AllFreeNovel
Share Us
However weird their marriage was, and however bizarre, however unreal it would seem—not just to her, but to everyone else who heard about it—it was indeed, undeniably, something to celebrate.
He gave a laugh, glancing up at the hovering stewardess. ‘Champagne it is,’ he said warmly.
With a murmur of assent, the stewardess glided away.
‘You’re right,’ Dante said, looking directly at Connie. ‘It is something to celebrate. We’ve both got what we wanted. That’s certainly worth toasting.’
The soft pop of a champagne cork came from the galley area, and then the stewardess was walking back with a tray on which stood two gently fizzing glasses of champagne. She offered one to Connie, with a perfunctory smile, and then, with a much warmer smile, gave the other to Dante. She glided away again.
Dante held his glass out across the aisle. ‘To getting what we want,’ he said to Connie.
He clinked his glass against hers, and took a mouthful of the beading liquid, as if assessing its mousse.
Connie took a sip of hers, feeling it effervesce in her mouth. Her eyes slid across to the man she had just married and she felt again that strange, irrelevant, impossible emotion well up within her—utterly and totally out of place as it was.
To getting what we want.
Dante’s words echoed in her head, and in their wake came a sudden sweeping desolation.
That would never be true for her.
Nevercouldbe true...
CHAPTER THREE
Eleven months later...
DANTEFROWNED. The email from Connie was brief, and all the more poignant for it.
Gran is fading—it is only a matter of time, the doctor says. It’s impossible to say how long, but she is now in end-of-life care.
He phoned her immediately. He could hear the tears in her voice as she spoke. He let her talk, knowing that that was what she needed to do.
He knew her better now. Even though their marriage was as minimalist as it was, some familiarity was inevitable. Though she had not come to Italy again after that first time, he’d occasionally visited her for the weekend. He’d stayed not at the cottage, which only had two bedrooms, but at one of the holiday cottages next door. The trips had been for appearances’ sake, to validate their marriage for his grandfather’s lawyers, but he’d found it refreshing—relaxing, even—to be out in the countryside, away from the high-pressure demands of city life and high finance.
Connie wasn’t high pressure at all—she was the complete opposite, gentle and sweet-natured—and that was refreshing too in its own way. She was so easy to be with. Familiar and undemanding.
In the time he’d spent with her they’d got more used to each other, become easier in each other’s company. They might come from different countries—different worlds—yet there were similarities that resonated. Like her, he had lost his parents when he was young, and been raised by a grandparent—in that respect they were alike, and they understood each other.
He’d fallen into the habit of phoning her on Sunday evenings, listening to her talk about her grandmother, knowing it helped her to do so—to have someone to express her concerns to—and in turn he had told her about how his week had been, about the work he was doing, his clients and their interests, the destinations he was going to on business.
Sometimes those included London, and twice she’d come to stay with him there overnight, sharing a suite with him at his favourite hotel. Again, it had been to help their marriage appear real, though she had never felt easy about being away from her grandmother, even with a nurse staying in her place. It was a devotion he had respected and admired and sympathised with as dementia had taken an increasing toll on her grandmother’s life.
And now, it seemed, as she told him what the doctor had said, her dementia had been compounded by a series of mini strokes, each one more incapacitating, each one weakening her grandmother further.
It was a sad business, to be sure, and he was as comforting as he could be on the phone to Connie.
‘Her life is drawing peacefully to a close—her long ordeal is nearing its end,’ he said sympathetically.
As was Connie’s long ordeal—though he did not say that. But in their most recent meeting, when he’d gone down to the West Country to visit her, he’d been taken aback by how exhausted she was looking.
Worn out—that was the phrase that came to mind. Though he’d provided funds for external carers and nurses, Connie had insisted that she wanted to do all the care she had the strength to do herself—and if that meant interrupted nights and endless coaxing to get her grandmother to take easily digestible food, to keep her hydrated, not to mention all the difficulties of personal physical care, she had doggedly got on with it.
Though he would not dream of saying so, Dante hoped that this final stage would not last too long. It was draining all of Connie’s strength—testing her to the limit.
‘I’ll fly over tomorrow morning,’ he promised her now.
Her answer surprised him, but he knew it made sense.
