The Perfect Happiness(123)

At three o’clock Olivier took Angelica home. “That’s the best party I’ve ever been to,” she said, climbing unsteadily into the waiting car. “And it was all for me!”

“I’m happy you enjoyed it.”

“I didn’t think you liked Kate.”

“It’s not that I don’t like her. Just that I find her dramas exhausting.”

“She’s a girls’ girl.”

“Clearly.”

“But you got together to organize this.”

“For you.”

“You’re so sweet, Olivier.”

He kissed her as the car drove up Kensington Gore. “I love you, Angelica.”

“And I love you, Olivier.” She sighed dreamily as she realized how much she really did.

As the car drew onto the street a hunched figure lumbered drunkenly down the road, hugging his coat tight to keep out the cold. “Oh God!” Angelica gasped. “It’s Pete.” They both stared as they passed him, making his way to Kate’s. “I’m so pleased we’re not there to witness the scene.”

“He really wants her back.”

“If he hadn’t been such an idiot, she would never have kicked him out.”

“I think he’ll find he’s missed the boat.”

“People make their lives so complicated.”

Olivier took her hand. “I’m lucky to be married to you. I see shipwrecks all over the beach and thank God that we’re still afloat, sails billowing.”

Angelica snuggled up to him guiltily. “Still afloat,” she replied. Closing her eyes, she envisaged the leak in the timber and mentally patched it over. If it remained below the water-line, he might never notice it.





30



All things happen at the perfect time.

In Search of the Perfect Happiness



The following morning Kate was on the telephone at dawn to report the arrival of Pete banging on her door, demanding to see the children, begging her to take him back. By the excited tone of her voice she was thrilled that he cared and triumphant that he had been brought to his knees. “Why would I want him back?” she asked. “When I have Edmondo, who worships me? Who would have thought that I’d walk down the aisle again, me of all people? The Vera Wang dress is just too beautiful to leave languishing in a cupboard.” Angelica listened sadly, thinking of the children and the little one not yet born into the chaos of Kate’s dramatic life. It didn’t really matter who the father was, for Pete would gather him into his brood and give him his name and probably never suspect that he didn’t belong to him. As for Edmondo, if he ever made it down the aisle, he’d find Pete standing between him and the altar. Angelica suspected that Kate still loved him and that she probably always would. Pete wasn’t going to give her up without a fight.

At the end of March, the children broke up from school, and the friends dispersed across Europe for their Easter holiday. Olivier rented a chalet in Klosters, where Letizia and Gaitano had an apartment with a splendid view down the valley. Letizia had managed to bribe Scarlet’s manny, Ben, to look after her boys for the fortnight, so while the children skied together with Ben and an instructor, Angelica and Letizia were able to enjoy long lunches on the Chesa terrace in the sunshine and gentle descents down the Klosters Path. Olivier was a powerful, experienced skier, but instead of disappearing with skins in his backpack to spend the morning climbing and the afternoon descending in untracked powder, he took time to ski with his wife and children and found, to his surprise, that the pleasure he derived from watching Joe and Isabel stem down the piste far exceeded the pleasure of yet another perfect turn of his own.

They dined at the Wynegg on snails and cheese fondue and discussed Kate and the count. Letizia and Gaitano had many friends in the village, and they swept Angelica and Olivier into their social whirl, dining at friends’ chalets and dancing at the little Casa nightclub into the early hours of the morning. Angelica felt revitalized, her marriage rejuvenated, her memory of the robbery faded and shunted to the back of her subconscious. But her first waking thoughts were of Jack.

She dreamed of him often, always with the same sense of loss. Awake in bed, recapturing the sense of him, she’d remember the sunset at Sir Lowry’s Pass and the gentle way he had looked at her. Above all, she remembered the way he had made her feel. But that woman was gone forever now, along with the future they had embroidered with the fine threads of delusion. A future had never been in the stars for them. Although her life had returned to normal, she carried within her a small part of Jack, like a warm nugget against her heart, comforting and grazing her simultaneously.