Chapter 27
The children are bathed, with cream on their stings, and are playing Happy Families on one of their beds.
I walk slowly down the stairs. Stella is wandering around the house, as if she’s inspecting the work. ‘This place is looking great. A big difference,’ she says approvingly.
‘You’ve been here before?’ I ask tentatively, heading towards the kitchen and pulling out an onion to start chopping, with no real idea of what I’m making for dinner.
‘Uh-huh. I lived here.’
I stop chopping, my thoughts racing, like an out-of-control horse, cantering and gathering speed into a gallop.
‘You lived here?’ I ask, hoping it will be a straightforward answer. ‘Grew up here? Was it your family’s home?’
She shakes her head. ‘No.’ She laughs. ‘My “family”,’ she uses two fingers to make inverted commas, ‘didn’t really do conventional living. My mother moved from place to place, with friends, wherever the next festival might be.’
‘Festival?’
She nods and shrugs at the same time. ‘Festivals, concerts. She was part of a band. I grew up on the road. I guess that’s where I still am.’
‘And when did you first meet my … Marco?’ I put down the onion and pour some wine into a small stubby glass. I should offer Stella a drink but, right now, this is not a social visit, and the wine is giving me the courage I need.
‘A couple of years ago.’
‘A couple of years ago?’ I’m trying to process the information. ‘You lived here a couple of years ago?’
‘A few months before he bought this place.’
‘He …’ I feel hot. ‘He bought this place after he met you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how did you meet?’ I pick up the knife and start chopping the onion again, putting all my energy into it.
‘Online,’ she says casually, pulling up a chair at the table.
‘You met online?’ I’m gripping the knife in my hand like a lethal weapon. I put it down quickly and pick up the wine.
‘Well, I contacted him.’ She reaches over to the bottle and helps herself, pouring wine into one of the children’s water glasses.
‘So let me get this straight. You contacted my husband online. You got in touch and the pair of you met.’
‘Pretty much, yup.’
‘More than once?’
She nods, casually again, making my hackles rise and my eyeballs burn with a red mist rising.
‘And then he bought this place,’ I say, picking up the knife again and slashing the onion with it.
‘It was a really good buy. Said he planned to see out his days here.’
‘Well, he did that!’ I say, furious at his untimely death all over again.
‘What did he die of?’
‘A heart attack. Who told you he died?’
‘You did. When you arrived.’
I narrow my eyes. ‘And you didn’t know before then?’
There’s a moment when I feel for her: two years without knowing, having been ghosted. And then I check myself. Why am I feeling sorry for this woman? She was clearly planning to take my husband from me.
‘Why Marco?’ I ask.
‘You tell me. You fell in love with him!’ She gives a little laugh.
‘I did. I gave up my life to be with him. He was everything to me. I thought I was to him too …’
‘He told me all about you. And the children.’
‘Did he?’ I say, feeling sick and pulling out a chair to sit down before my legs give way.
‘Everything. Did he ever say anything about me?’
I look at her. Really? The audacity. ‘No.’
‘He said he was going to tell you about me. He emailed.’
‘Well, I guess we were just too busy keeping the house and business together for him to get around to telling me about his secret life in Italy. Too busy selling me an idea of easier days in the sunshine, when all along …’
For a moment, she says nothing. Then, ‘I’m sorry.’ She drops her head. ‘He said he’d tell you.’
‘What? That he was going to leave me? Me and the children?’ I hiss quietly.
‘He was never going to leave you! He wouldn’t have done that. He loved you!’
‘And you?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I didn’t really know him. We’d only just met.’
‘So, how would you describe yourself? As his lover?’ I practically spit the words.
‘No! We were still getting to know each other. It was more like friends.’
‘Well, that’s something.’ A sense of relief washes over me. ‘A one-night stand?’
‘No, I promise. Nothing like that. I swear.’ She’s looking less self-assured now. She stands quickly to leave. ‘I swear …’
‘Then why were you messaging my husband? What did you want him to tell me? Were you blackmailing him?’ Now I’m feeling angry again, as if molten lava is rising within me.
We glare at each other.
‘He didn’t tell you … He said he’d tell you! He said everything would be okay when the house was sold to him. And then I hear nothing. For two years!’
‘Tell me what?’ I shout.
She glares at me. ‘I’m his daughter. I’m Marco’s daughter!
’ We stare wide-eyed at each other. I can’t think of a single word to say.
She can’t be more than about eighteen or maybe nineteen.
And then she gets up and rushes out of the front door, slamming it behind her.
This time, the ceiling stays put. It’s just my world that comes crashing down all over again.
I feel the knife being moved from beside me. And the onion. It’s Luca. ‘What are you doing?’ I ask him.
‘I’m making us pasta, like Dad used to,’ says Luca. ‘With Parmigiano,’ he adds, and somehow among this tsunami, it’s the most natural and comforting thing in the world. Because the new knowledge hurts as if Marco’s died all over again.