The Silent Wife(80)

I turned to face him. I hoped this wasn’t some elaborate hoax that would have me standing with my hands over Sandro’s ears in two weeks’ time, saying, ‘Shhh, Daddy’s just a bit cross today.’ But Sandro nearly drowning had turned my grievances on their head. What if Massimo hadn’t been there, the strong swimmer, the cool head to concentrate on what needed to happen instead of losing himself to panic as I had done? It was down to him that I still had a son, a family.

But maybe I was just falling back into pushover territory. I tested the water with, ‘I don’t want to go back to how we were before. I’ve got to be able to express an opinion without worrying about you flying into a rage.’ I studied his face for a flicker, a shadow, a pursing of lips.

‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘I will make it up to you, make you trust me again.’

Those eyes. So sincere. He hadn’t aged apart from a few flecks of grey in his fringe. Still that boyish appeal reeling me in.

‘We’re going to have to sit down and talk at some point, not just brush it under the carpet.’

He laughed. ‘Can we talk and, you know… perhaps get to know each other all over again?’ he said, running his hand over my breast.

I moved his hand away. ‘You seem so angry all the time. You always give the impression that it’s us in the way of whatever would make you happy. Do you really want another chance?’ If I’d flipped a coin, I wouldn’t have known whether I was wishing for heads or tails – go or stay.

He pressed his lips onto mine, lingering there until I felt myself folding into him. ‘Does that answer your question?’

I reached into my heart where just days ago all the fragments of betrayal and bullying had resided, their sharp edges lacerating my emotions into a harsh and jagged mass around which I had no choice but to build a permanent and resilient shelter. If I pressed hard, located the exact spot, like a tooth with a hairline crack, I could feel a sore when I thought of Massimo plotting and planning with Caitlin, skipping off on weekends of opera and – whatever he said – nights of passion. But the pain was so dull in the face of the agony of nearly losing Sandro as to seem almost risible.

There’d been so many false dawns, so many times Massimo had promised to change and so many disappointments. But I’d watched him with Sandro since the pool incident. He’d been patient, encouraging, the Massimo I’d fallen in love with, not the one I’d had to endure.

It was beyond ironic that Sandro had nearly had to die before we’d woken up to what we had. It would be foolish to compound our stupidity for the sake of getting even.

‘One last chance.’





38





LARA




Once we were back in England, Massimo was so sunny side up that the man who’d bent my fingers until I thought they’d snap, slept with my sister-in-law, hissed in Sandro’s face until his eyes were round with fright seemed like someone I’d invented to justify my decision to leave. Since Italy, it was as though we’d both decided to appreciate the good things we shared, not fixate on the bad. For years I’d had to remind myself why we’d got together in the first place, questioning my judgement, my actions, my whole personality. But now, for the first time in a long time, Massimo became a source of refuge rather than a font of attack.

We were spending more time on our own, just the two of us. Beryl was always happy to babysit: ‘I don’t want your money, it’s my pleasure.’ But Massimo would always press a couple of twenties into her hand after we’d spent evenings reminiscing about the past and planning for the future.

‘When Sandro’s a bit older, let’s take an extended holiday and travel round Italy.’ ‘Maybe I could look at retiring a little earlier or cutting down to four days a week, have a few long weekends, catch up on lost time.’

However, after the initial euphoria that we were still a family of three, not two, my ability to brush everything under the carpet had deserted me. I couldn’t just slot back into our old lives, even if on the face of it, they looked vastly improved. Try as I might, while Massimo was waxing lyrical: ‘I feel like I’ve got my wife back. I hated seeing you depressed like that. I should have got you help sooner,’ I couldn’t suppress the thought that he’d had an affair. And not with just anyone, with the one person guaranteed to wreak maximum damage on the whole family. Until I had a bit of clarity on that, Massimo’s desire ‘to wipe the slate clean’ was impossible.

I needed proof the person who’d frightened me wasn’t real, that between us we’d fashioned an environment that had trapped him into a corner, turning him into an intimidating tyrant driven by loneliness, fear and impotence. So, buoyed by the champagne, wine and the cosy little alcove in our local Italian trattoria, I forced myself to test Massimo, to be brave enough to bring up subjects that would have sent a recent version of him into a rage.

I leaned over the table towards him. ‘You never did explain why you had an affair with Caitlin.’

I steeled myself for a fist slamming on the table. But instead he just looked surprised, as if it was a truly odd question to be asking. He reached for my hand.

And for the first time since the holiday, I wanted to ball my hand into fist. Fold my arms. Hear a proper explanation. The fright that had made me cling to him after Sandro’s accident, the belief that everything else in life was irrelevant, was receding. A tiny seedling of rebellion and resentment was residing in the greenhouse of my marriage. My conversations with Maggie during the driving lessons I was still keeping a secret provided a cocktail of grow-faster nutrients.