by Lucy Gordon
He closed his eyes. ‘Please let her wake up. I have to explain to her.’
‘How will you explain this?’
‘I don’t know.’
The nurse brought another chair and they sat on each side of the bed. Holly reached out her hand to him, he took it but his eyes remained fixed on the little girl on the bed, breathing uneasily.
‘Liza,’ he said urgently, ‘Liza!’
There was no reply.
‘No,’ he said in a low voice, ‘no, no! Please, not now!’
Holly watched him through her tears, feeling his agony that he had learned the truth of his own heart when it might already be too late.
Silence and darkness. Time passed. It felt like a lifetime but the clock showed that it was only an hour.
Silence, deep and unfathomable.
‘I was afraid you weren’t coming,’ Holly said quietly.
‘I suppose I deserved that, but you might have trusted me a little more. No-’ he stopped himself quickly ‘-I don’t mean that. Why should you trust me about this? What have I done to deserve trust?’
‘It isn’t your fault-’
‘Not this time, but other times-you thought I’d leave her lying here ill? But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t get here sooner because I was held up by Fortese. He got into the courtroom and held us all at gunpoint.’
‘Oh, dear God-’
‘It’s all right. It’s over. He was too clever for his own good. He insisted on making a speech, saying exactly why he hated me, and that gave the guards time to break in. They grabbed him before he could fire, and hauled him back to gaol. He’s back behind bars right now.’
‘You mean,’ she breathed, hardly daring to hope, ‘it’s over?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, it is.’
She should be filled with happiness, but the joy was muted by the knowledge of tragedy still threatening. The child on the bed lay motionless as they sat on either side of her. Matteo spoke her name again, but there was no response.
‘It was this way once before,’ he said suddenly.
‘How do you mean?’
‘The night we married I had a bad dream, but you drove it away. I can’t remember details now, but I can still hear your voice saying, “I’m here, I’m here.”’
‘I didn’t know if you’d heard me.’
‘I think your voice could find me through anything. Tell me your secret because I need it desperately now. How do I reach out to my daughter?’
The words ‘my daughter’ caused a small well-spring of happiness to start in her.
‘You just did,’ she said.
Liza stirred and took a long breath.
‘Piccina!’ Matteo was beside her at once, taking both her hands back into his. ‘I’m here-I’m here…’
Consciously or unconsciously he was echoing the words Holly had spoken to him on their wedding night, words that shaped themselves into a promise of comfort and fidelity forever. But could that promise work again?
‘I’m here-’
‘Why-didn’t you come?’ she cried fretfully, her eyes still closed. ‘Mamma said-I don’t belong to you.’
He looked up at Holly. ‘But what does she understand by that?’
Suddenly it came to her, the inspiration she wanted, the only thing that could help him now.
‘Piccina,’ she said, turning to Liza, ‘your parents were both very jealous about you. They each loved you so much that they wanted you just for themselves.’
He drew a sharp breath as understanding came. It was as though a light had come on inside him. He leaned closer to Liza and began to speak in a kind of imploring voice.
‘Mamma said you were hers and I said you were mine-all mine, because I didn’t want to share you. We became angry, and that’s why she took you away, and told you that you didn’t belong to me, only to her.’
‘But I do-belong to you?’
‘Yes, piccina, you’re all mine-’
‘Always-’
‘Always and forever.’
Suddenly Liza took a long breath. A long, agonising silence, then she opened her eyes to see Matteo there.
‘Hello Poppa,’ she whispered.
‘Hello,’ he said shakily, dropping his forehead onto their entwined hands, while his shoulders shook.
After a moment he looked up, this time at Holly, and spoke through his tears.
‘Hello,’ he said.
As soon as Liza was out of danger Matteo arranged for her to come home. Her room was turned into a mini-hospital, and three nurses were hired to give her round-the-clock care.
He spent as much time with her as possible, insisting on taking time off from work, relishing his happiness, and safeguarding it.
Holly would have stood back, letting them be alone to discover each other again. But neither of them would allow that. They opened their arms, drawing her into their magic circle.
Alone with Matteo, the magic was different, profound, breathtaking. Now he could speak openly about his love, but it was when he said nothing at all that she knew it most deeply. Since the day she had drawn him back from the precipice he had placed himself in her hands entirely.
Soon it would be Christmas, the first that the three of them would share. As the weather grew colder and the leaves fell from the trees Holly found herself haunted by a strange thought. She was unsure about confiding it to Matteo. His heart had opened further than she had dared to hope, but was even his generosity enough for this last step?
One day as they sat together he gave her a sudden, curious look, and asked, ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I just had an odd idea…’
‘Share it with me.’
‘You may not like it.’
He smiled. ‘But I shall trust it.’
‘All right. I was thinking that the person I feel most sorry for is Alec Martin.’
‘Carol’s lover? The man who took my daughter.’
‘Yes, but-’
‘But he didn’t take my daughter,’ he said, reading her mind as he could do so easily now. ‘I took his, didn’t I?’
‘You’ve had her all her life. She met him only once, on the train, and she didn’t like him.’
He nodded, beginning to understand.
‘Carol did him a wrong, just as she did me-perhaps more so. All that time he had a lovely little daughter, and he didn’t know.’
‘It’s you she loves,’ Holly said.
‘Yes, and me she snuggles against and kisses goodnight. I thought he’d taken everything away from me, but actually it was the other way around.’
He walked slowly out into the garden, and this time she made no effort to go with him. He needed time to clarify his own thoughts. She had given him the lead, but the conclusion must be his own.
He didn’t mention it again for two days, but then he said, ‘I need to go out. Will you come with me?’
In the car he explained, ‘It took me a while to check out where he was buried, but I’ve found him now. I was afraid that they might have taken him back to England, but it seems that he had no close family to care.’
The cemetery was small and bleak, a place for people whom nobody wanted. Here were no beautiful monuments, only small, ugly slabs that almost seemed to shrink with the cold. At last they found Alec Martin’s, with his name and dates.
‘He was only thirty-three when he died,’ Matteo said. ‘And his whole adult life had been taken up making enough money to claim his family back from me. Now he has nothing.
‘I’ve hated him, but I never before wondered how much he must have hated me.’
He was silent for a moment before looking at the grave and speaking, almost as though there were someone there who could hear.
‘I came here today…’ He hesitated, and for a moment Holly thought he would be unable to go on. But then he lifted his head. ‘I came to say thank you for our daughter, and to promise you that I’ll always look after her.’
His face softened. ‘You have my word on that.’
> He drew Holly’s hand through his arm and led her away from the loneliness. The air was cold with frost and dusk was falling, but through the trees they could see lights, beckoning them on to another place, where there was warmth, hope and new life.
Just before they reached the lights he stopped and said, ‘But for you, I could never have understood. I could never even have made a beginning.’
‘The beginning will go on,’ she promised.
‘Only if you’re with me.’
‘I will be-always.’
He kissed her tenderly.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said.
Lucy Gordon
***
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