I don’t like to think of the details. Occasionally I find my mind wandering down a dangerous, dark alleyway where fear rushes towards me like the shadow of a jack-knifing lorry and adrenalin surges and glass shards and bone fractures and caves. If I catch myself off guard, I’ll sometimes wonder what Luca actually saw and heard, what he felt, whether he had time to be afraid. My story is that he died instantly, that he did not suffer and that he wouldn’t have known anything about the accident. ‘That’s a blessing,’ people say kindly. They think my story is true, but I don’t know whether it is or not.
Luca had a premonition that he would die on the motorway, in an accident. Whenever we were stuck in traffic jams, no matter how long and tedious, he would always tell me not to complain.
‘At least you’re not the poor bastard at the front of this queue,’ he would say, and I would think of the poor bastard and how he or she would have left home that morning just as they did every morning, with no idea of what lay in store. Now, at best, they would be in the back of the ambulance hurtling down the other side of the road with its sirens screaming and its lights blazing. And I would sigh and tuck my hair behind my ears and say, ‘Yes, I know. There but for the grace of God.’ Luca, who didn’t believe in God but was certainly not lacking in self-esteem, would say, ‘See, if I hadn’t spent that extra ten minutes watching the football results …’ So we were late for the wedding, so we missed the support band, so bloody what?
four
Luca had broad shoulders and slim hips and long, footballer’s legs. His eyes were dark and his eyelashes were dark and if his eyes had been slightly larger he would have looked quite feminine. Because he was so dark, he always looked as if he needed a shave. His hair was black and fine with a wave in it, which meant that when it was long it almost had ringlets. When he was younger, he wore his hair down to his shoulders. More recently he had it cut, but it was still longer than was the fashion. It didn’t matter in London. There you can be who you want to be.
Luca was always scruffy. He never perfected the habit of tidiness. I don’t recall him ever tucking in a shirt. Often his socks didn’t match. More often he didn’t wear socks at all, even though this made his trainers smell. I didn’t mind the smell of his trainers but other people would complain.
Luca was opinionated. He used to say this was a virtue because, according to him, all his opinions were right. Everything was black or white with him. He either loved or he didn’t love. He either cared or he didn’t. There was no middle ground.
Luca was a chef. He cared about his job. He loved his colleagues. He wouldn’t tolerate sloppy presentation or poor ingredients, overcooked fish or undercooked pasta. He was a perfectionist in his work. He laughed a lot. He shouted a lot. He made a good deal of noise. He was emotional. In that respect, he was very like his father.
When he was watching football on TV, Luca would sit forward in his chair, with his elbows on his knees, urging the players on and shouting instructions to them. If they followed his instructions and scored a goal, he would say, ‘Good boy! Well done!’ If they didn’t he would groan and sit back in the chair and slap his forehead with the heel of his hand and it would be like the end of the world for a few moments.
Luca loved football almost beyond the point of reason. He followed Team Napoli and said that Diego Armando Maradona was the best football player in the world, ever. Stefano said it was embarrassing these days to admit to supporting Napoli because they were so crap. In spite of this, sometimes Luca and I and Stefano and his family would all go to Italy so that Stefano and Luca could watch Napoli being beaten while Bridget and the children and I swam in the pool of our rented villa on the shanks of Vesuvius. On those magical Italian evenings, we would drink wine as the sun set and dip bread into olive oil before eating whatever feast it was that Luca had prepared for us. ‘Here, Liv, taste, taste!’ he would order, emerging from the plastic stripping which kept the flies out of the kitchen with a plate of something fresh and fragrant. He would press a titbit between my lips whether I wanted it or not. The children would squeal with delight. Stefano, a bottle between his legs, tugging at the corkscrew with both hands, would say, ‘Oh, leave the girl alone!’ out of the corner of his mouth, without dropping the cigarette that was stuck to his lip.
Luca used to play football all the time, everywhere. If he didn’t have a ball he would use a scrunched-up cigarette packet, or a conker, or an empty Coke tin, or anything else he could kick.
