However, after the initial euphoria that we were still a family of three, not two, my ability to brush everything under the carpet had deserted me. I couldn’t just slot back into our old lives, even if on the face of it, they looked vastly improved. Try as I might, while Massimo was waxing lyrical: ‘I feel like I’ve got my wife back. I hated seeing you depressed like that. I should have got you help sooner,’ I couldn’t suppress the thought that he’d had an affair. And not with just anyone, with the one person guaranteed to wreak maximum damage on the whole family. Until I had a bit of clarity on that, Massimo’s desire ‘to wipe the slate clean’ was impossible.
I needed proof the person who’d frightened me wasn’t real, that between us we’d fashioned an environment that had trapped him into a corner, turning him into an intimidating tyrant driven by loneliness, fear and impotence. So, buoyed by the champagne, wine and the cosy little alcove in our local Italian trattoria, I forced myself to test Massimo, to be brave enough to bring up subjects that would have sent a recent version of him into a rage.
I leaned over the table towards him. ‘You never did explain why you had an affair with Caitlin.’
I steeled myself for a fist slamming on the table. But instead he just looked surprised, as if it was a truly odd question to be asking. He reached for my hand.
And for the first time since the holiday, I wanted to ball my hand into fist. Fold my arms. Hear a proper explanation. The fright that had made me cling to him after Sandro’s accident, the belief that everything else in life was irrelevant, was receding. A tiny seedling of rebellion and resentment was residing in the greenhouse of my marriage. My conversations with Maggie during the driving lessons I was still keeping a secret provided a cocktail of grow-faster nutrients.
Just the day before, I’d had a discussion with Maggie about being faithful. I’d had to make a real effort not to let my jaw clang open at her honesty.
She fluttered her fingers, saying, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve not been an angel in my life with the men, lost count a bit, definitely run out of fingers and think Nico was probably the last toe I had left, but once you’ve taken that vow, that’s it, isn’t it? Otherwise you might as well stay single and just do your own washing.’
She was right. Not about who did the washing, but that there was a contract involved. And if you didn’t take your vows seriously, then what was the point?
I needed some answers. ‘How did it start?’
Massimo looked at the table. ‘It wasn’t an affair like you’re thinking. You were so distant after Sandro was born, like you weren’t interested in me. I felt so irrelevant, and Caitlin, she was around a lot; she was the only other woman I knew really well who’d had a baby. We just overstepped the line of friendship really.’
I was relieved we were speaking more honestly than we had for years, though half of the things he told me about what had happened when Sandro was born shocked me. I’d obviously been burying it for years. It was all a blur to me now. How I’d refused to get out of bed. How Massimo rushed in from work and often found Sandro screaming in his cot. How I left him crying for hours.
I sat opposite, staring in horror. ‘I always thought I’d got up to him as soon as he made a noise. I couldn’t stand him to be distressed.’ I was sure we’d rowed about me being too soft, never letting him ‘cry it out’.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Lara. You were probably so exhausted, you didn’t hear him.’ Massimo squeezed my hand. ‘I should have asked for compassionate leave at work. I was too stuck in my ways, thinking the best thing I could do was go to work and earn money. Typical hunter-gatherer thinking. I used to dash home from work in the middle of the day to check you were all right.’
To me, the days had stretched on interminably. I didn’t remember Massimo coming in at lunchtime. Maybe we’d been asleep, finally collapsed.
I did remember Anna popping in and out. She’d stay just long enough to drill it into me how many women would kill to be in my situation: ‘No money worries, a lovely house, a husband who adores you.’ She’d stand over me, readjusting Sandro’s nappy, sticking her face right into my breasts to see if Sandro was latched on properly, taking off his cardigan, putting one on, never quite being happy with how I’d dressed him whatever the weather. But if I asked her to watch Sandro so that I could shower without the backdrop of screaming that made me think he’d somehow catapulted himself out of his cot, she always had an appointment at the dentist, a plumber coming, a cake in the oven.
Massimo carried on. ‘I wanted a family with you so much. It frightened me that you were so unhappy. I didn’t know how to handle it. I was too proud to ask for help – I saw Nico and Caitlin with Francesca – the perfect huddle of three – and they made it look so easy.’
I couldn’t help wincing at the mention of Caitlin even though I’d asked about her. Listening to him talk about how lonely and frightened he’d felt after Sandro was born made me realise how we’d created the right circumstances for a chink in our marriage, for someone to slip in and shower him with comfort, attention and care. While I was pushing myself to the point of nervous exhaustion, pressing a glass on Sandro’s limbs, seeing meningitis rashes everywhere, fretting over his refusal to eat anything that didn’t come out of a jar, taking his rejection of my pureed kale and courgette personally, the proof that I was a hopeless mother, devoid of that most basic of skills – the ability to feed my baby – Massimo was helpless and isolated.
Then I thought of Maggie and what she would say if she could hear Massimo. ‘My heart’s not bleeding for him too much! Bless him with his full night’s sleep, secretary bringing him coffee and time to drink it before it’s stone cold. You must be off your rocker, letting him get away with that as an excuse.’
I would definitely have fallen into Maggie’s ‘wet drip’ category, the term she used for women who wouldn’t walk into a pub on their own, who needed their husbands to deal with ‘workmen’ and didn’t have their own bank accounts. I’d never dared admit it was only since we’d got back from holiday that Massimo had given me back my bank cards instead of leaving a ten-pound note on the table for me before he went to work.
I felt a surge of rage, as though I had too much blood in my veins and it was just searching for a weak wall to burst through. Instead of relying on her own husband, Caitlin had stolen mine. Standing there in her yoga Lycra while my stomach frilled onto my knees. Giving me a lecture about the importance of making time to do pelvic floor exercises when it was all I could do to put on clean underwear. And behind my back, she was planning little trips to the opera with Massimo, dinner out, jaunts to the Ritz. The Ritz! When I was lucky to manage a piece of cold toast by two in the afternoon.