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case,’ Speri said with a faint smile. ‘She’s Italian, but I don’t believe she’s been back to Italy in many years.’
‘She’ll come,’ Stefano said firmly. He would make sure of it—offer whatever enticements or inducements she needed. ‘How long did she work with this other child?’
‘A few months—’
‘Then I want her in Abruzzo, with Lucio, as soon as possible.’ Stefano spoke with a finality that took the psychiatrist aback.
‘Signor Capozzi, she’ll have other patients, responsibilities—’
‘She can get rid of them.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yes,’ Stefano said flatly. ‘It is. It will be. Lucio can’t be moved; it’s too upsetting for him. She’ll come to Abruzzo. And stay.’
Speri shifted uncomfortably. ‘That will be for you to negotiate with her, of course. Such an intensive course is to be recommended, although there are no guarantees, but it is also costly …’
‘Money,’ Stefano replied with the barest flicker of a smile, ‘is no object.’
‘Naturally.’ Speri looked down at his notes; Stefano knew the highlights of his own CV were sketched there. Stefano Capozzi, founder of Capozzi Electronica. Liquidator of a dozen of Italy’s top electronics firms. Unrivalled.
‘I’ll give you her details,’ Speri said with a little sigh of capitulation. ‘I have the article about her and the case I mentioned here. I should tell you she’s young, quite newly qualified, relatively inexperienced, but of course that case was remarkable …’
‘That boy recovered? He spoke again?’ Stefano demanded. He didn’t like the flicker of compassion—or was it pity?—in the doctor’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ Speri said quietly, ‘he did. But it isn’t that simple, Signor Capozzi. And Lucio might be different. He might indeed be—’
‘Her details, please.’ Stefano held out his hand. He didn’t expect things to be simple. He just wanted them started.
‘Just a moment …’ Speri looked through his papers again. ‘Ah, here’s the article I mentioned.’ He smiled and handed Stefano a medical journal, opened to a folded page. ‘Here she is … a lovely photograph, don’t you think? Allegra Avesti is her name.’
Stefano didn’t hear the last part of what Speri had said, but then he didn’t need to. He knew her name. He knew her.
Or at least, he once had.
Allegra Avesti. The woman who should have been his wife, the woman he no longer knew.
His concern for Lucio fell away for a moment as he gazed at the caption: ‘Allegra Avesti, Art Therapist, with patient’. Memories swam to the surface and he forced them back down again, drowning them as his dispassionate gaze moved to the photo. He saw that she was older, thinner. She was smiling in the photo, hazel eyes glinting as she looked at the child by her side, his little fists pounding a lump of clay.
Her head was tilted to one side, her hair, a thousand shades of sunlight, piled in a careless knot, tendrils escaping to trail her cheek, her shoulder.
Her eyes sparkled and her smile was wide, encouraging, full of hope. He could almost hear the tinkling promise of pure joy. She had dimples, he saw. He’d never known. He’d never seen them. Had she not laughed like that in his presence?
Perhaps not.
He stared at the picture—the ghost of a girl he’d once known, an image of a woman he’d never met.
Allegra.
His Allegra … except she wasn’t, he knew that, had known it when he’d waited while she’d walked away. For ever.
He closed the journal, handed it back to Speri. Thought of Lucio. Only Lucio. ‘Indeed, a lovely picture,’ he said without any intonation or expression. The look of joy and hope on Allegra’s face would be an inspiration to many a fearful and weary parent, seeking answers for their child. ‘I shall contact her.’
Speri nodded. ‘And if for some reason she is occupied, we can discuss … alternatives …’
Stefano acknowledged this statement with a brusque nod. He knew Allegra would not be busy. He would make sure she was not. If she was the best, if she’d helped a child like Lucio, he would have her.
Even if it was Allegra.
Especially if it was Allegra.
The past, he vowed, would not matter when it came to helping Lucio. The past would not matter at all.
Allegra Avesti gazed into the mirror of the ladies’ powder room at the Dorchester Hotel and grimaced. Her hair was meant to be in a carelessly elegant chignon, but it looked as if she’d only succeeded with the first part of that plan.
At least her dress hit the right note, she decided with satisfaction. Smoky-grey silk, cut severely across the collarbone and held up by two skinny straps on each shoulder, it was elegant and sexy without being too revealing.
It had cost a fortune, far more than she could afford on her earnings as a therapist. Yet she’d wanted to look good for her cousin Daphne’s wedding. She’d wanted to feel good.
As if she fitted in.
Except, she knew, she didn’t. Not really. Not since the night she’d fled her own wedding and left everyone else to pick up the scattered pieces.
With a little sigh she took a lipstick and blusher out of her handbag. She didn’t think of that night, chose never to think of it—the shattered dream, the broken heart. The betrayal, the fear.
Yet her cousin’s wedding this evening had brought her own almost-wedding to the forefront of her mind, and it had taken all her energy and emotion to push it back into the box where she liked to keep those memories. That life.
The wedding had been lovely, a candlelit ceremony at a small London church. Daphne, with her heart-shaped face, soft voice and cloud of dark hair, had looked tremulously beautiful. Her husband, a high-flyer at an advertising firm in the City, seemed a bit too self-assured for Allegra’s taste, but she hoped her cousin had found happiness. Love. If such things could truly be found.
Yet, during the ceremony, she’d listened to the vows they’d spoken with undisguised cynicism.
‘Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?’
As the words had washed over her, Allegra couldn’t help but think of her own wedding day, the day that never happened, the vows she’d never spoken.
Stefano hadn’t loved her, wouldn’t comfort her or honour her. Protect her? Yes, she thought wryly, he would have done that. Faithful? Doubtful …
Yet she still felt, sitting in that dimly lit church, an unidentifiable stab of longing, of something almost like regret.
Except she didn’t regret anything. She certainly didn’t regret walking out on Stefano. Although her uncle—and sometimes it seemed the rest of society—blamed her for that fiasco, Allegra knew the real fiasco would have been if she’d stayed.
But she was free, she told herself firmly. She was free and happy.
Allegra turned away from the mirror. She’d survived Daphne’s wedding, slipping out before anyone could corner her, but she wasn’t looking forward to the reception tonight. She was in a melancholy mood, didn’t feel like chatting and laughing and dancing. And although she loved Daphne and her Aunt Barbara, her relationship with her Uncle George had always been strained.
She hadn’t spoken to her uncle more than a handful of times in the seven years since he’d first sheltered her when she’d fled Italy, and those conversations had been uncomfortable at