Rosamund saw me first.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not staying,’ I said, looking at everyone one by one. Daisy smiled at me, at least. ‘I just thought I ought to give you this, Nick.’
I handed him the ring, pressing it into the palm of his hand.
Sophia laughed out loud. ‘Can you believe the audacity of this woman?!’
‘Mum!’ said Daisy. ‘Stop being so horrible to Maddie. She’s a nice person. And I, for one, am really sad that she won’t be part of my family anymore.’
Strange that she’d turned out to be the only person I felt some sort of affinity with, despite our rocky start. I thought it might be because I could see so much of myself in her.
‘Thank you, Daisy. And I am going to treasure the picture you gave me.’
And then I turned to Rosamund.
‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip and that this hasn’t disrupted things too much for you.’
She gave me a steely look in return and I rattled on before she had a chance to start laying into me.
‘And, Nick, I’ll be in touch when we’re back in London.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Fine.’
‘Bye, Daisy,’ I said. ‘Good luck with everything.’
‘You too,’ she said.
And then I turned and walked away, noticing how the further away from them I got, the more my shoulders fell from my ears and the more my jaw unclenched. I was free of them and it felt great. And whether or not things worked out with Aidan, I knew I’d done the right thing by not being with Nick. His family might have tried to make me feel as though I wasn’t good enough for them, but it had ended up having the opposite effect.
As I pulled my suitcase through the doors of the hotel, slipping the doorman a twenty-euro note as I went, I felt stronger and more hopeful than I’d ever been before.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I stepped out onto Via Tornabuoni, taking one last, longing look at the Gucci store and checking the directions the concierge had written down for me on the hotel’s headed notepaper: the pensione was over the river in Oltrarno. It should be about a ten-minute walk, he’d said.
As I slipped the paper into my bag, I pulled out my phone before I could check myself, opening my contacts, finding Aidan’s (now reinstated) number. My thumb hovered over the ‘call’ button. I badly wanted to talk to him, but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do it until I got back to London. I needed time to process everything, to work things through properly. To be one hundred per cent sure, this time, that this was what I wanted.
I set off towards the Arno, deciding it was easier to walk in the road where there was more space, even if it was bumpy on the cobbles.
‘Need some help with that?’ said a voice I knew all too well.
I tried to keep my cool, glancing across at Aidan, who had fallen into step beside me. He was wearing a checked cotton shirt open at the neck and and he had the same sparkling, hopeful eyes he’d always had.
I’d done the right thing, I knew I had.
‘Pretty sure I can manage,’ I said, grinning at him.
‘Well, at least let me walk with you. Just in case. I hateto say it, but I reckon your suitcase has seen better days,’ he said, grimacing at its noisy, wobbly wheels. ‘Where are you headed?’
‘The Pensione Valentina.’
‘Very romantic,’ he said.
I daren’t look at him. I knew what he was thinking. I was doing my best not to think about it, too.
We turned left and then right, finding ourselves beneath a beautiful arched corridor underneath one of the former palaces that were dotted around on every other corner of Florence. A flower market was packing up for the evening and I could smell the scent of the pretty wild flowers and olive trees as we passed. Lanterns were hanging above our heads, bathing us in a warm, buttery light.
‘I’ve called off the engagement,’ I blurted out.