As we travelled to Italy the next day, every now and again I’d feel a rush of worry. It had been bad enough holding the ‘Caitlin’s not the perfect wife we all thought she was’ secret to myself, without the additional fear that Lara might blurt it out. God knows what possessed me to tell her, though to be fair, if anyone ever walked this earth who personified zipped up and locked with a combination padlock, it was probably Lara.
As we reached the end of a long drive and drew into the castle grounds, Nico waved his arm theatrically and said, ‘Welcome to Castello della Limonaia!’ I squeezed his hand, glad of a change of scene, away from the house in Brighton where every room felt as though it was whispering conflicting secrets to me. He kissed me on the cheek and as I leaned into him, I caught sight of Mum studying us from the back seat. I did sometimes feel like a science experiment – join together two people from different backgrounds and see whether the marriage turns into a mutant.
During the journey, I wanted to take in all of the scenery, lose myself in my dreams and the fields of sunflowers, soak up Nico’s little nuggets of information: ‘Sunflowers in Italian are called girasoli – girare means to turn, and sole is sun – because they turn their faces to the sun.’
But every time he said something, I felt as though I needed to repeat it to myself, over and over again, to cement it in my brain so I’d be able to nod knowledgably along with the rest of the family, without Anna chiming up, ‘But Nico has already explained that to you.’
With Francesca sitting behind me, teen-ready with ‘You don’t say it like that’, I didn’t even dare attempt to repeat the word out loud. I was dreading having to choose in restaurants in front of them all, the orders rolling off their tongues until it was my turn. I’d probably order a pizza fungus by mistake and have the whole restaurant in stitches. When I’d tried to discuss my worries with Nico, he’d kissed me on the nose and said, ‘It’s a holiday, not an episode of Mastermind. We’ll love showing the three of you around.’
As soon as the car ground to a halt, Sam shot out, so excited to be abroad for the first time, that I pushed the previous day’s weird scenario with Lara out of mind. She’d seemed almost nosey about what had happened with the box, full of questions, which was so unlike her. Half the time she seemed so disinterested in me – or anyone else – that I wondered if she even liked people. Maybe, like me, she was relieved Caitlin had fallen down a rather large crack. In short, she was human like the rest of us. Even Massimo had been known to feed into the ‘Caitlin dropped glitter wherever she glided’ mythology. I made a mental note never to elevate Nico to hero status if he pegged it and I married again, though the odds of two husbands in one lifetime were slim. It really was so bloody tedious for the one that came next.
I gazed at the castle. Yet again, I was trapped between what I should be feeling and what I really felt. I’d never been to Italy before, never seen sunflowers in great golden swathes, just the puny little things Sam grew during primary school, withering at the window of Mum’s dark flat. Yet part of me was still wishing that Mum, Sam and I were bouncing off to a crappy caravan, car piled high with everything from duvets to dishcloths, singing ‘We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday’ at the top of our voices.
But I managed to loosen up and crack a smile as I watched Sam shout to Sandro, ‘Cor! A real castle! Come on, let’s explore!’ He disappeared off into the gardens, Sandro trotting lightly in his wake, dodging in and out of huge terracotta urns filled with geraniums. Francesca was far too cool to look excited and slowly lowered her legs out of the car, checking her hair in the rear-view mirror as she went.
Mum, on the other hand, was in the Sam camp of enthusiasm. ‘Didn’t realise it would be a proper castle. Gawd, it’s got turrets and everything. Do you think we can get up there? You’d be able to see for miles. Look, Mags, a drawbridge. You can just imagine them knights charging over that on their horses.’
Nico put his arm around my shoulder. ‘So, Mrs Farinelli, what do you think?’
‘I think “Wow”!’ I hoped this holiday would put us back on track. In the month since Francesca trashed my workshop, Nico had steered a neutral line, condemning her behaviour but stopping short of a one hundred per cent conviction that I was entirely innocent of the box disappearing – ‘It is strange how it’s just vanished though. Perhaps it’ll turn up.’
If there’d been a moment for telling the truth, I’d missed it. I couldn’t think of a version of events that would keep Caitlin’s affair covered up and provide a suitable excuse for the box’s disappearance. I hoped over time we’d all just forget about it and it would pass into the realms of unexplained family mysteries, a bit similar to where missing socks ended up – mildly irritating but not interesting enough to waste any time on.
But just as I was relaxing into that tiny moment of connection with Nico, a little papering over the frightening amount of cracks that had crackle-glazed our marriage within a short space of time, we were interrupted. This time it was Massimo.
‘So Maggie, how’s the Italian experience so far? Living up to expectations? Let me show you the view from the ramparts, bring your mum.’
I looked at Nico, who nodded and said, ‘Go on. I’ll get Francesca to help me unload the car.’
I hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’ I wasn’t used to someone else doing all the donkey work. He waved me off, laughing.
Mum was busy deadheading the geraniums in one of the urns.
Massimo put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Now, now, Beryl, this is a holiday for you. They have gardeners to do that, so I want to see you with your feet up and enjoying the sunshine. Come on, let’s go and see the views.’
I felt a rush of gratitude that Massimo was including her. Anna had sat at the airport making barbed comments such as ‘Of course, we’ve all been backwards and forwards on planes forever. I simply can’t understand people who have no interest in travel. So parochial.’
I hated her for banging on about how ‘parochial’ we were. I tried to get my own back on her, adopting an evangelical concern for the environment, pointing out that air miles weren’t something to boast about, that plane exhaust fumes kill more than ten thousand people a year.
But Mum handled her brilliantly. She laughed and sucked noisily at the straw in her milkshake. ‘You can be interested all you like, but if you haven’t got the cash for it, then it’s not going to happen. We’d all like to be swanning about, hopping on this and that plane, and I wouldn’t say no to a bit of a cruise round the Mediterranean, but the reality is, I wouldn’t be here now if Nico hadn’t been so lovely and taken pity on his old mother-in-law.’