She glanced at the label: Caterina’s Vineyard, it read. She rolled her eyes, poured herself a glass regardless and took a hesitant sip, but wine didn’t taste like she remembered it – or maybe it was just that anything he’d come into contact with was destined to leave a sour taste in her mouth. She poured the rest of the glass down the sink.
She mulled over Luciana’s reaction to his confession and couldn’t comprehend why she’d forgiven him so readily. And it irked her that it had taken a whore to set his moral compass straight when it came to facing up to his crimes.
‘I suppose it says something about her, doesn’t it,’ she began rhetorically. ‘I mean, I don’t know why I’m surprised that a woman who sold her body and had two bastard children with a married man could forgive him for murder. She’s hardly Mother Teresa, is she?’
‘Say what you want about me, Catherine, I’m old enough and ugly enough to take it,’ he began defensively, ‘and a little of it I probably deserve, but do not bring Luciana and my children into this. They have done nothing to you. I’m sorry if you haven’t liked what you’ve heard, but it’s the truth, and in the great scheme of things, it doesn’t matter how I got here. Because I’m here now, and I want to make my peace with you.’
‘Make your peace? How generous of you! Jesus, man, you should be on your hands and knees begging for my forgiveness! You should be here because you realised all by your stupid self that what you did to us was terrible, not because you were told to by my replacement.’
‘She wasn’t your replacement.’
‘You replaced all of us with them.’
‘I didn’t plan to start another family.’
‘With a whore, let’s not forget.’
‘No, with Luciana.’
‘A whore – you even called her that yourself. And a murderer.’
‘Don’t call her those things, please.’
‘But that’s what she is, isn’t she? A whore who killed two people. At least you had a lot in common.’
‘It doesn’t matter what she did,’ he shouted. ‘She’s the mother of my children.’
By the time he’d realised the irony of his words, it was too late.
‘And what was I?’ she yelled, throwing the glass into the sink, shattering it. ‘A trial run? You didn’t give a damn about the mother of your other children! You traded us in for a woman who’d screw any man if he had cash in his wallet! And you expect me to offer her some respect?’
‘You really don’t understand,’ he replied, shaking his head.
Once again he was disappointed by her reaction. He thought he’d explained there was so much more to Luciana’s make-up than the choices she’d made to survive. But repeatedly, she’d chosen to focus only on the negative. He began to feel tired and disappointed that even after all this time, she was still so bitter.
‘I didn’t leave you to run off with another woman and start another family,’ he continued.
‘You might not have set out to do it, but you did it all the same.’
‘Could I use your bathroom, please?’ he asked, his head now hurting from her ill-tempered reaction.
His ability to change the subject at the most inopportune moments frustrated her. Several times he’d cut her off in the midst of her responses. Either he was trying to defuse the situation or he’d lost his ability to focus on one subject for any length of time.
‘Yes,’ she replied, fatigued.
He turned to leave the kitchen and walked towards the staircase before pausing.
‘I’m sorry, can you remind me where it is?’
She frowned; he’d lived in the house for almost ten years, and earlier that day he had stood on the other side of the door as she vomited after he recalled what he’d done to Paula.
‘Upstairs, on the left.’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Of course it is.’
When he’d finished urinating, he rinsed his hands in the sink and stared into the mirror she’d referred to as the unforgiving one. She was right, he thought. It made his cheeks look puffy and paled his skin like an old man’s.
He noticed the bathroom still had the faint odour of bile as he removed the blister pack of tablets from his jacket pocket and scowled at the enemy. He cupped a hand under the tap and swallowed two of the pink pills. He considered taking one of the antidepressants his doctor had also prescribed, but he hated the synthetic happiness it brought him.
He surveyed a room he never thought he’d be standing in again as he felt the tablets sink slowly into his belly. The layout was the same, but the suite was no longer a dowdy avocado colour; it was plain white with silver fixtures and sandstone tiles. He approved of her taste. It wouldn’t look out of place in my home.
His eyes were drawn to the bath and the mat that lay in front of it, when a cold breeze suddenly swept through the room. The chill made the hairs on his arms reach for the heavens. He panicked and struggled to catch his breath. His eyes darted back and forth as he remembered the aroma of the bubble bath and the sound of her muffled voice in the bedroom that day. He shook his head until the thoughts disappeared, and he took a long, hard breath.
Just hang in there, he told himself, and hoped his brain was listening.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CATHERINE
Northampton, three years earlier
2 February
‘Bloody useless,’ I grumbled as I yanked off my glasses and stuffed them back into their case on the kitchen table.
I left the accounts ledger I’d been ploughing through all morning to fend for itself, rubbed my weary eyes and rummaged through a drawer for my painkillers.
Arthritis was making its way through my ankle and I didn’t have the energy I’d once had to work all the hours I needed to.
I’d survived for so long without the need of a second set of eyes, and had thought of it as a minor triumph in my war against age. However, the nature of my work relied on a strong eye for detail and an even more tenacious one for flaws. Together, they’d gradually taken their toll on my vision.
So when blurriness and headaches went from occasional to daily and then to just bloody annoying, I finally gave up fighting and made an optician’s appointment. My reward was a ￡200 bill and a pair of glasses I resented. They made me look like my mother, and to be honest, they were a fat lot of use. My eyesight had improved a little but the headaches still came. So I swallowed two tablets, and left the spreadsheets for another day.
The growling of two very loud engines above the house caught my ear, so I went out onto the lawn and squinted at the sky. Three yellow vintage biplanes flew so low overhead I could see their pilots. Then, without warning, my head exploded.
There was no noise, just a pain I’d never felt before, followed by complete disorientation. I saw nothing but blackness peppered with bright shining stars. My eyes burned and my whole head throbbed like one of James’s guitar amplifiers when he turned it up loud. I dropped to my knees and steadied myself by digging my fingernails into the grass.
The pain dissolved after a few moments, but my body was trembling and I was hit by a savage migraine and sickness straight away. I slowly stood up and fumbled my way into an empty house, grasping onto windowsills and furniture to keep from keeling over. I fell onto the sofa, breathing quickly as my vision slowly returned.
Then I closed my eyes and slept for the rest of the day and night.