I’d never felt more useless, more unable to provide for the needs of another human being. While her tears poured out, all the usual anger and spikiness washed away in a raw explosion of grief, I held her, stroking her back, whispering, ‘There, there,’ as Mum used to when I was upset. I lifted her hair off her neck, trying to cool down the turmoil of emotion that was consuming her.
Slowly, Francesca’s sobs lost their intensity. She sat back, not meeting my eye. I tried to hang onto this moment of connection, suspended between us, fragile as a soap bubble. I touched her hand.
‘I understand. Really I do. If I was you, I would want my mum too. Not someone my dad had married.’
Francesca bit her lip. She didn’t move, just sat there with tears regrouping along the line of her lower lashes, waiting to splash down. I wondered how many evenings she’d been crying into her pillow when Nico and I had been sitting downstairs, sipping our wine after she’d flounced off in a huff. While we’d been talking about how to ‘deal with her behaviour’, had she been pressing her face into her mother’s blouses, desperate for a trace of her familiar scent? Sifting through her jewellery box, untangling necklaces, trying on rings, attempting to conjure up the essence of her? And all the time I’d been thinking about myself, feeling thwarted by a thirteen-year-old and wondering how I could ask Nico to put a lock on our bedroom door?
Finally, I was understanding what it meant to be the grown-up.
And to be a step-mum to a daughter whose own mother had died.
If ever there was a time to stop wallowing in self-pity that my fabulous new world had a couple of minor imperfections, this was it. ‘I’m going to go and get those pads for you now. Why don’t you use the en suite in the guest room so you can have a bit of privacy? I’ll change your sheets for you. Just pop your pyjamas in the wash basket and I’ll sort them.’
Francesca nodded. ‘Thank you.’ And she gave me another hug.
It was only Francesca’s sad little face that stopped me bouncing on the bed, dirty sheets and all.
10
LARA
On Good Friday, when Massimo hopped out of bed at seven o’clock, kissing me on the cheek and saying, ‘You stay in bed, beautiful. I’m just off to collect your Easter present,’ I had to stop myself saying, ‘We could have been with Dad by eight-thirty.’ However, on the upside, I’d managed to sidestep torturing Sandro with a weekend at some of London’s most macabre attractions by reminding Massimo we needed to ‘rein in’ our spending.
I snuggled back down into my pillow, my mind churning around the contradictions of my husband. So many thoughtful gestures to balance his hurtful outbursts. But I’d known that from the beginning, when he’d first made a play for me at work. He’d brightened my day by noticing a new blouse. Then crushed my confidence by wrinkling his nose at my latest haircut. Brought me coffee when I worked through my lunch hour. Then driven off without me if I was five minutes late leaving the office. But whenever I was with him, I was part of the action, absorbing his energy – good or bad – rather than a passive bystander. And without the Farinellis, with all their collective faults, I’d now be alone in my world, except for my dad who was slowly losing the grip on his. I consoled myself that even if I’d rather have gone to visit Dad, Massimo making a special effort with an Easter present was another little crumb on the right side of the ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ scales.
But by ten o’clock, I was starting to wonder where Massimo had got to. Like my dad, I hated people being out in the car and taking longer than I expected. So my first reaction when Massimo came bursting through the door with a big ginger puppy in his arms was one of relief. Followed by bemusement, then fear.
Massimo’s face, that beautiful, haughty face, was alive with excitement. ‘Look what I found!’
I backed away, imagining he must have found the dog wandering outside and had brought in to stop it getting run over. I wished he’d tied it up outside.
He came right up to me with it struggling and flailing to get out of his arms. I stood on the second step of the stairs. He thrust the dog towards me, nearly making me scream.
‘A little something to make up for losing Misty. A Rhodesian Ridgeback. Last one in the litter. Nearly six months. They were going to breed from him but he turned out to have a kink in his tail so they wanted to find a new home for him. I persuaded them he’d have an amazing life with us.’
I tried to smile but I wanted to stampede up the stairs and lock myself in the bedroom until he’d shut the animal away. He couldn’t be serious. He knew I was terrified of dogs since I’d been bitten by a collie as a child, knew I’d stopped taking Sandro to the park because I couldn’t relax if there were any dogs running around. Even if they were on a lead, I couldn’t take my eyes off them in case they suddenly slipped their collar and attacked us.
To my horror, Massimo shouted up the stairs for Sandro, who shot out of his bedroom immediately, his expression a mixture of eagerness and trepidation.
‘Ta-da! Say hello to your new pet, Lupo. It means wolf in Italian.’
Sandro’s face dropped, then he glanced at me and wrenched his mouth into a smile. He hovered on the landing, while Massimo beckoned enthusiastically.
‘Look how cute he is. Man’s best friend. You’re going to love him, Sandro. Perhaps even more than Misty. Dogs are such good companions.’
Massimo’s excitement was clouding over as neither of us responded. I couldn’t let him down, couldn’t throw back in his face what he’d done to cheer us up. He’d probably thought I’d be okay with a dog of our own. And rationally, I knew most of them were fine. Plus we’d had lots of conversations about how I didn’t want Sandro to go through life freezing on the spot every time a dog was coming the other way. So I swallowed down my fear and walked over to Lupo, forcing myself to stroke its head.
‘He’s gorgeous, Sandro, look how friendly he is,’ I said, pressing myself against the hall wall as Lupo strained towards me, his big tongue flapping in my direction. I could feel the fear circulating at the back of my knees, making my legs tremble.
I summoned up the voice I’d heard dog owners using, with the little endearments that always ended in a ‘y’.
‘There’s a lovely doggy.’
‘These dogs are native to Africa, Sandro. I drove all the way to Whitstable to fetch him,’ Massimo said, impatience gathering in his voice.
But among all the other rubbish traits Sandro had inherited from me – an overlong second toe, a wonky canine tooth, a tendency to chapped lips – a paralysing fear of dogs was on the list. I couldn’t let Massimo notice Sandro was reversing up the stairs rather than motoring down. I clapped my hands with delight like a nursery teacher about to burst into a rendition of ‘Wheels on the Bus’.
‘Come on, let’s see if he likes our garden. He might want to do a wee if he’s had a long journey, and we don’t want him making a mess in the house.’ I beckoned him down the stairs.
Massimo put down the dog on the hallway floor, where it started to jump up and scrabble at my thighs. I wanted to burst into tears.
Massimo eyed me closely. ‘So what do you think of your present?’