LITMIR.BIZ

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She couldn’t think of a single one.

      ‘You didn’t want…’ she started, but he shook his head.

      ‘Anna, you have no idea how much I wanted.’

      ‘How can I know that? One minute we were planning marriage and then nothing.’

      ‘I should have asked before. About your mother.’

      ‘My mother was nothing to do with our relationship. She had very little to do with me. I told you she was a wild child. I told you there was man after man after man. What else was there to say?’

      ‘That she was a Castlavaran?’

      ‘As far as I was concerned, she was Katrina Raymond. She’d married my father, even if the marriage ended before I was born. I told you she’d been unhappy at home and her mother had died. I told you everything I knew.’

      The only time she’d learned more had been the night she’d introduced Katrina to Leo.

      She hadn’t seen her mother for almost a year. Katrina had been in the States, but had breezed back to London and decided to drop in on her daughter.

      ‘My head-in-her-books daughter has a man? Well, well, let’s meet him.’

      She’d been reluctant. To say she and her mother were dysfunctional would have been an understatement.

      Anna had always been cared for—sort of. Katrina had access to money. ‘It’s family money, sweetheart—money’s the only thing they’re good for.’ There’d been funds for an apartment with nannies, while Katrina had been off doing what she wanted. There’d been money to support Anna to study. There’d been no mother love.

      Neither had there been any sense of history. Katrina wouldn’t talk of home. ‘There’s some sort of Trust set up so my father has to support me,’ she’d told her. ‘That’s all you need to know. He’s an appalling man, Anna. Don’t ask.’

      So she hadn’t asked, and the only part of Tovahna she knew was the language, taught to her in the times Katrina returned to the apartment to get over her latest love affair or to escape from whatever disaster she was in.

      Anna had tried to warn him. ‘She’s unstable, Leo. She’ll talk too fast. She’ll come across as sophisticated and brittle but underneath…’

      Underneath there were scars that Anna could only guess at. And then that night at dinner, the scars were exposed for all to see.

      Maybe it was Leo’s gentleness. His kindness. His perception? Even at nineteen he knew how to empathise, and Katrina was captivated.

      He spoke to Katrina in Tovahnan and maybe that had been the undermining of Katrina’s defences.

      ‘So tell me about your father?’ he asked Katrina at last, when the pizza had been replaced by coffee. ‘My father died early, but my mother still lives on Strada Del Porto on the island’s east side. Is that anywhere near where your father lives?’

      What followed was a loaded silence, and Anna looked at her mother in astonishment and thought, Is she about to crack? She’d hardly talked of her father, even to her. But then…

      ‘As far as I know, my father still lives in that great gothic castle he loves so much,’ she said, in a voice that was almost a whisper. ‘It’s the only thing he loves. He sits there and pretends to be a king and he’s cared for nothing and for no one. Not my mother, and not me. And my brother’s just like him. They can rot in their castle for all I care.’

      And Leo stared at her in blank astonishment. ‘You’re a Castlavaran…’

      ‘Don’t say that name.’

      ‘But he’s your—’

      ‘Enough.’ Katrina pushed back her chair and walked out of the restaurant.

      And that was that. One ring returned. One love affair over.

      ‘I was so immature,’ Leo said now, and it was so much what she thought that she blinked.

      ‘Well. Good of you to admit it.’

      ‘I should have explained.’

      ‘So should my mother. I’m putting her in the same category. Let’s keep Anna in ignorance and let her face the consequences without warning, without respect, without any acceptance of the fact that I had a right to know.’

      ‘Anna…’

      ‘My grandfather and my uncle and then my cousin were all self-serving creeps. I know that now. My mother was a brittle, damaged alcoholic. I know that, too. And you added that up and decided I must be more of the same and you’d cut me out of your life before I could contaminate you.’

      ‘It was much, much more than that.’

      ‘How would I know? Neither of you had the courtesy to explain.’

      ‘I thought your mother—’

      ‘I’d already said she’d told me nothing. She died four years ago, still having told me nothing.’

      Unbidden, the hurt of so many years was spilling out, fury at her mother mixed with fury at Leo. But it was crazy, dumb, useless. It was adolescent anger, hurt from a time she should have put behind her.

      She understood now, or she thought she did. After that night she’d done her own investigation into her mother’s family and she even understood why Leo had walked away. Sort of.

      ‘If I’d stayed with you I could never have come home again,’ he said. ‘I knew that.’

      ‘And coming home was everything.’

      ‘It was.’ He hesitated. ‘Hell, Anna, I should have spelled it out. I know that. But this country…you’re getting a sense now of how impoverished we are. To send me to London to do medicine…it was a huge deal for the islanders. My father was dead and my mother had no means of support. I should have gone fishing when I was twelve, but my teachers told the town how smart I was. To be honest, most smart kids leave the island as soon as they can but I couldn’t walk away from my mother for ever, and the islanders knew it. So when I said I wanted to be a doctor, somehow they managed it. I still don’t know how. Because of the draconian rule of your family, every cent had to be accounted for.’

      ‘But they never have been my family,’ she managed, and he held up his hands, the same way he’d held them up ten years ago. Warding her off.

      ‘Anna, I’ve said I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for being too immature to explain properly, for walking away so fast. But to be honest, maybe it was for the best, getting it over with fast.’ He hesitated. ‘I hope you did get over it fast. You have a partner now?’

      What was there to say to that? A woman had some pride. ‘Don’t kid yourself that I’ve mourned you for ten years,’ she told him, attempting to glower. ‘I’ve had a very good time. I have a great job, a lovely home, dogs. I started dating Martin two years ago. He’s a lawyer and a friend, and he’d be here in a flash if I asked him. As would any number of my friends.’

      ‘But not now that you’re injured?’

      ‘I have a sore head, not a cerebral bleed. And you…’ Two could play at his game. ‘Wife? Kids? Goldfish?’

      ‘I’m too busy for relationships,’ he said brusquely. ‘Moving on. Anna, the idea of the hospital…you’re saying no.’

      She hesitated. She was trying hard to be grown up, she told herself. She needed to shelve her adolescent self. She needed to get over a pain that surely should be well gone.

      A hospital. Here.

      Martin’s advice had been sound. ‘Do nothing. You can spend twenty years planning what to do when you finally inherit. Just go and look and then come home.’

      Home sounded infinitely appealing.

      But so did doing something.

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