My Husband's Wife

by Jane Corry

  Blood.

  My sight is blurred.

  Yet I swear I can see something round the corner. What is it?

  A shoe.

  A red shoe.

  A siren roars by.

  I hold my breath with wild hope.

  But the siren goes past.

  If only I could turn back the clock.

  But hindsight, as the three of us might say, is a fine thing.

  What’s that I can hear?

  My blood runs cold.

  She’s still here.

  24

  Carla

  Autumn 2013

  ‘Excuse me, but I believe you are in my seat,’ said Carla. She flashed a smile at the business-suited man next to the window, two rows from the emergency exit. It was a carefully cultivated smile. Exactly the right combination of charm and ‘don’t mess with me’.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  She should have guessed. No Italian would wear such a terrible tie.

  Carla repeated her sentence in English with the same smile.

  There was a brief flash of annoyance on the man’s face, followed by a softening as he took in her smooth black bob, her full glossy lips, her flawless skin and her smell. Chanel No. 5. Her favourite perfume since borrowing Lily’s all those years ago.

  ‘I do apologize,’ he said, leaping up and almost bumping his head on the overhead lockers as he did so. Then he glanced at his boarding pass. ‘You’re right. I should be in the middle seat.’

  He said it in such a way that Carla knew he had deliberately made the ‘mistake’ to get the window seat on this flight from Rome to Heathrow. She also suspected that if she had been less attractive or less determined, her fellow passenger might have achieved his goal.

  The plane was only half full, she noticed, as it began to taxi slowly down the runway. There was no one on the aisle side. On her row it was just her and the man, who was now reading The Times. She glanced at the page he was reading.

  NEW PLAN FOR REFUGEE CRISIS

  Meanwhile, the stewardess was doing a safety talk about life jackets and putting oxygen masks on yourself before young children. Then there was a roaring noise that bellowed in her ears, followed by a sudden rush forward.

  Carla’s hands gripped the sides of her seat. Her second-ever flight.

  ‘Nervous?’ asked the man.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Carla smoothly. Mentally she crossed her fingers. Another old habit from the past whenever she told a lie.

  They were already up in the air! Through the window, she watched the tiny houses down below them. Goodbye, Italy, she said silently. Self-consciously, she touched the back of her newly bare neck. How odd it felt without her usual long black curls. ‘Your beautiful hair!’ Mamma had exclaimed when she’d returned from the hairdresser. But Carla had wanted a fresh look. To go with the new life ahead. She was nearly twenty-three! About time she made something happen.

  There was a ping, indicating that you could take off your seat belt. Carla would rather have kept hers on, but the man next to her was removing his, so she did too. Two stewards were pushing a trolley down the aisle in their direction. Carla’s stomach rolled. She hadn’t been able to eat anything for breakfast and it was now early afternoon.

  ‘Would you like a drink, madam?’

  ‘Red wine, please.’

  ‘Small or large?’

  ‘Large.’

  ‘Please, let me pay.’ The man next to her laid a hand briefly on hers. ‘It’s the least I can do for making a mistake over the seat.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Even so.’

  He was flirting. It was no more than she expected. Graciously, Carla dipped her head to one side just as Mamma used to do for Larry. ‘That is very kind.’

  ‘Are you going to London for business or pleasure?’

  ‘Both.’ Carla took a large sip. The wine was not as good as that in Nonno’s cellars, but it helped her relax. ‘I have just finished my law degree in Italy and now I am going to do a conversion course in London. But I also intend to look up some old friends.’

  ‘Really?’ The man’s eyebrows rose. They were sandy-coloured, stirring distant memories of Ed’s head tilted over his sketchpad. ‘I’m in the pharmaceutical business myself.’

  Carla could see where this was going. She’d already said too much, partly out of nervousness. It had encouraged him. If she didn’t take steps now, he would drone on for the rest of the journey. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, draining her glass. ‘But I have a headache. I think I must sleep.’

