I didn’t want to think I’d been wrong about Massimo. I was examining Dawn’s story, scratching away, looking for a hole to pick in it to prove she was making the whole thing up, or at least exaggerating so wildly that if there was a grain of truth, it was so distorted as to be no longer recognisable.
Dawn moved to go. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to dump all this on you. You must think I’m absolutely mad. It was all so long ago anyway. It’s just that Ben’s turned out to be such a lovely boy, even now I feel complete panic when I think I might have given in, never had him. Massimo just wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t even give us a chance. Typical Farinelli.’
‘Has he ever met him though?’ Massimo would be so proud of Ben, tall, good-looking and sporty with that same Italian appeal. Any parent would be.
‘No. Never. I sent him a note with a photo to let him know when Ben was born. Told him that he’d have to have several operations and they couldn’t guarantee the outcome.’
It was like watching a scary film where you wanted to know what happened next but couldn’t bear the anticipation leading up to it.
‘And?’ I was way beyond the nosey parker stage, but I had to know. Was Massimo really the sort of man who’d leave his wife to deal on her own, with his son, his own child, who might die?
‘Of course, he didn’t want to know. Hospitals aren’t really Massimo’s thing. Actually nothing unpleasant is Massimo’s thing.’
I was searching her face, raking about for clues that this was a strange tale she’d invented.
But it was as though Dawn was reading my mind. ‘I wouldn’t believe me either if I was in your position. I’ve no doubt that when you talk, Massimo stands there with his head on one side, making you feel as though what you have to say is the most interesting thing he’s ever heard. But believe me, the way he behaved over Ben was the final straw, not the starting point.’
I didn’t want to know any more. I wanted to be able to walk away and rationalise what she’d told me into something less awful, something that wouldn’t have me forever watching out for clues, signs of nasty behaviour, like an undercover cop at the heart of the family. I felt like I did when I was acting as goalie for Sam and he belted a football straight into my stomach, knocking all the air out of me. Every time I thought I’d got a handle on my new family, I’d come across another bloody skellygog in the cupboard.
And yet again, I’d have to decide whether or not to tell everyone else. I was becoming the left-luggage storage facility for family secrets, the ones with the broken zips and dodgy wheels no one wanted to reclaim.
I stood, torn between a desire to dig much deeper and to run away, kicking up a cloud of dust to blank out the new information I couldn’t now unknow.
Did Nico know? Did Lara? Anna? Were they all in on some kind of weird joke? Perhaps just Massimo knew, so ashamed of himself, he had buried it deep, hoping the rest of his family would never need to find out. I still found it difficult to accept the version of Massimo Dawn was presenting to me. The man I knew was always up for a laugh, swinging Sam onto his shoulders, ready with the jump leads whenever my knackered old Fiesta gave up the ghost.
I forced a smile. ‘He’s a lovely boy and I’m sorry you’ve had such a terrible time. I don’t really know what to say.’
Dawn surprised me by giving me a huge and heartfelt hug. ‘Take care in that family. Nico is lovely but the rest are a nest of vipers. Just answer me one thing: did Massimo marry again?’
I nodded, expecting her to make some catty comment. But instead she sighed. ‘That poor, poor woman. She’s going to have an unbearable life.’
Without saying anything else, we walked out to reception, where Ben was eating great chunks of a baguette in a way that would have had Anna tutting. I tried not to stare at him, tried not to put him on weirdo woman alert, but there was absolutely no mistaking who his father was.
At that moment, Francesca arrived, tossing her bag over her shoulder.
‘You did really well!’ I gushed.
For once she responded like a normal person and said, ‘Thank you. Shame I didn’t get to do the other race.’
Dawn congratulated Francesca on swimming so well and pride surged through me as she chatted and laughed. Then I had the horrible thought that Francesca might fancy Ben and it would all be a bit odd as he was her cousin, so I didn’t prolong the goodbyes and hurried her off to the car.
I hoped – unusually – she would do what she always did, plug herself into her headphones so I could think through what I’d just heard. But Sod’s law, she wanted to talk.
‘That Ben, the one whose mother you were just speaking to, he’s an amazing swimmer. His freestyle time was faster than the age group above. I bet he gets scouted for the national team eventually.’
As she was talking, the image of Sandro unconscious on the edge of the pool kept coming into my mind. The whole fuckedupness of it all: one son petrified of water who Massimo wanted to turn into an Olympic swimmer, and one son he wouldn’t acknowledge who had the potential to be just that.
And what did Dawn mean about the way Massimo behaved over Ben being the final straw, not the starting point? Granted, if what she said was true about how Massimo had treated her, it didn’t show him in a good light. But that was only her side of the story. Maybe she’d been an absolute nightmare to live with; maybe the whole Ben saga had been the last unhappy chapter in an already disintegrating relationship? But somewhere in the back of my brain, there was an anxious swirling, my mind straining to brush it out of the way so I could deal with the facts, not flimsy feelings or instincts.
A sense of unease was starting to creep through me, my thoughts turning to Lara, the watchful urgency about her, as though the pasta was about to boil over or she’d left the bath running. The frenzied rush to get the mop out if anything got spilt, even when it was just on the kitchen tiles.
But was she really like that because of Massimo? He was always so affectionate towards her, embarrassingly kissy-kissy. I could see that he was pretty dominant, a man who liked things just so and had an opinion on everything. On the other hand, I reckoned a straw poll of a cross-section of married women would prove the world hadn’t moved on as much as we’d all expected by now. That given a choice and enough cash, men would still rather go hunter-gathering and come back to a woman in a polka dot pinny, serving up a steak Diane and a slab of Black Forest gateau. Nico had been a revelation to me – a man who not only knew what a Hoover was used for but could change a bag in one. Massimo expecting his wife to keep his house to show-home standards wasn’t a reason to start thinking he’d bullied his ex-wife and shirked his parental responsibilities.
Thankfully this was one secret I could discuss with Nico. I’d have to be very careful not to present it as a criticism of Massimo. One of the things I loved about Nico was his loyalty, but the whole lot of them were like Shire horses with their blinkers on when it came to each other’s faults. But maybe it wouldn’t end up being a big deal.