My Husband's Wife (6 page)

‘You heard her.' He's speaking more quietly now, but the anger is still there. ‘She's got a boyfriend. And we're married. Isn't that good enough for you?'

‘But is it good enough for
you
?' I whisper back.

There's a tight pause between us. Neither of us dares to speak.

I finally allow myself to think of our honeymoon and what happened. Or rather what didn't happen. My mind goes back further to the night after Ed's unexpected proposal on that second date in a little restaurant in Soho. To the fumbling afterwards on the bed in my tiny shared flat. To my mumbled request that, if he didn't mind, I'd rather ‘wait' until we got married.

His eyes had widened in disbelief. ‘You haven't done this before?'

I'd expected him to declare that this was ridiculous. That hardly anyone was still a virgin at twenty-five. I prepared myself to return his ring, admit it had all been a dream.

But instead, he had held me to him, stroking my hair. ‘I think that's rather sweet,' he'd murmured. ‘Just think what an amazing honeymoon we'll have.'

Amazing? More like a complete disaster.

Just as I'd feared, my body refused.

‘What's wrong?' he asked. But I couldn't – wouldn't – tell him. Even though I knew he thought it was his fault.

No wonder he turned his back to me.

The atmosphere became so bad between us that I made myself go through with it on the final night.

‘It will get easier,' he said quietly afterwards.

This is the time to tell him, I think now. I don't want to lose this man. Ironically, I love it when he cuddles me. I like talking to him too. Being with him. But I know that can't be enough for him, not for much longer. No wonder Ed is tempted by Davina. I have only myself to blame.

‘Ed, there's something that I must …'

I stop at a strange scratching noise. A note is being pushed under the door. Ed bends down and hands it to me silently.

This is Francesca from number 7. I have to work on Sunday. I am sorry to request. Please could you look after my little one. She will be no trouble.

Ed shrugs. ‘Up to you. After all. I'll be painting.' He turns to go to the bathroom, then stops. ‘Sorry, what were you about to say just now?'

‘Nothing.'

I'm filled with relief. Thanks to the timely distraction, the moment has passed. I'm glad. If I'd made my confession, I'd have lost Ed for ever.

And that can't happen.

Mamma was happy, observed Carla, with a lightness in her own heart. They sang together all the way to the bus stop. Last night Mamma and the man with the shiny car had danced so hard that the floor had shaken. But Carla had been a good girl and did not get out of bed to ask them to stop, even though it had been difficult to sleep. She'd cuddled up to Charlie the caterpillar instead.

Right now, she was jumping. It was essential, Carla told herself, to take even more care than usual to leap over the unlucky cracks in the pavement. She had to make sure that nothing bad happened after all the new good stuff.

‘We're sorry that you have been bullied,' one of the teachers had said – the only nice one – when all the others had gone out to play. ‘The boy who hit you has hurt others too. It will not happen again.'

Kevin wasn't there. So she was safe to bring Charlie into school! A warm feeling of thanks wrapped Carla up like a woolly cloud blanket.
Grazie! Grazie!
She would be like all the others.

Well, not quite. Carla eyed her reflection in the bus driver's mirror as she and Mamma got on. She would always be different because of her olive skin, her black
hair, and her eyebrows, which were thicker than anyone else's.
Hairy Carla Cavoletti!

‘Carla,' said Mamma sternly, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Do not jump up and down like that. It will not make the bus start any faster.'

But she was looking for Lily. Not long after her poorly eye, Mamma's boss had told her she had to work on a Sunday. ‘What am I to do?' Mamma had said, her eyes round with anguish. ‘I have no one to leave you with,
cara mia
.'

Then her gaze had fallen on the photograph of the hunched woman in a shawl with a face that looked like lots of little crinkly waves made out of stone. ‘If only your nonna were here to help.'

Carla had been ready with her idea. ‘The lady who took me to hospital, remember, from number 3. She said she would help any time.'

As she spoke, she remembered Charlie. Supposing Lily with the golden hair told Mamma that Charlie the caterpillar was not a present after all?

Too late. Mamma had already written a note and slid it under Lily's door. All Saturday night, Carla tossed and turned and worried in her little narrow bed with the simple cross above, made of wood from the Holy Land. Poor Charlie was scared too.
I do not want to leave you
, he said.

