The Rumours Collection

Leandro had seen the statistics. Rosie had joined the thousands of people who went missing without trace. Every single day families across the globe were shattered by the disappearance of a loved one. They were left with the stomach-churning dread of wondering what had happened to their beloved family member. Praying they were still alive but deep down knowing such miracles were rare. Wondering if they had suffered or were still suffering. It was cruel torture not to know and yet just as bad speculating.

Leandro had spent every year of his life since wondering. Praying. Begging. Pleading with a God he no longer believed in—if he ever had. Rosie wasn’t coming back. She was gone and he was responsible.

The guilt he felt over Rosie’s disappearance was a band around his chest that would tighten every time he saw a toddler. Rosie had been with him on the pebbly beach when he was six and she was three. He could recall her cute little chubby-cheeked face and starfish dimpled hands with such clarity he felt like it was yesterday. For years he’d kept thinking the life he was living since was just a bad dream. That he would wake up and there would be Rosie with her sunny smile sitting on the striped towel next to him. But every time he would wake and he would feel that crushing hammer blow of guilt.

His mother had stepped a few feet away to an ice-cream vendor, leaving Leandro in charge. When she’d come back, Rosie had gone. Vanished. Snatched from where she had been sitting. The beach had been scoured. The water searched. The police had interviewed hundreds of beach-goers but there was no sign of Rosie. No one had seen anything suspicious. Leandro had only turned his back for a moment or two to look at a speedboat that was going past. When he’d turned around he’d seen his mother coming towards him with two ice-cream cones; her face had contorted in horror when she’d seen the empty space on the towel beside him.

He had never forgotten that look on his mother’s face. Every time he saw his mother he remembered it. It haunted him. Tortured him.

His parents’ marriage hadn’t been strong in the first place. Losing Rosie had gouged open cracks that were already there. The divorce had been bitter and painful two years after Rosie’s disappearance. His father hadn’t wanted custody of Leandro. He hadn’t even asked for visitation rights. His mother hadn’t wanted him either. But she must have known people would judge her harshly if she didn’t take him with her when she went back to her homeland, England. Mothers were meant to love their children.

But how could his mother love him when he was responsible for the loss of her adored baby girl?

Not that his mother ever blamed him. Not openly. Not in words. It was the looks that told him what she thought. His father’s too. Those looks said, why weren’t you watching her? As the years went on his father had begun to verbalise it. The blame would come pouring out after he’d been on one of his binges. But it was nothing Leandro hadn’t already heard echoing in his head. Day after day, week after week...for years now the same accusing voice would keep him awake at night. It would give him nightmares. He would wake with a jolt and remember the awful truth.

There wasn’t a day that went past that he didn’t think of his sister. Ever since that gut-wrenching day he would look for her in the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Hoping that whoever had taken her had not done so for nefarious reasons, but had taken her to fulfil a wish to have a child and had loved and cared for her since. He couldn’t bear to think of her coming to harm. He couldn’t bear to think of her lying cold in some grisly shallow grave, her little body bruised and broken. As the years had gone on he imagined her growing up. He looked for an older version of her. She would be thirty now.

In his good dreams she would be married with children of her own by now.

In his nightmares...

He closed the door on his torturous imaginings. For twenty-seven years he had lived with this incessant agony. The agony of not knowing. The agony of being responsible for losing her. The agony of knowing he had ruined his parents’ lives.

He could never forgive himself.

He didn’t even bother trying.

Miranda spent an hour looking over the collection, carefully uncovering the canvasses to get an idea of what she was dealing with. Apart from some of the obvious fakes, most of the collection would have to be shipped back to England for proper evaluation. The paintings needed to be x-rayed in order to establish how they were composed. Infrared imaging would then be used to see the original drawings and painting losses, and Raman spectroscopy would determine the identity of the varnish. It would take a team of experts far more qualified and experienced than her to bring all of these works to their former glory. But she couldn’t help feeling touched Leandro had asked her to be the first to run her eyes over the collection.

Why had he done that?

