‘There was no need to come out here, in the middle of nowhere, Alessandro! We could have discussed this like two civilised adults. Have you chosen to forget that we were once married?’
‘Call me cynical but I’ve given up on the civilised adult route. You have a nasty habit of briefing paparazzi whenever there’s any hint of a showdown between us. You enjoy playing the victim and you like having the back-up of an audience.’ He looked at his ex-wife with cool indifference.
She was a stunningly beautiful woman with curves in all the right places and the sort of dramatic dark looks that made men walk into lamp posts. Those looks had stopped working for him a long time ago.
‘You’re here because signatures are going to be put on documents that will be binding, Sophia. No more trusting you to play by the rules out of respect for a past relationship. No more playing fast and loose with our informal custody arrangements. What happens now isn’t going to be about you and the fragile mental state you keep telling me about. It’s going to be about me and my right to see Flora on a regular basis without having to endure insufferable last-minute cancellations for spurious reasons.’
‘I have been in and out of therapy for four years! Did I ask for a divorce? No! That wasyourdecision! You have left me suffering and it isnot my faultthat I am now battling with my mental health!’
Alessandro suppressed yet another sigh of impatience because this was well-trodden ground and he was sick of it.
Their window of marital bliss had been lamentably short. They had met seven years ago and what, he later thought, should have come to a natural end had, instead, been propelled into a walk down the aisle because Sophia had fallen pregnant.
In fairness, he hadn’t been dismayed. True, it hadn’t been in his timeline of what the road ahead looked like, but Sophia, as a girlfriend, had been all smiles and eager to please, if a little on the unchallenging side. Yes, she could be vain and demanding, but who was he to point fingers when he had such impossibly high standards himself? There was no such thing as perfection. Having a baby and getting married wasn’t going to be the end of the world and, in fact, he had found himself growing more and more excited as the pregnancy progressed.
But then… Flora had come along and how things had changed. Still working his way up the ladder, determined as he had been from the age of ten to shed the chains of his working-class background and grasp the only things that could ever buy him freedom, which were money, status and power, Alessandro had found leisure time in short supply.
He’d done his best. However, having completed his MBA at Harvard on a fiercely fought-for scholarship, he had been working long hours at a top investment bank with little time to spare.
What time he did have, he’d wanted to spend with Flora and gradually Sophia had succumbed to a mixture of boredom and resentment.
Her affair had been predictable but had still come as a nasty shock to Alessandro.
Divorce had been inevitable. It had not been in his nature to forgive infidelity, especially when he’d found out that the last had not been her first. The very fact that he’d been relieved to have found a reason to walk away from a marriage that had been a terrible idea had shown him just how little he had ever loved the woman he had married.
His lips thinned as he looked at her now, playing yet again to an audience of two lawyers, hoping to sway things in her favour.
‘You’re going to sign formal joint custody papers, Sophia, and you’re going to do that right now, witnessed by both our lawyers. In addition, you will sign an NDA. Leak anything to the press and I won’t hesitate to take you to court and wash whatever dirty linen is out there in public. I don’t want to fight you for fair access to my daughter, but fight you I will if you decide to stand in my way. I’ve reached the end of the line.’
‘I haven’t had time to consider any of this, Alessandro. I need your trust, not warfare!’ She cast a pitiful eye at the two lawyers, who were sitting in silence to the side, ready to spring into action but, in the meantime, diplomatic enough to know not to intrude. Or, worse, take sides.
‘Trust will be resumed when papers are signed.’
‘You do not make a good role model for our daughter,’ Sophia said bluntly, tossing her head, expression going from pleading to crafty. ‘Women on your arm all the time…the press taking pictures of youcavortingwith a different glamour model every week! You think I rest easy in bed knowing that that is the example our beloved Flora will be exposed to?’
Alessandro stiffened because this was the crux of the matter. Affair or not and whatever men his ex-wife chose to entertain couldn’t stem her bitterness at having to accept that he was now indifferent to her.
Alessandro knew the vital importance of a mother in his child’s life, but time was slowly altering that opinion. He had forced himself to empathise with the body blow of her realising that she meant nothing to him. She was a vain woman and that would have stung.
But now her games had gone too far. It had been four months since he had seen his daughter and his patience had come to an end.
He opened his mouth to pursue the conversation to its inexorable end when, this time, he heard it.
Not just a sound butmusic.
Coming from…somewhere in the houseand yet how was that possible? Had one of the staff who looked after the place left some sort of alarm on, which had now activated into life?
He looked towards the direction of the music. They all did, not that they could really see anything at all. They had come straight in and headed to the sitting room towards the side of the house. Sophia had thought that they would be meeting for a mediation opportunity and certainly not for an ultimatum and he had allowed the misconception. They had converged at a five-star hotel in Whistler, had a bite at the bistro there and then onwards to his chalet, with food out of the way and ultimatums waiting to be delivered.
He had been charming, attentive and conciliatory towards his ex but as soon as they’d reached the chalet, he had led them through to where they all were now, hearingmusic.
‘What is going on here, Alessandro? I want to go. Right now. I thought we would be talking about perhaps getting back together! You said that we would be meeting to find new, mutually caring ways forward! I was under the impression that we would have mediation specialists here, not two men with pens and papers to sign! Now I am here and you want to upset me and, on top of everything else, someone is in the house and I have no intention of staying here to find out who. One of your women, I expect!’
She moved to reach for her thick fur coat on the chair behind her, with both lawyers following suit in alarm along with Alessandro, who distractedly took a step towards the open door.
They all spotted her at the same time. A slight figure with tumbling blonde hair who was lustily singing as she made her way past the door, a fleeting figure not glancing in their direction because the room was slightly set to the side. She was clearly expecting no one to be there and so no one was there.
Alessandro felt the taste of pure, electric shock and complete bewilderment.
