Her Last Night of Innocence

Dominic met her eyes steadily, giving her the distinct impression that he was preparing himself to say something he’d been planning for a while. ‘You’re still waiting for a man you don’t really believe is ever going to show up, and yet you can’t quite bear to stop hoping.’

She turned her head away sharply, so that he wouldn’t see the pain on her face as Cristiano’s words came back to her.

This isn’t over, you know. Last night was just the beginning. Wait for me.

‘Ah, well,’ she said with quiet bitterness, ‘that’s where you’re wrong. It’s my New Year’s resolution to do exactly that.’

‘And how well did you do with that one last year?’ Dominic joked and then, sensing her anguish, softened his tone. ‘The problem is, you’re not going to be able to do it while everything is so unresolved. You need closure. You need to know once and for all that things are over between you, and I don’t think that’ll happen until you’ve told him that he has a son.’

Kate had stayed standing in the hope that she could wind this conversation up quickly and be on her way, but suddenly she wasn’t sure that was going to be possible. Or that it was turning out to be the kind of conversation that she could have without sitting down.

‘Not this again, Dominic. I tried that, remember?’ She sank back onto the chair and looked down at her hands. ‘Twice.’

‘I know you did, lovey, but you don’t actually know that the message got through. You wrote to him. But letters go astray—fall into the wrong hands. I think that for Alexander’s sake you have to try again. In a way that leaves no room for doubt.’

In her lap Kate’s fingers were twisted together, the bones showing white beneath the roughened, winter-dry skin. ‘I’m not interested in trapping him,’ she said, very quietly. ‘I really don’t want to force him into acknowledging me, or Alexander.’

‘But it’s his responsibility.’

There was a hint of exasperation in Dominic’s tone now, though he was doing his best to hide it. Oddly, it strengthened Kate’s resolve.

‘I don’t care,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t need Cristiano’s help—Alexander and I are fine on our own. Finding out I was pregnant was such a massive shock at the beginning, especially coming on top of the accident and everything, but I’m so glad it happened now. I love Alexander more than I could ever have thought possible.’ She hesitated for a second, swallowing the lump of emotion that had suddenly formed in her throat. ‘I know it would be better if he had a father—for him and for me—but only if he wanted to be there.’

Dominic turned and chucked the remainder of his herbal tea into the pot of a sickly-looking yukka behind his desk. ‘You don’t know for sure that he doesn’t.’

‘Oh, I think I do.’ Kate gave a dry, humourless laugh, turning her empty mug between her hands as if trying to absorb some of its fading warmth. ‘He did actually tell me that he didn’t want children when I interviewed him, so it was hardly a surprise when he didn’t answer my letters. But I did try to see him as well, don’t forget. I stood for two days outside the hospital, with the hardcore press pack and a group of slightly scary fans, trying not to throw up every five minutes.’

She laughed, but tears stung at the back of her eyes as she remembered the late July heat, the constant drag of morning sickness, the growing pain and humiliation of realising she was wasting her time.

‘He was in a bad way,’ Dominic remarked. ‘He was in a coma for ten days—those kind of injuries take some getting over.’

She flinched. The image of Cristiano, unconscious in a hospital bed was one that had haunted her during those terrible weeks. ‘I know. But he’d been out of Intensive Care for a while then, and according to the papers he’s made a full recovery. If he wanted to get in touch with me, he would have by now.’

‘So where does that leave Alex?’ Dominic said gruffly. ‘One day he’s going to want to know who his father is. He’s only three years old at the moment, and already he’s obsessed with cars and speed. Sooner or later…’

Kate sighed, letting go of the mug and staring down at its cheery picture of a beach and palm trees. I really would rather be in Tenerife, she thought wearily. ‘What do you want me to do, Dominic? I tried. I wrote to him; I went to see him and couldn’t get past Security. Short of a front-page kiss-and-tell exposé in a tabloid newspaper, what else can I do?’

Wordlessly, Dominic opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a large silver envelope. He slid it across the desk towards her.

‘Go and see him again.’

Kate glanced from the envelope to his face, and back down again. Her heart had started to thud uncomfortably in her chest.

‘What’s this?’

