Irresistible You (22 page)

Reuben flushed scarlet. ‘But would she have told me?’

‘Or me?’

Rosanna bit her lip. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I really believe she loved you both - in her own way. I
truly
believe that! I don’t know what her plans were. I’m her sister but that doesn’t mean she tells me everything.’

‘And you weren’t going to tell either of us?’ Mark asked.

‘That wasn’t really my place, was it?’

‘I can’t get my head round this,’ Mark said. ‘Yesterday, I was engaged. Today, I’ve been dumped and find out that my ex-fiancée was engaged to two men at once and that the other man dumped her before she dumped me and is now seeing her sister! Have I got that right?’

‘Mark!’

‘What?’

‘You make this sound awful!’

‘It
is
awful!’

‘You make it sound like it’s
all my fault,’ Rosanna said, a sob rising in her voice.

Reuben sat down next to her so that she was sandwiched between him and Mark.

‘It isn’t your fault. We know that!’

‘Reuben’s right, Rosanna!
I’m sorry,’ Mark said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so angry.’

‘I didn’t want any of this to happen,’ she said, her eyes suddenly filling with tears.

‘We know,’ Reuben said, putting an arm around her shoulder.

‘It’s just, all this has come as a bit of a shock,’ Mark said.

‘That’s right,’ Reuben added, seemingly working in tandem with Mark.

Rosanna reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out a tissue and trumpeted into it. ‘This is terrible!’ she said. ‘I can’t believe all this has happened.’

‘What was that?’ Reuben suddenly asked.

‘What was what?’ Rosanna asked, mopping her eyes with her sodden tissue.

‘I thought I heard the door.’

‘I didn’t lock it,’ Rosanna said in sudden panic.

The three of them turned around from the sofa to face the steps up from the front door and listened as heavy footsteps were heard approaching them.

‘
MERDA
!’ a voice filled the room as an angry, dark-haired man entered the living room. ‘I go away for a couple of months and come back to an orgy in my studio!’

Sandro Constantino was
back home.

Naples. Home of the pizza, Mount Vesuvius and some of the worst drivers in Italy, Elena mused as she navigated her way from Naples airport in her hired Fiat Uno. It was a horrible journey through the long, endless tunnels until she hit the coast road to Positano. Then, the horrors of the journey melted away as the beauty of the sea assaulted her. She always forgot how beautiful it was. Clinging to the knife-edged cliffs, the houses, painted in yellows, pinks, reds and whites, looked ready to tumble into the bright sea below if the merest wisp of a breeze shook them. The houses themselves were far simpler than the ones she’d left behind in Venice. Who needed columns and arches and endless domes when one had the sea to look at? Positano’s architecture was far less ostentatious. Clean, simple lines prevailed which made the town look rather Lego-like from a distance. On closer inspection, however, balconies and pots of flowers softened the lines and showed themselves to be worthy of a thousand holiday snaps and postcards.

It was a bare and bony landscape along many stretches, with vegetation losing its battle against the impenetrable rock, but Elena loved it. It was just what she needed at the moment and she was glad she’d made the decision to come.

Emiliana Montella had only been in Positano for two years. She was a bit of a nomad and had owned, since Elena and Rosanna had left home, two apartments in Rome, a villa in Calabria, and a farmhouse in Liguria before selling up and moving to Positano. Elena hadn’t really been surprised. Her mother had always loved beautiful things and beautiful places, and Positano was, perhaps, one of Italy’s loveliest towns.

Slowing the hire care to take a treacherous bend in the road, Elena took a quick look at the sea. The light was bewitchingly bright and forced Elena to reach for the sunglasses which she rarely wore in London. Shifting down a gear, she took another hairpin bend and found herself behind a coach of tourists no doubt on their Amalfi coast tour. It gave her time to admire the scenery herself. The roads and view were also a perfect distraction from everything she’d left behind her because there was very little room left in head for problems when she was driving on these roads and that was just how she liked it.

Sheer cliffs towered to her left whilst expensive villas sat to her right, gazing out over the sea from behind their security gates. Elena wondered what it would be like to live in a place whose gates were higher than the walls of the house. Would she be happy somewhere like that? Would she be able to close out her troubles behind such gates?

