‘You ran Misty over, didn’t you? I’ve found her fur on your wheel.’
I expected Massimo to laugh, to deny it outright. But he looked straight at me. ‘Stupid cat ran in front of me just up the road from the house.’
‘You bastard. You absolute bastard. You did it on purpose! Because she hated you and loved us? And you, you couldn’t stand it.’
I’d never sworn at Massimo. In any confrontation, I’d learnt the quickest route to calm was silence.
In the space of a few seconds, his face went from mild amusement at me, his meek, approval-seeking wife throwing a tantrum, to a twisted, sneering caricature of the handsome demeanour he took care to present to the world. But today I didn’t care. I was leaving him and taking Sandro with me.
He took a step towards me. ‘What did you call me?’
‘A bastard, a complete and total bastard.’ But I could hear the bravery seeping out of my words, terror falling into the space where my anger had boiled moments before.
He took a step towards me. I forced myself to stare him out, lifting my chin. My knees were going but I couldn’t let this moment pass. I thought of my dad, the way he’d always walked on the outside of the pavement as though a horse-drawn carriage was about to blunder through a muddy puddle and soak me. His hand in the small of my back, guiding me to the inside, a world of caring wrapped up in that little sidestep, that tiny gesture. That man who left the outside light on for me and waited up to see I was safely home even when I was in my twenties, hovering at the window if I was a few minutes late. Even now, in his muddled state, he’d pat my hand and say, ‘You’re taking care of yourself, aren’t you?’
He would be horrified if he knew the truth.
This was my moment. The time I needed to harness my rage and accept that Massimo would never be who I needed him to be. I conjured up a picture of Misty, bloodied and smashed, twitching at the edge of the road and fury surged through me again. ‘You’ve let us search for Misty all this time when you knew she was dead? Where is she? What did you do with her? Did she die immediately?’
‘Yes, the wheel went right over her head. I chucked her in the skip at the end of the road.’ He said it in a matter-of-fact way as though he was just mentioning in passing he’d knocked over a box of Cornflakes and made a bit of a mess.
I started to shake, tears for my poor cat clogging my throat. I got the words out, the ones I’d thought about so often, dreamt about making contact with the air. So much so I wasn’t sure whether I’d actually spoken them out loud.
‘I’m leaving you.’
Massimo laughed, a bitter noise rasping round the room, a sound that needed oiling to stop it rusting away.
He grabbed me, pushed me onto the bed, pinning my arms behind my head. I was wriggling, kicking, while his face hovered above me, smug with his superior strength, relishing my frustration.
‘You won’t leave me. You love me too much.’ He grabbed my right hand and clamped it to his crotch. Shock snuffed out the fight in me for a second. He started to undo my jeans with one hand, twirling a little piece of my hair round his finger – tenderly – with the other.
Gathering as much moisture into my mouth as possible, I spat, hitting his cheek, managing to jerk my head up and bite his chin, sinking my teeth into the fleshy curve. With a roar of rage he shot off me. I dived for the door, but I wasn’t quick enough. He slammed it shut, leaning against it.
He wiped his face with his hand, pressing his fingertips against his chin, where a little crescent of teeth marks sat. ‘You bitch. You’re not leaving me. Don’t even try it. I’ll follow you and find you. And if you try anything, anything at all, I’ll take Sandro to Italy. My company is bursting for me to move out and run our Italian branch. One word from me and I’ll be set up with a very nice life out there. I’ve got Sandro’s passport somewhere you’ll never find it.’
I stared at him, trying to recall whether I’d seen it in the safe the last time I’d put my diamond and platinum necklace away, the one Massimo insisted I wore to any company do: ‘You don’t want to look like you’re the caretaker’s wife, do you?’
‘He won’t go with you. I’ll fight you. I’ll take you to court. I’ll go to a solicitor,’ I said, already feeling as though I was scrabbling at a smooth concrete wall devoid of footholds.
He rubbed his chin again. ‘You know how quickly Italian bureaucracy works? “Oops, sorry, judge, I made a mistake about the court dates, sorry, I need more time to file my paperwork.” A quick backhand to the solicitor, a chat to my friend who works at the tribunal, a delay, a strike in the judiciary system. “Sorry the mother’s unstable, on antidepressants for years after the boy was born; she attacked me, I’d be worried for the child’s safety.” Sandro will be leaving home by the time you even get to state your pathetic little case for custody.’
For a moment I was stunned that he’d be such a bastard as to use the antidepressants against me: he’d been the one to insist I went on them in the first place, coming with me to the doctor and telling him I couldn’t cope. At the time, I was prepared to agree to anything that would stop Massimo being so angry with me for finding motherhood so hard. With hindsight, I probably just needed a few nights of unbroken sleep.
Then I flew at him, desperate to run to the safe and see whether it was true, that we were now reduced to warfare over Sandro’s passport to define the shape of the next few years of our lives.
Massimo held me off, keeping me at arm’s length. But I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Shock. Shock that I still had enough spirit to go against him, that even now he hadn’t worn me down completely. I tried to channel the sharp edges of my energy into a barb I could dig in deep and gouge at his heart.
‘What would your family think if they knew what you were really like? Anna’s always boasting about you to the woman at Waitrose: “Such a family man. Absolute rock to me when my husband died. And such a good father to that little boy. Not afraid to roll up his sleeves and help out.” What would she say if she knew what a bully you were? Do you think Nico would want you hanging around Francesca, giving her tips on her swimming if he knew that you were such a headcase you ran over cats that didn’t like you?’
He screwed his face into a sneer, a rush of defiance clenching his jaw before a little flash of fear, a glimmer of uncertainty replaced it.
‘You wouldn’t dare. They wouldn’t believe you. Blood’s thicker than water, remember.’
And then he opened the door with a flourish. ‘After you. I’m off to take some selfies of my chin in case I need them in court.’
Yep, I wondered what the hell Maggie would make of a man who ran over the pet cat and decided to buy a dog because he knew it would terrify his wife.
16
LARA