One Night in Italy

by Lucy Diamond

  ‘How … ? But …’ She couldn’t actually speak for a moment, just gaped. Oh shit. They’d read it?

  ‘What are you running away from, Soph?’ he asked, gentler now. ‘Surely not us any more. Yourself?’

  ‘I’m not running away from anything!’ she cried, feeling as if she was a teenager all over again. Why couldn’t they just get off her back? ‘What’s it to do with you anyway?’ Then she whirled around and rushed out of the room.

  She ran blindly down the corridor, her heart pounding, her breath tight and short in her lungs. The thought of her parents spying on her like that, reading about her intimate experiences – and some had been really intimate – was mortifying. How could they? How dare they?

  Leaning against a wall, she shut her eyes, feeling sick as detail after detail flashed up in her mind. So they’d have read about her being hospitalized in Wellington when she came off her bike and was knocked unconscious. They’d have read about her tempestuous affair with Dan, and how broken she’d been left afterwards. And they’d have read all the nasty stuff about them, too; she’d savagely ripped them apart in print, blaming them for her hang-ups, mocking them for their dull suburban lives.

  Shit. She thought she might throw up. No wonder her mum had been so off with her. No wonder she’d freaked out when Sophie had asked about the wifi code – she probably thought a new blog entry was in the making, all about how dreadful it was to be back chez Mum and Dad!

  The impulse to run beat loudly through her. She’d known all along she wasn’t welcome back in Ranmoor. She’d collect her stuff then get a train somewhere and start afresh. Her dad was on the mend, wasn’t he? Anywhere was better than here.

  Then she hesitated. It was already eight in the evening and dark outside. A horrible sleety rain had pelted them as they’d dashed from the car park to the hospital; her coat was still wet. Besides, she only had thirty or so quid left. She was trapped.

  She pushed a hand through her short blonde hair, trying to make a decision, her dad’s words still echoing in her head. What are you running away from, Soph? Surely not us any more. Yourself?

  Chapter Seven

  Una amica – A friend (female)

  After Mike left, Catherine did nothing but lie unmoving in bed, tears leaking into the pillow. The world seemed to have shrunk around her to the lavender-painted walls of her bedroom, a telescope closing up as she lay there, willing Mike to come back. He didn’t.

  Any minute now, she kept thinking, I’ll wake up from this terrible dream and it’ll be Sunday morning again, with the twins still here, ready to go to uni. Because this can’t have happened in real life. It just can’t.

  But the clock went on ticking, quiet and insistent. The room became darker as night fell, then suffused with pinky-gold light when the sun rose. Cars growled outside as people went to work. Footsteps clicked down the street.

  Any minute now, she thought, I’ll hear his key in the door. He’ll bring flowers, apologies, explanations. He’ll tell me how sorry he is, how wrong he was.

  He didn’t.

  On Monday, she peeled herself out of bed and made a few phone calls. The care home, to say that she wouldn’t be in to do her voluntary shift. The primary school, to say she couldn’t read with the Year 3s that afternoon. The charity shop, to say she’d fallen ill and wouldn’t be able to help out for a few days. Flu. Really bad flu.

  Exhausted by all the lies and at a loss for what to do next, she turned to the computer and opened up a search engine.

  I feel s— she typed and a whole list of options appeared.

  I feel sick

  I feel suicidal

  I feel so lonely

  I feel sad

  God, there was so much pain on the internet. So many unhappy souls calling out for comfort.

  I feel scared she typed, and again more options popped up.

  I feel scared all the time

  I feel scared

  I feel scared for no reason

  I feel scared and alone

  Tears pricked her eyes. All of the above, she thought, as a list of mental health websites appeared below the prompt box, along with the Samaritans helpline number and various anxiety forums. The letters blurred and swam, her brain too fogged to make any sense of them.

  She backspaced through her words and took a deep breath. My husband left me she typed, her fingers shaking, and a new string of results appeared instantly.

