Page 42 of Change of Heart
Alice made a quick decision. ‘You go. You know your way around better than I do. I’ll stay here with him. See if you can find Luca while you’re down there.’
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right on your own?’ Simonetta sounded hesitant.
Alice smiled up at her with a confidence she didn’t feel. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll stay with him until you get back with reinforcements.’
‘Just you be careful. That tractor looks as if it could topple over at any moment.’ Simonetta climbed back onto her horse and cantered off across the hillside. Horace just stood there unperturbed, helping himself to more of the rough grass, oblivious to the drama taking place around him.
Alice watched Simonetta disappear down the track for a few moments before taking a deep breath and turning back towards the injured man. Like it or lump it, she knew what she had to do. She slogged back through the mud to where the stricken man lay and allowed herself to slump back onto the ground alongside him. The brooding presence of the huge machine balanced above her was intimidating but she steeled herself and did her best to ignore it. The mayor’s outstretched arm was lying close by her so she caught hold of his hand and gave it a little squeeze.
‘Help’s on its way. You’ll be okay.’
At first there was no response from him but after a full minute she saw his eyes open. They were bloodshot and wracked with pain and her heart went out to him. The resemblance to his two sons was all too evident and she felt tears of pity spring to the corners of her eyes, but she wiped them away with the back of her free hand. Bursting into tears wouldn’t help anybody.
‘You’re the Varaldo girl, aren’t you? You work for them?’ His voice was little more than a croak, but she was heartened to hear him making sense.
‘Yes, I’m Alice. Simonetta has gone off to get help and Luca will be here soon. We’ll get you out of this. Try to conserve your strength until the medics arrive.’
‘Luca’s here?’ The disbelief in his tone said it all. ‘He won’t help me. He hates me.’
As she looked down at him, Alice’s mind went back to the awful moment four years earlier when she had woken to find herself buried beneath a metre of snow, unable to move without sending excruciating stabs of pain throughout her whole body. Even when her rescuers had arrived, she had had to lie there for almost an hour while they laboured to dig her out. A friendly paramedic called Stefano had crouched there with her the whole time, holding her hand and keeping her talking. They had talked about everything from skiing to horse riding, and when he had visited her in hospital a few days later he had told her that in these situations it was vital to keep the victim awake if possible, so she did her best to do the same with Luca’s father.
‘Luca doesn’t hate you. He’s your son. You’ll see.’
‘He hates me. So does Tommaso. They both hate me. They all hate me.’ There was no defiance or aggression in his voice now, just resignation.
‘Of course they don’t hate you.’ Even she could hear how hollow her words sounded but she knew she had to make the effort.
‘Everybody hates me, everybody’s against me.’ He was sounding less and less intelligible, his speech slurring as his eyes closed again and Alice jumped in to keep him talking.
‘I don’t hate you. If I hated you, why would I be here alongside you? Why would Simonetta be riding down the hill like a mad thing to get help if she hated you?’
To her surprise, his eyes opened once more. ‘Whyareyou here?’ There was scepticism in his voice. ‘You hate me, they all hate me…’
‘Like I’ve been telling you, I don’t hate you. Besides, I know what you’re going through.’
‘You do? Of course you don’t.’ There was a faint trace of his former arrogance in his scathing tone and Alice felt herself bristle.
‘See this?’ She reached down with her free hand and pulled up the left leg of her breeches, revealing her prosthetic limb. ‘Now do you believe me?’
She went on to tell him what had happened, making sure to keep pushing him to respond to what she was saying. She told him everything, from the despair and the agony to the hope and relief, and then to the bleak realisation that she would be disabled for life. ‘But I’m still here and I’m loving life again.’ Seeing his eyes begin to close, she searched desperately for something to say to stimulate him and produced a spontaneous comment that surprised even her as it leapt to her lips. ‘And if you don’t believe me, ask your son. I know Luca well now. In fact, I’m in love with him.’ Although she was honest enough to admit that her feelings for Luca had been strengthening day by day ever since she had first set eyes on him, this was the first time she had used the ‘L’ word to anybody, even herself.
It worked. His eyes opened once more. ‘Luca? Did you say Luca? You’re in love with Luca?’
Alice instinctively glanced over her shoulder in case Luca might have crept up and overheard, but she was still alone on the hillside with the critically injured man. For now all that mattered was to keep him talking so she nodded. ‘Yes. I think he’s a wonderful man.’
‘You do…?’
His voice tailed off and Alice was desperately searching for something else to say to keep the stricken man from losing consciousness when she heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. She squeezed his hand again and leant closer to him.
‘Can you hear that? Help’s arrived. I’m just going to show them where we are and then I’ll be back. Can you hear me? I said I’ll be back.’
There might have been a response but it was hard to tell. Beneath the coating of mud, the mayor was as white as a sheet and Alice had a feeling he was probably losing a lot of blood. The sooner they got him out of there the better. She wriggled backwards until she could pull herself to her feet and make her way around the side of the tractor. As she came out from beneath the overhang she felt an acute sense of relief, immediately tempered by the knowledge that there was still a human being under there. She emerged to see the mayor’s battered Toyota pickup being driven down the field towards her. At the wheel was Luca. He skidded to a halt and jumped out. As he did so, Alice spotted a big black shape on the passenger seat, but Luca wisely left Frank in the vehicle for now. He came running across and stopped in front of her.
‘Are you all right? I can hardly see you for mud.’
She did her best to explain the situation but Luca was already on his way around to see for himself and as he disappeared from sight beneath the body of the tractor she had a sudden shiver of fear at what might happen. If it toppled over it would crush both men and, bizarrely, this frightened her more than if she had been under there herself. She squelched around after Luca and found him on his knees by his father’s side, talking to him. It was impossible to hear what he was saying or to make out any response from his father but she decided to give them some space and left them to it.
As her eyes landed on the pickup truck an idea occurred to her and she hurried across to it. She searched through the chaotic jumble in the back of the truck that had no doubt been thrown about as Luca had charged up the hill until she found what she was looking for: a coil of rope. Grabbing it, she went around to the driver’s door and climbed in, fending off the joyful greeting of the Labrador as she did so. The key was still in the ignition and she started the engine. Unlike her car, this wasn’t an automatic and she had to struggle to operate the clutch. It wasn’t easy but she managed it. It was already in the low ratio gearbox and she was reassured to find that the tyres gripped well and she could reverse back up the field without too much trouble. When she was directly above the overturned tractor she inched back down towards it until she was barely a few metres from it.
