Margherita
The next day, with Lara in school and Leo in nursery, I sat at the kitchen table, ready to make two phone calls. The first one was the hardest.
“Oh, Margherita.” Ash said my name like a sigh. Like a chore.
Was this really my husband? Was this really the man I’d loved so much? This man who sounded like he felt nothing for me any more?
Nobody, nobody in the world had the ability to make me feel as cold as he did.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m taking the children on holiday,” I said. “We’ll go to my mum’s for the summer.”
A pause. “To Scotland?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to uproot Lara for so long? With her state of mind . . .”
“It’s hardly uprooting. It’s just for the six weeks.”
“Look, nobody wants you to go so far away.” Oh, how he loved patronising me.
“Maybe I want my family around me, Ash. Have you thought of that?”
“Your sister is here, and you spend a lot of time with her, certainly more than you do with me.”
“Now you’re jealous of my sister? You’re never around, Ash. Who else should I spend time with?” It was starting again, and I hated myself for letting him get to me. “I just want to see Mum, Ash, that’s all.”
“At the expense of your daughter?”
“I’m taking her on holiday to Scotland, not to a labour camp! And I notice you didn’t even mention Leo.”
“This again.” A deep sigh. “Leo is always at the top of my priorities.”
“You hide it well,” I said, recalling all the times he’d let Leo down, all the times he’d shown his indifference, openly and unashamedly: like when he missed his first Nativity play in nursery; like when he left him at a party for an extra hour because he had something urgent to do. Once, Leo had drawn our family: there was me, him and Lara as stick people under a tree dotted with apples, and far away, in a corner, was Daddy. Leo was extending a spindly arm to him, but Daddy’s arms were at his sides. I left the drawing on the kitchen table, hoping that he’d see it and maybe do something about Leo’s feelings, but he never showed signs of having seen it. This made it all the more heartbreaking: that Leo knew. He could feel with a child’s instinct that his father had somehow rejected him.
I dreaded the day he’d be old enough to ask me why, and I would have no answer.
“Talking to you is just impossible, Margherita. All you do is throw accusations at me.”
“Well, all you need to know is that we’re going to see my mum and Lara will be fine. You’re welcome to come and see them if you want.”
A pause. “I’ll be very busy, workwise . . .”
Of course. Of course.
“Bye, Ash.”
“Right. Fine. Bye.”
I put the phone down and I felt empty. I hoped that the second call would restore me a bit, but first I needed coffee. I made myself a cappuccino and sat at the table once again. I dialled the number for La Piazza. It rang a few times and I began to feel apprehensive – would it be okay to go to Glen Avich for so long? Had I made a mistake to assume she would have us? Oh God, I should have asked her first, before telling Lara and Ash . . .
But my doubts melted as soon as I heard her voice. That was my mum, my ally and best friend through thick and thin. She would not let me fall.
“Hi, it’s me,” I said, stirring my cappuccino, hoping it would keep me going after the sleepless night.
“Margherita! What’s wrong? You sound stressed.”
“Yes, well, I am. Oh, it’s Ash, it’s a million things, really. But mainly . . . Lara is having some trouble in school. She needs a change of scene. I need a change of scene. So I was thinking—”
“Of course! Nothing would make me happier.”
I smiled. “You guessed! I was going to ask you if I could come up.”
“Please do. Please, please do.” The joy in her voice was like a balm for my aching heart. “It would be such a treat to have you up. How long are you coming for? Why not the whole summer?”
“I was hoping so. But what about Michael?”
“What about him?” she said, and I could hear the fondness in her voice.
“Will he be okay with us being there for so long?”
“Of course! He’ll love having you around. You know his daughter and his grandchildren are in Canada, and he misses them a lot. Honestly, he’ll be delighted to have you.”
“Thank you, Mum,” I said tearily. The strife of the recent months was really getting to me – I was crying more often than ever in my life, even more than when I was going through fertility treatment.
“No need to thank me. I’m so glad also because I won’t be seeing either of your sisters. Laura is working all summer and Anna—”
“Yes, she told me. She’s going to Colorado to see Paul’s family. I’ll miss her.”
“So, will I be expecting you tomorrow?” she said hopefully.
I couldn’t help laughing, even between my tears. “Tomorrow? I haven’t even packed yet!”
“Sorry. It’s never too soon . . . I can’t wait to see you. The day after, then?”
I smiled again. “Schools break up next week down here. I’ll be there next Saturday.”
“Okay, then. I’m so sorry this is happening to you . . . but I’m so glad to have you up for so long! I’ll get the cottage ready and everything sorted for you.”
The cottage was a miniature two-room building at the bottom of their garden. They were once stables, but my mum and Michael had had them done up for us and for Michael’s daughter to come and visit.
“Thank you. Really.”
“Are Lara and Leo happy to come up?”
“Lara jumped at the chance. She wants to leave her friends . . . her so-called friends behind. They have been vile to her, after she started having trouble. Especially Polly and Tanya, you know, the girls who were supposed to be her best friends? The ones she’d been in class with since Reception.”
“Vile indeed! Girls can be so cruel. And is she eating okay?”
“We’re up and down with that too. She’s so small, like a bird.”
“We can work on that,” my mum said, and I imagined her rubbing her hands in glee. She loves nothing more than feeding people, and she has passed on her love of food to my sisters and me. Laura is tall and slender and she seems to stay that way even if she works as a chef; Anna eats like a horse but sweats all the calories off with her love of sport; and I happily accumulate them on my five-foot-two frame. You only live once, after all.
“I hope Lara will relax a bit, up there. She’s not sleeping well. She never did, but recently it’s got worse. I think she should see someone. I really do.”
“I think the summer in Glen Avich will do her a world of good. And you too. And after that, you can decide what to do about Lara.”
“Yes. Leo doesn’t know yet. I’ll speak to him later, but he’s so young, I’ll just tell him we’re going to see Nonna and he’ll be happy. Six weeks is a long time to be away from his dad, but he never really sees him anyway.”
“Is Ash still coming round every weekend?”
“No. Something always comes up. It’s been every two weeks for a little while, now it’s if and when. He wasn’t involved at all with Lara’s school either. It’s so sad to see, you know . . . Every time Ash is around Leo follows him like a little shadow. He tries to catch his attention and never quite manages.”
“Well, he’ll get plenty of attention here; we’ll give him a really good time, I promise. There are quite a few kids his age in Glen Avich and there’s a really good play park just across the road from our house, he’ll have plenty of little friends to play with.”
“That’s good,” I said in a shaky voice, and took a sip of my cappuccino. The caffeine was slowly waking me up after the sleepless night.
“Margherita?”
“Yes?”
“You told me something happened at Lara’s school, but never the details . . .”
I swallowed the coffee through the lump in my throat. “She shouted at her English teacher. Apparently she was about to hit her.” It was horrifying to say it aloud.
“Lara?”
“Yes.”
“My poor little girl . . .”
“Yes. She’s been through a lot.”
“I meant you,” my mum said. “Don’t worry, tesoro. We’ll sort things out, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered, feeling like a little girl for real. And a lost one, at that. I was a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two, but I wanted my mum.