‘An invitation.’ He silently cursed himself for not sounding more casual. He took a deep breath. ‘To a party at the Casino in Monte Carlo to launch the new season’s Campano team…And celebrate Cristiano Maresca’s return to racing.’

Kate’s cornflower-blue eyes widened, seeking out his and seeming to search them from a face that was suddenly the same colour as the pale grey sky beyond the window.

‘Are you going?’

Dominic couldn’t decide whether it was hope or terror that made her voice crack.

‘No. I’m sending Lisa, and Ian from the Campano account. And you.’

Kate leapt to her feet, shaking her head vehemently. ‘No. You can’t. I can’t. What about Alexander? I can’t leave—’

Dominic had known perfectly well that this would be her main objection and was well prepared. ‘He can come and stay with us—you know that he and Ruby have been pestering us for a sleepover for ages.’

Kate didn’t smile. ‘But I—I’ve never left him overnight before.’

‘He’ll be fine—just like Ruby was fine when she stayed with you when Lizzie and I went away for our anniversary. You’re doing it for him, Kate. This is your chance to get some answers.’

‘No—I can’t.’ She shook her head again, her hand flying to her throat, her eyes wide with fear.

Dominic felt guilt flare inside him like acid indigestion.

Losing her father in a car accident had taught six-year-old Kate Edwards that life was fragile, and that happiness and security were precarious—a lesson that had been brutally hammered home fifteen years later, when her seventeen-year-old brother had ploughed his car into a tree on the Hartley Bridge to Harrogate Road and been killed outright. Dominic had met Kate for the first time a few months after that, when he had interviewed her for a job as his assistant at Clearspring.

She had come back to stay in Hartley Bridge and be near her mother after university, she’d explained. It had been obvious within five minutes that she was capable of doing the job with her eyes closed, but also that she was a girl who was holding herself together by the skin of her teeth. He’d given her the job, and over the next year had watched the anxiety begin to fade from her eyes as her confidence grew. She’d been the obvious person to go to Monaco in his place when Ruby had made her unexpectedly early appearance, and he’d hoped that the trip would do her good—show her that there was a whole world beyond Hartley Bridge, and that aeroplanes were convenient methods of transport rather than plot devices in disaster movies.

It had all backfired spectacularly, leaving Kate more aware than ever of the risk involved in reaching for happiness. Hence Dominic’s guilt, and his feeling of responsibility to both her and Alexander. Sitting on the sofa with a bottle of wine the other night, he and Lizzie had decided that the Campano party was an opportunity to break the cycle once and for all. Tough love. That was what they’d called it.

Now it just felt cruel.

‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ he asked gently.

Looking out over the dingy car park, her eyes were huge in her pale face. ‘For once, I don’t even know where to begin to answer that,’ she said with a brave attempt at a laugh. ‘What if he doesn’t remember me? What if I got it totally wrong and to him I was just another anonymous, meaningless one-night stand? What if he’s there, surrounded by beautiful, adoring women, and he completely blanks me?’

‘Then it’s his loss.’ Dominic sighed. His caffeine craving was starting to bite, and this was the kind of conversation Lizzie was so much better at. ‘And you’ll know he was never worthy of your heart, or the time you’ve spent waiting for him, and you can finally move on.’

‘And Alexander?’

‘Look—here’s what I suggest.’ Frowning, Dominic got to his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets in what every member of the Clearspring marketing department would recognise as an indication that he meant business. ‘I think you should write Cristiano a letter, containing the basic facts about Alexander’s birth and leaving the name of your solicitor where he can contact you. If he doesn’t acknowledge you at the party, you can leave it with a member of his staff and come home knowing that this time you really have done all you can.’

Stunned into a moment’s silence, Kate blinked. ‘You’ve thought it all through, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve thought of nothing else since this damned invitation arrived.’

‘I haven’t got anything to wear.’

Despite her defensively tensed shoulders, Dominic recognised the final protest of a woman who knew she was defeated. He felt a small glow of tentative triumph.

‘So buy something. I’ll look after the kids at the weekend, and you and Lizzie can hit the shops in Leeds.’

‘I can’t afford it,’ Kate protested weakly. ‘I’m a single parent, remember?’

Reaching into the drawer again, Dominic took out his chequebook and began to scribble. Tearing it out, he handed a cheque to her with a grin. ‘Take this and buy something stunning, and hopefully you won’t be for much longer.’