In the morning, Carla woke to find Mamma's eyes sparkling over her. ‘The nice lady and her husband are going to take you for the day. You must be good. Yes!'

Charlie's heart was beating as they walked down the corridor. Hers too.

Please don't let them be found out.

‘I will be back as soon as I can,' Mamma was saying to Lily. ‘You are so kind. I must thank you too for the present you bought her.'

There was a silence. So loud that everyone had to hear it. Slowly Carla looked up and met Lily's eyes. She was wearing trousers that made her hips look very wide, and she did not have lipstick on. Instinctively, Carla knew this was not the kind of woman who would lie.

‘Present?' Lily said slowly.

‘The caterpillar pencil case.' Carla's voice trembled as she fixed her eyes on Lily's while crossing her fingers behind her back. ‘You bought it for me after the hospital to make me feel better. Remember?'

Another long silence. Carla's fingers fell over themselves in her attempt to squeeze them even tighter. Then Lily nodded. ‘Of course. Now, why don't you come in. I thought we might make a cake together. Do you like baking?'

Mamma's voice sang out in relief. Carla's too. ‘She loves cooking!' ‘I do. I do!'

No school now, Carla told herself as she skipped inside. Instead it was a wonderful day! She and Lily got flour all over the floor when they weighed the cake ingredients. But her new friend did not get cross like Mamma. Nor did she have to have ‘a little rest' with her husband, a tall man called Ed who sat in the corner of the room doing something on a pad of paper. At first she was scared of him because he looked like a film star in one of the magazines that Larry brought Mamma. His hair reminded her a bit of Robert Redford, one of Mamma's heroes.

She was also a little alarmed because Ed asked Lily why
she'd moved his paints ‘again' in a fed-up voice, just like Larry's when he came over and found that she was still up.

But then Ed asked if he could draw her, and his face seemed to change. He looked much happier.

‘You have such wonderful hair,' he said as his eyes darted from the paper to her head and then back again.

‘Mamma brushes it every night! One hundred times.
Cento!
'

‘Chento?' said Ed hesitantly, as if he was tasting a strange food for the first time, and she giggled at his accent.

No one minded when Lily suggested lunch, even though Carla said she did not like chicken because Mamma had had a pet hen in Italy whose neck had been wrung by Mamma's father on her eighth birthday.

Instead, Carla taught Lily and Ed how to make proper pasta instead of the hard sticks they had in the cupboard. It took a long time, but how they giggled when she showed them how to stretch it from the clothes rack that hung above the cooker.

‘Stop!' commanded Ed, his hand raised. ‘I have to sketch the two of you, just like that! Go on, Carla. Put your arm through Lily's again.'

‘Charlie has to be in the picture too.'

As soon as she said the words, Carla knew she should have kept quiet.

Lily's face grew still as if someone had waved a magic wand over it. ‘How did you
really
get your toy, Carla?'

‘He is not a toy.' Carla hugged Charlie protectively. ‘He is real.'

‘But how did you get him?'

‘It is a secret.'

‘A bad secret?'

Carla thought of the other children in the class who had fathers and didn't have to rely on men in hats and shiny cars. Did that not give her a right to take what they had?

She shook her head slowly.

‘You stole him, didn't you?'

Something told Carla there was no point in disagreeing. Instead, she silently nodded.

‘Why?'

‘Everyone else has one. I didn't want to be different.'

‘Ah.' The frown on Lily's face ironed itself out. ‘I see.'

Carla gripped her hand. ‘Please don't tell.'

There was a silence. Ed didn't notice, his head glancing from them to the paper and back to them again.

Lily's sharp breathing was so loud that it sent little prickles down the skin of Carla's arm. ‘Very well. But you must not steal again. Promise?'

A balloon of hope rose out of that heavy grey puddle in her chest. ‘Promise.' Then she held Charlie up so Ed could get a better view. ‘Charlie says thank you.'

When Mamma came to knock on the door, Carla didn't want to go. ‘Can't I stay a bit longer?' she pleaded.

But Ed was smiling and had his hand around Lily's waist. Perhaps they wanted to dance. ‘Here,' he said, pushing a piece of paper into her hands. ‘You may have this.'

Both Carla and Mamma gasped.

‘You have captured my daughter exactly!' Mamma said. ‘You are so clever.'

