One Night in Italy by Lucy Diamond Read Free Book Online Page B

he said eventually. ‘Just come home and we’ll talk.’
    Then her phone must have lost connection because all of a sudden the dial tone buzzed in her ear.
    She leaned back against the moulded head rest and heaved a long, juddering sigh. He wanted to talk. He’d said, ‘Come home.’ Those were good things, weren’t they? Practically an apology. He must be feeling terrible about this.
    Yes. She would go home and he would explain that it had been a stupid mistake, never to happen again. A moment of madness, he would tell her. Then she would forgive him, cry a bit probably, and pop one of her sleeping pills to blot the whole thing out. Tomorrow, they would carry on as before. They never need mention it again.
    Other couples managed to survive infidelity, didn’t they? She and Mike could too. They had to. Because without him, she was nothing.
    When she walked into the house, the first thing she saw was his suitcase in the hall, black and ominous. A suit-carrier hung from the coatrack and she looked at it, then back at the bulging suitcase. No, she thought, panicking. No.
    She went through to the living room as if in a dream. Mike was sitting on the sofa, his knee joggling impatiently. He stood up when he saw her.
    ‘I’m sorry you had to find out this way,’ he said. The line sounded well rehearsed. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time.’
    Wait a minute. The moment of madness had been going on for ‘some time’?
    ‘We both know we shouldn’t have married each other in the first place,’ he went on. ‘I’ve made it work for the sake of the kids, but now they’re no longer here I . . .’
    Whoa. Shouldn’t have married each other in the first place?
    ‘I want to move out. I’ve met someone else.’
    ‘The blonde woman,’ she said stupidly. Derrr. Ten out of ten, Catherine. Well spotted.
    ‘Yes. Rebecca.’
    There was a deafening silence. Blood pounded in her ears. She thought for a moment she might faint. ‘Is this really . . .’ She swallowed. ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘Well, I’m hardly going to joke about it, am I?’ The sharpness of his tone cut her to the quick.
    ‘I . . .’ She was gaping like a halfwit. ‘I don’t understand.’
    He got to his feet. ‘I don’t love you,’ he said, slowly and deliberately. ‘Do you understand that? You trapped me, getting pregnant. I never wanted any of this.’
    Tears dribbled from her eyes. She sank into the armchair, her legs suddenly weak. ‘But . . .’
    ‘Look,’ he said, exasperated. ‘We reached the end of the road years ago. We both know it. This is the best thing for both of us – there’s no point struggling on, being unhappy together for the rest of our lives.’
    Unhappy? Did he really think that? Every marriage had its ups and downs. That was life. Wasn’t it?
    ‘I’ll be back in a few days to get some more of my stuff,’ he said. ‘Bye, Catherine.’

Chapter Five
    L’investigatrice – The detective
    Anna hadn’t got very far in her quest to track down her mysterious Italian father. Annoyingly, it turned out that Pete was right, and Gino was an extremely popular first name in Italy; there were tens of thousands of them. She would need a lot more information if she was ever going to narrow the field.
    Her grandmother hadn’t been much help, other than the initial slip of the tongue that had started all of this. Anna had returned to the care home several times since, hoping to jog her memory with different techniques, but nothing had come of the venture other than to thoroughly confuse her. Despite the dementia, there was clearly some lockdown in Nora’s head which meant that she would go on loyally protecting her secrets the best she could till the end.
    Anna had spoken twice more to her mum on the phone, but each time she had bottled out of asking her outright for information. Still, Anna was a journalist, wasn’t she? She could uncover a story better than most people. There had to be a way around