‘It’s only a penknife, Mum. Papa gave it to me.’
‘I’m going to have a word with your father.’
‘Oh no, Mum, don’t, please!’
I sat down again on the bed. ‘Carl,’ I said seriously. ‘You are eleven years old. You arenothaving a penknife or any sort of knife now – or at any age for that matter. I don’t know what your father was thinking of.’
‘It’s only a titchy little blade, Mum, so it’s not really a knife. It’s got, like, twenty-four functions! So it’s got, like, a screwdriver and scissors and a tin opener and pliers – and there’s a pick, for getting the stones out of horses’ hooves!’
‘Yes, well, the day a horse moves in with us I’ll reconsider the situation.’
‘It’s even got a corkscrew,’ he persisted sneakily, ‘which would be handy for you when you’re always losing ours.’
Oh, the little devil. ‘Very well,’ I said, relentingslightly. ‘I won’t throw it away and I won’t mention it to your father, even if he has got a lot to answer for, but only on the strict understanding that the knife stays with me.’
Brooding a second, Carl nodded acquiescence, if gloomily.
I slipped the penknife into one the leg pockets of my combats, of which there were many because they were actually genuine army desert camouflage trousers purloined from my father years ago. They’re the only combats I’ve ever found that are long enough in the leg for me. High street ones are always at half-mast. My height is courtesy of Dad; he’s got a lot to answer for, too.
‘But when I’m arrested for being in possession of a weapon on the plane home. you’ll have to come and visit me in Wormwood Scrubs.’
‘Nobody would ever arrest you, Mum. You look far too nice.’
We left the hospital around eight in the evening, leaving Carl up in his trendy ski clothes but getting sleepy by then with the excitements of the day. Outside it was dark and cold with freezing rain threatening to turn to snow. However, the weather must have discouraged everyone because the traffic was much lighter, so before long we were pulling into the first service station on the motorway to get something to eat. As we started on a remarkably good lasagne – well, we were in Italy – Luc asked me for the umpteenth time whether I was sure about going back to the Villa Matisse tonight. There was still time to stay over if I wanted to see Carl tomorrow. I reassured him. There was no point, and I’d just be in the way. OnceCarl was discharged in the morning, Giancarlo had said he would be taking him straight back to the mountains, principally, I suspected, to avoid his mother homing in like a carrier pigeon with a pantechnicon of pasta. That would finish Carl off. Besides, I reminded Luc, there was his dinner party tomorrow evening.
‘I’ve cancelled that.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not just for me.’
‘I didn’t,’ he said in his forthright way. ‘I cancelled it yesterday. I was going to tell you this morning before events overtook us. I cancelled… I put a stop to… a stop to everything yesterday… everything.’
He spoke so haltingly but with such an oddly aloof air that I wondered what he was really getting at but didn’t feel I could press him, especially as he rapidly and very definitely changed the subject.
‘Giancarlo seems a decent man,’ he remarked.
I nodded. ‘He is; he’s a good father to Carl and kind to me.’
‘Why then, couldn’t you…’ he began and stopped.
‘Why then couldn’t I what?’
‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’ He wiped his lips on a paper napkin. ‘I was being prurient.’
‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. ‘If you were going to ask me why then Giancarlo and I couldn’t get it together, I don’t mind telling you.’ I finished my lasagne. ‘I don’t really talk about it these days, but it’s no big secret.’
‘Tell me in the car,’ he said, pushing his empty plate away. ‘I very much want to know, but we’d best get moving. We’ve a long way to go.’
Chapter Twenty
I met Giancarlo when I was twenty-four. Leaving university without any definite idea of what I was going to do, my parents had suggested everything from teaching – my mother – to joining the army – Dad – and eek! The latter forced me quickly to come to the conclusion that the only thing Iwantedto do was cook. I duly did some training, started off at the bottom of the catering trade but had moved up the scale to my first decent job as second chef in a country restaurant in the Midlands by the time Giancarlo entered my life. It was one of those restaurants where the kitchen is on show – a total pain, actually, when you’re dripping with sweat and not looking at all at your best. However, it does impose a check on those head chefs who still feel it essential to their image to fall in with what they consider to be tradition by constantly screaming obscenities at you. Giancarlo came in for lunch one early spring day with a group of businessmen. He’dbeen attending some trade exhibition in Birmingham. He’s in the fashion industry.
I noticed him, of course. I say ‘of course’ because Giancarlo is one of those men every woman notices, being tall, dark and handsome – seriously, I’m not joking. He really is. But I didn’t think too much about him. Until I got outside after my shift had finished and found him waiting for me in the car park. He asked me to have dinner with him and that was how we began.
‘Did you get on well together?’ Luc asked at this point.
‘Very well. It wasn’t just a flash in the pan either,’ I enlarged, ‘we actuallylikedeach other. And although from very different backgrounds, we seemed to have a lot in common.’
I went back to the story. About a month after we met, I found out I was pregnant. To this day I don’t know how, discounting the obvious, because we’d been careful, extremely careful. But there it was, and I considered a termination.
