The Playboy of Argentina(28)

       
           



       

'Shall I make it easy for you?'

She didn't sound angry anymore-just desperately, desperately sad.

'We're great together because we have great sex. But that's all there is  and all there ever will be. We don't work on any other level.'

'That's not true,' he bit out.

She looked at him then. His Frankie. A dark sweep of hair hung over one  eye, her stubborn chin was raised, her hazel eyes sunken and saddened.

'It is, Rocco. You're carrying around so much baggage, but everyone  pretends it's not there. Even Dante-even he skips over all your moods  and sulks. And God knows who you'd ever let get closer than him. A  woman? A "weak little woman"?'

'We are close, Frankie.'

'I don't feel it, Rocco. Not close enough.'

In the past five minutes the gap between them had widened and stretched.  They were still standing in each other's space, but light years  apart-like dying stars in the cosmic darkness.

He swallowed. Words to beg her to stay-on his terms-words to beg her  forgiveness for not being able to give her what she needed, words to  erase the mask of pain he saw settle into the beautiful curves of her  face, already gaunt and sunken-those words stuck deep in his throat. And  his mouth sealed over them, bottled them up like uncorked wine.

She turned away as a huge sob forced her shoulders to shudder.

He'd save her. If he could save her. Give her the water and light that  she needed. But she would always be parched of his love. His arms hung  limp at his sides as she finally stepped from their space, bent for her  laptop and left.

He stood in his room, the heart of his home, while the one chance he'd  ever had of feeling true love slipped like a ghost from his grasp.

It always came back to this. It didn't matter about walls or wealth.  None of that mattered. He'd never felt happier than in the warmth of his  mamá's bed until he'd felt the warmth of Frankie. A cardboard bed  cuddled up with Lodo  …  sleeping on the beach with Frankie. It was people  that mattered. But she mattered too much for him to give her only half a  life.

The glass in his hand weighed cannonball-heavy. He lifted it now, looked  at the delicate white patterns cut out of the paper-thin crystal. He  looked at the barely touched, carefully nursed vintage wine that coated  and glazed the sides of the glass. Looked at the space on the couch.  Moments ago he'd cared more about scents and flavours than the beautiful  woman who'd sat there.

And then, with all his might, he lifted it past his head and heaved it at the wall.

And watched as the rich red liquid streaked down the plaster.





CHAPTER TWELVE


SUNDAY MORNINGS AT home hadn't changed much in all these years. Frankie  lay in her narrow single bed, staring at the low sloping ceiling as the  scents of lunch wafted upstairs. Chicken and potatoes would be roasting;  pan lids would be wobbling with vegetables boiling underneath. The  windows would be steamed up and her mother's rosy face would be peering  into the oven, or she'd be wiping her damp hands on the cloth tucked  into her apron.

In the lounge, only ever used on high days and holidays, her father  would be marooned in a sea of Sunday papers like a grumpy old walrus,  occasionally barking out his horror at what he read to anyone who cared  to listen. Such was their life-the cosy, comfortable, mundane life that  they'd shared for almost forty years.

Why had she felt horror at the prospect of such a life? Why had she  fought against it every step of the way? Casting her net as far from  this place as she possibly could. Determined never to be that woman,  that wife.

Why-when she knew, now that it was so far from her grasp, that it was as  important to her as all her other dreams. Maybe even more so  …

Perhaps not here on a farm in County Meath, but maybe on an estancia in  Argentina. Or in a studio apartment in Madrid. Anywhere, in fact, as  long as it was with Rocco.

She rolled around in the narrow bed, tucking her legs in sharply when  shafts of cold air scored them. Her head was under her pillow, a  balled-up paper handkerchief clutched in her fist. When would the crying  stop? When would the misery of knowing she would never be with him  again finally ease?

She felt the thickening in her nose and the heat behind her eyes that  warned her of another outpouring. Two weeks she'd been like this. One  week in Spain, and then she'd finally caved and taken leave, coming back  here for the holidays.

