The Silent Wife(66)

I’d just managed to rein in a ‘coffee out of my nose’ moment. Most of my friends were more concerned about whether their kids would manage a GCSE in English. ‘Jesus. Sam’s only just nailed saying, “We were” instead of “We was”, and that’s only because Francesca points it out on a regular basis. We’re just going to have to stick with prawn crackers and sweet and sour as far as our Chinese goes.’

Lara got halfway through saying, ‘But Massimo thinks we need to get ahead of the game’ before her face moved from offended to seeing the funny side.

‘I can think of a million ways I’ve let Sam down – crap birth control and a feckless eejit of a father just for starters – but depriving him of learning Chinese would be a new low, even for me.’

For her part, she couldn’t disguise her delight at having an ally against Anna on holiday with her. I made her look amazing: I wasn’t monitoring how long Sam played on the iPad to the last millisecond, I didn’t ration out sweets with wartime alacrity and I didn’t fall on the floor if Sam wore the same T-shirt complete with ice cream splodge two days in a row. Presumably not being anywhere near ‘as bad as Maggie’ had eased the pain of not being as bloody marvellous as Caitlin.

And that was before anyone drew a physical comparison between Caitlin and me – I had no doubt she’d have been wafting about in an itsy-bitsy barely there bikini while I flubbered about in my one-piece swimming costume. The revulsion on Francesca’s face every time Nico rubbed suntan lotion into my back didn’t do a lot for my confidence. My fear of getting swimming costume sag and looking down to see half a squirrel of pubes hanging out of my cossie was leading to a ridiculous amount of undercarriage monitoring and rearrangement.

But today, I was feeling good. I’d caught enough sun to take the blue tinge off my white limbs and the warm weather had acted like Miracle-Gro on my optimism. I took off my sarong without looking at Anna sitting there with her stomach suspended like a smooth hammock between jutting hip bones. Too much watercress and not enough Mars Bars. Next time I saw an article in the paper about why chocolate/vats of wine/sugar-covered doughnuts were good for you, I’d bring it out with a flourish. Plus one on how being thin can suck the joy out of your life and make people hate you.

However, within moments of getting into the pool, I stopped worrying about that ‘big bum coming through’ stuff and found a childish pleasure in joining in volleyball, keepy-uppy, dodgeball. The swimming pool turned out to be a place for bonding and bridge-building. I’d often had to ride a bike when I’d run out of money for petrol, so despite being a little short-arse, my legs were perfect powerhouses for leaping up in volleyball. My school had only had a scrubby patch of waste ground masquerading as playing fields, so apart from a ‘sports day’ once a year where there was more emphasis on sack races than sprinting, I’d never had much opportunity to find out if I was competitive. But aged thirty-five, I had a definite killer instinct for battering a ball over the net. Even Sandro joined in with ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Go, Go, Go’ from the edge of the pool.

The unexpected spin-off was that although Francesca was still talking to me in monosyllables, her desire to win meant she wanted me on her team. When she picked me above Nico, I didn’t immediately move to her side of the net in case I’d heard wrong. But as she beckoned me over, I felt all that hard-done-by feeling loosen, as though I’d taken everything far too personally.

When we beat Massimo and Nico, we high-fived and a tiny shoot of belief that we might move forwards uncurled. Even though I was still secretly replaying my spectacular winning smash in my mind, I said, ‘You deserve a medal! You were brilliant!’

Her face creased into a big grin, then, almost as though she’d reminded herself I was the enemy, her smile faded.

‘Shame I haven’t got a jewellery box to keep it in,’ she said, plunging into the water and disappearing off down the other end of the pool doing butterfly. So bloody Farinelli. Nothing so common for them as a bit of breaststroke or non-descript doggy-paddle.

I repeated, ‘Baby steps, one at a time’ to myself.

Nico gave me one of those smiles I was beginning to dread, the one full of sympathy that said, ‘Be patient, we’ll get there.’ I did sometimes have an overwhelming desire to sing, ‘There are Worse Things I Could Do’, accompanied by some chicken-wing movements and Olivia Newton-John jiving not strictly in keeping with the song.

Just occasionally I’d like him to pull her up on her bloody rudeness.

So, with this thought clouding my original hopes for a guilt-free sunny day, I didn’t offer to go with Nico and Anna to the market to do the food shopping. Even though it was my turn, as marked in pink highlighter on Anna’s inflexible little chores rota, I was going to rebel: sit on my sunlounger and read ‘one of those dreadful celebrity gossip magazines’ instead of pontificating about whether tonight’s dinner required a porcino mushroom, an asparagus tip or a bloody snuffle of truffle. Nor was I in the mood to appease Anna’s endless fishing for compliments with arse-licky answers: ‘Yes, the castle is fantastic. Yes, it is a real privilege to be here. No, Sam hasn’t ever travelled anywhere as lovely before.’

Instead I wrapped myself in a towel, waving a cheery goodbye, watching to see if there was a furtive dip of the head as Anna whispered a little dig about me out of earshot. I wasn’t disappointed. I wanted to chase after them down the cobblestones, wobble my fat thighs at her, grab my belly and squidge it into a speaking mouth that said in a high-pitched voice, ‘Go screw yourself’. The temptation to thunder over to her and tell her that even though I could do with stepping through the doors of Slimming World, at least I was faithful and true to her son, unlike Caitlin. I might even share the tongue-twister I’d invented to distract myself when Anna’s Caitlin hyperbole got too much. ‘The pin-thin paragon of all things Pilates with a penchant for penises.’