Louisa stopped then. Turned, slow and deliberate. Head held high. Jaw clenched hard. Eyes narrow, spitting fire.
‘Just you watch me.’
Matteo paced through his Como villa, to a window overlooking the lake. The day outside gleaming beautiful and bright. Blue skies and sunshine. A perfect day for exploring the small inlets, villages and surrounding countryside. Yet nothing about this was perfect. In a place he’d always felt settled, nothing seemed to fit any more.Hedidn’t fit. It had been a week since Louisa had turned her back and walked away. In his arrogance, he’d been sure she’d return within an hour after she’d left. Then time had ticked by and night had fallen. There’d been no tearful return. Only silence.
A sensation had clawed at him. Fear. That she was alone and he wasn’t protecting her as he’d promised.Damned promises.He’d gone to the village and searched. Silently stalking the streets and laneways. Visiting thetrattoriathey’d dined in, but she’d melted away. He might have called the police, had he not received a message via his assistant saying Louisa had been in touch to ask that he pack up her things and she’d provide a forwarding address.
That address hadn’t yet come. Now thoughts of her plagued him. Was she safe? Did she have enough to eat? How would she cope without her familiar things? His gut wrenched at the worry that she was alone, together with a terrible sense that he’d forgotten something or, even worse, lost something irreplaceable. Because she hadn’t walked away and left everything behind. She’d walked away and lefthim.
That distinction was vital.
He’d reflected on their final, terrible conversation. At first not understanding why she couldn’t see that every living Bainbridge should be punished for what they’d done. To her, to him. That he had the means to lash out and destroy, as if that would somehow blunt the pain. However, he’d come to realise that the pain had turned inwards and now flayed him alive.
She’d offered him her love, and he’d thrown it back in her face. All because of fear.
Matteo turned away from the view that had once given him peace, and now reminded him of what he’d lost. He’d convinced himself that he didn’t want relationships. Had spent most of his adult life alone, travelling, making his fortune. He still had everything he’d started this journey with, and had a fight ahead over Mae’s will. As Louisa had requested, he’d asked staff to pack up her things, ready to send them to her whenever she gave word. They’d almost finished the job. There was one room left, which he’d told them to leave till the end. The room containing her drawing table and her art supplies...
He wasn’t sure why he’d asked for that space to be packed up last. Hoping that she’d return, perhaps? But she wouldn’t. Like his birth mother, like his adoptive parents. It was a familiar pattern. Everyone left him behind. That was why he kept moving. If you didn’t stop, you couldn’t be left. People had troublecatchingyou. Matteo started walking then. Not really knowing where he’d end up, yet at the same time finding himself unsurprised that he’d made his way to where Louisa had done her illustrations. After it had been so important to her, he’d found it hard to fathom her abandoning everything here. It told him how much she’d wanted to get away.
Her sketchbooks were stacked in a neat pile. He ran his fingers over the spiral bindings. The need to open them, to look, as if that would somehow connect him to her, became overwhelming. To immerse himself in the joy and innocence of her illustrations. Except he’d stolen that innocence from her. Tried to corrupt her. Taken a woman who deserved so much more than the cracked and broken man he was. Tried using her to satisfy his own needs.
He’d dismissed her as if she’d meant nothing to him at all. It was no wonder that she’d walked away without looking back.
He rubbed at the ache in his chest as he slid a random sketchbook from the pile. Flicked through book after book of whimsical drawings, sketches that he didn’t understand. All the while the pictures connected him to her inner beauty. He marvelled at how untainted she’d been by what life had thrown at her. How she’d retained any sense of wonder at all was a miracle.
Shewas a miracle.
He took out the final book, one that looked a little different from the others. Opened the first page. Stilled.
An illustration of a little girl with flaming-red hair and a little boy, in a forest. A title page...
Matty and Lulu’s Stupendous Adventuresby Louisa Cameron.
It was as if his heart forgot to beat. Time simply stopped. He flicked through page after page. Stories of a sun-drenched summer where two sad and lost children found each other and made their own magic.
The memories of that time blazed on the pages. Funny, glorious. He’d forgotten how they’d found a nest of hedgehogs. Tried to catch fish with their hands in the stream. Sneaked through the secret passageways of Easton Hall, pretending to be chased by ghosts.
The only ghosts now were the ones he’d created for himself and they haunted him with a vengeance.
Back then he’d been a scared boy, full of bravado. He questioned how much had actually changed. The fear gripped him now, of what else he might find as he turned those pages. What other stories it would show. And yet there on the pages were tales of a holiday when two children were simply allowed to be themselves. A little boy, a little girl. Both of them perfect and innocent.
Somehow in the intervening years he’d lost that innocence, whilst Louisa had retained it. He’d spent his life building a business, accumulating money and for what? Because he realised it now. That childhood summer was one of the best times of his entire life.
No. There was something that eclipsed it. This present summer, before Lulu had gone.
How had he not recognised it? How everything had seemed softer focus, in so many ways, gentle. A glowing warmth that had nothing to do with the weather outside but was carried around inside him. An emotion so foreign he hadn’t understood it.
Happiness, and something more.
Something expansive, that hinted at a future. Something vast, unfamiliar. Never-ending.
A choking sensation throttled him, an inability to breathe. Lulu brought out something in him, a side that was patient, thoughtful. That could care and take care. Matteo gripped her art desk, riding the wave of panic and realisation. This emotion was all-encompassing. Something like he’d never experienced before, and that could only mean one thing.
He’d loved her yet had refused to believe it because everyone he’d loved had walked away. Like Louisa, except in truth that was a lie he’d told himself. He’d pushed her away. Ended it when she’d refused to be trapped in the same hatred and anger that had consumed so much of his life.
Hadn’t he done the same to his sister as well?
He sat down with the book and finished reading the stories. Some he remembered. Like eating berries till their fingers were stained and bellies were full. Others he’d forgotten, like trying to talk to the bees after Mae told them she’d knocked on the hives in the days after Great-Uncle Gerald had died, letting them know that he’d gone but she would look after them. Whilst reading, he searched for a skerrick of that innocence inside himself. He wanted that again, the optimism. He craved it.
