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‘Signore—Mr Henderson?’
‘Are you that Luca fella my Tina’s been talking about?’
He felt an unfamiliar stab of insecurity. What had she told him?
‘I am he,’ he said, introducing himself properly as he held out his hand.
The other man regarded it solemnly for just a moment longer than Luca would have liked, before taking it in his, a work-callused hand, the skin of his forearm darker even than Luca’s, but with a distinct line where his tan ended where his shirt sleeve ended between shoulder and elbow.
‘I’m here to see Valentina.’
The older man regarded him levelly, giving him the opportunity to find the resemblance, finding it in a place that made the connection unmistakable—in his amber eyes—darker than Valentina’s, almost caramel, but her eyes nonetheless.
‘Even if I wanted to let you see her,’ he started in his lazy drawl, and Luca felt a mental, male!, ‘she’s not here. You’ve missed her.’
Panic squeezed Luca’s lungs. He’d been so desperate to track her home to Australia, he’d never thought for a moment she’d take off for somewhere else. ‘Where has she gone?’
Her father thought about that for a moment and Luca felt as if he were being slowly tortured. ‘Sydney,’ he finally said. ‘A couple of hours ago. But she wouldn’t tell me where or why. Only that it was important.’
Luca knew where and he had a pretty good idea why.
‘I have to find her,’ he said, already turning for the car. If she was two hours ahead he could still miss her...
‘Before you go...’ he heard behind him.
‘Yes?’
‘Tina was bloody miserable when she came home. I only let her get on that bus because she insisted.’ He hesitated a moment there, letting the tension draw out. ‘Just don’t send her home any more miserable, all right?’
Luca nodded, understanding. There was an implicit threat in his words, a threat that told him that this time was for keeps. ‘I can’t guarantee anything, but I will do my best.’ And then, because he owed it to the man who had been prepared to put his own property on the line to bail out a sinking Lily, even when there was no way he could, ‘I love your daughter, Signore Henderson,’ he said, astounding himself by the truth of it. ‘I want to marry her.’
‘Is that so?’ her father said, scratching his whiskered chin. ‘Then let’s hope, if you find her, that that’s what she wants too.’
* * *
The cemetery sat high on a hill leading down to a cliff top overlooking a cerulean sea that stretched from the horizon and crashed to foaming white on the cliff face below. The waves were wild today, smashing against the rocks and turning to spray that flew high on a wind that gusted and whipped at her hair and clothes.
Tina turned her face into the spray as another wave boomed onto the rocks below, and drank in the scent of air and sea and salt. She’d always loved it here, ever since her father had brought her here as a child for their seaside holiday and he’d wondered at the endless sea while they’d wandered along the cliff-top path.
They’d come across the cemetery back then, wandering its endless pathways and reading the history of the region in its gravestones. Then it had been a fascination, now it was something more than just a cemetery with a view, she thought, reminded of another time, another cemetery, that one with a stunning view of Venice through its tall iron gates.
She wandered along a pathway between old graves with stones leaning at an angle or covered in lichen towards a newer section of the cemetery, where stones were brighter, the flowers fresher.
She found it there and felt the same tug of disbelief—the same pang of pain—she felt whenever she saw it, the simple heart-shaped stone beneath which her tiny child was buried, the simple iron lace-work around the perimeter.
She knelt down to the sound of the cry of gulls and the crash of waves against the cliffs. ‘Hello, Leo,’ she said softly. ‘It’s Mummy.’ Her voice cracked on the word and she had to stop and take a deep breath before she could continue. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’
Bubble wrap gave way to tissue paper as she carefully unwrapped the tiny gift. ‘It’s a horse,’ she said, holding the glass up to the sunlight to check it for fingerprints. ‘All the way from Venice. I saw a man make one from a fistful of sand.’
She placed it softly in the lawn at the base of the simple stone. ‘Oh, you should have seen it, Leo, it was magical, the way he turned the rod and shaped the glass. It was so clever, and I thought how much you would have enjoyed it. And I thought how you should have such a horse yourself.’
