Ava sat up straight and almost spilt her cup of coffee in the process. ‘A … letter?’
‘That’s why we tried to work ourselves up to come and visit you—to give you the letter,’ Bella confessed.
‘Why didn’t you just post it to me?’ Ava demanded angrily. ‘Why didn’t anyone ask if I could visit her before she died? I didn’t even know she was ill.’
‘Mum passed away very quickly,’ Gina told the younger woman heavily. ‘Her liver was wrecked. Dad didn’t want you informed and Mum insisted that she couldn’t face seeing you again, so we couldn’t see the point of telling you that she was dying.’
Ava absorbed those wounding facts without comment. News of her mother’s death had come as a shocking bolt from the blue while she was in prison. She had been excluded from the entire process. Now she had to accept the even harsher truth that, even dying, her mother had rejected a chance for a last meeting with her. ‘The letter …’ she began again tightly.
Bella grimaced. ‘We didn’t post it because we know prisons go over everything offenders get in the post and the idea of that happening to Mum’s last words didn’t feel right. But we’ve brought it with us … not that it’s likely to be of much comfort to you.’
‘Towards the end Mum’s mind was wandering. The letter’s more of a note and it makes no sense.’ Gina withdrew an envelope from her handsome leather bag and passed it across the coffee table.
‘So, you’ve read it, then,’ Ava gathered.
‘I had to write it for her, Ava. She was too weak to hold a pen,’ Bella explained uncomfortably. ‘It’s obvious that she was feeling very guilty about you and she did want you to know that.’
Ava’s hand trembled and tightened its grip on the crumpled envelope. She still felt that her sisters could have made more of an effort to ensure that the letter came to her sooner but she said nothing.
‘We all loved her but she wasn’t a normal mum,’ Gina remarked awkwardly. ‘Or even a decent wife and we all suffered for that.’
Her attention resting on Ava’s pinched profile, Bella grimaced and murmured, ‘Let’s leave this subject alone for the moment. Are we allowed to satisfy our crazy curiosity and ask what you’re doing living in Bolderwood Castle?’
‘I’m organising the Christmas party for Vito,’ Ava advanced. ‘Everything else just sort of happened.’
‘Everything else?’ Gina probed delicately. ‘You used to be besotted with him.’
‘I got over that,’ Ava declared, privately reflecting that proximity to Vito and a closer understanding with him had merely made her reach a whole new level of besottedness.
‘Come on, Ava. The whole countryside is talking and you’re killing us here,’ Bella complained. ‘Spill the beans, for goodness’ sake!’
As the door opened Ava was rolling her eyes in receipt of Bella’s pleading look and saying, ‘Vito’s not my partner or my boyfriend, nor are we involved in anything serious … he’s just my lover.’
‘Outside the bedroom door I rarely know where I am with your sister!’ Vito quipped without batting a single magnificent eyelash while he strolled fluidly across the room to greet her sisters as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Registering that Vito had heard that unplanned statement, Ava turned a painful beetroot shade, her discomfiture intense. But she hadn’t wanted her siblings to get any ambitious ideas about where her relationship with Vito might be heading and a dose of plain speaking had seemed the best approach to take. Ava watched as her siblings reacted predictably to Vito’s stunning good looks and white-hot sex appeal. Gina stared at him transfixed while Bella giggled ingratiatingly at almost everything he said. Vito, in comparison, was smooth as silk as he invited her sisters to the Christmas party and asked them about their children. As distanced as though she were on another planet while she had that all-important letter still clutched in her hand, Ava learned that Bella had given birth to a baby boy the previous year, a brother to round out her trio of daughters. Gina, of course, never as child-orientated, still had only one child, a ten-year-old son, and a successful career as a photo-journalist.
Ava was stunne
d to hear Vito invite her sisters and their husbands to attend the private lunch that was always staged for his closest friends before the party kicked off in the afternoon.
‘Why did you do that?’ she demanded accusingly when her siblings had gone.
‘It seemed polite and you do want your sisters back in your life again, don’t you?’ Vito asked levelly.
‘Sort of …’ Too much had happened too fast for Ava to be sure of what she wanted, aside of Vito. He was the one constant she did not need to measure in terms of importance and that hurt as well. How could she have been stupid enough to let her guard down and fall for him again?
‘What’s wrong?’ Vito prompted, watching troubled expressions skim across her expressive face like fast-moving clouds.
Ava explained about the letter.
‘Why haven’t you opened it yet?’
‘I’m afraid to,’ she admitted tightly, her blue eyes dark with strain. ‘Bella implied it would be disappointing. It’s one thing to imagine, something else to actually see her words on paper. If it’s unpleasant those words will live with me for ever.’
‘Maybe I should open it for you …’ Vito suggested.
But such a concession to weakness was more than Ava could bear and she slit open the envelope to extract a single piece of lined notepaper adorned with Bella’s copperplate script.