Luca smoked more than anybody else I have ever known – except perhaps Marc.
Luca could play bass guitar quite well. Sometimes he gigged with a band from Southend called The Piers.
Luca was completely physically unselfconscious. He wore an earring in each ear. That was his only affectation.
When he was in the bath, Luca liked to put a flannel over his face, hang one leg and one arm over the side, the dark hairs flat against his skin, and listen to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Luca turned me on. At work, on the tube, in the supermarket, whenever I was bored, I would dream of our love-making. I adored him. I would never have been unfaithful. Why would I have looked at any other man when no other man came close?
Luca had my name tattooed on his left arm, close to his heart.
five
Luca was buried in a plot already reserved for the Felicone family in Arcadia Vale, a sprawling, overgrown Victorian cemetery close to his parents’ home in the northern city of Watersford. The city lies about twelve miles east of the small seaside town where we both grew up and is known for its university, its cathedral and its glassworks. These used to produce highly prized goblets in pink and white marbled glass, before the seam of coal that fired their furnaces was exhausted a century ago and they all closed down. Angela and Maurizio live in a grand, bay-fronted semi in one of the more upmarket suburbs of the city. The road outside their house is wide and bordered by lime trees whose roots buckle the pavements at intervals. The original settlement of Watersford was built on a hill in the curve of the river, and a small part of the old city remains intact behind a section of stout, defensive wall. There is a tangle of impossibly steep and narrow streets connected by flights of dipping and sloping stone steps. Beyond this is a much greater, grander city built by the show-off Georgians and Victorians which stretches down to the river and beyond. It contains Watersford’s neo-classical civic buildings, tall and elegant with sandstone façades, the university, the grammar schools and the main shopping roads. There are fountains and churches and little parks with wrought-iron fences and statues of the great men of commerce. Parts of the city were destroyed in the war and the gaps were filled with concrete and brick constructions which haven’t worn nearly as well as the older buildings. There’s an ugly shopping centre where the drug addicts hang out and a bowling alley and a car park and the former Romeo and Juliet’s nightclub which is now a casino. The residential areas radiate away from this hub, crescents and avenues and streets of villas, houses and tenements. As the glass industry brought wealth and opportunity to Watersford, so its population grew. The small church graveyards were soon overcrowded and Arcadia Vale was created to prevent an impending crisis. The elegantly landscaped cemetery was situated on the far side of the river. It overlooks the city and the city watches back and the river curls like a ribbon in between.
Given the choice, Luca would probably have preferred a quiet cremation followed by a noisy, drunken wake in the Bow Belle, which was our local pub in London, but in the face of his parents’ grief I didn’t have the heart to insist upon this, or even to suggest it. They wanted their son to be buried in traditional fashion in Arcadia Vale where the family could visit him whenever they wished, and I concurred. It was the least I could do after everything I had put them through and I didn’t think it would matter to me where he was.
But it did.
By mid-February a black dog of depression and misery had come to sit on my shoulder. I’d heard of such creatures before, of course, but never encountered one
. My dog was not an evil presence; more, as is the nature of dogs, a loyal and trustworthy companion, an embodiment of my unhappiness. It was always with me. It weighed heavy on my shoulder. I could feel its weight in my bones, causing me to stoop and walk with my head lowered, my eyes cast down. The dog was on the pillow beside me when I awoke, and curled up on my chest when I fell asleep. On the occasional instance when I forgot what had happened, the dog was there to remind me, its breath hot in my ear. At some point, I thought, I would have to chase the dog away, throw metaphorical stones at it or something. But for the time being I welcomed the dog into my life, and even went so far as to talk to it. Only the dog understood the depth of my loneliness and the enormity of my fear. The dog, I reasoned, had come to fill the gap, large as a universe, left by Luca.
