One of the cards has a particularly ‘look at me!’ flamboyant scrawl, in turquoise ink. ‘Davina was a girlfriend once,’ Ed explained before she turned up at our engagement party. ‘But now we’re just friends.’
I think of Davina with her horsey laugh and artfully styled auburn locks that make her look like a pre-Raphaelite model. Davina who works in Events, organizing parties to which all the ‘nice girls’ go. Davina who narrowed her violet eyes when we were introduced, as if wondering why Ed would bother with the too-tall, too-plump, tousle-haired image that I see in the mirror every day.
Can a man ever be just friends with a woman when the relationship is over?
I decide to leave my predecessor’s letter until last. Ed married me, not her, I remind myself.
My new husband’s warm hand now squeezes mine as if reading my need for reassurance. ‘It will be all right, you know.’
For a minute, I wonder if he is referring to our marriage. Then I remember. My first criminal client. Joe Thomas.
‘Thanks.’ It’s comforting that Ed isn’t taken in by my earlier bravado. And worrying, too.
Together, we shut the front door, checking it twice because it’s all so unfamiliar to us, and walk briskly down the ground-floor corridor leading out of our block of flats. As we do so, another door opens and a little girl with long, dark, glossy hair swinging in a ponytail comes out with her mother. I’ve seen them before, but when I said ‘hello’, they didn’t reply. Both have beautiful olive skin and walk with a grace that makes them appear to be floating.
We hit the sharp autumn air together. The four of us are heading in the same direction but mother and daughter are now slightly ahead because Ed is scribbling something in his sketchbook as we walk. The pair, I notice, seem like carbon copies of each other, except that the woman is wearing a too-short black skirt and the little girl – who’s whining for something – is dressed in a navy-blue school uniform. When we have children, I tell myself, we’ll teach them not to whine.
I shiver as we approach the stop: the pale autumn sun is so different from the honeymoon heat. But it’s the prospect of our separation that tightens my chest. After one week of togetherness, the thought of managing for eight hours without my new husband is almost scary.
I find this unnerving. Not so long ago, I was independent. Content with my own company. But from the minute that Ed and I first spoke at that party six months ago (just six months!), I’ve felt both strengthened and weakened at the same time.
We pause and I steel myself for the inevitable. My bus goes one way. His, the other. Ed is off to the advertising company where he spends his days coming up with slogans to make the public buy something it never intended to.
And I’m off to prison in my navy-blue skirt suit and suntan.
‘It won’t be so scary when you’re there,’ says my new husband – how I never thought I’d say that word! – before kissing me on the mouth. He tastes of Rice Krispies and that strong toothpaste of his which I still haven’t got used to.
‘I know,’ I say before he peels off to the bus stop on the other side of the road, his eyes now on the oak tree on the corner as he takes in its colour and shape.
Two lies. Small white ones. Designed to make the other feel better.
But that’s how some lies start. Small. Well meaning. Until they get too big to handle.
2
Carla
‘Why?’ Carla whined as she dragged behind, pulling her mother’s hand in a bid to stop this steady, determined pace towards school. ‘Why do I have to go?’
If she went on making a fuss, her mother might give in out of exhaustion. It had worked last week, although that had been a saint’s day. Mamma had been more tearful than usual. Birthdays and saints’ days and Christmas and Easter always did that to her.
‘Where has the time gone?’ Mamma would groan in that heavy, rich accent which was so different from all the other children’s mothers’ at school. ‘Nine and a half years without your father. Nine long years.’
For as far back as she could remember, Carla had known that her father was in heaven with the angels. It was because he had broken a promise when she’d been born.
Once she had asked what kind of promise he had broken.
‘It was the sort that cannot be mended,’ Mamma had sniffed.
Like the beautiful blue teacup with the golden handle, Carla thought. It had slipped out of her hand the other week when she had offered to do the drying up. Mamma had cried because the cup had come from Italy.
It was sad that Papa was with the angels. But she still had Mamma! Once, a man on the bus had mistaken them for sisters. That had made Mamma laugh. ‘He was just flattering me,’ she’d said, her cheeks red. But then she had let Carla stay up late as a special treat. It taught Carla that when Mamma was very happy, it was a good time to ask for something.
It also worked when she was sad.
Like now. The start of a new century. They’d learned all about it in school.
Ever since term had started, Carla’s heart had ached for a caterpillar pencil case, made of soft green furry stuff, like everyone else had at school. Then the others might stop teasing her. Different was bad. Different was being smaller than any of the others in class. Titch! (A strange word which wasn’t in the Children’s Dictionary that she’d persuaded Mamma to buy from the second-hand shop on the corner.) Different was having thick black eyebrows. Hairy Mary! Different was having a name that wasn’t like anyone else’s.
Carla Cavoletti.
Or ‘Spagoletti’, as the other kids called it.
Hairy Carla Spagoletti!
‘Why can’t we stay at home today?’ she continued. Our real home, she almost added. Not like the one in Italy which Mamma kept talking about and which she, Carla, had never even seen.
Mamma stopped briefly as their neighbour with the golden hair walked past, shooting her a disapproving glance.
Carla knew that look. It was the same one that the teachers gave her at school when she didn’t know her nine times table. ‘I’m not good with numbers either,’ Mamma would say, dismissively, when Carla asked for some help with her homework. ‘But it does not matter as long as you do not eat cakes and get fat. Women like us, all we need is to be beautiful.’
The man with the shiny car and the big brown hat was always telling Mamma she was beautiful.
When he came to visit, Mamma would never cry. She’d loosen her long dark curls, spray herself with her favourite Apple Blossom perfume and make her eyes dance. The record player would be turned on so that their feet tapped, although Carla’s weren’t allowed to tap for long.
‘Bed, cara mia,’ Mamma would sing. And then Carla would have to leave her mother and guest to tap their feet around the little sitting room all on their own, while pictures of her mother’s family glared down from the cracked walls. Often their cold faces visited her in the nightmares that interrupted the dancing and made Mamma cross. ‘You are too old for such dreams. You must not bother Larry and me.’
A little while ago, Carla had been given a school project called ‘My Mummy and Daddy’. When she’d come home, fired with excitement, Mamma had done a lot of tongue-clicking followed by a burst of crying with her head on the kitchen worktop. ‘I have to bring in an object for the class table,’ Carla had persisted. ‘I can’t be the only one who doesn’t.’
Eventually, Mamma had taken down the photograph of the stiff-backed man with a white collar and strict eyes. ‘We will send Papa,’ she announced in a voice that sounded as though she’d got a boiled sweet stuck in her throat. Carla liked boiled sweets. Often the man with the shiny car brought her some in a white paper bag. But they stuck to her hand and then she had to spend ages washing off the stain.
Carla had held the photograph reverently in her hand. ‘He is my grandfather?’