Chapter 31 Freya
FREYA
I’m still in bed, curled into a ball, when the doorbell rings.
“It’s only me,” comes the shrill voice through the letter box.
I close my eyes and let out a breath. I could pretend I’m not in and stay hidden under the duvet. But I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that my mother will use the key she got cut, claiming she’d only use it in an emergency.
“I’m coming,” I call out as the bell rings again. I slide into my slippers and rub at my eyes, feeling like a sleep-deprived zombie.
“I know you said you didn’t want me to go out of my way.…”
“I did,” I say, gritting my teeth before my mother’s even crossed the threshold. I’m not in the mood for her today.
“But I wanted to check that you were okay.”
“Aside from feeling like I’ve gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.”
She lifts my pajama top up. “Ouch, that’s got to hurt,” she says, when she sees the deep purple-and-blue bruising that marbles my skin.
“It does.”
“And where’s Charlie?” she asks, looking around. “In your hour of need.”
“He just had to pop out for a bit,” I say, feeling I need to offer more to justify his absence. Knowing she’ll only demand it if I don’t. “He had a couple of errands to run.”
“Shouldn’t he be here, looking after you?”
There she goes. My mother doing what my mother does best. Throwing a grenade into the middle of proceedings, stepping back, and watching it explode
“He has a restaurant to run,” I say, wishing I hadn’t opened the door.
“Talking of restaurants, did you see that article about Frank?”
My ears prick up, but I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of my piqued interest.
“No,” I say, filling the kettle, at pains to prove my indifference.
She pulls that face. That look of one-upmanship that she revels in, as she takes her phone out from her bag.
“Well, apparently there’s trouble in paradise,” she says, scrolling and turning the Daily Mail app toward me.
I scan the headline, my eyes tripping over the words.
After the ordeal of her recent street robbery, in which an as-yet-unknown assailant stole Coco De Luca’s ￡70,000 watch, it’s perfectly understandable that she’d want to seek comfort in the arms of the man she loves.
But when her husband, celebrity chef Frank De Luca, is working two miles away, serving London’s elite at his Michelin star restaurant, Indigo, she’s going to have to find solace elsewhere.
And Mrs. De Luca didn’t waste any time in cozying up to this mystery man. …
I feel instantaneously sick, not wanting to scroll down to the bank of photos I know is going to follow. My mother stands there, watching, as if waiting to see if I’m going to be brave enough.
“That’s Coco for you,” I say, handing back the phone, refusing to give in, even though every sinew in my body is itching to see if it’s who I think it is.
“It’s funny,” she says, laughing. “I almost thought it was Charlie at first sight.”
I grit my teeth. “It may well be,” I manage. “They were good friends.”
“Were?” is all she says, looking at me with self-satisfied smugness.
“Are,” I say, correcting myself, but like a dog with a bone, she smells blood.
“Well, if it is Charlie, I’d say they are far more than good friends.…”
All I want to do is go upstairs and check the photos, needing to put myself out of my misery. Because right now, it feels like the whole world has definitive proof that my husband is having an affair with Coco De Luca before me.
“You know what the papers are like,” I say, clutching at straws, and hoping I’m right. “Always looking to make something out of nothing.”
“Oh, goodness, I hope that’s all it is,” she says, throwing a hand to her chest theatrically. “Because I don’t think I could stand it if history was repeating itself.”
I push the sting of tears away.
“Because it seems that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve got, if you’ve got a roving eye, you’ll have your head turned eventually.” She purses her lips. “Just look at your father. If it can happen to him, believe me, it can happen to just about anyone.”
She’s right. My dad was the least likely man you’d ever imagine having an affair. Kind and respected, he just didn’t have it in him, and I wonder, still to this day, why she ever believed he would.
“Are you absolutely sure it was your father?” she’d sobbed, when I told her that I’d seen him kissing an attractive blond woman in a house doorway.
“I got off the bus and went back,” I said. “Just to be sure. And I watched him come out and get into his car.”
“How do you know it was his car?”
“Because I know his number plate,” I’d said impatiently.
“What is it then?” my mother barked, looking as if she wanted to shoot the messenger just as much as her cheating husband. “Tell me what his number plate is if you’re that sure.”
I’d reeled it off without hesitation.
An earsplitting wail had resounded around my parents’ bedroom, as my mother threw herself onto the bed that they’d never share again.
“It wasn’t me,” my father had predictably claimed, from behind the closed kitchen door later that night.
“She saw you!” my mother cried, as I cowered at the top of the stairs, peering out between the banisters. “She was on the bus!”
“So she couldn’t be sure it was me?” my dad had countered. “It would have been dark, she wouldn’t have been able to see properly, she’s put two and two together and come up with five.”
And my mother had been so desperate to believe him that, much to my dismay, she forgave him. At least until six weeks later, when I told her about the salacious texts on his phone that proved beyond all doubt that something was going on.
“Show me,” she demanded, as I stood shaking alongside her.
“No,” said Dad defiantly, glaring at me.
“I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt,” said my mother, her bulging eyes scaring me.
“That perhaps it was a mistake on her part. But if you think I’m going to turn a blind eye to you and this bitch talking dirty to one another while I’m sitting on the sofa beside you, you’ve got another thing coming. ”
“Are you honestly going to believe Freya’s word over mine?”
“I have no reason not to.”
“She’s lying!” my dad roared, his angry spittle landing on my cheek.
“And why would she do that?” cried my mother, desperate to give him a get-out clause. “What child would knowingly lie about something this serious?”
“I wouldn’t know. Perhaps you should ask her.”
And she had, again and again, desperate for a different answer to the one that I’d sworn by, hoping that with the passing of time, I might admit to seeing or hearing something that would offer a different slant, that would exonerate her husband from being the man she never thought he would be.
It was only showing her the messages that were hidden deep in the archives of his phone that finally allowed her to believe that I might be telling the truth.