  His disappointment gave her a flash of pleasure. Not that she needed any proof that she could turn heads. The real test was whether she could turn the right heads.

  Carla took out the silk sleep mask from her soft brown leather handbag. Adjusting her seat into the reclining mode, she closed her eyes. Just as she was starting to relax, there was a lurch followed by a ping and an announcement. ‘This is the captain speaking. We are entering a period of turbulence and I would advise you to return to your seats and fasten your seat belts.’

  Silently, Carla began to recite her Ave Marias. Then, in a further bid to distract herself, she allowed her mind to slip back over the years. To the time when she had first flown in a plane. When she had been a scared, uncertain child. Not like the new Carla whom she had worked so hard to become.

  She’d only just recovered from her appendix operation when it happened. Gossip travelled fast. After the discovery by her school friend’s mother that Mamma came from her husband’s birthplace, people in the valley and the mountains began to talk about Nonno’s daughter, who was not a successful London career woman as he had claimed, or a ‘widow’ as Francesca had maintained, but a struggling single mother, working in a shop. Prompted by Nonna, who had, it turned out, been behind those silent phone calls (‘I traced you through directory enquiries, but every time I got too scared and put down the receiver’), Nonno had summoned them ‘home’. And because Mamma could no longer pay the rent, they had had no choice.

  From the minute they arrived, both she and Mamma found themselves firmly under Nonno’s thumb. Her grandfather would not allow Mamma to work. She must stay at home and look after Nonna – Carla’s grandmother – who had ‘aches in her bones’.

  ‘How I miss Larry,’ Mamma would tell Carla when they were alone in the bedroom they had to share.

  ‘But he was a bad man,’ she would reply.

  ‘He loved me.’

  Instead, Mamma blamed Lily. Lily had forced him to stay away. Lily and her interfering ways.

  Try as she might, Carla could not make Mamma see sense – Larry was as much to blame as Lily. Her mother’s hair grew lank. It lost its bounce and its sheen. Strands of grey crept in. Slowly at first. And then fast. She became thin. The bloom on her skin was no longer there. And she kept going over and over that last night in the flat. ‘I should have called the doctor earlier for you,’ Mamma kept saying. ‘You might have died.’

  ‘No, Mamma,’ Carla had reassured her. ‘You were sad.’

  Mamma had nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right. If Lily had not threatened Larry, none of this would have happened.’

  Was that true? Carla wondered. After all, she had planned to get rid of Larry. But when Lily had done it for her, she realized it hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  Already their lives were regulated by Nonno. She was never allowed out late, even when she became a teenager. She was banned from parties that her friends were invited to. ‘Do you want to end up like your mother?’ he always demanded.

  ‘Shh,’ Nonna would say.

  But Carla already knew the truth. One of the neighbours had let the cat out of the bag, as the English would say, soon after they had moved in. ‘Your poor mamma.’ She said the ‘poor’ bit with a sneer, as though she wasn’t to be pitied at all. ‘To have been betrayed by that man. To think he was already married with a child of his own.’

  ‘How do you kn
ow about Larry?’ she had demanded.

  The old woman’s face had frowned. ‘Your papa’s name is Giovanni. He used to live in Sicily, but I heard he has now gone to Rome.’

  So her father was not dead at all? Carla felt she should be shocked. Yet something inside her had suspected this all along. After all, it wouldn’t have been the first lie Mamma had told her. Giovanni must be the man with the funny hat under Mamma’s bed. The neighbour’s remark prompted Carla to take another look at the box, which, now they were back in Italy, Mamma had hidden at the back of the wardrobe behind her clothes. Sure enough, tucked inside an old envelope, was her birth certificate. There was a blank space in the section for the father’s name.

  Despite this, Carla knew that she must not ask Mamma anything or she would be even more upset than she was already. So she talked to Nonna instead. ‘Do you have his address so I can write to him?’ she asked. ‘If he knew I was here, he might want to see me.’

  ‘Hush, child.’ Nonna put her arms around her. ‘I am afraid he wants nothing to do with us. You must let the past be the past.’

