He swallowed, the iced coffee still untouched. ‘I was trying to tell you – to show you – but you wouldn’t talk to me. Your housekeeper almost impaled me with a roasting fork.’ He pulled out his phone. ‘Here.’
Nella squinted at the screen. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘It’s one of Clarkson’s cases – he passed it on to me. He had heaps, so I only managed to get a look at it after I got back from Italy. It’s for your father’s hotel development.’
‘Yeah. I see that.’
‘Scroll down. Look at the name of the attorney he’s named – the one who’s going to close the biggest deal he’s ever made in his entire life.’
She saw the name. Blinked. Restarted her entire brain. But still, the letters did not rearrange into any coherent order that would make sense in this universe.
Antonella Barbarani.
She almost didn’t believe it. But there it was, clear as day, next to her father’s unruly pigeon scrawl. Her name. The one he’d given her.
‘Would have made,’ she said, throat burning. ‘He’s gone.’
‘He named you, Nella. That has to count for something.’
Maybe. Maybe in time it would. But not now.
Oliver scratched his head. ‘I really wanted you to know.’
‘Because you feel guilty?’
‘I ... I mean ... what you said back in Italy, about not wanting ... That’s not what happened with us, was it? You never said ...’
‘I shouldn’t have had to.’
Oliver looked down at his half-covered feet.
‘Did you ever do it again?’ she asked.
‘I don’t ... I never ...’
‘I’m not interested in what you think happened, or what you meant to do. You didn’t ask. You assumed. I didn’t like it.’
‘Didn’t like it or didn’t want it? Because you were flirting with me all night. I’m not saying that means you couldn’t say no ... I’m not a rapist ... I’m a feminist. But I was confused about what you said in Italy. That’s just not how I remember that night. I’m sorry, I’m really, honestly sorry if I forced you to do something you didn’t want to do.’
Nella raised her sunglasses. Tiny bits of hair tugged painfully but she didn’t move them. Even though the sky was overcast, with thick, bulbous clouds pressing down, there was a stinging brightness to the afternoon, just like there had been the day they’d buried her father.
Now she had to bury something else. ‘You’re going to make me a promise, Oliver.’
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
‘Whenever you’re with a woman, until the day you die, every single time, before you do anything, you will say four little words. Can you tell me what those words are, Oliver?’
His throat bobbed.
‘Oliver?’
He mumbled something.
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Do. You. Want. To.’
It didn’t satisfy her the way she’d thought it would. Was it enough?
