by John Marrs
My head pressed against a heart I knew would always be open to mine. But hers wasn’t destined to beat for long.
Northampton, today
6.15 p.m.
The picture he painted of his life in Italy was all too vivid and left her feeling bitterly cheated.
‘Those were our dreams,’ she said sorely. ‘We were going to retire to Italy – you and I. They weren’t yours to take away and live with somebody else.’
She moved across the kitchen, avoiding his eye, and removed a bottle of wine from the cupboard. She kept alcohol in the house only for guests, and it had been two decades since a drop had passed her lips. But if ever she’d needed a glass, it was today.
‘It’s a good year,’ he offered inappropriately as she uncorked it.
‘What is?’
‘The wine. It’s one of ours – 2008, if I’m not mistaken.’
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 st
raight 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.
SIMON
Montefalco, Italy, three years earlier
11 February
It had begun as an innocuous little lump on her left index finger – nothing you’d notice without searching for it, and certainly no bigger than a small ball bearing.
It itched, Luciana told me, and the more she scratched it, the sorer it became. Two weeks passed and it continued to irritate her, so I persuaded her to make an appointment to see her doctor to check it wasn’t an infected insect bite. He admitted it puzzled him, so he erred on the side of caution and took a biopsy. Within five days, we were called back to his surgery to discover that innocuous little lump we could barely see was going to make our perfect lives implode.
It was malignant.
We carried on with our lives regardless and with relative normality while we awaited the results of an urgent barrage of tests to ensure it was just a one-off, random cluster of cancerous cells. Luciana remained convinced we had nothing to fear, but inside I knew the darkness I’d eluded for two decades had found me again.
Our wealth paid for speedier results, but it couldn’t pay for positive ones. Her cancer was not a rogue occurrence, but a secondary form. Its parasitic parent had already made a home in her right breast before silently creeping around her body.
‘I believe it’s an intrusive cancer that’s already spread to a kidney and your stomach,’ her doctor began solemnly, then paused as we absorbed the news.
Luciana reacted like she would towards one of her businesses failing. Without a hint of self-pity, she was collected, optimistic and sought to formulate a plan of attack. ‘What are my options?’ she asked without expression, staring her doctor firmly in the eye.
‘It has moved far too quickly and it’s incurable, Luciana,’ he replied softly. ‘I’m very, very sorry.’
‘There are always options,’ she said firmly, gripping my hand tightly.
‘We can try and control it as best we can. But the best-case scenario is a year to eighteen months.’
She nodded her head slowly. ‘That’s good,’ she replied. ‘That’s a good time. I can get a lot done in that time.’
We left his surgery too stunned to speak and with a schedule of medical treatments designed to slow down her cancer’s rate of growth. We each had one eye on the clock. Hers was to remind herself of how much longer she had left as the centre of my universe.
Mine was to decide on the right time to leave her.
CATHERINE
Northampton
14 February
The second explosion walloped me almost a fortnight after the first, as I wandered around the supermarket shopping for groceries. It followed the same course as its predecessor – unexpected, excruciating stabs to the brain, darkness, white lights and then dizziness – and it scared me to death. Not just because of how much it hurt, but because it meant the first wasn’t a one-off.
I tried in vain to steady myself against a freezer chest, but I missed the lid and fell into an ungainly heap on the floor. Someone helped me to my feet and took me to the manager’s office, where a kind boy asked if he should call me an ambulance. But I reassured him I’d just had a funny turn and all I needed was to sit down and compose myself.
I tried to fool myself into thinking it was nothing more than a delayed but extreme reaction to my new HRT medication. But I knew the difference between a hot flush and something that was trying to blow my scalp off. And naively keeping my fingers crossed and praying it would go away as quickly as it had appeared probably wouldn’t work.
Nevertheless, I chose denial. I took a few days off and left Selena in charge of the shops so I could hide in the safety of my home. And when a week passed without incident, I almost began to stop waiting for another one. More fool me, because the next was by far the worst.
I was in my granddaughter Olivia’s bedroom at Emily and Daniel’s house, playing imaginary tea parties, when my words became slurred and jumbled.
‘Teddy cake go and find to him,’ I mumbled, unable to correct myself. In my mind, I knew what I was trying to say but when it came out, it made no sense. I tried again, then again and again, but it made no difference.
‘Nana, you’re being funny,’ giggled Olivia, but it was only amusing to a three-year-old. I tried several more sentences but each one failed. Terrified, I lifted myself off the floor and perched on her bed.