  My husband left me for another woman

  My husband left me for a man

  My husband left me after I cheated

  All those leaving husbands, all those front doors slammed, all those wives left behind, weeping and lonely. It would have been enough to break your heart if Catherine’s wasn’t already pulverized.

  She switched off the computer, unable to cope with anybody else’s misery, then went back to bed and pulled the covers over her head.

  Mike had been living in a grungey student house in Nottingham when Catherine eventually tracked him down and broke the news that she was pregnant. His eyes had bulged in horror. ‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not,’ Catherine replied.

  Left to his own devices, Catherine suspected Mike would have washed his hands of her and the babies, but Shirley wasn’t about to let him – or Catherine – off the hook. They were married just two months later. ‘God has willed it,’ she said simply, drawing up the invitation list and unearthing her best hat. ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’

  All Catherine’s friends thought she had lost the plot. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ they kept asking fearfully, eyes darting to her swollen belly. ‘You really want to give up uni and be a wife?’

  Her mum thought she was nuts, too. She had split up with Catherine’s dad many years earlier and since then had made no bones about the fact that she preferred cats to men. ‘You’re only twenty, darling. Don’t write yourself off with a bloke and kiddies yet, whatever you do.’

  Buffeted by the rollercoaster she seemed to be on – the exhausting pregnancy, the wedding, the plans to live with Mike’s parents while he continued his degree in Nottingham (‘I think it’ll be for the best,’ Shirley said in the no-arguments voice Catherine had already come to dread) – Catherine felt powerless to make any decisions, as if she’d had her chance at a life and blown it. ‘I’ll finish my degree another year,’ she promised her friends vaguely, but she already knew she wouldn’t.

  It had not been an easy time. Shirley was firmly in the ‘You’ve made your bed now lie on it’ camp and, when the babies arrived, she left Catherine to cope with them alone, all day every day, while she busied herself organizing prayer sessions for starving children in Uganda in the nearby church hall. The first few months were a blur of snatched naps, feeding, nappies and long, limb-aching walks around the local park in an attempt to soothe the babies to sleep. Her student life of essays and lectures and parties seemed very far away, on another galaxy, impossibly out of reach.

  Once Mike graduated, he came to join her in Sheffield and she thought the balance might even out between them, especially when they moved into their own little house – but no. He was working insane hours trying to prove himself in his first job at the hospital. She, on the other hand, felt like a milch-cow put out to pasture. Although for a while she clung to the faint hope of returning to university, she never did. After a few years, she stopped mentioning it altogether.

  ‘What do you need a degree for anyway?’ Mike once asked. ‘It’s not like you were ever going to be an academic. Besides, who would look after the kids?’

  It wasn’t until Tuesday, when the doorbell rang insistently, followed by some energetic knocking, that the real world intruded. ‘Cath? Are you in there? Catherine!’

  Catherine jerked at the noise. The voice was strident and loud. It was Penny, she realized, Penny from down the road, with whom she played tennis every Tuesday. Was it Tuesday already? It must be.

  She staggered out of bed and pushed open the bedr
oom window. Her hair was lank and straggling, her body unwashed; her tears had probably worn grooves into her face. ‘Oh, Pen,’ she began. ‘I …’ She meant to say she was unwell again – flu, really bad flu – but she was caught off guard and the lie refused to trip off her tongue.

  Penny tipped her head back and stared up at Catherine in alarm. She was used to seeing Catherine clean and wholesome, with lipstick and a sensible coat, not like something recently exhumed. ‘Bloody Nora, you look terrible, girl,’ she said, as tactful and sensitive as ever. ‘What the frig is up with you?’

  ‘I’m …’ To Catherine’s horror, tears plopped from her eyes and onto the roof of her car below. Drip drop drip drop, little puddles on the Toyota. ‘I’m …’

  ‘Let me in,’ Penny ordered. ‘Let me in this minute. You need sorting out.’

  Catherine had never been very good at covering up. Her resistance was at an all-time low, too. It was only a matter of seconds, therefore, before Penny was in her kitchen, making them both strong coffee and hunting out the last few chocolate digestives with the air of a woman well used to crisis management.

