She kept her tone pleasant, but he must have sensed her determination because he yielded. She knew a twinge of disappointment. Understanding her need for independence was one of her silent ‘tests’ and he’d failed it. But there was time yet, and she was determined to enjoy her evening with him.
They walked the short distance to the restaurant, and settled down at their table to talk.
‘Did you have to bring that great folder in with you?’ he asked.
‘Of course. How else could I make my pitch? This is a working dinner, remember? I have several ideas that I think you’ll like.’
She talked for several minutes, illustrating her points by pushing various pages towards him. She’d earlier marked them with nail scissors, so that she could tell by feel which was which.
‘You seem to know everything about everything we’ve ever made,’ he said, awed.
‘I’ve been working hard.’
‘I can tell, but how on earth-’ he asked.
‘I accessed a lot of information about your firm on line this afternoon.’
‘And your computer delivers it vocally?’ he hazarded.
‘There is software that does that,’ she said vaguely.
In truth she’d got Sally to read it out to her, a method she sometimes used when she was short of time. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.
There were two conversations going on here, she realised. On the surface she sold her abilities, while he admired her work. It was pleasant, restrained, but beneath the surface they were sizing each other up.
Celia listened closely to every nuance of his voice. Without being deep, it had a resonance that excited her and made her want to touch him.
She’d chosen this restaurant and insisted on taking Wicksy because in that way she could keep some sort of control. The trouble was that she increasingly wanted to abandon control and hurl herself headlong into the unknown.
She sensed that he, too, was putting a brake on himself, but his caution was greater than hers. Francesco eased her away from the subject of work, and made her talk about herself.
‘How did your parents cope with you being blind?’ he asked.
‘Easily. They were both blind, too,’ she explained.
‘Mio Dio! How terrible!’ he said instinctively.
‘Not really. You’d be amazed how little you miss what you’ve never had. Since they couldn’t see, either, and I’m an only child, I had almost no point of comparison. The three of us formed a kind of secret society. It was us against the world because we thought everyone else was crazy. They thought we were crazy, too, because we wouldn’t conform to their ideas about how blind people ought to behave.
‘They met at university, where he was a young professor and she was one of his students. He writes books now, and she does his secretarial work. He says she’s more efficient than any sighted secretary because she knows what to watch out for. They used to say they fell in love because they understood things that nobody else did. So I grew up accepting the way we lived as normal, and I still do.’
There was a slight warning in her voice as she said the last words, but she didn’t make much of the point.
She managed to turn the conversation towards him. He told her about his family in Italy, his parents and his five brothers, the villa perched on the hill with the view over the Bay of Naples. Then he caught himself up, embarrassed.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘I don’t expect people to censor their speech because I’ve never seen the things they describe. If I did that I wouldn’t have any friends.’
‘And you’ve never seen anything of the world at all,’ he said in wonder. ‘That’s what I can’t get my head round.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is hard,’ she mused. ‘This morning my friend told me you had deep blue eyes, but I had to tell her I couldn’t picture them.’
In the brief silence she could sense him looking around, and strove not to smile.
‘Why-did she tell you that?’ he asked, almost nervously.
She assumed a wicked, breathy innocence. ‘You mean, it’s not true? Your eyes are really deep red?’
‘Only when I’ve had too much to drink.’
She laughed so much that Wicksy, dozing at her feet, pushed his snout against her, asking if all was well.
Something other than laughter was happening that evening. It was in the air between them. Another woman might have read it in his eyes. Celia sensed it with the whole of her being.
The talk drifted back to his family.
‘My mother’s English, but you’d never know it. At heart Signora Rinucci is a real Italian mamma, determined to marry all her sons off.’
‘Six sons? That’s quite an undertaking. How’s she doing?’
‘Four married, two left, But my brother Ruggiero has just got engaged. He’ll marry Polly fairly soon, and then Mamma will turn her firepower on me.’
So now he’d contrived to let her know that he wasn’t married, she thought, appreciating his tactics.
‘Don’t your parents do the same with you?’ he asked casually.
‘It’s the one thing they’ve never given me advice about,’ she said. ‘Except when Dad’s been at work in the kitchen Mum will say, “Never marry a man who cooks squid.” And she’s right.’
After a brief silence he said, ‘We have squid in the Bay of Naples. Best in the world, so the fishermen say.’
‘But you don’t cook it, do you?’
‘No, I don’t cook it,’ he assured her.
And then a strange silence fell, slightly touched by embarrassment, as though they’d both strayed closer to danger than they’d meant.
Celia found that she couldn’t be the one to break the silence, because she was so conscious of what had caused it, but his manner of breaking it brought no comfort. He offered her coffee and another glass of wine, his manner polite and impeccable. Earlier he’d been warm and pleasant. Suddenly only courtesy was left, and it had a hollow feel.
The truth began to creep over her, and with it a chill.
At her front door he said, ‘I’ll take your folder with me. I like your ideas, and I think we’ve got a deal, but I’ll know more when I’ve read it again.’
‘You’ve got my number?’
‘I made sure I got it. Good night.’
He didn’t even try to kiss her.
Now she knew the truth.
When he didn’t call her, she understood why. As though she was inside his head, she followed his thoughts, his dread of getting too close to a blind woman, his common sense advice to himself to back off now, before it was too late.
‘They all do it,’ she mused to Wicksy as they took their final walk one evening. She sat on a bench beneath the trees and felt him press against her. ‘We’ve both known it to happen before. Remember Joe? You never liked him, did you? You tried to tell me that he wouldn’t last, and you were right.’
His nose was cold and comforting in her hand.
‘Men are scared to become involved with me in case it disrupts their pleasant lives, their successful careers.’
The nose nudged gently.
‘I know,’ she said sadly. ‘We can’t blame them, can we? And maybe it’s better for him to be honest and retreat now rather than later.’
Another soft nudge.
‘It’s just that I thought this time it might have been different. I thought he was different. But he isn’t.’
There was a whine from beside her knee, with a distant air of urgency.
‘What’s that? Oh, the biscuit. I’m sorry. I forgot. Here.’
She felt it vanish from her hand.
‘What would I do without you, my darling? You’ve got more sense than the rest of us put together. As long as I’ve got you, I don’t need anyone else.’
Celia leaned down and rested her cheek against his head, trying to take comfort from their loving companionship.
But the truth was that her heart was aching. Something about Francesco had reached out to her, and she had reached back because it had felt so right. It was crazy to feel like this about a man she’d only just met, but with all her heart and soul she wanted him.