Ed pushed his hands into his pockets and looked like Larry did when Mamma thanked him for the perfume or the flowers or whatever gift he had brought that evening. ‘It's only a sketch. Charcoal, you know. Don't touch or it will smudge.'

Carla would not have dreamed of touching it. She would only look. Was this really her? This was a picture of a child – not the nearly grown-up lady she wanted to be. Even worse, Charlie wasn't in it.

‘What do you say?' demanded Mamma.

‘Thank you.' Then, remembering the book they were reading at school about English kings and queens, she bent her knee in a sweeping curtsey. ‘Thank you for having me.'

To her surprise, Ed burst out laughing. ‘She's a natural. Come again any time, Carla. I will do a proper painting next time.' His eyes narrowed as if he was measuring her. ‘Maybe acrylics.'

And now, here they were on the bus to school, waiting for Lily.

Perhaps she will not come
, said Charlie from his place on her lap.
Perhaps she is still cross with us because you stole me
.

Carla stiffened. ‘Do not ever say that again. I deserved to have you. Just as you deserved to have me. Did you really want to stay with that big bully?'

Charlie shook his head.

‘Well then,' hissed Carla below her breath. ‘Let's not talk about it again, shall we?'

‘Hold on.' Her mother put out a hand protectively as the bus lurched forward. ‘It's starting at last.'

Sitting back in her seat, Carla watched the trees go past
with their yellow and green coats fluttering down to the ground. And then she saw her! Lily! Running down the street. Running as fast as she tried to run in her nightmares, even though her feet, in that other world, always stayed glued to the ground.

‘Come on!' she called out. ‘You can sit next to me!'

But their bus went on, gathering speed. On the other side of the street, she could see Ed, waiting for a different bus. He went another way to work, he'd said yesterday. Carla knocked hard on the window and waved. Yes! He was waving back. And although Carla was sad that Lily had missed her bus, she also felt warm and happy because now they had friends. Proper friends. It was one more step away from being different.

‘I think you were wrong, Mamma,' she said.

Her mother, who was examining her face in the little mirror which she always carried in her bag, stared sideways at her. ‘Wrong about what, Carla?'

‘You said that women who don't look after themselves don't get handsome husbands. You also said that Lily is fat. But Ed is like a film star.'

Her mother let out a little trill. It made the man on the other side of the bus glance at her admiringly. ‘That is true, my clever little bird.' Then she pinched her cheek. ‘But what I didn't say was that women like Lily might get a husband, but they need to be careful. Or else they might lose them.'

How could they lose them? Carla wondered as she prepared to get off (this was her stop now). Did they drop them in the street? Or mislay them on the bus like she had mislaid a pink hair slide the other week? Besides, Lily
might be big but she was kind. She had kept her secret about the caterpillar. And she had let her make a cake. Was this enough for her to keep Ed? Carla didn't want her to have to find another husband.

She was about to ask, but Mamma was calling out. Giving her instructions for this afternoon when school finished. ‘Wait for me, my little one. Do you hear me? Right there by the gate, even if I am late.'

Nodding happily, Carla jumped off the bus, waved, scuttled across the playground and made her way into the classroom. After the ball incident the other week, she'd been disappointed to find that the children in her class had still not been very friendly. But now she had Charlie, they would soon come round. She was sure of it.

At break-time, she wrapped Charlie up carefully in her jumper so he wouldn't get cold, and left him in her locker. Then she went out to play. ‘May I join in?' she asked the girls who were playing hopscotch. No one answered. It was as if she had not spoken.

She tried a group of girls who were throwing a tennis ball against a wall. ‘Can I play too?' she asked. But they just looked the other way.

Carla's stomach felt like it did when it was empty, even though it wasn't.

Slowly, she returned to her classroom. No one was there. Not even the teaching assistant who had taken her home when Kevin had hurt her eye. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen her since that day, although she had heard one of the other teachers saying she had been ‘let go', whatever that meant.

Excitedly, Carla went to her locker and began to unwrap
her jumper. Charlie would understand about the children who wouldn't talk to her. Charlie would make her feel better …

No. NO!

Charlie was dead. Slit from top to toe in a jagged line, his lovely green fur ripped. And on top of him, a note. In big red capital letters.

THEEF
.