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“Beth is going to take care of everything.” Rosie nodded at the tins of chocolate and biscuits neatly piled on the table by the door. “All the stuff you need is right there. I’ve told her what to do. She’s creative. She’ll manage.”
Angelo shook his head, confused. “I’m not paying Beth to cater my event. I’m paying you. So don’t tell me that she can handle everything because she’s creative.” Bewilderment lent his voice a harshness that barely made Rosie flinch. She felt like a zombie, totally zoned out.
If she had known what she would find when she had begun rummaging wildly through the chaotic jumble on the top shelf of the larder, would she have begun her search for biscuits and chocolate? In her frantic haste to go as quickly as possible, she had knocked over the stack of Amanda’s possessions, bits and bobs which she had shoved out of sight until the day came when she could face doing something with them—pretty tins and boxes, which she had briefly glanced at before stashing away.
And a jewellery box with a concealed drawer which had sprung open as the box had hit the tiled ground with a resounding crash, splintering open so that the gaudy baubles, stuff she’d used to wear when they had gone out as teenagers, scattered across the floor.
Rosie had the contents of the jewellery box on her lap now and she knew that, however much she didn’t want to face Angelo just at this very moment in time, she had no choice.
“Angelo, we need to talk,” she said heavily.
“Now is not a good time for a lengthy conversation, especially a lengthy conversation on a subject you know I have no intention of covering.” He strode towards the window, then to the fireplace. For once, he wasn’t grace in motion. His movements were jerky and restless and he kept glancing across at her with a frown. Instinctively he knew that, whatever was happening, it wasn’t good. Instinctively, he also knew that he would rather drag things back to where they were, to the party, the biscuits and the chocolate. He could deal with her getting in a flap because she couldn’t rustle up something fantastic with limited ingredients.
“We either talk, Angelo, or else you can leave and I never want to see you again. And I don’t care if you don’t want to cover the topics I want to cover. I don’t care about your precious ground rules for this relationship.”
Angelo stilled. So this was what an ultimatum sounded like; he had never had one delivered to him. He narrowed his eyes on her stricken face and got the feeling that she was close to passing out. Her breathing was fast, like someone on the verge of hyperventilating. How could all this have happened in the space of twenty minutes? Was she having some kind of panic attack?
“So talk,” he said roughly. Never had he felt so at odds with himself. He wanted to continue pacing the room—he felt he needed an outlet for reserves of restless energy that he was finding difficult to contain—but then he really needed to sit, really needed to impose some calm on the situation.
“I know now,” Rosie said quietly. She was glad that he had chosen not to sit next to her on the sofa but instead on one of the other chairs so that they were facing one another.
Of course she could fully see that this was the worst possible time to have this conversation, but how would she ever be able to go back up to the house with him, chat in the car as though nothing had happened, see everything through the following morning and then, when the dust from the party had settled, pull him aside for a chat? She just didn’t have such reserves of self-control within her.
“What do you know?”
“A while ago I stuck some of Mandy’s stuff in the larder, right at the back on the top shelf. Actually, I’d forgotten that I’d put it there. Then, later on, I filled the shelf with bits and pieces I thought I might need one day, stuff that I could pull out in an emergency and use because the sell-by dates were way in the future...” Her voice petered out.
Angelo didn’t move a muscle. He was leaning forward, head slightly cocked to one side, arms resting loosely on his thighs and his fingers lightly clasped together.
“Excellent forward-planning” was the sum total of what he could rummage up to contribute to the conversation. “You never know what you might need in a larder that has a sell-by date five years hence...”
“Beth should be here in a minute to collect all of it and take it back to your house, so you needn’t worry that your friends and colleagues are going to miss out on things to eat with their liqueurs and coffee.”
“This may come as a shock, but do I really strike you as the sort of man who gives a damn about something like that? Do you really think I care whether Henry from Legal has something to go with his coffee or his glass of port?”
“You paid me to do a job, so I’m going to make sure that it gets done.”
“Why do I get the feeling that we’re beating about the bush here?”
Rosie was saved having to answer that by the arrival of Beth who appeared in a tidal rush of concern. What did she think she had eaten? How brave of her to get through the entire evening without murmuring a word of complaint! Of course she would let everyone know that Angelo was on his way, that he was just making sure that she was okay before he headed back over...
Rosie wasn’t sure what Beth suspected about her relationship with Angelo. To most people, an employer who is concerned enough to sit with his employee while she pulls herself through a bout of so-called food poisoning would be a target of instant suspicion. But Beth, aside from being incredible at what she did, was also big-hearted enough to ignore the suspicious and discreet enough to mention nothing even though suspicions had been aroused.
Certainly as she fussed and carried away the biscuits and the chocolate Rosie couldn’t help but think that she and Angelo must make a very odd picture, he sitting as still as a stone, barely muttering anything; she white as a ghost and clearly distressed.
“One of Mandy’s things broke. It fell and cracked open. A jewellery box.” Rosie picked up the threads of the conversation as soon as Beth had slammed the front door behind her. She wanted to take this through its natural timeline—it helped, like repeating instructions out loud until they were clear in your head. A few of the brightly coloured rings and bracelets were on her lap, scooped up along with other stuff.
“When I first came across the jewellery box, I didn’t even know that there was a hidden drawer under the trays of jewellery. I just opened the lid, looked in and put it aside. I know we parted company and never spoke again, but seeing her stuff brought back fond memories of how things used to be. I didn’t want to get rid of the more personal pieces. I wasn’t too sure what I was going to do with some of them but...” Again she faltered, twining and untwining her fingers.
Angelo had no intention of rushing her. So what if his guests began to notice his absence? He was hovering on the brink of a precipice. He could feel it, and his normally clever mind, which could cope with anything thrown at it, was not co-operating.
“But?” he eventually prompted when the silence threatened to remain permanent.
“But it’s a good job I hung on to a few of her things, because how else would I ever have found out that she was having your baby?”
The silence that greeted this question was deafening. Rosie could hear her heart beating fast. So what had she been hoping for? A miracle? That he would rush into instant denial? She could tell from the greyness that stole into his face that that particular miracle was out of the question.
“What did you find?” Angelo asked eventually. Her calmness was disquieting. He thought that he would have been able to react better if she had become hysterical, argumentative, demanding. But there was a flatness behind her eyes that sent a chill through him.
“A scan picture. There was a date on it. I worked it all out.” She had been confused when she had first seen it, hadn’t really made any connections. When the truth had sunk in, something inside her had shrivelled up and died. She had spent years imagining that he had been having a fling with her friend, even though she just couldn’t picture that in her head. Knowing the truth was even worse, because not only had they been having a fling behind her back but the fling had led to a pregnancy. Somehow that seemed like the greatest of all betrayals. He was paranoid about them not taking any chances, yet he had played fast and loose with Mandy. Had they sat and made plans together? Happy-family plans? Had they worked out names, projecting a future for their unborn child?
“Where is the child now? Why have you never mentioned it to me?”
Angelo was lost for words. He knew exactly what she was thinking, yet how could he confess to her that he could barely remember that one night with Amanda? How could he admit that he had been so devastated by revelations that he had practically drunk himself into a state of oblivion? That for the first time in his life he had slept with a woman without even contributing to the act?
When Amanda had tried to insinuate herself on the back of a one-night stand he didn’t remember, Angelo had turned his back on her. The fact that he had slept with her at all had disgusted him, had been a sign of staggering weakness, a moment of vulnerability of which afterwards he had been ashamed.