In March I started scanning the recruitment sections of national newspapers for jobs in Watersford, but public-relations posts are hard to find. After a dozen letters, and God knows how many online applications, I secured an interview with a PR company that specialized in the leisure sector and flew up to Watersford, but I could see in the directors’ eyes that I hadn’t got the job even before they stood up to shake my cold and trembling hand. I probably smelled of the previous evening’s gin.
I would have to come up with a different plan.
After the funeral, Angela called me occasionally. During these calls she made an effort to sound attentive and affectionate, as if she were speaking to somebody she cared about. She must have been calling out of loyalty to Luca. We both knew it wasn’t out of love for me.
Before Luca died, we used to maintain a polite distance. We would be cordial to one another at family functions, and if Angela called and I answered the phone, our exchanges would be short but civil. She sent me birthday cards, but didn’t write With love on them, and I dutifully sent her birthday cards but deliberately picked embossed, flowery cards with poems when I knew perfectly well she would have preferred a tasteful watercolour. It was my way of retaliating for the myriad minor snubs she dealt out to me over the years.
Luca never seemed to notice, but I was always aware of how she favoured the other daughters-in-law, particularly Nathalie, and always found something to criticize in me. Nathalie could do no wrong. As the years went by, she became more like Angela and the bond between them grew stronger. It became clear that, although the blood-link was tenuous, they had genes in common. They shared the same values, beliefs and prejudices. They enjoyed the same music and disliked the same television programmes and they concurred in the opinion that there was little I had to say that was of any interest. I understood, of course, why Angela behaved like this, but after so many years of being cold-shouldered at family get-togethers I had tired of my black-sheep status.
It didn’t help that, after all I had put the family through, I had failed to deliver the expected grandchildren. Bridget, Nathalie and Carlo’s wife Sheila had all produced babies without any fuss or difficulty. Angela, who had also excelled at motherhood, regarded conception as a straightforward matter.
‘No good news for us yet then, Olivia?’ she would ask every time we visited. Luca said it was just her way of being interested in me. I regarded it as very bad manners. I’m sure she believed my failure to fall pregnant was proof that I was not committed to her son. In truth, Luca and I did want children. We had tried for years, but there were physiological issues that had stopped us conceiving. My physiological issues. He wanted to tell his mother about them, but I thought it was none of her business and was damned if I was going to humiliate myself by airing any aspect of my private life or the deficiencies of my private parts in her restaurant. So I pretended that I was just too busy to think about babies, having too much fun, enjoying my life too much. Angela would sniff and shake her head and use this ‘selfishness’ as another example of my bad character. I didn’t care. It was better than her knowing the truth.
Before Luca died, Angela was my nemesis. She enjoyed humiliating me, in little ways and big ways, especially in front of Nathalie. Now we were both bereaved, things were a little different. We were a little more considerate towards one another. I appreciated her concern, which seemed to be almost genuine, and although we struggled to find new areas of conversation once we had enquired after each other’s health and exhausted the topic of the weather in our respective parts of the country, she continued to call.
After Luca’s death, when she saw the way I was, I think she finally believed that I had loved her son. For that, she would never forgive me.
When I told Angela I intended to move back to Watersford, she sounded surprised, and far from enthusiastic about the idea. I heard her take a deep breath when I broke the news, almost a gasp, and then there was an uncomfortable pause before she responded.
‘Olivia, I’m sure Luca wouldn’t want you packing up and moving.’
I twirled the phone cord around my fingers. ‘It’s something I have to do, Angela. I need to be close to him for a while.’
‘You’re not thinking of staying permanently then?’
‘No, not at the moment.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
I made an effort to ignore this remark.
‘So what are your plans?’ she asked.
‘I don’t really have any plans.’
Angela tried a different tack. ‘Is it really a good idea to leave your whole life behind you? Your house, your job, your friends …’
‘Luca was my life. Nothing else matters. Being in Watersford, near him, is the only thing I care about right now.’
‘But what about Lynnette? She needs you to be in London.’