‘It’s going to be quite a party.’

Dr Francine Fournier looked up from the invitation in her hand and raised a perfectly shaped, brutally eloquent eyebrow. ‘I’m just sorry I can’t be there, but unfortunately tonight is—’

‘Please—there’s no need to explain.’ Cristiano got up from the chair and walked a few paces across the thick carpet of Dr Fournier’s consulting room before turning back to her with a bleak smile. ‘I think we both know that the whole thing is a complete sham. I wouldn’t be going myself if I had any choice.’

Outside, the February dusk was falling early over Nice, and a thin slick of rain made the pavements glisten. In here, the lamps cast a soft glow over serious seascapes in oil, and a huge bowl of white hyacinths on the desk perfumed the centrally heated air. There was nothing remotely clinical about the room apart from the lightbox on the wall with its illuminated display of cross-sections of Cristiano’s brain.

Dr Fournier sighed, slipping the invitation inside the cover of the file of notes that lay open on the desk in front of her. ‘It’s not a sham, Cristiano,’ she said, in the grave, low-pitched voice she used for breaking bad news to families. ‘It’s just a little premature, perhaps.’

‘Premature?’ Cristiano echoed hollowly, thrusting his balled fists into his pockets and walking over to look more closely at the X-ray images, as if he might be able to see something in the intricate whorls and dark spaces that Dr Fournier had missed. ‘By how long? A year? A decade? A lifetime? Because, from what you’ve just told me, I’m never going to be able to race again.’

Francine Fournier was forty-eight years old, and had been happily married to her second husband for six years. She was also one of Europe’s most senior and well-respected brain injury specialists, but, in spite of all these things, she still had to steel herself against the spark of attraction as she looked from the images of the inside of Cristiano Maresca’s head to the face of the man himself.

‘I didn’t say that.’

The light from the X-ray box emphasised his pallor, and the lines of tension etched around his impossibly sexy mouth, but neither of those things detracted from his extraordinary good-looks.

‘Not in so many words,’ he said hoarsely. ‘But if you can’t find out what’s wrong with me and work out how to put it right, it amounts to the same thing.’

‘It’s not that simple, Cristiano. The good news is that you’re looking at a healthy brain. Those X-rays show that your recovery from the accident has been remarkably complete.’ She picked up the top sheet from the file and frowned slightly as she studied it. ‘All your stats are excellent—proving that your reflexes and responses far exceed those of the average fit male your age. My investigations have been exhaustive, and I can state categorically that there’s no physiological cause of the symptoms you’ve been having.’

He gave a hollow laugh. ‘You’re saying that it’s all in my mind?’

‘The brain is a very complex organ. Physical injury is easy to see, but psychological damage is harder to measure. The palpitations and flashbacks you’re suffering while driving are very real symptoms, but their cause is nothing I can specifically identify or treat.’ She paused, rearranging the papers on her desk, her large diamond eternity ring flashing in the lamplight as her hands moved. ‘I believe,’ she began again carefully, ‘that they are directly related to your memory loss. In itself, that’s not a problem, but because your subconscious has blocked out memories of the crash you haven’t yet been able to process them and move on.’

‘But what about before the crash?’ Cristiano’s voice was like sandpaper. ‘Why can’t I remember that either?’

‘Retrograde amnesia,’ Dr Fournier said gently. ‘It’s not uncommon. Many people experience some degree of memory loss after a head trauma. The length of time that’s lost is significant—the fact that you’ve only got a gap of twenty-four hours is good news.’

Cristiano gave a hard, abrupt laugh. ‘Is it?’ Silhouetted against the gathering darkness outside, his broad shoulders were absolutely rigid. ‘Will I ever get them back?’

‘It’s impossible to say. There are no guarantees. Sometimes memory comes back in its own time.’

He swore in Italian, softly and savagely. ‘I can’t wait for that. The Grand Prix season starts in six weeks.’ Thrusting a hand through his hair, he gave a ragged, bitter laugh. ‘Suki’s invited every sports journalist and team sponsor on the planet to this ridiculous event tonight to celebrate my return to the circuit. Silvio has rediscovered religion thanks to the miracle of my recovery.’

