The Shadow Behind Her Smile

by Janene Wood

  “I can't believe you're actually here!” she exclaimed ecstatically. “This is so like you, to just turn up without any sort of warning.”

  “I didn't know I was coming myself until the last minute,” he dissembled, gratified by the exuberance of her greeting which he knew he didn’t deserve. But then family tended to forgive things friends never would.

  “You’re lucky you caught me; I was just on my way out the door when you rang,” said Jules.

  Marc frowned. “Don't change your plans for me, Jules. I'm happy to amuse myself for a couple of hours.”

  “Don't be ridiculous! We hardly ever see each other. I intend to spend every second I can with you…when you're not working of course, which I imagine is why you're in town.”

  “You imagine right,” he said, not giving anything away.

  “Well, you can’t work 24 hours a day. We'll get to spend some time together, right?”

  “Don't worry, you'll be sick of the sight of me before the week is out,” he grinned. Just two minutes of Jules' company made him feel so much better about everything. It even put seeing Kate again into proper perspective. He had survived losing her; he could survive finding her again, no matter what ugly truths were revealed in the process. “If I'm not working, I'm all yours.”

  “This is fantastic!” Jules enthused. “We’re going to have a blast.” She hooked her arm through his and walked him down the hall to the kitchen. Turning to face him again, she asked, “Shall I make a pot of tea, or should we start as we mean to finish, with a bottle of wine? The Olds sent me a case of red a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty sure I have one or two bottles left.”

  Marc grimaced at her easy reference to their grandparents. In a tight voice, he suggested, “Why don't we go out somewhere instead? Let me take you to lunch, sorellina, and we'll drink all the wine you want.”

  Jules was surprised, but agreed readily. “I know a lovely cafe we can walk to. That way we can both have a few drinks without worrying about driving or catching a taxi.”

  After a leisurely stroll to the high street, they made a quick stop at the off-license to pick up some wine, before being shown to a quiet table at the back of the café Jules recommended. Marc took a seat facing the door and waited patiently for the waitress to uncork and pour the first bottle. He took a long sip from his glass and felt himself unwinding. It had been a stressful morning, and though he still hadn't decided what to do about Kate, he forcefully pushed all thought of her to the back of his mind, determined to give his complete attention to his little sister.

  Looking across the table at her, he realised there was one more thing they needed to get out of the way before they could properly begin to enjoy each other's company. Jules wouldn't thank him for bringing it up, but it had to be done. He took a deep breath and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve been to seen Mum?”

  Jules sighed. “And here I was thinking we were here to enjoy ourselves.” Her face was stony; anger simmered just below the surface.

  Recognising the look, Marc said, “I'm not trying to make you mad, Jules; I know how you feel. I was just going to suggest we go and see her while I'm in town. Together. She misses us.”

  “She should have thought of that before; don't you think?” retorted Jules bitterly.

  “I don’t want to argue with you,” said Marc gruffly, forcing down his own anger at her inability to think rationally about this one painful subject. “And I’m not trying to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “So what is it you do want?”

  “I guess I want you to think about forgiving her.”

  “But you don’t think she did it,” argued Jules. “If someone framed her, then there’s nothing to forgive, is there?”

  “It doesn't matter what I think. You think she's guilty, so the only way to properly move forward, to keep your anger and bitterness from eating you up inside, is to forgive her. Don't do it for her, do it for yourself.”

  “That’s easy for you to say; you were always closer to her than to Russell.”

  Marc leaned toward her, catching her eye and refusing to let go. “That doesn't mean I didn't love him, Jules. He was my father in all the ways that mattered. It can't have been easy, stepping into a dead man's shoes, but he loved us like we were his own blood. I took his name, didn't I? I am who I am today largely because of him.”

  Jules pulled her gaze away and looked down at the table.

  “And you know how much Mum loved him,” Marc went on. “If she did kill him as you believe, it was in a moment of passion, a moment she'll regret for the rest of her life. If you would just go and talk to her, you’d understand how much pain she’s in. Won't you at least think about coming with me to see her?”

