Thankfully at that moment Robert came pootling down the hallway trying to eat a banana. I was glad of an excuse to escape for a minute.
‘Robert, let me just peel that for you.’
‘Thank you. Who are you?’
‘I’m Maggie.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Robert but you can call me Bob.’
Behind me, I heard Anna say, ‘Massimo, pack a case and get out. You can stay with me until we repair the damage you’ve caused.’
A long pause. ‘If we ever can.’
Then a sound I didn’t know Anna was capable of making.
A sob.
49
Two Years Later, MAGGIE
Anna took a seat on our terrace with its distant view of the sea. Just looking out over the water with the pier silhouetted against the sky made me feel as though I was living somewhere exotic. Anna had begged us not to move from Siena Avenue but Nico had been adamant. To her credit, she’d been very restrained when the ‘For Sale’ sign went up. Thankfully she took herself off to Italy for a holiday a few days before we left forever, sparing us the ordeal of seeing her distraught face bobbing out from behind the removals van. During the nine months we’d lived in Moneypenny Cottage, she’d even managed the odd compliment hidden under a criticism: ‘You wouldn’t think that a dark house like this would be so cosy.’
Instead she directed her venom towards Caitlin, or the person now known as ‘that first wife’ at every opportunity. When she saw Caitlin’s pastel jugs on a shelf in the hallway, she turned up her nose. ‘I don’t know why you’ve still got these. That woman had such insipid taste in everything. And they’re just dust traps anyway.’
I’d let Nico decide what to bring with us when we moved. Francesca just shrugged whenever Nico asked her if she wanted to keep various bowls, mirrors and all sorts of other old crap no one had ever needed in their lives. Unless you were a brushing-behind-the-radiators, grout-whitening, lavender-balls-in-your-bloomers type of person.
Today though, Anna was on her big-family-gathering best behaviour, snapping open her bag and handing out tubes of Baci chocolates to Francesca and Sam.
She hesitated, then passed me a little box, wrapped in the sort of paper that cost three quid a sheet. ‘Happy birthday, Maggie.’
Mum raised her eyebrows at me, Parker-speak for ‘That looks like it cost a bomb’.
I was fairly confident it wasn’t a garden gnome to match the one Mum had bought me: ‘I couldn’t resist him. As soon as I saw him, I thought of your new garden.’
I wasn’t sure what had made me laugh the most – the fact that Mum had spotted a gnome playing an accordion and somehow seen it as a must-have feature for our patio or Nico’s face when I opened it. I bet he was bloody delighted that, after all those evenings he’d spent clearing weeds, training a clematis over an archway and faffing about with pots to ‘draw the eye at the right level’, my mum had taken one look and thought, ‘What this place needs is a gnome.’
I picked carefully at the Sellotape, sensing Mum hovering, ready to stash the poppy-print paper to reuse another time.
Inside the box lay an antique silver and sapphire pendant. ‘It’s gorgeous, Anna. Thank you so much.’
She smiled. ‘It belonged to my mother. It was always a sadness to her that I didn’t have a daughter, but I know she would want you to have it.’
Tears pricked. I gave her a full-blown Parker hug. She accepted it rather than embraced it, but the fact that I even dared risk disturbing her scarf was such a huge step forward from when I first joined the Farinelli family.
But with the tact typical of a thirteen-year-old, Sam failed to disguise his lack of interest in Anna’s big ‘You have been accepted into our family’ gesture and butted into my thanks with a ‘Can I bring the cake out now?’ He was like a steam engine that needed a regular shovelling in of fuel. At least his rubbish father had served one purpose: Sam was already a good few inches taller than Mum and me and showed every sign of inheriting his dad’s slim frame. At my lack of resistance, he went running up the steps to our cottage. Anna did a quiet tut in deference to my birthday but that little telltale click of her tongue was still audible. I had failed to fall in with the Farinelli rules about eating – refusing to peel apples, finishing dinner with a big mug of milky coffee and never feeling the need to mop up sauce with a piece of bread. Hence I didn’t give a hoot that the kids would hoover up my birthday cake before we’d had a barbecue. Sausages, burgers, chocolate cake… it all went down the same way regardless of scoffing order.