She didn’t have time to ponder her question as she came into view of Mama Montella’s house: a two-bedroomed, white-washed cube tucked into a cliff on the outskirts of the main town. With its sea views and small veranda, it was breathtakingly beautiful. Her mama lived alone there. Elena and Rosanna’s father had died when they were small and Emiliana hadn’t remarried until recently. However, things hadn’t worked out and she had filed for divorce within eight months

Elena pulled into the short driveway. There was no need for gates here but Elena announced her arrival with a friendly toot of her car horn.

‘
Mia bambina
!’ her mama soon shouted, her short, plump arms outstretched towards Elena as she got out of her car and crossed the driveway. She was five foot nothing but was wearing three inch heels even though she was in the privacy of her own home, and her dark hair, which had been dyed for as long as Elena could remember, was piled on top of her head, adding two more inches to her.

‘Mama!
How are you?’ she asked, kissing her mama and receiving her papery kisses on both cheeks.

‘Mustn’t complain,’ Emiliana said which, of course,
was a lie. Elena knew what was to follow. ‘But I still have these terrible pains in my shoulders. My doctor assured me the climate here would improve things but – pah! What does he know?’

‘You look well,’ Elena said, knowing she’d be in trouble if she didn’t flatter her mother within the first ten minutes of their meeting. ‘Your hair looks pretty like that.’

‘And you look –’ Emiliana began, her eyes squinting, ‘- tired. And your ends are split too. Look at the state of yourself. A young woman must never let herself go.’

Elena sighed. Nobody could insult you in quite the same way as your mother.

She followed her into the house and marvelled at how clean and bright it was. Every surface glowed an astral white and there were bunches of bright flowers everywhere.

‘Where on earth did you get all these flowers from, Mama?’

‘They’re from Giovanni. He thinks he can get round me with flowers.’

Elena smiled. Her mama had never been short of admirers and would never be wanting in the flower or jewellery department for long. However, keeping her men was another matter. She had the beauty and skill to attract but a temper and temperament which drove away.

‘Your sister rang me before you got here,’ Emiliana said without seeing the need of a preamble.

Elena followed as she walked through to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

‘Did she?’ Elena asked, trying to sound nonchalant as she looked out of the picture window in front of the sink. It looked down a steep hill straight down to the sea which dazzled with diamonds. In fact, everything about Positano was diamond-bright. Venice was a pearl, Elena thought, but Positano was a diamond. Dishes would be a pleasure to wash with a view like that, Elena mused, trying desperately hard not to think about what Rosanna might have told their mama.

‘She sounded very upset,’ Emiliana said.

‘And I suppose you’re not going to believe my version of things now.’

‘It’s not a case of whether I believe things or not. What I want to know is why can’t my two girls get on together? What did I do to make you argue all the time? I never argued with my sister.’

Elena looked puzzled. ‘You never had a sister.’

‘But, if I had, I wouldn’t have argued with her like you and Rosanna,’ she stated. ‘Anyway, what’s all this arguing about?’

‘Nothing! And we don’t argue all the time – only when she steals my fiancé.’

‘Ah! And you never stole her boyfriends, eh?’

‘She wasn’t actually engaged to any of them, was she?’

‘Does that make a difference, then?’ Emiliana asked.

Elena was silenced for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said, but she wasn’t at all sure now she came to think of it.

‘A lover is a lover – whether he’s put a ring on your finger or not.’

Elena didn’t dare look round at her mama. Her tone of voice said it all. Elena had been an absolute cow to Rosanna when they’d been growing up and yet Rosanna had forgiven her for everything: all the misdemeanours and mistakes. But this was different. They were adults now and you just didn’t go around stealing fiancés. It wasn’t right.

‘Reuben was my
fiancé, Mama,’ Elena sighed.

‘And so was Mark, wasn’t he?’

Elena flinched. So Rosanna had told their mama everything. Well, so much for sibling loyalty, she thought. Although, why was she expecting loyalty from Rosanna after what she’d done?

‘You don’t understand,’ Elena said but she sounded feeble even to her own ears.

‘You’re right! I
don’t
understand! How does a daughter of mine end up with two fiancés, eh? That’s not the way I brought you up.’

It was true enough. Emiliana Montella might never have been short of admirers but she’d certainly never entertained more than one at a time.

Elena walked through to the living room and made towards the window which looked out over the sea but there was a rival for her attention: a little table by the window. It was round and made of a dark wood but the wood was almost invisible under numerous photo frames. For a moment, it reminded her of Irma Taccani’s photographs and she immediately felt guilty as she thought of what she’d done that day. She’d bought the mask with her to Positano but, at that moment, she felt as if she never wanted to see it again. It had caused nothing but trouble.

