‘You’ve had ten years from me, Massimo. Our son wet the bed last night because you frightened him so much by throwing him in the pool, yet he’s been lying in soaking sheets all night because he was too scared to wake us up because he knew you’d be angry.’
Massimo ran his fingers through his hair, his curls spiralling round his face, giving him that gypsy look I’d loved so much. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve done it all wrong and now I’ve lost you. That age-old thing, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Will you at least stay for the holiday?’
I wanted to say no. I wanted to pack my bag and run, run far away, where Massimo’s flattery and remorse and clever words wouldn’t reel me back in. I had to stop believing he would change. I stood looking at him, a million images racing through my head. Champagne glasses we’d clinked to ‘good health’, ceramic bowls he’d thrown at the wall. Gentle kisses on the lips, harsh yanks on my arm. The way his optimism and vitality lit up a room. How his black moods wrapped themselves around us like a damp towel left outside overnight. That man who, despite everything, I’d loved. Laughed with when he hadn’t made me cry. Been proud of when I wasn’t ashamed. Admired when I hadn’t despised him,
Before I could reach down into the swirling mud of emotions and pluck out a coherent answer, a shout disturbed the moment. ‘Help! Help! Someone!’ I strained my ears, wondering whether it was Francesca and Sam messing about in the pool, playing one of their silly games, with one pretending to be a shark and the other the victim. But the sound grew nearer and more frantic.
I flung the door open to find Beryl puffing up from the swimming pool, her long cheesecloth skirt held high, one flip-flop missing.
‘Sandro’s in the pool without his armbands!’
I didn’t wait to hear anything else, just started to run, the thick denim of my shorts chafing my thighs. Massimo darted out into the courtyard, sprinting towards the pool, barefoot over the gravel without pausing. I flew after him, my legs refusing to cooperate, my panic intensified by the two orange armbands side by side on the sun lounger. Massimo dived straight in, fully clothed. Sandro was underwater in the centre of the pool, his sandy hair spread out like a dandelion clock, face down but his limbs moving. Or maybe that was just the force of the water banging against his body as Massimo powered towards him. I wanted to scream but my throat was closed off. Massimo reached him, hoisted him out of the water, where Sandro flopped against his arm, his back resolutely sunburnt despite my constant applying of factor fifty, a pale contrast against Massimo’s dark skin.
‘Massimo! Is he breathing?’ My voice skidded across the surface of the pool, a wobble rather than a scream. Not hysterical as I’d imagined myself in the many disaster scenarios that haunted me in the middle of the night. Not a thrashing about, a raging, nor anything that could go under the banner of making a scene. Something worse than hysterical. A scorching fear, as though all the blood had left my body, replaced with an acid searing through the veins, closing down organs as it circulated, pooling in the final resting place of the heart, only to discover on arrival that there was nothing there, just a burnt-out curl of flesh, no longer beating towards the future but grieving already for the past.
The effort of swimming with Sandro meant Massimo’s voice came out as a grunt. ‘I don’t know. Call an ambulance.’
I was vaguely aware of Beryl clattering up, Maggie putting her hand on my arm. Anna bellowing instructions down the phone to the emergency services. Nico hauling Sandro out and heaving him onto the paving, leaning him on his side. Usually he seemed so light, a wisp of a boy, with barely enough substance to plough forwards through life. Now, his uncooperative body was causing muscles to flex, backs to bend, the sound of physical exertion to fill the space.
Dropping to my knees, disjointed thoughts racing about – the paving stones are warm, that’s good, he’ll be cold – I grabbed his hand, squeezing it, trying to transmit my love, wanting him to know that I was there, desperate for him to feel the sheer force of maternal love to pull him back from wherever he’d faded away to.
Massimo began pummelling his chest. Breathing into his mouth. A strangled ‘Come on’ from me. Or perhaps from Massimo. I didn’t know whether the thoughts in my head were making it out into the atmosphere. Noticing the hairs on the back of Massimo’s hands, the steady, strong fingers rigid against Sandro’s chest, willing him back to life. Beryl’s voice with nothing like its usual raucous timbre, counting the intervals, giving instructions. Registering a dragonfly skimming the surface of the water, wondering if that would be what I remembered, the rainbow of colours glittering in the sunlight as my son died.
And then, the smallest sound from Sandro. So small that I wasn’t sure if it had come from him, or escaped from the bubble of terror compressing my chest. Then a violence of movement, Sandro’s head jerked up and a wash of vomit spurted up Massimo’s chest and trousers. He didn’t flinch, didn’t move. His shoulders slumped. ‘Thank God. Thank God.’
Sandro’s eyes opened. ‘Mummy?’
I took a breath. My lungs sucked greedily on the air as though my airways had hibernated without me noticing. ‘I’m here, darling. I think you fell into the pool. But Daddy saved you. You’re all right now.’
The distant sound of a siren, drawing closer.
Sandro blinking a few times, screwing his eyes up. His voice, hoarse as though he had tonsillitis, scraped out. ‘I didn’t fall in, Mummy. I tried to swim to make Daddy happy.’
36
MAGGIE
The last few days of the holiday bore no resemblance to the edgy bear-pit moments that had preceded it. Massimo displayed a tenderness with Sandro I found so moving that my eyes prickled every time I saw them together. Massimo had always been restless, a man of movement, in and out of the pool, off to the shops, poking about in the garden, finding basil and rosemary to go with lunch. Now, instead of the pool king, he was the champion of Uno tournaments, Sandro’s favourite game. Both Francesca and Sam pronounced it ‘too silly, too young’ but were soon begging to join in, drawn to the way Massimo made everything sound so much fun.
Since the near-drowning experience, Sandro had been like a flower opening under time-lapse photography, a tight bud relaxing its protective layers to expose the colourful petals within.
I nudged Lara next to me on the sunbed. ‘Maybe some good has come out of it,’ I said, indicating Sandro’s little face, shining with pleasure as he slapped down his last card.