him a frigid little nod.
‘Could Rowena call me a taxi, do you think?’ she said quietly.
He knew there would be tears behind the misted lenses, and with no warning he found himself thinking of another office and another woman with tears in her eyes.
The roles on that occasion had been reversed. The woman in question that day had beenhisboss, his older, beautiful, charismatic and—as she had told him very quickly—unhappily married boss. He had been a youthful romantic idiot determined to play the big, protective hero... The memory of that long ago humiliation was enough to quash dead any impulse he might have felt to supply a shoulder for Matilda to cry on.
