‘I wanted to tell her the truth but being in France was my only escape. If I spoke of what had happened while I was there … well, it was impossible. I just told her I couldn’t think of it.’
‘It was the truth.’
‘Yes. But I did feel I’d short-changed her.’
She hugged him close. ‘You can move beyond this.’
He shook his head and spoke very quietly. ‘Florence, I just don’t know how.’
‘It wasn’t the same thing, of course, but after the rape I discovered that unbearable pain can pass through youwithout destroying you. Little by little you let it in, feel it, and it passes.’
‘Does it?’
‘Yes, and that’s how you learn to live again. In the middle of something that seems so impossible there can be peace. Moments only, but peace all the same and they grow longer. But if you spend your life suppressing the pain it really will destroy you.’
‘You know I love you, Florence.’
‘Yes … I do. And I know you’ve been trying not to.’
‘Will you help me?’
She blinked hard, wanting to cry herself. ‘Of course. Of course I will. Only you can do it, but you don’t have to do it alone. I’ll be there, Jack. I’ll always be there.’
He nodded.
‘And you know, everything passes, everything, no matter how loved or how precious. We all live with that knowledge. It’s life. And yet we still have the courage to love knowing that one day that same love will break our hearts.’
And then he kissed her. Properly. Longingly. Passionately.
CHAPTER 35
Riva
Malta, 1930
It was Addison who saved her, Addison who got her back on her feet after she recovered from losing the baby and it became clear Bobby was never coming back … Addison who, several weeks after she tore up Bobby’s note, came to her door and asked her to accompany him although he didn’t specify where to.
She had been listening to the radio where the news was still all about the Wall Street Crash the year before and the ongoing global economic depression. Millions were unemployed, hungry, and desperate and in Germany people were turning to the Nazi party for a cure. While it was clear that peace was fragile, it seemed far enough away not to be a problem for Riva, and she’d rather belistening to the news from afar than having to face the real world outside her front door.
Rather unwillingly she followed Addison out of the apartment, along the corridor and then down the main stairs.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
He half turned back to look at her, his eyes sparkling. ‘You’ll see.’
‘You know I don’t really want to leave the house yet.’
He laughed. ‘You won’t have to. I promise.’
When they reached the ground floor and the grand hallway, he crossed it and unlocked a small door opposite the stairs. She had no idea how much he was opening a door to a different future, had just assumed it was a cupboard of some sort, but he asked her to follow him along a narrow dark corridor.
‘Good grief, Addison, are you going to hide me away in a dungeon until I grow old and grey?’
He laughed again and at the end of the corridor, opened another door. She shaded her eyes at the blinding sunlight that flooded in.
‘Come on,’ he said, and stepped outside.
She glanced out and then, as her eyes adjusted, walked into the prettiest courtyard garden she had ever seen. She heard the gentle trickle of a fountain set right in the middle, surrounded by flowers that grew out of blue enamel pots and roses that climbed the surrounding walls. An Arabic-looking archway on the opposite side led to what looked like a covered alcove.