  Marc hated fighting with Jules and knew she felt the same way. They were all the family either of them had – if they didn’t count their mother, and he was all too aware that Jules didn’t.

  “I'll think about it,” she muttered grudgingly.

  “That's all I ask,” said Marc, placated by her response.

  The waitress returned to take their orders, giving them both a few moments to put away the painful subject of their stepfather's death and their mother's incarceration. Nothing was the same since Elizabeth Gibson Sant’Angelo Webb had been tried and found guilty of her husband's murder seven years ago, but they had become expert at pretending it was.

  Marc felt the weight of Jules’ speculative gaze and wondered how much of his confusion and distraction over Kate showed in his manner and expression. She certainly knew him well enough to know that if he wanted to tell her something, he would get around to it in his own good time, and if he didn't, nothing she said would make him give it up.

  Instead of challenging him directly, she bided her time, remarking, “Don't think I didn't notice the way you skipped over the whole subject of the Olds earlier. You know, they ask about you all the time.”

  After Marc and Jules' father, David, died, Elizabeth Sant'Angelo decided to accept her in-laws’ offer of a new home and a brand new start and left England. Hoping that new surroundings and their grandparents' influence would help her children get over the loss of their father, she uprooted them to the south of Italy, to Benevento, fifty kilometres northeast of Naples, where the senior Sant’Angelos owned a vineyard. Life was slower there, a far cry from the frenetic pace of London; the perfect place to raise children and heal painful wounds.

  Marc didn’t return to London until he was twelve, when he started boarding at the same school his Sant’Angelo cousins attended. As the years passed, his relationship with his grandparents became more strained. With little input from the outside world, they became set in their ways, while Marc enthusiastically embraced each and every new experience. By the time he matriculated, he was convinced his future lay in serving his country. As a soldier. The Olds were far from pleased and not afraid to tell him so. He'd had very little to do with them since.

  “And what do you tell them?” Marc's voice was guarded, his eyes narrowed like a cat’s. The Brotherhood of Guardians was a secret organisation, of which few outsiders were properly cognizant. To the world at large, it was a private security firm that deployed its employees to hot-spots all over the world. To Jules' and Marc's mutual acquaintance, Marc was a gun for hire, a man incapable of settling down, a man too damaged to lead a normal life. Jules loved him enough to romanticise his “work”, calling him honourable and self-sacrificing, and in doing so, came closer than she realised to the truth.

  “I say you're doing important work and they should be proud of you. I tell them it's time to swallow their pride and make amends before it's too late.”

  “Perhaps it's already too late. We wouldn't even know each other after all this time.”

  “They're your grandparents, Marco! A thousand years could go by and you would still know them. They don't ever change.”

  “That's the problem! They’re incapable of adapting. They take it as a personal affront that I took a different path to
the one they would have chosen for me, conveniently forgetting they always encouraged me to be my own person. They can't accept that they're partly responsible for the person I became. That they don't approve of who I am and what I do is actually the most ludicrous, hypocritical thing in the world.”

  “It's not that they don't approve exactly, they just worry about you. Anyone with eyes in their head can see you're a good person. A decent man who constantly sacrifices his own happiness for the sake of the greater good.”

  Marc's eyes narrowed. “Is that what you truly see, Juliet? Or are you just trying to keep the peace, as usual?”

  “Don't do that!” she exclaimed angrily. “I know who you are, damn it!”

  “Who I am is a cynical, violent man who destroys everything and everyone he touches,” said Marc harshly, thinking of Errol's death and the way he manipulated the younger man for his own purposes, convincing him to take risks he was completely unprepared for. He was as responsible for Errol's death as surely as if he'd shot the kid himself. “Maybe the Olds are right, and I should have joined the civil service or become an accountant. It might have bored me to death, but at least I'd have a clear conscience.”