‘Mummy for Nana,’ I begged. ‘Mummy . . . Nana.’
Her little face fell and I could tell I was scaring her. She ran from the room yelling for Emily.
I remained frozen on her bed, and the last thing I heard were her feet scampering down the staircase before I fell unconscious.
SIMON
Monte Falco
16 February
It was a myth that God is merciful. To me, he was a cruel, cold-hearted, vindictive bastard who was predominantly interested in punishing me. From birth, he had strewn my path with a deceitful mother, cunning friends and disloyal lovers.
I’d tried so hard to live a good life since I met Luciana, and for a time, he’d fooled me into believing he’d taken notice. He’d blessed me with two incredible children and the love of a woman I didn’t deserve.
I showed my gratitude by being a worthy husband, a doting father and a charitable man. A third of the profits from our winery went directly to a foundation providing aid to the children of poverty-stricken widows in the region. We sponsored five scholarships for gifted students from low-income families to attend the same private school as Sofia and Luca. We’d even donated three acres of land to a sanctuary for retired working horses.
But that wasn’t enough for God. Not nearly enough. By granting us a life of privilege, he’d merely lulled me into a false sense of security before striking me with his next blow. He could have taken Luciana away from me in an instant with a sudden, fatal accident. But he decided he’d gain more pleasure in watching me suffer, watching her suffer.
I’d already experienced life with someone so utterly tortured by sorrow that they were unable to recognise night from day. I’d been the one who had hovered in the corners of rooms, watching as grief devoured Catherine.
Now history was about to repeat itself and I was going to be forced to see the love of my life slipping away. The only way I could prevent his victory was to do what I knew best – run. And when I was miles and miles from her failing body, I would remember with fondness her love – and not someone locked into a death sentence.
Our house had not been built of brick, as I’d thought, but of feathers. A wind I couldn’t harness would destroy it whether I was present or not.
CATHERINE
Northampton
18 February
‘I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs Nicholson, but the scans suggest you have an intracranial solid neoplasm, otherwise known as a brain tumour, on the left-hand side of your temple,’ explained Dr Lewis, as sympathetically as he could.
Four days after my last attack, I had yet to leave the hospital. When Dr Lewis came to my room with the results of the MRI scans and blood tests, I wished I’d not insisted Emily leave her bedside vigil and go home to rest, so that I had somebody’s hand to hold.
‘We will need to operate as soon as possible to take a sample, then test if it’s malignant or benign,’ Dr Lewis continued. ‘I’d like to arrange it for first thing tomorrow morning, if that would be convenient?’
‘Is it going to kill me?’ was all I could think to ask.
‘Once we get the results of the biopsy we can decide which approach to take. The tumour is most likely the cause of your headaches – blood vessels in your brain bursting under the pressure as it grows.’
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ I said. ‘Is it going to kill
me?’
He paused. ‘We’ll know its severity once we do the biopsy. Then we’ll talk again.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied politely, and picked up Emily’s iPod, put the headphones into my ears, closed my eyes and blasted her music as loud as I could to drown out my fears.
SIMON
Montefalco
20 February
I walked away from Luciana with only what I’d brought with me – the clothes on my back and an uncertain future.
I knew starting afresh would be a much harder task, as my years were more advanced than when I’d last decamped. Nevertheless, my mind was made up.
I waited until she was alone at a doctor’s appointment and the children were at school before I packed my old rucksack with the bare essentials and began the steep walk downhill to the town in the shadow of the villa.
I planned to make my way up to Switzerland and then through Austria, before exploring the Eastern bloc. According to the bus stop timetable, it would be another hour before my ride arrived, so I sat by the side of the road and began the process of putting the life I had cherished so much out of my mind.
Only I couldn’t.
The boxes were open and waiting, but the beautiful spirits I loved so dearly were too large a presence to be contained. I had left my other children when they were too young to be affected by my absence. I’d only left Catherine when she was finally well enough to cope with it.
But Luciana, Sofia and Luca were different – and now so was I. They had made me a better man. I thought about how, through Catherine’s sadness, I’d learned to tend to fragility and incite a person into believing that, against all hope, there was always hope to be found if they just kept searching.
I couldn’t find that hope for Luciana, so she would need me more than Catherine ever did. I’d spent half my life running away from my responsibilities and I was an idiot for thinking I could do it again. But if I stayed, I’d need to muster up all my strength to help the three of them and the four of us.