Dr Fournier’s voice was deliberately soothing. ‘Have you talked to the people you were with that night? Sometimes you just need a trigger for the memory to return…’

Cristiano gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘I was alone. The last thing I remember is getting into the car for qualifying.’ He had been over it time and time again. He remembered the click of the harness as he’d got into the car, and after that nothing. Sometimes, just as he was drifting off to sleep or waking up again, he thought he caught the echo of something that was a memory rather than a dream, and desperately tried to hold onto it, but the harder he tried the more elusive it was. ‘Suki tells me I did an interview with someone from Clearspring Water, but that can’t have taken long. After that I must have gone home.’

Leaning against the windowsill, he dropped his head into his hands for a moment as despair and self-disgust overwhelmed him. Against the odds he had survived a crash that should have killed him, come round from ten days in a coma and dragged himself from an Intensive Care bed back to the cockpit of a racing car. He had built up his strength, and driven himself ruthlessly and relentlessly to regain fitness, harnessing the same determination and focus that had made him so successful before.

Now everything he had worked for was slipping through his fingers. And there was nothing he could do about it—because while he could control his body and work harder, train longer, push himself further, his brain still let him down.

‘Don’t forget that you are lucky to have survived, Cristiano.’

He raised his head and looked at the doctor with an expression of infinite despair. ‘If I can’t race again, I might as well not have.’

Dr Fournier tapped her finger thoughtfully against her compressed lips. ‘When was the last time you had a holiday?’

He shrugged. ‘Relaxing has never really been my thing.’

‘Maybe you should try it. You’ve pushed yourself as far as you possibly can physically, so maybe now it’s time to give yourself a rest. Take some time out to think.’

‘No thanks.’

He had spent his life trying to avoid having time to think. Escaping from introspection had always been one of the driving forces behind everything he did.

Dr Fournier shrugged one cashmere shoulder. ‘It’s the best shot you’ve got of getting your memory back. Since you left hospital you haven’t stopped pushing yourself—almost as if you have to prove to yourself that you’re not just as fit as you were before the accident, but fitter, stronger, better. You’ve done it, Cristiano—congratulations. Physically, you’re in peak condition. However, mentally…’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ He gave her a glacial smile. ‘You don’t need to remind me about my mental failings.’

‘Needing time to get over a trauma like you’ve had isn’t a failing—and I’m not saying this as your doctor; I’m saying it as your friend. I have a chalet in the Alps, near Courchevel. It’s pretty isolated, but a housekeeper keeps it stocked up with the essentials and the skiing is great.’ She opened the top drawer of her desk and took out a set of keys. They gave a silvery jangle as she held them out to him across the desk, looking at him steadily. ‘It’s yours for as long as you want it.’

And, because he had run out of options, because he was desperate, because it was the only glimmer of hope left on an increasingly dark horizon, Cristiano found himself leaning forward and taking them from her.

‘Go, Cristiano,’ she said gravely. ‘Go soon.’

Chapter Two

‘OMIGOD—you will never guess who’s just arriving…’

Kate jerked her head up, almost stabbing herself with the mascara wand, as Lisa’s shriek of excitement ricocheted off her taut nerves.

‘OK, tell me.’

Lisa, already dressed and ready to go in a skin-tight silver dress that showed off her magnificent figure to perfection, was stationed at the French windows looking out over the front of the hotel to where the Monaco Casino lit up the night like an elegant ocean liner. The guests for the Campano party were already arriving: a steady procession of shiny, sporty, expensive cars pulling up in front of the Casino’s famous Belle Epoque frontage to disgorge their glamorous occupants while Lisa gave an increasingly excited commentary.

‘Oh…no, wait a minute…it isn’t,’ she said now, her voice suddenly flat with disappointment. ‘I thought it was Maresca, but it’s not…Too short…’

In the mirror, Kate’s own eyes stared back at her—wide, and dark with terror as well as with unfamiliar make-up. Just the mention of his name and her hands, already shaking enough to make putting on mascara a very hazardous exercise, were damp and slick with sweat. Why had she ever thought she could actually go through with this?

Letting the curtain drop back into place, Lisa peeled herself away from her vantage point and picked up her mini-bar vodka and tonic. Taking a sip, she almost spat it out again as Kate turned round.