  Jules frowned, shocked by her brother's words. “Can I be honest with you, Marco? The man I see needs to settle down and get himself a proper life, away from that goddamn company. Can't you see it's squeezing the life out of you?”

  Marc locked eyes onto his sister's face. Since he was in London for the foreseeable future, he had been considering telling Jules the truth about who he worked for and what he really did for a living, but he wasn't quite ready for that conversation, so he had no choice but to maintain the fiction for a while longer. “You can’t blame the company for the way my life turned out, Jules. Everything that's happened is because of choices I made. I may not be conventionally happy, but there’s a great deal of satisfaction in doing a job well, you know.”

  “I worry what's going to become of you, that’s all,” she said simply. “I know what you’ve been through, and I worry that you never really got over her.”

  Marc stared at his sister, speechless. Not for the first time, he wondered if she could actually see the thoughts spinning around in his head. Why else would she bring up the subject of Katy today when they had only ever spoken of her that one time, years ago?

  “I have something to tell you,” he said at last, forcing the words out. “I wasn't going to bring it up, but since you seem able to read my mind...”

  Marc took a deep breath to bolster his resolve. Right now, he felt it was entirely possible he had dreamed the startling events of this morning, from stepping foot on the escalator in the airport terminal, to seeing Kate embrace her lover on the street outside her house. Once he spoke the words out loud, there would be no going back; he would have to face the reality of the situation and follow it through, dealing with whatever insidious truths were revealed in the process. There was the very real possibility nothing would change; indeed, things might deteriorate even further. But if there was even a slim possibility his heart might be returned to him, bruised and battered but otherwise intact, wasn't that worth risking everything for?

  “I saw her this morning,” he told her decisively.

  Jules frowned. “Who?”

  “Her,” he repeated. “Katy.”

  “What!” Jules was stunned. “How is that possible? You said she was dead!”

  “I know what I told you, Jules,” said Marc quietly, “but I saw her this morning at the airport. I couldn't believe my eyes so I followed her halfway across London, to a house in Notting Hill.” He paused to allow her a moment to process this revelation. “There’s no doubt it was her. Alive and well.” A shadow fell over Marc's face. “I think she might be married.” He somehow managed to utter this last observation without choking on the words.

  “How is that possible?” repeated Jules incredulously. “Didn’t you see her? Her body, I mean?”

  Marc shook his head helplessly. “That’s the thing; I couldn’t. I was…well, I wasn’t there when she died, so, no, I didn’t get to see her body.” Marc cursed himself, yet again, for being absent at the worst possible time. “It was Africa. Bodies decompose rapidly in the heat so they had to bury her immediately. I had no reason to doubt what I was told, even though not being able to see her one last time tore me apart.”

  “Oh, God,” groaned Jules.

  “What is it?” asked Marc absently, immersed in his own dark thoughts.

  All the blood had drained from Jules’ face and she looked in danger of passing out. “Did you say you followed her from the airport to Notting Hill this morning?”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.” Her voice had altered, becoming as flat and toneless as a doctor delivering the unfathomable news that her patient has only weeks to live.

  Marc nodded mutely, encouraging her to go on.

  “I have a friend named Kate – she’s my best friend, actually – who just moved to Notting Hill. I know for a fact she was at the airport this morning, dropping off her brother Jack, who’s flying home to Australia. She has the most exquisite violet eyes...they're really quite distinctive...” Jules trailed off, leaving him to form his own conclusions. “Ring any bells?”

  Incapable of speech, Marc just stared at her.

  Jules continued on relentlessly, as if fearing her courage might fail her if she delayed. “She drives a yellow Jeep and has lived in London for about four years now, after working for a year somewhere in Africa. Something terrible happened to her there, but she never talks about it. She hates it with a passion when anyone calls her Katy – and I'm beginning to understand why. She's in a serious relationship, that's true, but she’s not married, not yet. But the thing you need to know is this: she has more integrity and guts that anyone I know, and I can tell you, without knowing any of the details, that whatever came between the two of you was as much a tragedy for her as it was for you.”