Had it simply been an impulsive thing, as he had intimated, or had he truly thought she was the best one to do it? Whatever his reasons, it was like being let in on a secret. He had opened a part of his life that no one else had had access to before.

It was sad to think of Leandro’s father living here on his own for years. It looked like no maintenance had been done for a decade, if not longer. Cobwebs hung from every corner. The dust was so thick she could feel it irritating her nostrils. Every time she moved across the floor to look at one of the paintings the floorboards would creak in protest, as if in pain. The atmosphere was one of neglect and deep loneliness. As she lifted each dustsheet off the furniture she got a sense she was uncovering history. What stories could each piece tell? There was a George IV mahogany writing table, a Queen Anne burr-elm chest of drawers, a seventeenth-century Italian walnut side cabinet, a Regency spoon-back chair, as well as a set of four Regency mahogany and brass inlaid chairs, and an Italian gilt wood girandole mirror with embellished surround. How many lives had they watched go by? How many conversations had they overheard?

Along with the furniture, inside some of the cabinets there were Chinese glass snuff bottles, bronze Buddhas, jade Ming dynasty vases and countless ceramics and glassware. So many beautiful treasures locked away where no one could see and enjoy them.

Why was Leandro so intent on getting rid of them? Didn’t he have a single sentimental bone in his body? His father had painstakingly collected all of these valuable items. It would have taken him years and years and oodles of money. Why then get rid of them as if they were nothing more than charity shop donations? Surely there was something he would want to keep as a memento?

It didn’t make sense.

Miranda went outside for a breath of fresh air after breathing in so much dust. The afternoon was surprisingly warm, but then, this was the French Riviera, she thought. No wonder the English came here in droves for their holidays. Even the light against the old buildings had a certain quality to it—a muted, pastel glow that enhanced the gorgeous architecture.

She took a walk about the garden where weeds ran rampant amongst the spindly arms of roses and underneath the untrimmed hedges. A Virginia creeper was in full autumnal splendour against a stone wall, some of the rich russet and gold leaves crunching and crackling underneath her feet as she walked past.

Miranda caught sight of a small marble statue of an angel through a gap in the unkempt hedge towards the centre of the garden. The hedge had grown so tall it had created a secret hideaway like a maze hiding the Minotaur at the centre of it. The pathway leading to it was littered with leaves and weeds as if no one had been along here for a long time. There was a cobweb-covered wooden bench in the little alcove in front of the statue, providing a secluded spot for quiet reflection. But when she got close she realised it wasn’t a statue of an angel after all; it was of a small child of two or three years old.

Miranda bent down to look at the brass plaque that was all but covered by strangling weeds. She pushed them aside to read:

Rosamund Clemente Allegretti.

Lost but never forgotten.

There was a birth date of thirty years ago but the space where the date of passing should be was blank with just an open-ended dash.

Who was she? Who was this little girl who had been immortalised in white marble?

The sound of a footfall crunching on the leaves behind her made Miranda’s heart miss a beat. She scrambled to her feet to see the tall figure of Leandro coming towards her but then, when he saw what was behind her, he stopped dead. It was like he had been struck with something. Blind-sided. Stunned. His features were bleached of colour, going chalk-white beneath his tan. The column of his throat moved up and down: once. Twice. Three times. His eyes twitched, and then flickered, as if in pain.

‘You startled me, creeping up on me like that,’ Miranda said to fill the eerie silence. ‘I thought you were—’

‘A ghost?’

Something about his tone made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. But it was as if he were talking to himself, not her. He seemed hardly even aware she was there. His gaze was focussed on the statue, his brow heavily puckered—even more than usual.

Miranda leaned back against the cool pine-scented green of the hedge as he moved past her to stand in front of the statue. When he touched the little child’s head with one of his hands, she noticed it was visibly shaking.

‘Who is she?’ she said.

His hand fell away from the child’s head to hang by his side. ‘My sister.’

She gaped at him in surprise. ‘Your sister?’

He wasn’t looking at her but at the statue, his brows still drawn together in a deep crevasse. ‘Rosie. She disappeared when I was six years old. She was three.’

