Francesca had captured – and perfected – Caitlin’s ability to look at her audience as though they were honoured to be in her company, as though she pitied the trees that produced the oxygen wasted on my words.
I sat down, muttering to Sandro to go to the loo, that I’d pop out in a minute. But he shook his head and tugged at my hand. My shoulders tensed, my mind racing. I needed to nip this in the bud right now before it escalated, before we set off down that well-trodden path of Massimo versus Sandro, with me dancing between them like a demented puppet. The dull weight of inevitability competed with my sense of urgency.
Massimo patted Sandro’s shoulder. Only I could see the hard fingers of the other hand digging into his arm, prising him off me. ‘Come on, son. Let Mummy talk about Auntie Caitlin.’ His tone was light but Sandro’s practised ear would be able to discern the thin thread of threat.
Sandro leaned into me, holding his breath, his stomach puffing out in a concave circle. I prayed that we weren’t about to see a splatter painting of soup.
I tapped Massimo’s arm. ‘I don’t think he feels very well. Could you take him out then?’
Massimo’s nostrils flared with impatience but his words played to the gallery. ‘Where does it hurt, son? Come here and let me have a look.’
I didn’t need to see Anna to know she’d have that expression, that face semaphoring to the world that ‘Poor Lara does her best, but Massimo has to step in so often. That boy’s so sickly, I don’t think she can be feeding him right.’
Sandro squiggled away from Massimo, leaning towards me, his back rigid, his bony shoulders digging into my ribs. I sat on my hands to stop myself scooping him up, lifting him onto my knee, rubbing his stomach and cuddling all his knots of angst away.
I could have leapt up and kissed Beryl when she came bustling in with a Cornetto – ‘Sandro – come into the kitchen and have this while the grown-ups do their talking.’
She’d swept him out before Massimo could react, before he could insist on Sandro standing in front of him to be prodded and poked, before the inevitable announcement: ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’
The surge of apprehension loosened inside me as Sandro ran off holding Beryl’s hand, snuggled in close to her ample hips as if leaning into a windbreak in a storm, safe for the moment.
Irritation flashed across Massimo’s face but he settled back into his chair, arms folded, expectation chiselled onto his features. ‘The floor’s yours then, Lara. I know how much you miss Caitlin.’
I groped around for something, anything other than the thought that was burning in my head, blotting out everything else. The scar on the back of my hand from an old dog bite tightened and itched as it always did when I was nervous. I glanced around wildly, feeling Massimo shift beside me. I spotted the little vase of snowdrops on the side. ‘Gardening,’ I said, as though I’d just come out with the answer for a million-pound prize. ‘She was brilliant at gardening.’ I prepared myself to start naming spring bulbs, gearing up for a eulogy about her daffodils, hyacinths and crocuses.
Anything to stop myself saying, ‘The thing I remember most about Caitlin is how much I hated her and her perfect life.’
7
MAGGIE
Now I wasn’t spending the mornings in my shop working out how many dresses I needed to alter to pay for new football boots for Sam, my old love for sewing returned. And by mid-March, when Francesca had ramped up her hostilities – flouncing out of the room whenever I walked in, barging me out of the way to sit next to Nico on the couch, encouraging Sam to be cheeky to me – it had also become my haven. I loved opening the door into my own private space where I wasn’t constantly on the back foot, feeling as though I had to make excuses for still sucking in air. At work I knew the answers. People looked to me for help and didn’t go all out to contradict me once I’d found a solution. In the long hours I spent bent over buttons, hems and hooks, the nagging feeling of not being good enough subsided only to claw its way to the forefront again as I drew closer to the place I still didn’t think of as home.
So that March evening when the landlord of my shop shuffled about on the spot before blurting out – ‘Ever so sorry’ – he’d sold the whole building and was giving me four weeks’ notice to leave, big fat tears blobbed onto the silk skirt I’d been mending. I’d rented this little place for next-to-nothing for so long, there was no way I’d find another shop I could afford. And if I didn’t sew, I couldn’t earn and I really would fulfil everyone’s gold-digging expectations. The sneering about ‘It didn’t take her long to become a lady of leisure’ would be ricocheting around certain houses on Siena Avenue before I’d even packed up my pin cushions.
I was tempted to give my mates on the estate a ring, disappear down The Hat and Feather and drink enough vodka until I saw the funny side. Or skip the alcohol and head over to Mum’s where Sam stayed after football practice every Wednesday. I allowed myself to consider how comforting it would be to burst through my old front door and slump down on Mum’s knackered couch while she bustled about with tea and crumpets. All the seats in Nico’s house were designed to encourage you to get up and do something else. And for once, I wanted to eat takeaway curry out of a foil dish, mopping up the sauce with a chunk of naan bread, not fiddle about with garlic, herbs and proper chicken stock.
But I was a wife now, so I had to go home. Nico was already back from the garden centre when I got in. He looked up from the risotto he was stirring and rushed over. ‘Maggie! Are you okay? What’s the matter?’ And despite feeling that with Francesca so unhappy, it was up to me to keep the faith that everyone would come round eventually, my brave face crumpled there and then. Nico held out his arms to me. Francesca, who’d been doing her homework at the kitchen table, slammed out of the room.
And once I’d started, Nico must have wished he’d done a bulk buy of Kleenex and kitchen roll. Out it all poured, spewing into the atmosphere. Me losing the sewing shop. Caitlin’s clothes in the wardrobe of the spare room, beige, black and navy, hanging there like a reproach. Francesca waging – and winning – a war that meant we never got any time together. I wished I could fix her, wished I could make it better, stop her hurting and being so angry.
But I couldn’t.
Which meant we could never relax in case Francesca needed Nico. Even when we went to bed, there was often a nightly drama: ‘Dad, there’s an earwig in my room/I can hear a noise downstairs/I can’t sleep/I’ve got a headache.’ Despite growing up on the estate where the walls were so thin you could hear the neighbours fart and fornicate, fear of Francesca’s footsteps along the landing was the most effective antidote to newly-wed libido known to man – or woman.