“Sorry. The next time she called I refused to go home. My friend Adam who works in South Africa was in London on business and several of us from university had met for drinks. We don’t see him often and we had a lot to catch up on. When I got home she was crying like someone had died. She accused me of having an affair and nothing I said convinced her. The next time I was out she turned up at the bar, pretending that she’d been in the area. Then one night I went out with the guys and when Harry returned from the bathroom he told me that he saw a blonde at the bar who looked just like Renata. He thought it was just a coincidence, but I knew immediately that it was her, spying on me. When I got to the bar it was her wearing a wig. She admitted that she had been following me for months.
“I admit I found it flattering at first. A gorgeous woman…sorry…behaving as though she couldn’t get enough of me. But the constant phone calls to check up on me and her neediness soon became tiring. She called me sometimes ten times or more when I was on a night out with the guys. I got tired of having to go outside just to hear what she was saying. When I switched off the phone she was accused me of being with another woman so I couldn’t take her call. We were arguing almost all the time and one day I decided that I couldn’t live like that anymore.”
“You lived together?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “She was renting a studio in Shoreditch when I met her and I took over paying the bills when I moved it. I thought I’d met the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I was ready to settle down and have children, but we would have been very unhappy with her questioning my every move and doubting my integrity.”
“How long has it been over?”
“About seven months.”
“And you’re not seeing anyone else now?”
“No. I been on a couple of casual dates, but I haven’t been in a relationship since.”
“So, who was that woman?”
“That was Eva.” Stephano unlocked his iPhone and flicked through his photographs until he found what he was looking for. “If I dated her it would be like dating my sister.”
“She’s quite petite.” Natalie looked at the slender woman smiling back at the camera. She couldn’t be more than 5’2”, but she was beautiful with long, relaxed hair loose around her shoulders and not pulled back in a chignon as it had been the day Natalie had caught a quick glimpse of her before she’d driven away. She was petite, but had curves in the right place and especially where it mattered to Stephano—the hips.
“She’s small but deadly She used to beat up anyone who messed with me!” Stephano chuckled. “She’s a secondary school teacher now and I’m sure her students are all terrified of her.”
Natalie wondered if Stephano was pulling her leg. The smiling woman looked harmless.
“She was my best friend growing up and we’re still close today. I think our parents thought that something might develop between us when we got older, but we don’t feel that way about each other.” Stephano’s voice was filled with a warmth that Natalie hoped would one day be there when he spoke about her. “She used to beat me up and take away my sweets when we were younger. Truthfully I’m still scared of her now, though she’s five feet nothing.”
Natalie smiled at the image of Stephano cowering in front of a woman over a foot shorter than he was.
“When you meet her you will see that there’s nothing there for you to be jealous about.”
She loved the fact that he’d said “when”, not “if”.
***
Later that night, Natalie lay awake in bed trying to process the day’s events. She’d persuaded Stephano not to accompany her home. He had make another trip to Cadbury’s Head Office. The competition was stiffer than had been anticipated. A much larger, very reputable rival had thrown its considerable resources together to put up a fierce battle. Getting the account would be a real coup, so Paul was flying up from Ireland to accompany Stephano for the last round of talks. Natalie knew how important it was for Stephano to be rested and at his best when he gave his final presentation to the prospective clients.
She’d also needed some time to think. Although she had told her mother about him, she’d had no intention of having Stephano meet the family if she had taken on the role of ‘other woman’. Convinced that he was seeing someone one else, she hadn’t considered what it would mean to be Stephano’s woman exclusively.
Her father would be her biggest hurdle. He had always kept to ‘his own kind’, as he phrased it, but he hadn’t objected to her mother or Nathan having friends of all races or bringing them home. He’d never said it explicitly, but Natalie knew that he’d expected his children to marry within their race. And like her mother, her father would have assumed if one of his children did date a white person, it would have been Nathan.