I tried not to let a seed of resentment take root. Maggie hadn’t sought this. Massimo had done his usual trick of showering all his charm on everyone else, with none left over for me. I wished I could turn the clock back to the blissful fourteen months before we got engaged, when he couldn’t bear a cross word between us. When he was working so hard to win my trust, to convince me a man ten years my senior, with money, authority and charisma, really couldn’t live without mousey old me. When the slightest disagreement would provoke a flurry of texts all day, bouquets arriving at my desk to the envy of all the other girls, double-checking that we were ‘all good’, that I hadn’t gone off him. Once I’d agreed to marry him the following year, I noticed little flashes of temper, episodes of rage, which he put down to the stress of organising the wedding: ‘I just want to make everything perfect for you.’ I convinced myself he’d be calmer once I was his wife. But now I knew that ‘calm’ when applied to Massimo only came in the context of ‘before the storm’.
Fortunately, this morning Beryl was distracting everyone with a monologue about some woman who’d tripped into a basket of melons by the door in Aldi, and sent the whole lot rolling off down the hill outside. ‘It was like melon-bowling, people dodging out the way.’ And off she cackled, infecting me with her laughter and even Sandro who’d crept in and was sitting listening on a bar stool. He didn’t seem as shy with Beryl as he did with Anna. And then just as I’d had that thought, like some Medici queen, Anna let herself in. It did irritate me that she used her key even when I was at home. She’d barely put down her handbag before she started complaining.
‘I don’t know why Massimo decided to cause all this extra work. It wasn’t up to you to do a party for Sam. We’ve got enough with the birthdays in our own family.’
I wondered if she could actually see Beryl – Sam’s grandmother – standing there or whether her self-importance blinded her to the presence of other human beings.
I was just about to leap to Sam’s defence when Beryl took on the expression of a cow in a field that had happily been minding its own business before suddenly stalking in the direction of something that’s caught its attention.
She started jabbing a buttery knife in Anna’s direction. ‘Do you know what, love? I’ve got news for you. Sam is your family now, poor kid. So get used to it, get over it and stop floating about like your shit doesn’t stink. You should be encouraging your sons to support each other’s families, not do your best to set them at loggerheads.’
Anna looked as though she had a crisp stuck in her throat, her mouth open, her eyes bulging, but no words coming out. I’d never seen anyone stand up to her before – not properly – and I had to close my own mouth to stop a cheer escaping. I expected her to shout back, but she channelled her inner Maggie Smith, readjusted her gold bangles and said, ‘Beryl, no one champions my sons and their families more than me, but it simply isn’t fair to let outsiders divert energy from their own children. Nico has to concentrate on Francesca and Massimo has quite enough with Sandro.’
I flinched at Anna’s insinuation Sandro was ‘so problematic’ as to be a full-time job for Massimo, whereas clearly my contribution to parenthood was almost a hindrance. I stood, bread roll in hand, waiting to see which blow would land next. Beryl probably had a bit more practice at slanging matches with people who didn’t have to overcome their natural middle classness, prefacing everything with ‘I don’t mean to be rude’ and ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but…’ though I had absolutely no doubt Anna would be nastier.
Beryl slammed down her knife with a clatter, wiped her hands on her jumper and wobbled her way up to Anna, who was doing an excellent impression of a poplar tree.
‘Look, I get it that Nico and Massimo have responsibilities to their own kids, no one’s saying otherwise. But I won’t have my Sam talked about like he’s just an old shoe to be chucked in a cupboard until he’s eighteen and they can get rid of him. You’re all the same, you posh people. It ain’t a limited pot of love and kindness, you know. If you’re nice to Sam, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be nothing left over for the others.’
Anna took a step back as though Beryl was a pesky baby rhino butting her with a horn. But she didn’t get to reply because Massimo and Maggie came in the door.
Maggie clocked the stand-off immediately. ‘Mum? Everything okay?’
I loved Beryl’s fearlessness. She put her hands on her hips and stared directly at Anna and said, ‘Anna seems to think that Lara and Massimo shouldn’t make so much effort because Sam is not really part of the family. I was just helping her out with my opinion.’
Maggie’s face dropped, but Massimo stepped in before she could speak. ‘Whoaaa, ladies, ladies. We’re all on the same side here.’ He put his arm round Beryl. ‘You’re my favourite mother-in-law by proxy. And we do consider Sam – and Maggie – family. I think Mum is just worried about Lara, because she gets so stressed about everything. Her concern comes from a place of love, doesn’t it, Mum?’
Anna looked like a cobra geared up to strike but which, at the last minute, decided to coil up in the sun instead. ‘Of course. Perhaps Beryl misunderstood my concern. Perhaps now dear Caitlin has gone and everyone has moved on, I feel someone has to remember what she would have wanted.’
I watched Massimo closely. I hadn’t dared even mention Caitlin in case I blurted out – or confirmed – my suspicions.
He moved away from Beryl and took his mother’s arm. ‘I know you miss her, Mum, but no one has forgotten about her. She was very special, but so is Maggie. And Beryl.’
I couldn’t read him, this man of many faces. Was he saying ‘special’ as in ‘I loved her and am bereft without her,’ or was he making the point that she was a big part of the family?
Anna burst into noisy tears, falling against Massimo’s chest, sobbing in between gasps of grief, ‘I still can’t believe she’s gone, a lovely wife and mother like her, it’s just so unfair.’
I’d only ever seen Anna cry in a queenly manner, delicate tears dabbed away on a dainty handkerchief. I glanced at Maggie and Beryl.
Beryl was muttering, ‘Christ, I only came here to butter a few buns. Didn’t realise I was coming to a bloody performance of the Wailings of Winifred.’
Maggie’s lips twitched but she still managed to hiss at Beryl to shut up.
Massimo steered Anna out into the garden and then we all looked at each other in silence for a minute until Beryl, wonderful, disrespectful, say it how you see it Beryl, blurted out, ‘That’s such a lot of bollocks. Anna didn’t even like Caitlin. It was your lovely Massimo who sat with her most of the time when she was ill. Now he’s a man who understands family. Proper gent he is.’
The knife went loose in my hand. Either I was mad, suspicious and interpreted everything Massimo did wrongly or he was so clever no one else could see the truth.
After all these years, I wasn’t sure I knew the answer.
26
MAGGIE
By the time Nico arrived, twenty minutes into the party, I was frazzled. Being anywhere around the Farinellis en masse, especially when Mum was there with her own special brand of problem-solving, did my bloody head in. And Anna doggedly clinging to the sainted deceased cliché about Caitlin made me want to sit her down, pull the pin on what I’d found in the attic and pop that particular grenade under her skinny little arse.