The Silent Wife(64)
‘No.’ Sandro’s bare little twig a of response seemed to satisfy Massimo. He stood up, that pointing, stabbing forefinger relaxing back into his palm. Then, as though someone else had walked into the room, Massimo swept Sandro off his feet, swung him round and planted a big kiss on his head. ‘Good lad.’
A dart of fear washed across Sandro’s face, subsiding into relief as Massimo put him down again, sending him on his way with a pat on the back. ‘Off you go then. See if you can find where Sam’s got to.’
‘He’ll be all right once he settles in,’ I said, deliberately busying myself with unpacking so I wouldn’t have to look at Massimo, wouldn’t have to monitor the ‘insolence’ on my face. I could feel him moving behind me. My shoulders tensed, my body braced for a jab in the kidneys or a shove into the wall.
He put his chin on my shoulder from behind, kissing my ear. ‘Of course he’ll be fine.’
For a split second, I relaxed, a brief flicker of hope flaring in me. But then he grabbed my wrist, digging in his thumb so hard my fingers went weak. I’d trained myself not to struggle. I let my body go loose, the inside of my wrists didn’t usually bruise easily. I kept my eyes open but unseeing, blanking him out.
‘He’ll be fine because I’m going to take that boy in hand this holiday. I’m not having you mollycoddling him until he’s scared of his own bloody shadow.’
As always, I rebelled silently, clenching my free hand to my side and spilling out a furious argument in my head, congratulating him on bullying Sandro to get the result he wanted, that fantastic tried-and-tested parenting approach. But I couldn’t let that retort come swashbuckling out into the air. Massimo had discovered my Achilles’ heel all right. If I stood up to him, Sandro would get the brunt of it. It wasn’t hard for a forty-five-year-old to get the better of a seven-year-old boy. Or apparently, a thirty-five-year-old woman.
How many times had I been sucked in? No doubt tonight, when we were in bed, he’d stroke my face, work his way slowly on top of me, murmuring some weasly excuse that I had once fallen for, some pathetic version of ‘I’m only like this with Sandro because it would break my heart if people thought you were a bad mother.’
It would just be one among so many other excuses, those impostor sentences posing as love, but in reality nothing but hollow worms of words: ‘I only tell you what to wear because I want everyone to see what a beautiful wife I’ve got.’ ‘What you want matters to me more than anything, it’s just that sometimes I make mistakes about what you want.’
It would only be a short hop from there to trying to convince me he had had sex with Caitlin so he wouldn’t have to bother me when I was so tired all the time.
‘Or some old bollocks’, as Maggie would say.
I’d deliberately avoided getting into conversation about what she’d told me on the journey over. How could I admit – ever – what I knew and still stay with Massimo? She’d just think I was the most pathetic person who walked this planet. And maybe I was, allowing myself to be taken in, Massimo’s will encroaching on me over the years, eroding my sense of self like a winter sea hammering against chalky cliffs.
But I’d wanted to be taken in. I was the one who allowed him to behave like that, smiling for the public photo then smashing the scenery when the lens cap was back on.
I’d been so proud of the surprise that flashed onto people’s faces when first, I introduced my handsome Italian fiancé, and later, my gregarious husband, smug at the ‘She’s done well for herself’ marbling people’s faces. How I’d loved leaving work, enjoyed the envious looks as I climbed into Massimo’s waiting BMW, swept along by the man who knew which wine to order, how to get the best room in hotels, how to make an ordinary girl feel extraordinary.
And how abruptly that honeymoon had ended. The birth of the Sandro snapping us out of an intensity I’d mistaken for love, his all-consuming interest in me. Fascinated by who I’d spoken to, what I said, what I was thinking, how much I loved him. Within days of Sandro’s birth, it was as though a party in full swing had been shut down, the plug pulled on the electricity, leaving us paddling about on a sticky floor, knee-deep in punctured balloons and beer-soaked streamers.
I carried on unpacking, trying to banish the memories swooping out of the suitcase with everything I picked up. The T-shirt I’d been wearing when Sandro had accidentally knocked Massimo’s iPhone off the table and smashed it. The maxi dress I’d sobbed into in the back of the cab coming home from his company’s summer party. The flip-flops I’d been wearing as slippers when he’d locked me outside in the snow, Sandro’s little palms pressed on the window.
I put the silver locket that belonged to my mother onto my bedside table, fingering the little bump where I’d had the chain soldered back together. The other furious rows blurred into each other, but I’d had to work hard to bury that particular one.
I looked out of the window onto the terracotta tiles of the courtyard, forcing myself to imagine the hustle and bustle of sixteenth-century castle life. But despite studying the frescoes, the lovely curves of the arches, the memory I had suffocated, depriving it of air until I could tell myself it had never happened, rose to the surface. I put the locket in the drawer. But it was too late to stop the feelings of that day re-emerging.
Sandro was about four months old. I’d been up all night, my nipples sore and cracked from the relentless routine of feed, scream, feed. Every suck of milk sent a jag of pain through me. Sandro had finally fallen asleep in the Moses basket next to the bed and I collapsed into the pillow, my head fuddled with fatigue, too terrified to drop off in case he woke up again and I’d have to drag myself from a deep dark place of utter exhaustion.