  Marc continued to stare at his sister, trying to reconcile the impossible, that his Katy, the one person in the world who truly knew him, happened to be Jules' best friend. She had been here, within reach, all this time! So very close. And he had no one but himself to blame for not figuring it out earlier. If he hadn’t been such a lousy, selfish brother, Jules would have introduced him to her ages ago and none of this would be happening now.

  “How long have you known her?” he asked, his voice hoarse with shock and regret.

  “A bit over three years. She was very quiet at first, a bit standoffish. As I said, she doesn't talk about that time in her life, between leaving Australia and coming here. The only reason I even know about it is because I saw her passport once, and asked her about all the exotic stamps. Cairo. Addis Ababa. Istanbul. She said she did some aid work in East Africa and then changed the subject. I didn't push it.”

  “Obviously she never mentioned me,” remarked Marc dispiritedly.

  “No, but I'm not surprised to hear she had a tempestuous love affair that went wrong, for whatever reason. When I first met her, she was so damn sad all the time.”

  “And you couldn't resist trying to fix her, like a bird with a broken wing.” Marc gave her an affectionate smile.

  “She needed a friend,” said Jules simply. “So tell me about the two of you. What were you like together?”

  Marc's expression softened and his eyes gained a faraway aspect. “We fit. That's the best way I can describe what it was like. There were no sharp bits or jagged edges; it was smooth and seamless, like we were each fashioned with the other in mind.” He let out a heavy sigh. “God, I miss the effortlessness of it. Everyone else is bloody hard work.”

  The sympathetic look Jules gave him was tinged with envy. “How did you meet?”

  Marc took a sip of his wine and straightened his shoulders. “As to that...well, it wasn't under the best of circumstances, but it was certainly memorable.” Taking a deep breath, he thought how best to begin.

/>   “Four of us were out on a routine patrol. It was getting late and we were thinking about heading back to base when we saw what appeared to be an abandoned vehicle in the distance. It turned out to be a medical supply truck with its tyres shot out. The driver was lying on the road with a bullet in his head. We found a young woman hiding inside, almost hysterical with shock. After she calmed down, she told us she was a nurse, returning from leave in Addis Ababa. They were heading to the refugee camp where she worked when they were attacked. Bandits stole their supplies and abducted the girl she was traveling with.

  “The nurse was a pretty Ethiopian girl with mild cerebral palsy. The bandits told her no one in their right mind would pay good money for a ‘retard’ like her and left her to fend for herself in the middle–”

  “Hold on a minute,” interjected Jules. “You're saying Kate was abducted? By human traffickers?”

  Compassion shone from Marc’s eyes as he looked across the table at his beautiful, naive sister. “It happens a lot, Jules.” And if not for people like him, willing to risk their lives, it would be even more prevalent. He didn’t say it out loud, the truth of it was in his manner and bearing, etched into the hard contours of his face.

  “It’s no wonder she was so jittery when we first met,” she murmured.

  “Anyway, we tracked them without much difficulty. They finally stopped for the night and we effected a rescue. Not that it went off without a hitch,” added Marc grimly.

  “Do I want to know what happened?” asked Jules tentatively.

  Marc shrugged. “You wanted to know how we met.”

  “Go on then.”

  “They tied Kate's hands and feet so she couldn't run, then secured her to one of their vehicles with a rope. They left her like that while they dug in for the night. They didn't bother with sentries. We waited till full dark, by which time they'd been hitting the booze pretty hard. We managed to subdue them with only a few shots fired, but one of them slipped away and reached the vehicle Kate was tied to. I don't know if he forgot she was there or just didn't care, but he tore out of there, fast. He dragged her a couple of hundred metres over rough, rocky ground before I finally got a decent shot at him. He lost control of the jeep and plummeted over the bank of a dry river bed, taking Kate with him.”