Julia’s notebook had been left hidden in her sock drawer thousands of miles away. It was as if a sixth sense had prepared her for the fact that here in Florence she would not need it. She didn’t know why this had happened or whether it was temporary. All that she knew was that here in this Italian peninsula things had returned to their status quo. The horrible thoughts she had harboured about Ben’s possible infidelity, about Ben’s possible illness, about Ben’s mystery that she still couldn’t unravel had disappeared. She felt serene and secure. She felt safe with him, a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time. Here she did not need to fret about anything, Ben was doing all the thinking for them and she, like a young obedient child, followed willingly. Her reward lay in the nights of passion Ben had rekindled like two honeymooners having an insatiable appetite for each other’s bodies, wanting more.
The time spent in Italy was magical. It was not just a change to Julia’s dreary routine back home, but it provided her with so many new tastes, sensations and experiences that she craved for more. The trip was quenching her thirst for culture and knowledge. It was fulfilling her complete need as a woman. She felt whole again as they roamed the Uffizi discussing the masterpieces on the walls. The children were content in these surroundings and the moaning and whining that was so exemplified back home was non-existent here. They had stopped squabbling with one another and teasing each other over petty issues like they did back home, it was as if everyone had been sprinkled with the magical fairy dust that this city provided.
That eventful wintry night had not only changed Sophia’s life but also Julia’s. Now she realised that the shock of seeing her friend so brutally attacked and in that horrible state had impinged on her consciousness so badly that it was as if she had been there, as if she had visualised the attack, as if some of Sophia’s wounds were her own. It was during this holiday in Italy that Julia realised that her healing process had been complete. If Sophia was not yet ready to do so, Julia had chosen life over death. She had chosen to move on and live life with whatever the future held in store for her and not renounce everything as Sophia had done. She had done a lot for Sophia in the last months. She had dedicated so much of her time and energy to her; however, it was necessary to take a step forwards. She would go back to work in October. She would start earning a regular income again. She would start going out, wearing new suits and smart shoes. She would become a busy working mum again. She would meet new colleagues at work, some of whom would become friends. She would be caught up in the craziness of juggling work with her children. She would be super busy but fulfilled. When Ben would return home from work she would grumble about all the multitasking she had to do. She would have sleepless nights thinking about work deadlines and figuring out how to balance school appointments with her work schedule; however, she would feel happy again. A person with a life of her own and not just a life dedicated to others. She would of course still dedicate her life to Ben and the children but there would be that fraction dedicated to Julia too. She would build on her aspirations and ambitions. She would slowly build up her career again and she would feel mentally challenged again.
Julia had still not discussed this return to work with Sophia; however, she had broached the subject with Ben during one of the evening strolls back to their Florentine apartment. Ben hadn’t been too convinced about all the benefits that Julia had enthusiastically reeled off to him but she was not put off by it. Ben had always been like that and he needed to adjust himself to new ideas. He had always known that Julia would soon return to work; however, he had not realised just how much she had missed this part of her life. She was caught up in the idea of returning to work, whereas he was more cautious. He acknowledged the benefit of the extra income, as this would mean that he could reduce his working hours and see more of his family in the evenings; however, he was worried about the strain it would cause Julia who was already busy running a house-hold and raising three kids. Ben had always been protective of Julia. At times Julia resented the fact that he almost treated her like a young child; however, she was also aware that if he did this it was only caused by her clinginess and neediness of him. However, now she was adamant that her plan would work out. She needed to go back. The children were growing up and were depending on her less and less. She felt that now was the right time and that if she kept prolonging her return to work the gap in her CV would be frowned upon. The career break that was so fashionable to take would be viewed as a negative trait, which meant that her skills hadn’t been updated and that she was out of touch with the latest trends.