  Carla reluctantly did as she was told. What choice did she have? No one would even tell her what her father’s real surname was. Cavoletti was of course her mother’s maiden name, something she’d never thought of when they sent those postcards to Nonno and Nonna.

  ‘I should have said nothing,’ added the neighbour. ‘And don’t press your mother or grandmother. They have been through enough.’

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t plan for the future. ‘Don’t worry,’ she would say, holding her mother in her arms when she wept every night. ‘We will be all right in the end.’

  ‘But how?’ her mother had sobbed.

  Her fists clenched. ‘I will think of something.’

  Before long, Carla showed the natural aptitude at school that she had just started to discover back in England, before it all went wrong. Nonno began to boast about his granddaughter who got such excellent grades. He even began to listen to the teachers who said she should consider a career in the ‘professions’. How about becoming an avvocata? Carla showed great skill during school debates.

  And that’s when the idea began to form. She would go to university to study law. It was a five-year course – a commitment – but it would be worth it. You can do it, her teachers had assured her. (Indeed her grades were so good that she’d been put up a year at school.) But the real reason that Carla wanted to take the course was because Lily had proved that law gave you power. A right to decide other people’s future. The Lily she’d seen in the corridor that last night was full of it. It might also make her rich enough to rescue Mamma from the stultifying atmosphere in Nonno’s home.

  With the hindsight of time, Carla realized that Mamma had not behaved as well as she might have done in England. Perhaps she should have called that doctor sooner. Maybe she should not have had an affair with a married man. But she had been a vulnerable single mother. Now it was up to her, Carla, to protect her.

  It was during her final year at university in Rome that one night, when researching a particularly dull case, she had suddenly felt a burning need to see what would happen if she put Ed and Lily’s name into Google.

  So! Lily was a partner now. It was not fair that she was doing so well while Mamma was almost a prisoner in Nonno’s home as a result of Lily’s actions. The headshot on the firm’s website showed that she had cut her hair into a bob. Lily looked almost glamorous. Nothing like the Lily she once knew.

  As for Ed, she could find very little about him apart from the odd small exhibition here and there. But then a picture jumped out at her from an obscure arts site. Her heart started pounding. The picture was of a little girl with black curls and a smile playing on her lips which somehow managed to look both innocent and knowing at the same time. The colours were dramatic – a crimson-red dress against a sky-blue background – but it was the way the child looked out of the frame that really got you. It was as if she was there in the same room.

  Which of course she had been. Because the child had been her. The dress had in fact been black. But an artist, Ed had said at the time, was ‘entitled to change things’.

  ‘Artist sells acrylic painting to anonymous art collector for a five-figure sum,’ announced the text below.

  A five-figure sum?

  Stunned, she read on.

  ‘Ed Macdonald has given hope to all up-and-coming artists everywhere after a collector made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “I actually painted The Italian Girl some years ago and entered it for an award where it won third prize. However, it didn’t find a home. I was stunned when a buyer, who has asked not to be named, recently walked into a gallery where I exhibit and bought it on the spot.” ’

  It wasn’t fair! If it were not for her, there would have been no painting. So Carla wrote to Ed. She had not been paid for her services as a model, she pointed out. Perhaps Ed might like to share some of the money he had been paid.

  After three weeks, there was no reply. Maybe they had moved. So she sent a second letter to the gallery mentioned at the end of the article.

  Still nothing. How dare he not acknowledge her? The more she thought about it, and the more phone calls she had from poor, housebound Mamma, the more she became convinced that she was owed something. The bitterness grew and grew inside her.

  Then a chance remark from a tutor gave her an idea. ‘You are fluent in English, yes? Perhaps you should consider a transfer course in the UK. It will increase your earning power.’

  It would also take her nearer to the people who had hurt Mamma, including Larry. To claim what was rightfully hers. And to have what Lily had. Money. A good job. A new look – maybe a bob would suit her too. And whatever else she could take.

