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‘No—Dante, please. I know it sounds ungrateful, but...but this is the last time I shall ever have Gran to myself, and I want... I want...’
She could not finish. Her voice was choked.
Immediately Dante backed off. ‘If you change your mind, just say. And if there is anything else I can do—’
‘No—truly, thank you.’ Connie’s voice sounded disjointed. ‘Dante, I have to go—that’s the district nurse arriving.’
She rang off and Dante disconnected, staring at the phone for a moment. A frown furrowed his brow.
After Connie’s grandmother died—what then?
What will happen to this strange marriage I’ve made?
He put down the phone, staring blankly at the wall, not coming up with any answer at all.
Connie sat quietly on the bench in the churchyard—the churchyard that would soon contain her poor grandmother’s remains. The plot was ready—next to the husband her grandmother had lost so many years ago, long before Connie’s own parents had been so tragically killed and she’d come to live with her still-stricken widowed grandmother.
The gaping earth was like a wound, raw and agonising, echoing the pain in her heart. Oh, she might know with her mind that her grandmother’s death had been the kindest way out of the cruel clutches of dementia, but for all that she missed her with all her heart. That ache could not be eased.
Dante was coming over for the funeral. He had been adamant. ‘It is my place to be at your side,’ he’d said to her, his tone quiet but firm.
And she was so very grateful to him. Not just for the financial support he’d given her as part of their deal, but for the kindness he’d shown her. The sympathy and support. It had made her feel less...alone.
Oh, her neighbours and the vicar, all the hired carers, had been sympathetic to her plight, and helpful in practical terms, but at the end of the day they all went back to their own homes. As for her friends from school and uni...well, they were all pursuing their own lives, most of them geographically far away. Being the sole carer of an elderly grandmother with dementia was very isolating, physically and emotionally, and had cut her off from the rest of life.
With Dante, for all the strangeness of their unusual marriage, which was not really a marriage at all in any normal sense, it was different. There was a link between them—a bond. A reason for them being in each other’s lives, however limited, that was in a strange way comforting and reassuring. Private and personal to them.
As the months since their wedding had passed she had become far more at ease with him when they’d met out of necessity for the validity of their marriage. She had lost much of her awkwardness with him and had found him easy to talk to about her grandmother, her fears for her, and her other daily concerns. And listening to him quietly telling her about his life in Italy had been something of an escape for her too, opening a window on a world far beyond the confines of caring for Gran. He’d become familiar...reassuring.
No one here even knew she was married. She wore no wedding ring and had not changed her name. She had explained Dante’s visits, and his involvement in her life, such as it was, by saying he was a cousin of her late father, who had got in touch with her and been kind enough to offer his help and support. It was plausible enough. After all, no one would believe a man like Dante Cavelli could ever think of her in any kind of romantic light.
But what was he to her now?
She swallowed, her throat tight, and her eyes went to the empty grave again. Pain tore at her, tears welling and spilling with a raw, terrible grief. Awkwardly, she got to her feet. Dusk was gathering and the rooks in the trees around the graveyard were cawing, the sound mournful and desolate. Tomorrow was the funeral service, and now she must go back to the empty cottage, have a shower, wash her hair, make herself presentable for the next day, force herself to eat something...
Her appetite had disappeared weeks ago as her grandmother had weakened so inexorably. Instead of the comfort eating that she had resorted to previously while looking after Gran, she had gone in the opposite direction, picking at her food, pushing away her still-full plates. The pounds had dropped off her, but she couldn’t care less. Her appearance had never mattered—not since she’d dedicated herself to her grandmother’s care. And it certainly did not matter to Dante...
Into her head flitted what Dante had said as they had flown off after their wedding.
‘To getting what we want.’
Well, that was just what theyhadgot. He’d got his inheritance, and she had got security for her grandmother for the rest of her days. And now those days were over...
Tears of loss choked her again. The funeral tomorrow would be unbearable.
But I will have Dante at my side, to help me through it.
It was her only comforting thought, and she clung to it with surprising strength.
Dante stood beside Connie by the waiting grave as the pallbearers slowly lowered their burden into it and the vicar intoned the solemn words of the Committal. At his side, shoulders hunched in the concealing black coat she was wearing, Connie wept silently.
His memories went back to the funeral of his grandfather. His grief had been infused with shock—the suddenness of the fatal heart attack, unexpected, despite his grandfather’s age. He had seemed so indomitable. As if he would go on for ever. Instead, he had died, leaving his grandson completely alone in the world.
As Connie is now too.
It was a strange thought...that both of them had no one else at all.
Except each other.