Disappeared? Miranda swallowed so convulsively she felt the walls of her throat close in on each other. He had a sister who had disappeared? The shock was like a slap. A punch. A wrecking ball banging against her heart. Why hadn’t he said something? For all these years he’d given the impression he was an only child. What a heart-breaking tragedy to keep hidden for all this time. Why hadn’t he told his closest friends? ‘You never said anything about having a sister. Not once. To anyone.’

‘I know,’ he said on an expelled breath. ‘It was easier than explaining.’

Why hadn’t she put two and two together before now? Of course that was why he was so standoffish. Grief did that. It kept you isolated in an invisible bubble of pain. No one could reach you and you couldn’t reach out. She knew the process all too well. ‘Because it was too...painful?’ she said.

He looked at her then, his dark eyes full of silent suffering. ‘It was my way of coping,’ he said. ‘Talking about her made it worse. It still does.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He gave her a sombre movement of his lips before he turned back to look at the statue. He stood there for a long moment, barely a muscle moving on his face apart from an in-and-out movement on his lean cheek, as if he were using every ounce of self-control to keep his emotions in check.

‘My father must’ve had this made,’ he said after a long moment. ‘I didn’t know it existed until now. I just glanced at the garden when I came yesterday—I couldn’t see this from the house.’

Miranda bit her lip as she watched him looking at the statue. He had his hands in his pockets and his shoulders were hunched forward slightly. Bone-deep sadness was etched in the landscape of his face.

She silently put a hand on his forearm and gave it a comforting squeeze. He turned his head to look down at her, his eyes meshing with hers as one of his hands came down on top, anchoring hers beneath his. She felt the imprint of his long, strong fingers, the warmth of his palm—the skin-on-skin touch that made something inside her belly shift sideways.

His gaze held hers steady.

Her breathing stalled. Her pulse quickened. Her heartbeat tripped and then raced.

Time froze.

The sounds of the garden—the twittering birds, the breeze ruffling the leaves, the drip of a leaky tap near one of the unkempt beds—faded into the background.

‘My father wouldn’t allow my mother to pack anything away,’ Leandro said. ‘He couldn’t accept Rosie was gone. It was one of the reasons they split up. My mother wanted to move on. He couldn’t.’

‘And you got caught in the crossfire,’ Miranda said.

He dropped his hand from where it was covering hers, stepping away from her as if he needed space to breathe. To think. To regroup. ‘I was supposed to be looking after her,’ he said after another beat or two of silence. ‘The day she disappeared.’

Miranda frowned. ‘But you were only what—six? That’s not old enough to babysit.’

He gave her one of his hollow looks. ‘We were on the beach. I can take you to the exact spot. My mother only walked ten or so metres away to get us an ice-cream. When she came back, Rosie was gone. I didn’t hear or see anything. I turned my head to look at a boat that was going past and when I turned back she wasn’t there. No one saw anything. It was crowded that hot summer day so no one would’ve noticed if a child was carried crying from the beach. Not back then.’

Miranda felt a choking lump come to her throat at the agony of what he had been through—the heartache, the distress of not knowing—never knowing what had happened to his baby sister. Wondering if she was alive or dead. Wondering if she had suffered. Wondering if there was something—anything—he could have done to stop it. How had he endured it?

By blaming himself.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘How can you feel it was your fault? You were only a baby yourself. You shouldn’t have been blamed. Your parents were wrong to put that on you.’

‘They didn’t,’ he said. ‘Not openly, although my father couldn’t help himself in later years.’

So many pennies were beginning to drop. This was why Leandro’s father had drunk to senselessness. This was why his mother had moved abroad, remarried, had three children in quick succession and had been always too busy to make time to see him. This was why Leandro had spent so many weekends and school holidays at Ravensdene, because he’d no longer had a home and family to go to. It was unbearably sad to think that all the times Leandro had joined her brothers he had carried this terrible burden. Alone. He hadn’t told anyone of the tragedy. Not even his closest friends knew of the gut-wrenching heartache he had been through. And was still going through.

‘I don’t know what to say...’ She brushed at her moist eyes with the sleeve of her top. ‘It’s just so terribly sad. I can’t bear the thought of how you’ve suffered this all alone.’