  ‘Go on then, tell me,’ Penny said, plonking down their steaming mugs and sitting opposite her at the old scrubbed pine table. Tall and rangy, she had a glossy black bob with an electric-blue streak in the fringe, and sharp brown eyes that didn’t miss a thing. ‘What in chuff’s name has happened?’

  Catherine obediently told her. It took two whole biscuits to get the story out, with a brief pause for nose-blowing, eye-dabbing and a hug from Penny that was so tight and strong she could have had King Kong in a headlock.

  ‘Flaming hell,’ said Penny. ‘And here’s me thinking you had a dodgy tummy or were missing the children. I wasn’t expecting any of that.’

  ‘Nor was I,’ said Catherine, her voice wobbling.

  ‘Oh, love,’ said Penny, putting a hand on hers. ‘He must be having one of those mid-life crises. He’ll be back by the end of the week, I bet you, tail between his legs, begging your forgiveness.’

  ‘He said he’d never loved me, Penny, that I’d trapped him by getting pregnant. He said we should never have got married.’

  Penny sucked in a breath. ‘That’s just nasty. Bloody men, they’ve got no idea, have they?’

  ‘It was probably my fault,’ Catherine ventured in a small voice.

  ‘Bollocks, was it,’ Penny told her. ‘Your fault that he’s been such a bastard? Don’t give me that shite.’

  Nobody had ever called Mike a bastard in Catherine’s presence before. He was a doctor, a pillar of the community, her husband. ‘He’s not a …’ she began, automatically leaping to his defence.

  Penny raised an eyebrow. ‘He shags another woman and tells you he’s never loved you? He totally is a bastard, love. I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that’s pretty much as bastard as bastard gets.’

  Catherine’s head was ringing with all this bastardliness. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

  Penny squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get over him,’ she said. ‘Good riddance. And you’ve got me to look after you in the meantime.’

  ‘I don’t think I need …’

  ‘You do. Trust me, you do. Now, I’m your friend, Cath, so I’m allowed to ask: when was the last time you ate a proper meal?’

  It was hard to remember when she’d last done anything that felt ordinary. ‘Saturday?’ she guessed.

  ‘And no offence, love, but you don’t half pong. Have you actually washed recently? Be honest now.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Yeah. As I thought. Go and have a shower while I make you something to eat. Go on!’

  ‘Penny, you don’t have to. I …’

  ‘And wash that hair, for crying out loud. It looks like there’s been a natural oil disaster on your head. Really, Cath. Now. Do it.’

  Catherine opened her mouth to protest but Penny had her hands on her hips and a certain look in her eye. Penny had brought up three children and six bloody-minded dogs in her time and was definitely not a person to start arguing with unless you had the stamina of an Olympian. She was already rummaging through the larder in search of ingredients. As Catherine trudged upstairs, she heard the radio go on, then Woman’s Hour being retuned to a channel playing pop music. Seconds later there came the sound of singing and clattering pots.

  Catherine stood in the shower and let the water cascade over her, feeling nothing but terror and dread about what lay in the future. Surely not even Penny could rescue her from this nightmare?

  ‘You know, you could see this as an opportunity,’ Penny told her twenty minutes later, running hot water into the bowl at the sink and adding a squirt of washing-up liquid.

  Catherine was now fully dressed with clean, dry hair, and tucking hungrily into the cheese and ham omelette her friend had rustled up. God, she was famished. ‘An opportunity?’ she echoed, her mouth full of hot gooey cheddar.

  ‘Yes, an opportunity. A new start. A chance to do all those things you always wanted to but never had the nerve.’ Penny swished the foamy water around while she thought. ‘You could go and live abroad for a while. You could—’

  ‘I don’t want to live abroad.’

  ‘You could have a holiday, then. Escape Britain and catch some rays. Play your cards right and you might even catch something else, if you know what I mean.’

  Catherine tucked a stray red tendril behind her ear and gave her friend a withering look. ‘Gonorrhea?’

