The Silent Wife(25)

I took Massimo’s grunt as assent and ran upstairs, wondering how I’d become this person. I tried to recall whether my mother had been mild-mannered and gentle, but my memories of her refused to be pinned down. I remembered feeling safe, as though she would take care of things so I didn’t have to worry. Yet again, I felt a rush of guilt that Sandro would never be able to say the same about me.

I crept into Sandro’s room. He was sitting with his head on his desk, felt-tip in hand, drawing a house. I didn’t even want to see what fucked up family he would depict living in it. I cuddled him and he leaned into me, as though I could protect him. How could a seven-year-old possibly understand that every time I fought his corner, every time I stood up to his father, drew my line in the sand, the whole landscape shifted, bringing with it a raft of new ways for Massimo to enforce his will on me? I couldn’t bear to think about the time I’d told Massimo I didn’t want Sandro to do football training any more. Explained that I couldn’t stand to see his skinny legs blue with cold, the fear on his face when a crowd of boys steamed towards him, the humiliation when – yet again, he tried to kick the ball and fluffed it – with all his little teammates jeering in frustration. I’d actually thought Massimo would applaud me for realising that he was unhappy, discuss constructive options about which other sports might be good to encourage.

Not sign him up for rugby coaching to ‘help him stop being such a wuss’.

I kissed Sandro’s cheek and told him Daddy didn’t mean to get cross, he just felt very strongly that he wanted him to make friends to play with because he was an only child. And it was a long time since Daddy had been seven years old, so sometimes he didn’t understand that although Sandro was on his own, he wasn’t lonely. Sandro nodded but didn’t speak.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

He nodded again, looking up at me, dry-eyed and defeated, without lifting his head from the desk.

I couldn’t decipher what was going on in his mind. Whatever it was, it was far too complicated for a seven-year-old boy, who should have been thinking about Disney films, Lego and Meccano sets, not trying to grasp the rudiments of power politics before he’d even stopped believing in Father Christmas.

But how could he make sense of a world where one person dictated and the other acquiesced? Where was the ‘We listen to what each other has to say’ in that? The ‘We look after each other’ that Massimo was so keen on ramming home – when it suited him? How would he ever understand why I hadn’t stepped in – right in the middle of one of Massimo’s diatribes about Sandro poncing about with his paints and pencils – and put my face right up to his father’s, stuck my hand in his chest and said, ‘Enough. I’m leaving you and taking him with me.’

Maybe he’d understand when he was older. That if I left, I’d have to leave without him. Massimo had made it clear he’d fight me, follow me. We’d never be rid of him. I’d seen enough of the Farinellis to know Anna and Massimo would never accept defeat; that their idea of winning was not just getting what they wanted but making sure their opponents lay gasping their last. And if, by some miracle, I managed to share custody, half the time Sandro would be alone with Massimo without me to anticipate, to calm, to sacrifice myself if necessary. Half the time left on his own to second-guess whether the nine out of ten in spellings that was acceptable last week would be a cause for an eruption this week. To sit in front of a fish dinner he hated and wonder whether it was worse to refuse to eat it or throw up trying. To lie in bed in a pool of urine rather than wake his father.

And that was without considering what would happen to my poor befuddled dad, currently safe in his private nursing home specialising in Alzheimer patients. Paid for by my generous husband who ‘only wanted the best for us all’.

So instead of standing there cuddling that sweet little boy, his face clouded with bemusement at why his mother couldn’t make things better by talking to Daddy, I got his tracksuit out of the drawer and watched him put it on with agonising slowness.

I patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll go and get your snack ready. Don’t be long because Daddy’s waiting.’

As I walked downstairs, I peered through the bannister into the playroom where I could see Massimo moving about. A hundred little pieces of paper with snippets of circles on them were scattered across the room like the aftermath of a demented wedding. Then the unmistakable snap of wood, the sound of Sandro’s treasured pencils falling to the floor in a rainbow of insanity.

A punishment for Sandro for being quiet and arty, not sporty, not man enough for Massimo.

And a punishment for me.





13





MAGGIE




Nico bought me the most wonderful worktable with built-in lights and tiny drawers. He commissioned – I didn’t think I’d ever tire of that word – a fabulous cupboard with a hanging rail high enough for the most elaborate long dress. We got rid of most of the boxes, stacking the ones Francesca thought she might want when she was older in a corner. I’d hidden the gold jewellery box under a pile of fabric at the back of one of my cupboards. Every other day I’d pull it out, wondering if I’d somehow got the wrong end of the stick. Between Francesca and Anna, they’d planted a picture in my head of this slender saint of a woman, her house, her belongings, her whole life neatly shuffled into tidy categories, with no room for a jam doughnut, let alone furtive conversations and sneaky sex sessions. Nowhere in my imaginings did a wild hussy feature, jaunting off to Bath for an illicit rendezvous, lies laid out, alibis aligned. Could anyone who was uptight enough to buy sock dividers for her drawers really be getting her baps out for someone other than her own husband? I didn’t associate a woman who had owned a special brush for dusting behind the radiators with rash and reckless sex.