Leandro reached out and grazed her cheek with a lazy fingertip, his expression rueful. ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

‘I can’t help it.’ Miranda sniffed and went searching for a tissue but before she could find one up her sleeve he produced the neatly ironed square of a clean white handkerchief. She took it from him with a grateful glance. ‘Thanks.’

‘My father stubbornly clung to hope,’ Leandro said. ‘He kept Rosie’s room exactly as it was the day she went missing because he’d convinced himself that one day she’d come back. My mother couldn’t bear it. She thought it was pathological.’

Miranda scrunched the handkerchief into a ball inside her hand, thinking of the football sweater of Mark’s she kept in her wardrobe. Every year on his birthday she would put it on, breathing in the ever-fading scent of him. She kept telling herself it was time to give it back to his parents but she could never quite bring herself to do it. ‘Everyone has their own way of grieving,’ she said.

‘Maybe.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘Rosie’s room?’

‘Would you mind?’ she said.

He let out a ragged-sounding breath. ‘It will have to be packed up sooner or later.’

Miranda walked back to the villa with him. She was deeply conscious of how terribly painful this would be for him. Didn’t she feel it every time she visited Mark’s parents? They had left his room intact too. Unable to let go of his things because by removing them they would finally have to accept he was gone for ever. But at least Mark’s parents were in agreement.

How difficult it must have been for Leandro’s mother, trying to move on while his father had been holding back. The loss of a child tested the strongest marriage. Leandro’s parents had divorced within two years of Rosie’s disappearance. How much had Leandro suffered during that time and since? Estranged from his alcoholic father, shunned by his mother, too busy with her new family.

After the bright light of outdoors the shadows inside the villa seemed all the more ghostly. A chill shimmied down her spine as she climbed the groaning stairs with Leandro.

The room was the third along the corridor—the door she had noticed was locked earlier. Leandro selected a key from a bunch of keys he had in his pocket. The sound of the lock turning over was as sharp and clear as a rifle shot.

Miranda stepped inside, her breath catching in her throat as she took in the little fairy-tale princess bed with its faded pink-and-white cover and the fluffy toys and dolls arranged on the pillow. There was a doll’s pram and a beautifully crafted doll’s house with gorgeous miniature furniture under the window. There was a child’s dressing table with a toy make-up set and a hairbrush lying beside it.

There was a framed photograph hanging on the wall above the bed of a little girl with a mop of dark brown curls, apple-chubby cheeks and a cheeky smile.

Miranda turned to look at Leandro. He was stony faced but she could sense what he was feeling. His grief was palpable. ‘Thank you for showing me,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful room.’

His throat moved up and down over a swallow. ‘She was a great little kid.’ He picked up one of the fluffy toys that had fallen forward on the bed—a floppy-eared rabbit—and turned it over in his hands. ‘I bought this for her third birthday with my pocket money. She called him Flopsy.’

Miranda blinked a couple of times, surprised her voice worked at all when she finally spoke. ‘What will you do with her things once you sell the villa?’

His frown flickered on his forehead. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead.’

‘You might want to keep some things for when you have your own children,’ Miranda said.

She got a sudden vision of him holding a newborn baby, his features softened in tenderness, his large, capable hands cradling the little bundle with care and gentleness. Her heart contracted. He would make a wonderful father. He would be kind and patient. He wouldn’t shout and swear and throw tantrums, like her father had done when things hadn’t gone his way. Leandro would make a child feel safe and loved and protected. He would be the strong, dependable rock his children would rely on no matter what life dished up.

He put the rabbit back down on the bed as if it had bitten him. ‘I’ll donate it all to charity.’

‘But don’t you—?’

‘No.’

The implacability of his tone made her stomach feel strangely hollow. ‘Don’t you want to get married and have a family one day?’

His eyes collided with hers. ‘Do you?’

Miranda shifted her gaze and rolled her lips together for a moment. ‘We’re not talking about me.’

The line of his mouth was tight. White. ‘Maybe we should.’

