by Lucy Gordon
Alex’s beauty and charisma had caused him misery, but he knew now that he would never have been happy with her. She was too independent to need him as he must be needed if he were to know peace and fulfilment.
But Laura’s vulnerability had spoken to him from the first moment, although it had taken time for him to understand. She could be strong and resourceful. The child’s birth had proved that. But for her daily life she needed the strength he had to offer, and his heart had chosen her because she called forth the better part of himself. They completed each other, just as Rinaldo and Alex completed each other. There could be no stronger union than that.
The light was still there in the window. Gino started the engine and drove the rest of the way. As he went into the house, he knew what he would find.
‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him.
‘Hello,’ he said, gazing at her.
She was enchanting, her face illuminated by the glow of the lamp. When she put out her hand he took it in his, gently caressing her fingers with this own.
‘What is it?’ she asked when a sudden alert look came into his face.
He raised her right hand to study the thing that had caught his attention. It was a small filigree ring on the centre finger.
‘Nikki gave me that,’ she said. ‘She won it at a fair. You’ve seen it a thousand times before.’
‘Yes, but I never realised-’
And suddenly he was back in the hospital, rambling feverishly to the woman who sat with him, speaking in a warm voice, full of hope, saying ‘Time to forget and love again.’
He’d denied it, but she’d pleaded, ‘Suppose she loved you. Don’t you want to be loved as well as to give love?’
Then he’d drawn her hand closer and brushed his lips over it, feeling the rough outline of a ring on her finger.
A filigree ring.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he asked now. ‘In the hospital, that time.’
‘Yes, it was me.’
‘Why did you never tell me?’
‘I couldn’t while you loved Alex so much.’
‘I thought I did. But you said such things to me while I was in that fever-about a woman who loved me as much as I loved her. Who did you mean?’
She shook her head. ‘You know who I meant.’
‘But I need to hear you say it. Tell me that you love me, Laura, please.’
‘I love you,’ she said simply. ‘I have for a long time. I always will.’
‘And I knew I loved you soon after we married,’ he admitted, ‘but I didn’t know how much. I had to come back and see Alex again to realise what a small part of my life she was. You are my life. My whole life, now and for ever. You and Nikki. The three of us.’
She placed his hand on her stomach. ‘Four,’ she said.
She put down the lamp quickly to go into his arms, and as they held each other tightly she felt the shadow between them finally pass away.
‘There’s so much I wanted to say to you,’ he said, ‘But I could never forget that you only married me for Nikki’s sake.’
‘I thought I did. I had to tell myself something like that, as a kind of protection. I was scared to admit how much I loved you, even to myself. I couldn’t believe that I really meant anything to you.’
He kissed her. ‘You were right when you said that I had to come back. You’re wiser than I. You knew the past had to be dealt with. Even though I loved you, it wouldn’t have been complete without this.’
He took her face between his hands, searching it anxiously. ‘What happens now?’
‘I called England this afternoon, to tell them they can buy the house. We can use the money to put this house in order.’
‘It’s all settled, isn’t it?’
‘It was settled before we arrived. Alex chose this place ages ago, but do you know why? Look.’
She picked up the lamp and went to the window, staring across the valley to where they could see the lights of the house he’d just left. Some of them were on, but there was one darkened room, where he could just see a gleam of light, as though an answering lamp had come on.
‘We’ll always be within sight of each other,’ Laura said. ‘When it’s dark, we can look out and see their lights, and they can see ours. It had to be here and nowhere else.’
She raised the lamp high, moving it back and forth. As Gino watched, incredulous, the pinpoint of light in the far building, also moved back and forth, as though in answer.
‘Who’s doing that?’ he asked.
‘Alex of course,’ she said calmly.
‘You and Alex-friends?’
‘Friends and allies, as sisters ought to be. Look.’
She moved the lamp again, and back through the darkness came the answer, the ancient, unmistakable message, that he’d thought never to find again.
It was the same message that he’d discovered in Laura’s arms, in the circle of her love, and it was wonderfully, overwhelmingly right that it should be she who evoked it for him now, shining across the darkened valley.
All’s well. Welcome home!
Lucy Gordon
***
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