  There was a gentle touch on her arm. Carla started. Woken from the dream-like memories of the past. ‘We are about to land,’ said the man with the terrible tie. ‘I thought I ought to tell you.’

  Peeling off her eye mask, she smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not at all. Where are you going to stay in London?’

  ‘King’s Cross,’ she said confidently, thinking back to the hostel she had found on the Internet. It had looked so nice, and it was reasonably priced too.

  ‘Have you been to London before?’

  ‘Of course. But many years ago.’

  ‘Things have changed.’ He took a business card out of his pocket. ‘Here is my number in case you feel like a drink sometime.’

  She glanced at the silver wedding band on his left hand. If Mamma’s experience had taught her one thing, it was that married men were not worth it. ‘Thank you but that is not necessary.’

  His lips tightened. ‘Your call.’

  There was a bump, followed by a high screaming of brakes. They were hurtling forward so fast that she wondered if they would be able to stop. This time, there was no comforting pat on the arm. Instead, her companion was restless. Keen to get up and grab his bag. If she’d accepted his card, Carla told herself, he might have taken her out to dinner.

  But nothing must be allowed to distract her from her plan.

  EU ARRIVALS THIS WAY.

  Heathrow was so busy! The queues were never-ending. It took so long for her little red suitcase to come bumping down on the conveyor belt that Carla had almost convinced herself it had been lost. Relieved, she started to haul it off, but a nice young man stepped in to do it for her.

  Where should she go next? Bewildered, Carla stared at the various signs. Taxi? Perhaps the Tube would be cheaper. Nonno had given her some money for the course and her living costs, but it was not very much.

  It took a long time to reach King’s Cross station after taking the wrong train twice. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the man selling newspapers outside, ‘but can you tell me where this street is?’

  Ignoring the address she put before him, he served the customer behind. It was getting dark now and she’d forgotten how much colder England was than Italy. Shivering and hungr
y, she asked directions from person after person in the crowds swanning past. Each one walked away as if she hadn’t spoken. Eventually, after going into a ‘Late Nite’ chemist, she found someone who was kind enough to get out their phone and warn her that it was a ‘good fifteen-minute walk’.

  Eventually she found it. Carla stared with distaste at the dirty concrete building with peeling green paint on the door. Two girls came out, arm in arm, wearing tights with big glaring holes in them. Over the tights were denim shorts.

  Smoothing down the neat cream linen jacket which Mamma had made specially for the trip, Carla went in. ‘I have booked a room,’ she said politely to the woman at the desk.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Carla Cavoletti.’

  The woman sniffed and handed her a key. ‘Third floor. First on the right. Lift’s out of order.’

  The steps smelled of pee. Someone had scrawled rude words on the wall in red paint. Carla’s heart sank. This room was like a monk’s cell! The bed was narrow with a scratchy grey blanket. There was a desk, but the lighting was so poor that it would be hard to study there. The ‘en suite’ bathroom was a cupboard with a washbasin. The notice on the wall informed her that the toilets on this floor were not in use. PLEASE USE THE FACILITIES ON THE SECOND FLOOR.

  Carla sat down on the edge of the bed and flicked on her phone. ‘Ring when you arrive,’ Mamma had said.

  ‘Hello? It is me. Yes, the flight was wonderful and the hotel, she is beautiful. You know what my plans are, Mamma. I’ve told you so many times. Tomorrow, I register at the college. Yes, Mamma. I told you. I will also find Larry to tell him where you are. I love you too.’

  As Carla ended the call, a cockroach scuttled out from under the bed. Ugh! She swiftly ground it into the floor with her stiletto heel. There was a scrunching sound. Disgusting! Yet also strangely satisfying.

  Kicking the dead body under the bed, she took out her cigarette case, despite the NO SMOKING sign on the wall, lit one and inhaled deeply. That was better. Then she walked to the window. Outside, London glittered with lights and roared with the constant hum of traffic and possibilities. Somewhere out there were the three people she needed to find. And find them she would.