Page 54 of Suddenly Beck

He sighs slowly. ‘Ask me again.’

‘What’s wrong?’ I say softly.

‘I’m just feeling a bit raw I guess.’ He frowns, rolling onto his back and rubbing his forehead as if he can’t quite articulate. ‘You and me... here, like this... took me by surprise, and I’m not quite sure what to do with that.’

I prop myself on my elbow as I look down at him. ‘I know what you mean.’ I nod. ‘I guess all we can do is take it one day at a time and see what happens, but Beck, if you want to stop this at any point you only have to say.’

‘I don’t want to stop,’ he mutters. ‘That’s what worries me.’ His gaze trickles down my chest and snags on the tiny silver pendant that lays against my sternum. ‘What’s this?’ he asks softly.

‘It’s a compass,’ I tell him. It’s a small silver disc barely the size of a ten pence piece, and at first glance it looks a little like a St Christopher medal, but on closer inspection, it has a tiny little intricately designed compass face. ‘My sister gave it to me a long time ago.’

He wraps his arm around me, pulling me into his side and brushing his lips against my temple. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘She’s older than me, twenty-nine,’ I begin.

‘About the same age as Reed then,’ he muses.

‘We were really close as kids, but like I said before, my dad, he’s… well, he’s kind of an arsehole. He always acted like Pia was in the way, like she was an inconvenience. He had no desire for a daughter at all.’

‘What about your mother?’ he asks.

‘She doesn’t give a crap either.’ I shrug. ‘About either of us. She never wanted kids, and she never would have reproduced at all, but my father wanted a son to carry on the family name and all that, and he’s the one who pays her credit cards. She’s the epitome of a trophy wife.’

‘So, that just left you and you sister?’

‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘We had each other, and for a while, we had Carmella.’

‘The cook?’

‘That’s right.’ I smile softly in remembrance. ‘She was so lovely. I think I’d have turned out very differently, a lot more bitter, if it wasn’t for her.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She stayed with us for as long as she could, even though she couldn’t stand our parents. I think she’d have stayed longer, but when I was sixteen, her mother fell ill, and she returned to Italy. She never came back to the UK after that. But I stayed in contact, although I haven’t seen her in ten years, we still talk a few times a year.’

‘What about Pia?’ he asks, and I notice he’s adopted my nickname for her rather than her full name, and I almost smile knowing that my mother would be horrified.

‘I don’t know,’ I say quietly. ‘Like I said, we grew apart. I don’t know what’s going on in her life now. I haven’t seen her in months. We sometimes run into each other at social functions, but I don’t like her husband. There’s something about him I don’t trust.’

‘So, how did you end up with the compass?’

‘My parents sent her away to boarding school, so I barely saw her through our teen years, but she came back once when she was seventeen. I would have been about fourteen at the time. She seemed really sad, but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. She gave me the compass, it’s one of a set, and she has the other. She said that no matter how far apart we were, we’d always find our way back to each other. The next time I saw her was her eighteenth birthday when my dad announced her engagement to one of his friends.’

‘That’s her husband?’ Beck frowns. ‘The one you don’t like.’

‘That’s right,’ I sigh. ‘I don’t know what happened or why she ended up marrying him, but he’s fifteen years older than her and an arrogant bastard.’

‘You kept the compass though,’ Beck says softly.

‘Yeah.’ I finger the worn metal sentimentally. ‘I know that things were never the same between Pia and I after that, but I still miss her.’

‘Why don’t you call her?’

‘I can’t.’ I shake my head. ‘Besides, if I tell her where I am, and her husband finds out he’ll tell my father, and all this will be for nothing.’

‘Are you telling me no one knows where you are?’ He looks at me sharply.

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you,’ I reply nonchalantly. ‘I’m not sure Pia even cares I’m gone, my mother probably hasn’t even noticed, and my father would simply drag me back to London. I emailed each of them before I left, plus the partners at the firm. Telling them I quit my job and was going away for the entire summer. I then left a note at my place saying the same thing in case my father files a missing person’s report and the police search my flat.’