  ‘No! Killjoy. I meant a holiday fling, a handsome Pedro or Jean-Paul. Just what you need to forget your cheating bastard husband.’

  ‘Penny!’

  ‘Just saying!’

  ‘Well, don’t. Anyway, I did that once before – the holiday fling, I mean – and look where it got me.’

  ‘Yeah, eighteen happy years and two lovely kids. My point exactly.’

  Catherine forked another mouthful of omelette in, not bothering to argue. Penny had been divorced twice and was now having a fling with a thirty-year-old toyboy. She didn’t have a clue.

  ‘Or,’ Penny went on, sensing they’d hit a brick wall, ‘you could go back to college. You could go back to uni!’

  ‘To finish the twenty-one-year degree course? Surely that’d be a record.’

  ‘Get a job, then. A proper job. Never too late to have a career change, and you’re still young. Younger than me, you cow.’

  ‘How can I have a career change when I’ve never even had a career?’ Catherine pointed out. ‘Anyway, I’m too busy with all my other things.’

  ‘What, making tea for old ladies and selling musty clothes in the charity shop?’

  ‘There’s the dog rescue centre, too. And all that ironing I said I’d do for Mrs Archbold.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you need a break, Cath. Hey, best idea yet. How about a girls’ holiday, just us two? Get some winter sun … what do you say?’

  Catherine sighed. She couldn’t decide anything. She’d had enough trouble deciding whether or not she wanted salad with her omelette. ‘I don’t know,’ she said faintly. ‘I’ve got to talk to Mike first.’

  ‘Sod Mike. You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to. And you certainly don’t need his permission for—’

  ‘No, I mean money-wise. If we split up …’ She broke off, suddenly losing her appetite again. ‘If we split up, I’m not going to have any money, am I? I can’t start flouncing off abroad on his savings.’

  ‘Sure you bloody can. It’s the least he can do, after the psychological scarring he’s inflicted on you, the unfaithful shitbag.’

  The fight had gone out of Catherine as well as her appetite. She pushed the plate away feeling tired of this conversation. ‘I can’t think straight,’ she mumbled.

  ‘No worries. Sorry to go on at you. That’s all you need, right?’

  Catherine’s bottom lip was wobbling again. She blew her nose quickly, not meeting Penny’s eye.

  Penny finished washin
g up and dried her hands on the nearest tea towel before sitting down at the table. ‘Do you want to come and stay with us for a while? Just until you’ve got your head around this? I promise I won’t nag on at you all the time.’

  Catherine managed a weak smile. Penny’s house was noisy and chaotic, with teenagers and dogs spilling out of every nook and cranny. Last time she’d popped round there had also been Toyboy Darren hunking about the place, with his buff bare chest and a towel round his waist. She wasn’t sure she had the energy to cope with that lot right now. ‘That’s really kind, but I just need to hibernate fora bit, if you know what I mean. Pull the duvet over my head and shut out the world.’

  Penny wouldn’t know what she meant; Penny’s idea of getting over a man was to doll up in a short dress and heels, get lairy on tequila and go clubbing with anyone game enough to accompany her.

  But she nodded and clasped Catherine’s hand all the same. ‘Whatever you want, Cath. Whatever it takes. But you know I’m here, right? And I’ll help you get through this, I swear I will.’

  Chapter Eight

  La Cucina – Cooking

  It was a cold, frost-glittering Saturday morning in December and Anna was on her way to Giovanni’s deli for her daylong Italian cookery course. She hoped she wasn’t about to disgrace her father’s people. Knowing her, she’d hack off a thumb amidst some ambitiously fast garlic chopping, or worse. Maybe that was why her father had abandoned her, she thought wildly, clutching the banister as she climbed the stairs to the class. Maybe he had seen in her eyes, even as a mewling baby, that she was not cut out to be a proper Italian daughter. Maybe he—

  ‘Buongiorno,’ Giovanni said, smiling warmly.

  Anna blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘Buongiorno,’ she replied.

  ‘You are Anna, I am thinking? Welcome. Now everybody is here and we can begin.’