She looked at the collection of photographs. There was a photograph of Elena in a pram the size of a juggernaut, and another of her sister’s first birthday. There were school portraits of both sisters: Elena with her jutting cheekbones and Rosanna with her slightly rounder face. Both had the same dark, dark eyes and irrepressible smiles. There was a holiday photo of the two sisters on Capri. Their hair was swept back by the warm breeze that Elena could almost feel on her skin now even though she’d been just thirteen when she’d felt it. The whole table was dedicated to Elena and Rosanna and it made Elena feel so sad that they were no longer speaking to each other. She wondered what their mama would do. Would she divide the photos up, slicing through the ones of the two sisters together and place them on separate tables?

‘You cannot separate yourself from your sister,’ Emiliana said as she entered the room with two cups of coffee.

Elena turned around. That was the other annoying thing about mothers. Not only could they insult you like nobody else in the world, but they could also read your mind at twenty paces.

‘You’ll have to talk to her at some point. You can’t run away from her.’

‘I’m not running away,’ Elena said, sitting down opposite her mama and taking a cup from her. ‘I just needed some space. How was I meant to think with Rosanna and Reuben there in front of me?’

Emiliana shook her head. ‘I don’t know what there is to think about. They’re together, no?’

‘Yes,’ Elena said, sounding puzzled.

‘And you broke up with him?’

‘Because they were together!’

‘But you also had this Mark?’

‘What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘You tell me, Elena! You’re the one engaged to him.’

‘We’re not engaged any more.’

‘Why? Is Rosanna seeing him too behind your back?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘I’m not being ridiculous. It seems to me that you’re the one who’s being ridiculous!’

Elena sighed. Why, no matter where she went or whom she confided in, did her problems seem to double in size?

‘I was hoping you’d be a little more understanding,’ Elena said, her tone accusing.

‘I’m trying to be but I really don’t understand what’s been going on. Are you going to tell me how you came to be engaged to two men?’

‘Three.’

‘What?’

‘I was engaged to three men. Well, I was. I suppose I’m still officially engaged to one of them.’

‘Three? But Rosanna said two.’

‘She doesn’t know about the third.’

Emiliana’s face scrunched up into a frown worthy of a gargoyle.

‘Don’t look at me like that! It isn’t as bad as it sounds,’ Elena assured her.

‘What do you
mean,
it isn’t as bad as it sounds?
How can you say such a thing? You’ve been leading these men on, haven’t you? You’ve been pretending to be someone you aren’t. Just like when you were young.’

‘Mama-’

‘No, Elena! You will listen to me
this
time. You’re always getting yourself into impossible situations and then running away from them. Well, you can’t live your life like that. You have to think of those around you. The world isn’t your personal amusement park - you have to realise that.’

Emiliana paused and Elena stared down at the floorboards, dreading another outpouring, but her mama didn’t say anything. In fact, she got up and walked across to the table on which the framed photographs stood. Elena watched as her mama leant forward and picked one up, turning to present it to Elena. It was of a young man. He was very handsome, and his dark eyes smiled out of the silver confines of the frame making Elena feel as if he was in the very room with them.

‘Why do you keep that photograph?’

‘Because it’s part of our album,’ Emiliana said slowly.

‘I asked you to put it away,’ Elena said. Her voice was calm but there was an icy undertone to it.

‘You can’t put the past away into a drawer and expect it to stay there.’

‘I didn’t say you could.’

‘But that’s what you’re trying to do again now, isn’t it?
By coming here?’

‘No!’ Elena said, getting up and walking towards the window. ‘I came here to think things through. Why doesn’t anyone think I’m capable of that? Why do you all think I’m running away?’

‘Because that’s what you normally do.’

Elena swallowed hard. She knew the truth when she heard it and it hurt. ‘I’m trying to sort things out,’ she said calmly. ‘I really am.’ She looked across the room at her mama and she felt like a young girl again - a girl who thinks she’s clever and capable but who is drowning in her own confusion.

‘Won’t you help me?’ she asked.

Emiliana put the photo frame back on the table, pursed her lips and nodded.
‘If you really mean it.’

Elena swallowed hard and looked across at her mother. ‘I mean it,’ she said.