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But when a month and a half later she had shown up with proof of a pregnancy, when it had been confirmed that the child she was carrying was his, he had been forced into a marriage he had not wanted to a woman he despised. Like it or not, his own sense of honour had become the walls of his own prison. There was no way he could allow any child of his to be born illegitimate. It just wasn’t the way he was built. His mother had been great when it had come to instilling family values...not to mention the value of accepting responsibility for his actions.
“There was a miscarriage. It hadn’t been a smooth pregnancy from the start. It was an early miscarriage...” Angelo could still remember that horrific day when Amanda had been rushed to hospital. Afterwards, he had asked himself whether stress had been the cause even though, when he had tentatively and privately mentioned that to the consultant he had been assured otherwise. These things happened, he had been told. It was no one’s fault.
At any rate, without a child in the equation, he could easily have divorced her, but he hadn’t. He had distanced himself from her, but divorce? No. His penance for being foolish enough to have been taken in by one woman and manipulated by another was to remain harnessed to Amanda for life as a reminder of his own stupidity. They had led separate lives. He had ensured her financial well-being but that was as far as it went. As far as he had been concerned, she could do as she wished, and so could he, for there was nothing binding them together. In the end, he had felt pity towards her, but that was all—and it was more than she deserved, he had always reckoned.
“I’m sorry,” Rosie muttered because, whatever had happened, losing a child would have been terrible. “How long... How long had it been going on behind my back, Angelo?”
Angelo knew that this was his one and only chance to tell her the truth, but could he? At the end of the day, Rosie had been as guilty as her friend when it came to opportunism. As he was now aware, two girls from deprived backgrounds willing to do anything it took to advance their prospects. Was he now going to humiliate himself by confessing how deeply he had been affected by Rosie’s betrayal? Pride surged through him, strangling at source any inappropriate temptation to confide. He wondered what he was doing here. Why had he recommenced this fatal relationship with her? All the reasons he had given himself now seemed weak and unjustifiable.
“So now you know the truth.” He stood up and shrugged fluidly.
“Did you marry her because she was pregnant? Did you...did you love her?”
“I’m not discussing this.”
“Is that all you have to say, Angelo? That you’re not discussing this?”
“You’re mistaken if you think that I’m going to indulge in some pointless heart-to-heart about it. I’m not.”
“I just want to know what happened. I think you owe me that!”
“I don’t owe you anything!”
“How can you say that?”
“We’ve been having sex, Rosie. Since when do I owe anything to a woman I’ve been sleeping with? A woman who means nothing to me? Explanations are reserved for the people we care about.”
Angelo steeled himself against the ugly sensation twisting inside him, as if someone had plunged a shard of glass straight through his ribcage and was methodically twisting it in search of soft tissue. This was how he had to play it. Needs must. He should never have become involved with her all over again. He should just have let sleeping dogs lie instead of thinking that he could kill off his lingering attraction to her by getting her into bed.
Rosie watched him withdraw from her, saw the ice settle over his features. She almost wished that she had never found that wretched little picture, even though the better part of her knew that it was always best to face the truth, which was something she had been dodging ever since she had jumped into bed with him. Like a fool, she was now in a position where he had had to spell things out for her: I owe you nothing because you mean nothing to me...
How delusional had she been ever to imagine that he would crack and open up his heart to her, give her the opportunity to defend herself? Had she ever really thought that that would happen? Or had she continued to feed her own love and addiction to him because she had secretly believed and hoped that, if they carried on with what they had, he would one day discover that he had fallen in love with her? That she had somehow become indispensable? Had she, deep down, been prepared to blank out their history if there was the promise of a future dangling in front of her? Had she imagined that he would ever be able to do the same? That somehow she could convince him to feel the same way about her as she felt about him?
“Did she take to drink because she lost the baby?” Rosie asked painfully.
“Repeat—I’m not going to discuss this.” He began walking towards the door. “I have a party to get back to.”
“You’re just going to go?”
“What more ground is there to cover?”
“You’re right. None.” She stood up, but her legs felt wobbly. “I think we should call it a day on this. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.” She was ashamed of the fleeting pause that followed this statement because she knew that, like a coward, she was giving him one last chance to jump in and somehow save the day. “I’m very sorry that I can’t see the job through to the finish—but tomorrow,” she said quickly, “I shall go up to the house to finish off the cleaning.”
“Forget it. I’ll get my people to sort it out.”
“You paid me to do it.”
“I said forget it.”
“In that case, would you like me to return the car to you? Because that was part of the payment for ensuring that your house was returned to its pristine condition.”
“Consider it a parting gift for services rendered—and I must say, you’re a much cheaper option this time round.”
Rosie didn’t think before she raised her hand and whipped it against the side of his face. She hit him so hard that her palm stung, but it still felt good to release the rage bubbling up inside her. If she could have hit him again, she would have. She had never been prone to violence but she felt that that could change in a heartbeat, right here, right now.
Angelo rubbed the side of his face but didn’t bat an eye. He supposed he deserved that.
“The next time you hear from me,” he said coolly, “It’ll be through my lawyer. I intend to sell my house as quickly as possible. I will suggest the necessary boundary lines, and I’ll get that certified as fast as I can. Provided you don’t contest my decision, it can be settled in a matter of weeks.”
“Good.” She was already missing him, already wondering how the weekends would be without him around. She wanted to reach out and grab him as he swung around, heading to the front door.
She didn’t. Instead, she held herself in rigid silence as he strode through the door, slamming it behind him, and she remained that way until she heard the deep-throated growl of his car as it disappeared back up to his house.
Then, and only then, did she collapse, like a puppet whose strings have been cut suddenly. She sank to the ground and cried until she didn’t think it was possible to have any tears left in her to shed.
In the larder, the ground was still strewn with all the stuff that had fallen off the shelf as she had scrabbled for the chocolates and biscuits. The tins and boxes, she stuffed into a bin bag. There was a coal shed at the side of the cottage; she would put it all there and maybe, just maybe, she would forget about it.
And the toxic jewellery box with its contents... It would be destined for a more permanent resting place. She put all of it in a separate bin bag and trundled the lot out to the bins at the side where they would be collected the following Monday by the bin men. In the distance, she could just about make out the sounds of revelry at Angelo’s house.
It was easier not to think while she tidied and, although it was late, she cleaned the entirety of the larder, rearranging everything and wondering whether she would ever really be able to go in there without remembering the effects of tonight.
It was three in the morning by the time she finally got to sleep, after a shower. Beth had texted to ask how she was feeling and told her that the chocolate and biscuits had done the job. Rosie had read the text and had wanted to text back asking what Angelo was doing. Was he back out on the patio with the small blonde lawyer? Had he decided that sleeping with someone who didn’t come with complications, baggage and a murky shared past would be blessed relief?
She still couldn’t come to terms with the way he had refused to talk to her, the finality with which he had walked out of the front door without looking back. Lying in bed when she closed her eyes she still had his image in her head as he had stood in front of her and told her that he owed her nothing because she didn’t matter, because he didn’t care about her.
The prospect of picking up the pieces and getting on with her own life struck her as the most terrifying thing she could contemplate doing. She had tried that once and had ended up with a stalker. What was going to happen next time round? Would she land herself a serial killer?
How much poorer was her judgement going to be, because she felt as though her love for Angelo, despite all the unforgiving odds, had deepened this time round. He had been so adamant about just being in it for the sex, yet there were things they had done together that had been curiously intimate and quite unrelated to sex.
