The Silent Wife(17)

And because Massimo always fluttered his fingers at me when I asked to see the paperwork – ‘I’ll take care of all that, it’s my pleasure’ – I had no idea how long Dad would be able to pay for himself even if I did manage to wrest financial control from Massimo and get access to Dad’s money.

Massimo was mashing his fish hard against the side of the plate. I was in danger of spoiling the evening. I’d try again tomorrow.

He looked up. ‘Anyway, if you’ve got so much free time, why don’t you get yourself off to the doctor’s and get to the bottom of why you can’t get pregnant again? You seem to have found plenty of time to send out search parties for the bloody cat but haven’t quite got round to finding out why there’s no brother or sister for Sandro.’

I should have known better than to push it. Typical Massimo to tolerate, even embrace, something that was important to me until he got bored, until there was no glory left in it for him, no one to say, ‘You should see the way he tried to cheer up that little boy when their cat went missing.’

‘I’ll try and get an appointment but the doctor who specialises in family planning and fertility issues has been off for a while.’ I stood up to fetch a glass of water so that he wouldn’t see me blushing at the lie. ‘As soon as she gets back, I’ll see what she says. She’ll probably want to examine both of us at some point.’

Massimo banged his knife down. ‘There’s never been a problem with fertility in the Farinelli family. Nico only had the one daughter because Caitlin didn’t want any more. You do the tests and see what they come up with.’

I nodded as though I’d be booking my appointment just as soon as I could.

But Massimo couldn’t control everything.

Yet.





9





MAGGIE




For the first time since I’d moved in, I had a sense of claiming my place in the home instead of hovering apologetically in the wings. I was going to have my own workshop, make an area of the house mine, rather than squat in a space belonging to another woman. I was just about to trot downstairs for breakfast, light of step, when I heard a strange noise on the landing. It reminded me of a fox I’d once seen get hit by joyriders on our estate writhing in the gutter in agony.

I rushed to the end of the landing. Francesca’s room. I hesitated, afraid that she might scream at me to get out. Then I decided there might be a real emergency on the other side and dashed in, shouting for Nico as I went. Her curtains were still drawn and it took me a moment to locate her, upside down on the bed, half in, half out of the duvet, crying as though the world had ended.

‘Francesca!’ I ran over to her and put my hand on her hot little back. ‘What’s the matter?’ I tried to turn her over but she buried further into the duvet.

Then I saw the big blotches of blood all over her sheets.

‘You poor thing. Is this your first period?’

She nodded into the duvet.

‘Have you got anything?’

She sobbed out a ‘No’.

Nico appeared at the door, ‘What’s going on?’

I put my finger to my lips and waved him away, mouthing, ‘It’s okay.’ Nico’s ability to turn green at the discussion of ‘women’s things’ was not what was called for right now. He looked puzzled but backed out of the room. I loved him for trusting me.

I fetched Francesca’s dressing gown from the hook on the back of her door. ‘Right, lovey. You go and have a shower; you’ll feel so much better. I’ll find some pads for you.’

To my surprise, she flung her arms around me, her face hot and damp on my shoulder. ‘I want my mum. I really want my mum. I wish she was here.’

I forced myself not to think about how Sam would cope if I dropped dead tomorrow. Even now, at thirty-five, I couldn’t imagine my mum not being around – how alone would I have felt walking down the aisle to marry Nico if she hadn’t been in the front row, smelling of the rip-off Coco Chanel she bought on the market? I’d had over three decades of Mum telling me how amazing I was, when in reality, I was so ordinary. But to her, I was extraordinary, in a way no one else could ever be. Even now, she sometimes called me her ‘baby girl’ as a joke. But I loved being someone’s baby, even at my age. A safety barrier between me and the outside world, someone who would do her best to make life come good for me, without any agenda or expectation of payback.

Francesca had had such a short time to absorb that ‘biggest fan in the world’ feeling from Caitlin. And now here she was on the cusp of womanhood battling with all those child-versus-adult feelings, plus a bag of nutty hormones bouncing around, without the one person who could help her make sense of it all.

It made me want to cry myself.

I’d never felt more useless, more unable to provide for the needs of another human being. While her tears poured out, all the usual anger and spikiness washed away in a raw explosion of grief, I held her, stroking her back, whispering, ‘There, there,’ as Mum used to when I was upset. I lifted her hair off her neck, trying to cool down the turmoil of emotion that was consuming her.

Slowly, Francesca’s sobs lost their intensity. She sat back, not meeting my eye. I tried to hang onto this moment of connection, suspended between us, fragile as a soap bubble. I touched her hand.