In the end Julia felt confident that she had won Ben over and that he was as enthusiastic about the upcoming change as she was. This was going to be a new phase in their life. They would be living on two incomes and the extra money coming in would mean that they could splurge out on more luxuries, which at the moment they couldn’t afford. Julia was already racking her brain at how she would find a job. She needed a job that wasn’t too far from home and to the children’s schools. Bristol would be ideal as the commuting was not too bad and if she was lucky she would be offered some tele-working too so that she could work in the comfort of her home and manage the children’s drop off and pick up times without too much stress. She could organise a car pool so that she wouldn’t have to collect the children on a daily basis. If she just found one parent who was willing to do this, it would cut down the times she had to collect and drop of the kids by half, and two other children would fit in her car together with her three children. Perhaps she would ask her parents to collect the children once a week; she knew that they would be willing to help her out in this way and would be enthusiastic to spend time with their grandchildren. Julia’s mind was running wild with these ideas and she knew that she was rushing ahead of things. She must take things one step at a time as it was useless planning so far ahead when there were so many other factors involved. However, she knew that there was no harm in dreaming about this. It made her look forward to the start of the scholastic year and she hadn’t felt this enthusiastic about something in such a long time. The thought of this gave her a renewed energy. She would make the most of the time with the children over the summer as her time with them would be limited in the coming year. In the evenings she would have to clean and tidy the house instead of just having all the time allocated to the children and their needs. She would need to cook and freeze meals in the evenings if she wanted to ensure that they kept a healthy diet and somehow in all this she also had to fit in her friend. She hadn’t yet thought much about this and as things stood this seemed like an impossibility; however, Julia was not going to let this taint her dream. At the moment everything was looking as rosy as ever. She knew that she was just being idealistic and the reality would be far different. It would bring stress and worries and problems of its own; however, there would be time for that in October, she would not lose sleep over it now. She felt a renewed vigour, a new lightness in her step. A feeling of euphoria washed over her like a Baptism so that a new Julia was being reborn. A Julia that had been cleansed of her past sins, her past life and she was now free to choose a new path in God’s grace. She felt clean and pure again, the same feeling she got when she carried out a good deed. At University she had once found a wallet in the canteen. She remembered that feeling she had when she had opened the wallet and found it full of crisp tenners. As a student on a tight budget she had an endless list of items she needed to buy. Items that were not just things she wanted but actually needed; however, that little voice in her head had told her that she must return the wallet. She had found an Organ Donar’s card in the wallet and from there it was easy to trace its owner. She hadn’t handed in the wallet to the University authorities or to the police, but had tracked down the person from the address on the identification card. The look on the student’s face when Julia had turned up unannounced and simply pushed the wallet into the girl’s hands without saying anything had remained imprinted in Julia’s memory for years after and the feeling she had felt
had made her feel so good that she knew it had been worth it. She knew that she had done the right thing. This is the Julia she was. She was a person with many flaws, but a person who was essentially good. She was living a life of lies and deceit but she convinced herself that the intention behind all these was not bad. She was doing this to protect Ben, but most of all to protect herself. Her dad had once told her that ‘A happy wife meant a happy life’ and this simplistic phrase had become a sort of mantra that convinced her that Sophia had been beneficial for Ben too, as it had kept Julia so happy and ultimately this meant remaining close to Ben in some warped, illogical way.
Chapter 15
Upon returning home the sensations she had experienced on holiday gradually began to wear off so that they eventually faded completely and their lives had gone back to the former routine. The children were busy that summer with their sports activities and both girls had dance lessons. All the children also attended catechism lessons and in Emma’s class they were being prepared to receive their confirmation. Andrew had now received his First Holy Communion and the religious lessons filled up their already busy time-tables. Julia dropped them off to the local swimming-pool for their swimming lessons and collected them from their play-dates and various birthday parties they were invited to. At times she felt tired by all the driving around and the fact that she was taken for-granted; however, when they lay asleep in their beds at night Julia would often slip into their bedrooms and look at them whilst they were far away in the land of dreams. She would restrain herself from touching Emma’s beautiful curls. She had so often twirled the strands of hair when she had been younger, but had stopped when it started to embarrass her. About a year ago she had tried to kiss Andrew when she had dropped him off on the way to school and he had firmly pushed her away embarrassed that his friends might see him. She had felt stabbed through the heart; however, she knew that this was just part of his growing up and that this was bound to happen sooner or later. They were all breaking free one by one and very soon even Laura would stop asking for cuddles and kissing her with hundreds of wet noisy kisses. At times when they were alone at home Andrew would sit in her lap and allow himself to be cuddled and kissed. She loved the way he looked at her as if she were the most powerful deity able to solve all his infantile problems. The children were all hers, just as an extension of her limbs or vital organs. She was the one who had carried them inside her, had chosen to give life to them. There were so many childless women out there nowadays, women who through their own choice had chosen other paths of life away from having children; however, they were one of the things she had never regretted doing. They had taught her so much and she had given and been given so much love from them in return. Her heart ached when she thought of anything bad ever happening to them. She often thought of the Virgin Mary and the pain she had suffered in seeing her son killed in a slow and agonising death.
