The Liberation by Kate Furnivall

Author:Kate Furnivall [Furnivall, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781471155574
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Lucia Lombardi stood immobile, her face a frozen mask.

The whisky had done its job well on Jake. The treacherous amber road to oblivion. Jake cursed it. It had dulled his reactions. He would have been right on Caterina’s heels if not for the whisky, but he missed his chance. He was too slow, caught off guard. He started after her and called, ‘Caterina, I’ll drive you home,’ but a hand gripped his arm. He looked down to where red-painted nails had sunk their tips into the weave of his khaki sleeve.

‘Wait!’ Lucia Lombardi said. ‘I wish to talk to you about my daughter. If you care for her at all – and I can see you do – help me to become her friend again.’

‘Why would I do that, signora?’

He removed her fingers from his arm.

‘Because,’ she held his gaze, ‘you and I both know she needs me. You saw it. Here. Tonight. As plain as day.’ She looked over towards the bar. ‘Now buy me a drink, soldier, and let’s talk.’

Her smile was intimate. As if they shared something important. And he wondered how often she practised it in the mirror.

‘With respect, signora, I do not think you are the expert on what your daughter needs. But you are right, I do care for her, which is why I am going to find her now and take her safely home.’ He nodded curtly. ‘Good evening to you.’

He pushed his way through the crowd. Frustrated by the delay. Disturbed that this woman had thrown herself back into Caterina Lombardi’s life with the force of a hand grenade. He had to find her. He sidestepped a couple of soldiers who were weaving drunkenly towards him and carved a path to the door with no sighting of a white dress. He hurried out into the marble-columned reception hall, but still no Caterina.

He cursed himself.

Sweetheart.

The word had lingered on the glossy scarlet lips like cigarette smoke.

My bella Caterina. That’s what her mother had dared to say.

Caterina turned her face and spat out the words on to the wet slippery pavement. As if sweetheart could kill her.

When she ran out of the Pompeii Club into the dark night, it was raining. The odours of the city were more pungent in the rain and she could smell its stale breath. Her own breath came in shuddering bursts as she looked up and down the street in search of Leonora’s retreating figure, but the girl was nowhere in sight. The road was a main thoroughfare lined with fine tall buildings, its surface black as wet ink in the rain, but it was empty at this hour. Some of its street lamps were surprisingly still working, tossing buttery yellow pools on the ground and in one of them two alley-cats were yowling in a stand-off.

She hurried down the club’s front steps and turned to her right, ducking her head against the rain. It slithered down her neck, along her bare arms, and she was shivering but it wasn’t from the cold.

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