Free Who's Sorry Now (2008) by Freda Lightfoot Page A

finish with me? We were getting on really well.’
    Carmina gave a little shrug. ‘She seems to think you’ve been a naughty boy, which I’m sure you have. When did you ever stay faithful to a girl? You certainly never were to me.’ That had been a big bone of contention between them at the time they were going out together, the way Luc was always off chasing some bit of skirt or other.
    ‘I’ve changed. For the better, I hope. Perhaps I’ve matured. OK, you and I had a bit of fun, but what I feel for Gina is different. She’s special, at least she is to me.’
    Carmina thought she might vomit all over his polished winkle-picker shoes.
    Oh, but he was so handsome, so assured, so dangerous ! His mouth was full and so very kissable Carmina longed to taste it, but that wasn’t what nice girls did, was it? She must try to remember to play hard-to-get. That was the best way to catch him.
    ‘Spare me the hearts and flowers,’ she said, and tossing him a careless smile, spun on her heel and walked away. Otherwise, she might well have smacked that handsome face of his. Anyway, if she knew Luc Fabriani, he’d soon come running.
     
    Gina sat at home alone in her room and thought of what might have been, indulging in a bout of uncharacteristic self-pity.
    She was bored with sitting with her family night after night listening to some orchestral concert or operetta on the wireless. Tired of sewing. Tired of being brave. Had things been different and she hadn’t developed poliomyelitis when she was ten years old, she could have been attending her first dance this evening, with a boy she liked a great deal, might even be growing to love. She would have been the one getting dressed up to go out, the one putting on lipstick, and the new skirt and top she’d secretly bought for herself from the small allowance Papa gave her.  
    Instead, she felt as if she were being dragged back into childhood, back to those bitter dark days of pain and suffering.  
    Carmina was the one going out into the world, as always. The one who was allowed a normal life to enjoy herself while Gina wasn’t permitted to do anything: no boy friend, no dances, not even a job.
    She’d tried playing chess with Antonia but her mind wasn’t on the game. Marta had made an effort to keep her company, helping her to reorganise Gina’s collection of Whimsies. These were little porcelain animals: a hedgehog, tortoise, frog, rabbit, owl, dogs and farm animals which family and friends had bought her over the years to add to her collection whenever she’d been facing yet another operation, or having a hard time. Somehow the cheery little figures had offered a kind of comfort. Not tonight.
    Gina was all too bitterly aware that while she sat listening to Marta chatter away as she rearranged the ornaments on the shelves Papa had made specially for the purpose, Luc was dancing with some other girl, kissing someone else, someone who was normal. He probably hadn’t even given her a thought.
     
    As the evening progressed Carmina became quite certain that Luc was watching her, giving her the kind of measured look any girl could interpret. Maybe he was thinking better of his declaration of devotion to the antiseptic Gina. Exciting little shivers rippled down her spine as she imagined Luc’s glorious dark eyes blatantly undressing her, examining every luscious curve, the olive tone of her skin, the sheen of her hair. She came over all hot and bothered at the thought of his hands following the same track. He was within her grasp, Carmina was sure of it.
    And then to her complete delight he came over. ‘Wanna dance?’
    ‘Sure.’ She answered with a casual disinterest, as if to imply she really didn’t care one way or the other.
    It was a Johnny Mathis number, The Twelfth of Never , the kind of song where you barely moved an inch, which was exactly what she’d dreamed of night after night for weeks .
    ‘ I'll love you’til the poets run out of rhyme. Until the