That week in Spain had been a blur, of course. She'd caught the Madrid  flight she'd originally booked, much to the discomfort of her fellow  passengers and the aircrew, who hadn't quite known what to do with the  agonised bundle of limbs she'd become, sleeping and weeping her way  across the Atlantic.                       
       
           



       

Then, appearing for work, it had turned out she hadn't needed the extra  time after all-though God knew they'd encouraged her to take it when  they'd seen that their waterproof mascara wasn't quite so waterproof  after all.

It was a miracle that she'd pulled herself together and finally got her  moment in front of the board. Skirting over her lack of information  about the Argentina growers, she'd made a one-sided, half-hearted  presentation about the potentials of the Dominican Republic and openly  accepted, when questioned that, yes, she had become 'overwrought' during  her meeting with the Argentinian traders. And worse, yes-they probably  could get better terms from India.

But Rocco Hermida wasn't in India.

He wasn't anywhere now.

And it was time she finally realised that. Since he'd walked out of her  life she'd been chasing him. They were his steps she'd followed. He was  the reason she'd cast her net so far and wide. He was the reason she'd  taken a gap year, gone travelling, set herself higher and higher goals.  She'd emulated him. She'd wanted to be worthy of him, even if she  couldn't actually have him.

The only incredible part was how blind she had been in not seeing all  this before. And, even more worryingly, persisting for all those years  when she should have realised as he'd slung his rucksack over his  shoulder that morning ten years ago that he didn't need her. Never  would.

Tears burned and flowed again. The black jaws of agony yawned awake  inside her again. She pushed her fist into her mouth to stop the howl.  Her teeth scored her flesh, but the numb sting of pain meant nothing.  She curled into a little ball and rocked herself into another day  without him.

Eventually she became aware of someone moving about in the hallway. Her  father, clearing his throat-his passive-aggressive way of telling her  that she should be downstairs helping her mother.

Well, he was right about that. But that was all he was right about.

Since she'd come back they'd quietly circled one another, silently  assessing but not engaging. She knew it upset her mother, but she was  putting so much effort into not crying in front of them that she  couldn't risk getting involved in any arguments with him. But it was  coming. She could feel it.

Slowly she sat up, dropped her legs out of the bed, let them dangle in  the chilly air. How many times had she sat just like this over the  years? Countless. And here she was again. She stood. Her heart was  strong. It could beat seventy times a minute. It had just taken the  pummelling of her life and it was still beating. Life was going to get  better. It had to.

She shuffled her feet into slippers, shrugged her shoulders into Mark's  old Trinity College hoody and began to make her way along the hall.

'So you're going to join us?'

He was standing at the top of the stairs-just like he'd been all those years ago. Just standing there. Staring. Judging.

'Yes,' she said.

Something about his dark, solid, unflinching outline made her pause her steps. He was holding something in his hand.

'I knew I was right. All these years  … '

There was barely any light in the top hallway. A tiny skylight and a  four-paned window at the end. The flower-printed shade that her brothers  had to dodge as they passed held only a dim lightbulb that daubed the  walls and carpet in dark beige patches the colour of cold tea. Her  father's anger radiated its own dark gloom.

She stared at him. The default denial-No, Daddy, I promise I didn't-sank to the floor. She had no use for it anymore.

'Yes. You were right. Does that make you happy?'

He seemed to take that like a blow, tipping his head back slightly with  the shock of it. She couldn't see his face properly, but she could sense  the intake of breath.

'Happy? How could any shame you bring on yourself make me happy? Then or now?'

'I've never done anything shameful.' She jerked her chin up at him. And  she hadn't. There was no shame in love. 'But God knows you made me feel  like I did. Treating me like an outcast-sending me away like that.'

'It was for your own good.'

'How can you say that? You ruined my life-selling my pony and imprisoning me in that convent.'