The Silent Wife(2)

I glanced behind me for moral support. My mates from the estate gave me a thumbs-up. I looked away quickly in case they started whooping as though a horse they’d bet on had come up trumps. I’d already seen my soon-to-be mother-in-law eyeing up the cleavages and sequins with disapproval. God knows what Anna thought of my best friend’s hat, sitting on her head like a feathery Walnut Whip. Instead, I looked to my mum for encouragement. She didn’t disappoint, grinning away, a jolly rhododendron bush in a room full of austere alliums. I replayed her words from earlier. ‘Hold your head up high, darlin’. You’re the best thing to happen to that family. Give his daughter some stability and love.’

For once in my life, I wanted to surrender to romance, to believe love was sparkly and special and not something that made you look in the mirror and shake your head at your own stupidity.

While I was taking my vows, I kept my eyes on Nico’s, cocooning myself in their kindness and warmth, insulating myself from the rest of the room. But Francesca’s stares were drilling into my back, making me stumble over the pronunciation of Nico’s middle name, Lorenzo. I imagined the whole family rolling their eyes. Nico squeezed my hand, reminding me we’d discussed how tricky this might be, prepared for it. That, as the politicians liked to say, ‘we were in it together’. But I still felt the prickle of Francesca’s opinions swooping between us, looking for a crack or a crevice in which to park her protest, the fermented fury that two years after her mother had died, Nico had chosen to marry again.

Despite my best efforts at getting to know her, she veered between stonewalling and outright rudeness. Sometimes her face lit up when I suggested a trip to the cinema or dinner out, before closing down again as though any enthusiasm for my ideas would be disloyal to her mother. Coming to our wedding would probably seem like a betrayal with bells on it, so I’d suggested to Nico it might be kinder to give her the choice about whether or not to attend. But Nico was resolute. ‘We want to be a family, not an opt-in, opt-out multiple-choice group. We’ve got to present a united front. In the end, it will make her feel safe.’

But how could your father marrying again be a cause for celebration? For a thirteen-year-old, it must have rammed home the message that her mother’s memory was fading further and further into the distance. That her father, the person whose grief had been as acute as her own, had learnt to live without her and now Francesca was stumbling forwards, alone in holding the bereavement standard aloft.

When I heard the shrieking behind me, my heart leapt for a second, thinking Francesca had finally lost control. Even the registrar paused as a scream reverberated round the room. Light footsteps that could only belong to Nico’s seven-year-old nephew, Sandro, echoed on the marble floor. The clack of high heels followed him, then the door banged shut.

I resisted turning round, forcing myself to tune into the registrar who was working up to the words I’d dreaded, the bit about in sickness and in health. I couldn’t concentrate on what we were promising each other, only that Nico would be saying these words for a second time. Had he for one moment imagined the burden of that vow, the reality he might be forced to face? Had Nico really expected Caitlin, with the toned biceps and sleek hair, to cash in the bit about ‘in sickness’, to watch her slip away, a little more, week by week? When he thought about having kids, did he ever imagine sitting at a table set for two, talking brightly to a teenage daughter, trying to ignore the third place where Caitlin used to sit, shocking and bold in its emptiness?

His voice caught on those words. I put my hand on his arm to reassure him I was expecting to bulldoze through the next fifty years without so much as a fallen arch. The way he grabbed my hand made me realise his first marriage would shape his second.

Thank God I’d lived long enough not to expect the fairy tale.





2





LARA




A little frisson of disapproval dominoed around the congregation – a unanimous Farinelli family frown – as Maggie walked in, barefoot, clutching a single sunflower. If not exactly dancing, she was close to prancing as she made her way down the aisle on the arm of her son, Sam, as though the very beat of ‘Chapel of Love’ was seeping up into her feet, bringing joy to her limbs.

As Sam did a little shimmy past in his junior-sized top hat and tails, I hoped no one else heard my husband, Massimo, say, ‘It’s like the circus coming to town.’ I couldn’t resist a glance at my mother-in-law, Anna, standing there ramrod straight, her pillbox hat perched like a predatory eagle on her head. Her face was a perfect picture of disdain, as though she was having to concentrate on not shouting, ‘Will someone switch this racket off?’