‘Lynnette’s fine about it,’ I lied. I hadn’t even mentioned the move to my sister. ‘She thinks it’s a good idea.’
‘Right. I see. And have you told your mother?’
‘I’ll let her know my new address.’
I could imagine Angela exhaling and tapping her pen against her accounts book as she acquiesced. She wasn’t going to talk me out of this plan, no matter how much she disliked it, so, typically, she began to take control of it.
‘Well, of course, Olivia, you must come and stay with Maurizio and me in Watersford. We’d be pleased to put you up for a few days.’
I was ready for this. ‘No, Angela, thank you, I’ll look for somewhere to rent.’
Angela sighed again. It was a habit she had picked up from her husband and modified over the years so that her sighs could convey a variety of emotions and messages. This one signified frustration tinged with disappointment.
‘All right. But when you’ve found somewhere, you let me know where you are so that I can keep an eye on you.’
I promised, although in my heart I knew the last thing I wanted or needed was to have my mother-in-law watching my every move.
six
I don’t remember the first time I met Angela, but she does. As you might expect, I come out of the encounter in an unflattering light. ‘Not a pretty baby,’ is how Angela describes me. I was about a year old, bald, fat and red-faced, buttoned up in a knitted jacket and screaming in my pram. This was a big, old-fashioned, second-hand affair which was being pushed by my long-suffering mother, a newcomer to Portiston, the seaside town to the east of Watersford. With us was my sister, a quiet, well-behaved four-year-old. A squall had blown up outside on the seafront, and my mother, anxious to keep her daughters out of the rain, had taken us into Marinella’s Restaurant. Her immediate priority was to buy something sweet that she could put into my mouth to shut me up.
My mother and Angela were of a similar age. Both my mother’s parents hailed from Lancashire. Angela had been born in Glasgow, the only daughter of second-generation Italian immigrants who owned and ran a chain of fish-and-chip shops. Both women had been encouraged to learn a useful skill and had left school at sixteen to take secretarial classes which equipped them for office work. At the age of twenty, both had started courting and at the age of twenty-two both were married. The difference was that Angela’s marriage was
successful.
When my mother arrived in Portiston with her two small daughters, she was on the run from a small-town scandal that was nipping at her heels. Up until then our little family had been living in an upmarket suburb of Wigan in what appeared to be complete propriety. This image was shattered when it transpired that my father, an electrician, was romantically involved with the teenage girl who kept the books at the shop he owned. My mother, with her secretarial certificates, could have kept the books herself, but she didn’t believe it was ‘done’ to be a mother and to work.
This is obviously conjecture, but knowing my mother as I do, I imagine the neighbours would have been outwardly sympathetic, but inwardly just a little pleased at this turn of events. My mother was, and most likely still is, a snob, and there would have been those who thought she got what was coming to her.
Mum’s overriding concern was to avoid being the subject of gossip. She craved respectability and the admiration of her friends and neighbours above everything else. She cared profoundly about what other people thought of her, and their pity would have been as wounding to her as their Schadenfreude. The situation was intolerable.
Fortunately, as well as her pride, Mum also had access to a small inheritance which she’d wisely squirrelled away from her husband. She had the keys to the house of a spinster aunt who had lived, and died, in Portiston. Nobody had bothered to sell the house; it was fully furnished, and available. So we upped sticks and decamped to Portiston, where nobody knew us and our history. Mum allowed people to believe that she had been widowed. Lynnette was somewhat confused but everyone else, including me when I was old enough to understand, accepted the lie. For the first seventeen years of my life, I really believed that my father was dead.
Angela, on the other hand, had married Maurizio, a gentle, hard-working Glaswegian whose family originally hailed from Naples. Maurizio’s catering skills complemented Angela’s administrative abilities: they made a good team. Angela’s wealthy parents gave the young couple Marinella’s as a wedding present. They worked hard to establish the restaurant, living in the large flat above it and expanding their family in line with their profits.
The Love of My Life Page 2