She pulled back her shoulders. Lifted her chin. Held his steely look even though it made the backs of her knees feel fizzy. ‘It’s different for me.’

A glimmer of cynicism lit his dark gaze. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I made a promise.’

Leandro gave a short mocking laugh. ‘To a dying man—a boy?’

Miranda gritted her teeth. How many times did she have to have this conversation? ‘We loved each other.’

‘You loved the idea of love,’ he said. ‘He was your first boyfriend—the first person to show an interest in you. It’s my bet if he hadn’t got sick he would’ve moved on within a month or two. He used your sweet, compliant nature to—’

‘That’s not true!’

‘He didn’t want to die alone and lonely,’ he went on with a callous disregard for her feelings. ‘He tied you to him, making you promise stuff no one in their right mind would promise. Not at that age.’

Miranda put her hand up to her ears in a childish attempt to block the sound of his taunting voice. ‘No! No!’

‘You were a kid,’ he said. ‘A romantically dazed kid who couldn’t see how she was being used towards the end. He had cancer—the big, disgusting C-word. In an instant he had gone from being one of the top jocks to one of the untouchables. But he knew you wouldn’t let him down. Not the sweet, loyal little Miranda Ravensdale who was looking for a Shakespearean tragedy to pin her name on.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You have no right to say such things to me. You don’t understand what we had. You don’t commit to a relationship longer than a few weeks. What would you know of loyalty and commitment? Mark and I were friends for years—years—before we became...more intimate.’

He tugged her hands down and loosely gripped her wrists in his hands so she could feel every one of his fingers burning against her flesh. ‘Am I wrong?’ he asked. ‘Am I really?’

Miranda pulled out of his hold with an almighty wrench that made her stumble backwards. How dared he mock her? How dared he make fun of her? How dared he question her love and commitment for Mark and his for her? ‘You have no right to question my relationship with Mark. No right at all. I loved him. I loved him and I still love him. Nothing you can say or do will ever change that.’

His mouth slanted in a cynical half-smile. ‘I could change that. I know I could. All it would take is one little kiss.’

Miranda coughed out a laugh but even to her ears it sounded unconvincing. ‘Like that’s ever going to happen.’

He was suddenly close. Way too close. His broad fingertip was suddenly on the underside of her chin without her knowing how it got there. All she registered was the warm, branding feeling of it resting there, holding her captive with the mesmerising force of his bottomless dark gaze.

‘Is that a dare, Sleeping Beauty?’ he said in a silky tone.

Miranda felt his words slither down her spine like an unfurling satin ribbon running away from its spool. Her knees threatened to give way. Her belly quivered with a host of needs she couldn’t even name. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his coal-black gaze. It was drawing her in like a magnet does a tiny iron filing.

She became aware of her breasts inside the lacy cups of her bra. They prickled and swelled as if stimulated to attention by the deep, burry sound of his voice. The below-the-ocean-floor, rumbly bass of his voice—the voice that did strange things to her feminine body.

Her inner core clenched in a contraction of raw, primal need. Her blood ticked, raced, through the network of her veins at breakneck frenzied speed. Every pore of her body ached for his touch, for the sensuous glide of his fingers, for the hot sweep of his tongue, for the stabbing thrust of his body.

But finally a vestige of pride came to her rescue.

Miranda dipped out from under his fingertip and rubbed at her chin as she sent him a warning glare. ‘Don’t play games with me, Leandro.’

A sardonic gleam shone in his dark eyes. ‘You think I was joking?’

She didn’t know what to think. Not when he looked at her like that—with smouldering black-as-pitch eyes that seemed to see right through her defences. That sensually contoured mouth shouldn’t tempt her. She shouldn’t be wondering what it would feel like against her own. She shouldn’t be looking at his mouth as if she had no control over her gaze.

He was her brothers’ friend. He was practically one of the family. He had seen her with pimples and braces. He had seen her lying on the sofa with a hot-water bottle pressed to her cramping belly. He could have any girl he wanted. Why would he want to kiss her unless it was to score points? He thought her loyalty to Mark was ridiculous. How better to prove it by having her go weak-kneed when he kissed her?