The Italian's Cinderella Bride. Lucy Gordon
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‘Don’t force yourself if it’s too painful.’
‘I have to, or I’ll never escape.’
‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell me what happened.’
At last Ruth began to speak.
‘When we’d finished eating we went out to the car park, and found some lads there, trying to break into the car. They attacked us. I was knocked out, and woke up in the hospital. My mind was a blank. I didn’t know what had happened, or who I was. I didn’t even recognise Gino. I only knew there was a young man sitting beside the bed, but to me he was a stranger. Everything in my mind was blank, including myself.
‘But seeing him again afterwards, didn’t that help you to remember?’
‘I don’t remembering him coming back—but he may have done. I kept blacking out. When I awoke properly it was some time later and he wasn’t there. I never saw him again. Perhaps he couldn’t bear my not recognising him any longer. I can’t blame him for leaving.’
Pietro was getting a very bad feeling about this. Gino’s story that he’d been jilted had always sounded unlikely. In truth, he seemed to have deserted her when she most needed him.
‘And you had nobody to help you? No family? Nothing?’
‘After my parents died I was raised by my mother’s sister, who didn’t really want me. She died while I was away at college. Then I discovered that she’d known for months that she was dying, but never told me. It was like the final slamming of a door.
‘So there was nobody who’d known me in the past. I had blinding headaches. There was a lot of pressure on my brain because I’d been beaten so badly about the head. They had to operate to relieve it. I was better after that.’
‘But—alone,’ he murmured, stunned by the horror of it.
She gave a little wry smile.
‘I looked awful. I was rather glad there was nobody to see me.’
Pietro was speechless. Perhaps, he thought, it was a good thing Gino wasn’t present right now. He might have said or done something he would later regret.
‘All my hair was shaved off,’ she recalled. ‘I looked like a malignant elf.’
Something in her self-mocking tone inspired him to say absurdly, ‘Why malignant? I always thought elves were nice.’
‘Not this one. I even scared myself. My memory started to return in bits. It was odd, I’m a language teacher and I found I still knew the languages, but not my own identity.
‘I was able to get some official records, and the people I knew at work could tell me a few things that I’d told them about myself. But effectively my life started when I awoke in the hospital.’
‘How long were you there?’ he asked.
‘Three or four months. Then I was moved into sheltered accommodation. I was too full of nerves to go back to teaching in a school, but I managed to get some translation work to do at home. That made me feel better, and my mind seemed to open up a little more every day.
‘At last I remembered who I was, and Gino—how much we loved each other—it all came back in a rush, while I was asleep. I went back to the hospital to see if anyone there could remember seeing him, but of course it was in the past, and most of the staff had changed.
‘So in the end I decided to come back to Venice. I hoped to find him but if—if not, I can go back to the places where we were together, and see if anything more comes back to me.’
‘What are you hoping for?’ he asked. ‘That you’ll rediscover your love?’
‘I’m not really sure. But there are so many gaps that only he can fill in. I can’t even remember much of the attack. The lads were never caught. It was a year ago, but to me it was yesterday.’
Which means that it was yesterday she’d sat in the restaurant with Gino, exchanging words of love. Part of her, at least, was still in love with him. Pietro was sick at heart.
‘I suppose he might be married by now,’ she said softly. ‘I can’t hope that he still loves me just because I—’ She broke off.
‘No, he isn’t married,’ Pietro said heavily.
‘But for him it’s been a long time. I know.’ She suddenly gave him a delightful smile. ‘Don’t worry. I haven’t come to make trouble. I just want him to help me move forward.’
Ruth seemed to become self-conscious. ‘Perhaps you should go away now. I don’t want to make trouble for you either—I mean your wife. Gino told me about her, and the baby you were expecting. I hope I haven’t disturbed either of them.’
‘No, you haven’t disturbed them,’ Pietro said abruptly. ‘They’re both dead. Goodnight.’
He left quickly.
Back in his own room he tried to sleep, but now it was impossible. The trouble with letting a ghost into his home was that she had brought other ghosts with her. He spent his life trying to avoid those gentle phantoms, and now they were here, making him feel their sadness.
Not that Lisetta had ever reproached him. She’d loved him too well for that. More than life, she’d often said. And proved it. And the baby, dead after only a few hours, now sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms, a reminder of what might have been.
‘Go away,’ he cried desperately. ‘Haven’t I been punished enough?’
It was an hour before he fell into an exhausted sleep, and when he awoke it was broad daylight, and he could hear Minna, his housekeeper, moving about outside. He wondered if the two women had met. But when he went out there was only Minna, large, middle-aged, the epitome of solid reassurance.
‘About that lady,’ he said when they had greeted each other.
‘What lady, signore?’
‘Haven’t you seen her? She stayed the night here because of the storm. Perhaps she’s still in her room.’
But the room was empty. The bed had been stripped and the bedclothes folded neatly. Ruth’s suitcase was gone.
‘There’s a letter for you on the table,’ Minna said.
With a sense of foreboding he snatched it up and found his worst fears realised.
‘I’m really sorry to have bothered you,’ it said. ‘I had no idea about your wife. Please forgive me. Thank you for all you did. Ruth.’
‘Stupid woman!’ he growled, crushing the letter.
‘Signore?’
‘Not you, Minna. Her. What does she think she’s playing at? You didn’t catch a glimpse of her leaving?’
‘No, signore. There was nobody here when I came in. Just the letter on the table. What has this woman done?’
What had she done? he wondered. Only invaded his life, destroyed his peace, turned everything upside down, made him feel responsible for her welfare and then vanished into thin air. Nothing, really.
‘I’m sorry, signore.’
‘What for? It’s not your fault. It’s just that when I find her I’m going to strangle her.’
‘Have some breakfast first.’
‘No time. I don’t know how long she’s been gone.’
He vanished out of the door as he spoke, hurrying down the narrow calle that ran alongside the palazzo. It ended in a small square where there were a few shops, at one of which a man was arranging groceries outside.
‘Enrico, have you seen a young woman come out of here?’ Pietro described her.
‘Yes,