‘Wow—just look at you!’ she squealed, peering at Kate through thick false eyelashes as she came forward. ‘Who the hell would have thought that you’d scrub up like that, Miss Edwards?’ She circled around Kate and came back to stand in front of her, an expression of such astonished admiration on her face that Kate wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered or insulted. ‘The dress is fabulous. Fab. U. Lous. And where have you been hiding that figure?’

‘The dress was Lizzie’s choice,’ Kate muttered, tugging it over her straining cleavage. ‘There’s absolutely no way I would have gone for anything so revealing. You don’t think it’s too much, do you?’

As she asked the question she realised that since Lisa was wearing thigh-skimming silver sequins teamed with vertiginous over-the-knee black patent platform boots, her idea of ‘too much’ might not be completely reliable.

‘Absolutely not.’ Lisa’s eyes skimmed over Kate, taking in every detail of the midnight-blue satin dress, with its plunging halter-neck and gathered pleats held in a diamond clasp nestling between her breasts. She shook her head. ‘You are a dark horse, you know. I always thought there might be hidden depths behind that Plain Jane exterior you present in the office.’

Kate moved away, letting her hair fall over her face as she bent to slip on the impossibly high-heeled and pointy-toed shoes Lizzie had made her buy. ‘Oh, I’m completely not. I’m one of the most boring and straightforward people in the world—seriously.’

Lisa wandered over to the mirror, leaning forward and checking her own cleavage before pouting her glossed lips thoughtfully. ‘I was really surprised when I heard you were coming on this trip, since you don’t even work on the Campano account any more. I suppose it’s because you came out here all those years ago and did that interview with Maresca, isn’t it?’

Kate felt sick. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Now, what do we need—invitation, hotel key, money…?’

‘Apparently there’s going to be poker and roulette,’ Lisa said, her butterfly mind mercifully alighting on a new subject as she sprayed on more perfume. ‘Just like in a James Bond film. I’ve always fancied having a go at all that. What about you—are you going to get down to some serious gambling tonight?’

Kate had to reach out and lean against the edge of the bed for support as a black wave of panic swept over her, catching her off guard.

‘Yes.’

It came out as a kind of odd, breathless gasp, and she had to pretend to be adjusting the heel of her shoe as she doubled up against the pain.

At that moment there was a loud volley of knocks on the door. Lisa checked the time on her phone as she chucked it into her tiny silver clutch bag and crossed the room to open it. ‘That’ll be Ian. I said we’d meet him in the bar at seven-thirty, and that was fifteen minutes ago. He must have come to see what’s keeping us. OK! I’m coming!’ she yelled as the hammering started up again.

‘You go,’ Kate called after her. ‘I’m ready, but I just want to phone and say goodnight to Alexander. Please—you two go ahead. I’ll come over when I’m done.’

‘OK, if you’re sure,’ Lisa said, clearly recoiling from the idea of putting her evening on hold for something as boring as phoning home to speak to a three-year-old. ‘We’ll see you in there. Unless, of course, I’ve been swept off my feet and taken into a dark alcove by Cristiano Maresca before you get there…’

The door slammed behind her. Sinking down onto the bed, Kate listened to her laughter fading as she and Ian walked away down the corridor. She squeezed her eyes shut and let out a shaky breath.

Suddenly it was very quiet.

Since they’d got to Leeds airport at two o’clock that afternoon Lisa had kept up a constant stream of chatter that had almost driven Kate demented, but it had also provided a very useful distraction from the spiralling vortex of her own fears. Now they all came rushing in to fill the silence.

With a shaking hand she picked up her phone, longing to hear Alexander’s voice. Maybe that would remind her what she was doing this for. And stop her from packing her bags and getting in a taxi back to the airport.

Standing in front of the mirror, Cristiano dropped the ends of the silk bow tie for the sixth time and swore viciously.

No matter how many formal awards dinners and black tie sports events he’d attended over the years it had never got any easier. It was as if the ridiculous thing had a mind of its own and was determined to show him up as an impostor—a boy from the back alleys of Naples. The boy in the second-hand school blazer, who couldn’t write a line in an exercise book without smudging the ink or letting the words slide all over the page. The boy who would never amount to anything.