She loved the children with all the pain and hurt they brought her. She loved them when they belittled her or argued with her, when at times they even shouted that they couldn’t stand her. She knew that these were words only spoken in anger, words which did not come from the heart. Words that she could so easily forgive. She loved the children for the laughter they brought in her life, for the innocence they had and for the overarching reason that she was their mother. The be-all and end-all of their world. The person who comforted them, supported them, nurtured them and loved them unconditionally. They were each so different with different moods, characters and personalities. She knew them inside out and no matter how old they grew they would always remain her babies etched forever inside her heart. She couldn’t begin to imagine the pain that parents went through when their marriage failed and custody of their children was shared. She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like going to bed and not having your children under the same roof of having to share the time spent with them, of having to miss out on birthdays, Christmases and other important events. Her life would be hollow without them and Ben. She loved Ben for having given her these precious angels. The love she had for each of her children was indescribable. She remembered the fear she had felt when she was pregnant with Andrew. It was the fear that she would not love her second child as much as she loved Emma. Now she laughed at the stupidity of this. Love was an elasticated belt that could be stretched to encompass more than one person. Hers had been wrapped around Ben for so long, they had shared so many years just the two of them together. Dating for five years and then another two years before Emma was born. They had had ample time as a couple to strengthen their relationship till it was strong and steadfast; however, although the children brought so many arguments with their arrival as they clashed over the different ways to raise the children, ironically the children bonded them together. At times she wondered if their marriage would have survived had they remained childless. Would the despair of not being able to have children have broken up their relationship? Would they have surpassed this hurdle together? They had always agreed on having three children, this was something they had spoken about early on in their courting days. Those were the days when so many beautiful plans had been made and discussed, they had never once mentioned what would have happened if those plans never materialised.
When they had started trying for a baby Julia had panicked at the thought that she might not get pregnant. What if they had spent years trying to conceive? She knew of many friends who had to go through IVF and the idea of all those painful injections terrified her; however, she was lucky as they conceived all three children effortlessly. She remembered the joy she had felt as she sat in her bathroom waiting for the pregnancy test to reveal the result, the way Ben had reacted to the news, the way it had brought so much joy to all around them. Ben had placed her on a pedestal throughout her pregnancy and from that moment of conception she had become that bit more important. She was not just his wife and lover, but now the mother of his child. She was the woman who now had given him three, healthy children. They were three gorgeous children whom he adored and loved infinitely.
Julia wondered if what she was experiencing now was just some temporary mid-life crisis Was it some pre-menopausal hormone that was arousing such suspicions which were probably non-found? At times she wanted to tear up the notebook and erase the notion from her head. It was absurd, her life was picture perfect and she was creating problems which weren’t there. Years ago, they had consulted a marriage counsellor when they had been going through a difficult patch. Julia imagined what the psychologist’s reaction would be, had they to return to her now and uproot this problem. In the end Julia had decided to stop going to the counsellor, why spend sixty pounds an hour to emerge from the session with more questions than when she started. She had always imagined that marriage counselling would help them by giving them solutions to problems, but what it gave was a list of endless scenarios and then you were thrown out to the dogs, left on your own devices to try and understand which was the best option. Perhaps one could argue that it opened up different options for you, but what was the benefit in having so many options when all you needed was one. It was exhausting, having so many possibilities thrown at you and as if within a maze you are meant to find the correct one. Julia preferred to remain oblivious to the possibilities that existed and limited herself to what she knew, as she had done in the past, she would tackle this problem systematically. In a rational, unemotional manner. She would jot down her lists and observations, thinking of the pros and cons to her lone words as if she were tackling a school comprehension.
Chapter 16
Throughout the summer she saw less and less of Sophia as it was more difficult to find the time to visit her friend. It was impossible to get through to her by phone and she never picked up the ringing phone, and since the accident she had never replied to any texts on her mobile. Julia suspected that she must have lost her phone in the attack or that Julian had broken it as she never spotted it lying around the house; whereas Sophia was previously addicted to checking her emails, Whats
App and Facebook pages, she never caught Sophia doing so now; in fact her Facebook page had last been updated three days before Christmas.
When Julia was around ten her parents had given her a hard-back copy of Great Expectations. She remembered reading the book spread out on her knitted blanket in her cosy bedroom. She had been fascinated by the characters in the novel, but especially the beautiful Estella. The power that Estella had over men was the power that Sophia had. She could tame men around her little finger so that they fell to her knees in adoration. She had a power that was achieved because of her beauty, but there was something more than that. She had an assertiveness within her, a magnetism, that drew people to love her. Like Estella she was the cause of many broken hearts, having refused many proposals of marriage and having turned down the earnest of suitors. It was as if all men fell short and the men she had in her life were used to satisfy her needs and then discard without another thought. Was it this that had caused Julian to lose control? Was it the sheer fear of losing Sophia? Despite hating Julian for what he had done, she pitied him when she thought of how desperate he must have been when he discovered that Sophia was no longer interested in him and had moved on to her next conquest; like a frantic game of chess always one move ahead in the game. However, what reminded Julia about the epic novel now was not the character of the beautiful Estella but that of the jilted Ms Havisham. Like her, Sophia’s beauty belonged to her previous life, the life before that terrible night. The beauty she looked at now felt out-dated. Like this character, Sophia was now stuck in time. The objects around her untouched as if that fateful night had stopped the clock ticking and time had stopped forever.
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