Set Me Free Read online

  “Hello? Is that Marco?”

  “It sure is!” He threw his little chubby hands up in the air. Marco and Pietro had a hint of an American accent because their dad was from Colorado.

  “Maybe it’s just a phase,” Anna offered.

  “Maybe.”

  I agonised over Ash’s change, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him what was wrong. I was too frightened to hear that what was really wrong for him was that he’d gone back to square one, and once again he didn’t want this baby.

  “Maybe he’s nervous, that’s all,” she said unconvincingly. I could see she didn’t believe what she was saying. “Marco, sit beside Ziarita, not on her. There, good boy. No room to sit on her lap any more. Paul was terrified when Pietro came along. You know, about becoming a father. But he was always there for us.”

  “Paul is a good man.”

  “And Ash isn’t?” she said, and looked up to study my face.

  Anna and I were very close – we had been all our lives – and I knew very well she had never been sure about Ash. She often said we were like two different species. I’d always known that, always, but it never worried me before. I was too in love to even suspect it could one day be an issue. His reaction to my pregnancy had completely thrown me – but I seemed to be the only one who was surprised. Anna certainly wasn’t.

  “Of course he is. You know that. It’s just that he’s never been like this.”

  “He wasn’t that keen on adopting Lara, I seem to remember.”

  I felt my stomach churning. I didn’t want to remember that. I’d wanted to forget how he’d resisted the process, how often I’d suspected he was only going along with it because of me. I’d been too hungry for motherhood to acknowledge it, to even admit it to myself. That stung. And it stung even more because it was true.

  “I remember you telling me many times that he wasn’t convinced about the adoption at all,” she continued. “You seem to have removed this from your memory. Like you’ve pressed the delete button on it. Look, I’m sorry . . .” she said, seeing my face crumple. “I don’t want to upset you.”

  “Ziarita? Look!” Marco had wiggled down from his little seat and was handing me a Spiderman costume.

  “Oh, that’s a fancy costume! Shall we put it on?” I busied myself slipping it on him, trying to hide my disquiet.

  Anna was right. Ash had dragged his feet about adopting, although I didn’t like remembering that. He eventually came round and embraced the idea, but right at the beginning he’d had his doubts.

  “Better head back,” I said, fighting back tears, and I rose to go.

  Anna looked hurt. “Look, I’m sorry. Come on, stay for a little longer. Another slice of cake?” She gestured to the chocolate delight on the table.

  With the amount of cake I was eating every day – it was the only thing that settled my stomach – I feared I wouldn’t be able to move by the time I got to the end. I hadn’t been very slim before either. Thankfully my sister dragged me on interminable walks – she walked, I waddled – to keep me trim. Although trim was the last thing you would have said about me right now. My bump sat comfortably on my small frame, making me look like a little Russian doll. My hair was shiny and thick and my skin was glowing, though: overall, pregnancy seemed to be kind on my looks.

  “Come on, you’re eating for two,” Anna insisted.

  “For five, more like.” I sank my spoon back into chocolate heaven with only a hint of guilt.

  Finally, the time had come. Come and gone. I was ten days late, fit to burst and completely fed up.

  One night in April Lara and I were reading The Hobbit together, cosying up on the armchair in her room – I took up all the space, and she had to perch on the armrest – when I felt like a huge hand was squeezing my insides. A thin film of sweat settled on my forehead, and I knew.

  Ash was in Liverpool on business, so I called Anna at once. She arrived in ten minutes flat, which was quite remarkable because her house was twenty minutes away by car. I’d rather not think how she managed that with her tiny Mini Cooper. We left Lara with my next-door neighbour, a kindly woman who had worked as a childminder and had a house full of children day in and day out, and off we went.

  After hours of howling, kneeling on the floor and leaning on the hospital bed while contractions came thick and fast – I had long said goodbye to any remains of my dignity – Ash arrived. At last. He was white-faced and still in a suit and tie, more than a bit frayed around the edges. He went from white to green as I screamed and grunted and did all the unbecoming things that women do when they squeeze a human being out of their bellies. I cried a lot, mainly because it was all so painful and I’d never felt such agony before, but also because I was so completely overwhelmed by it all. It was just too . . . enormous an experience. My body was an alien thing, contracting and expanding and turning itself inside out. My birth plan had gone straight out of the window and I begged the midwife for an epidural – she smiled cheerfully and said it was too late. At that moment, I hated her with all my might. I briefly contemplated shaking her until she had no choice but to call the anaesthetist, but I couldn’t sit up straight so I abandoned the idea. I cried some more, I screamed some more, I cursed some more, and someone, somewhere, said the head was out, and then the whole baby was. His cries filled the room, and it was finished.

  I had done it.

  They weighed him and wrapped him in a little blanket, and then they gave him to me. I cried some more – from happiness. He was perfect. He was Leo, with his little face and a mop of fine blond hair, and his little chubby fists and his scent – how I had dreamed of breathing in the scent of a baby of mine, a baby I had brought into this world! He was screaming, and he would not settle. I couldn’t blame him: the birth, and the bright lights, and being whisked away to be weighed, and people talking all around – it had been quite a lot for him. His screams were surprisingly loud, somewhere between a kitten meowing and a siren. When he was in my arms, I held him in a haze of happiness, whispering soothing words, smiling like I would never stop smiling ever again.

  “So what’s his name?” the midwife asked.

  “Leo,” I said, and my father’s name enfolded him like a blessing.

  It seemed impossible that Ash would not fall for Leo too, and I turned to him in trust, and love, and gratefulness for having given me the gift of a son. I was expecting the same rapture painted all over his face.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. Instead of shining with happiness, he was frowning as poor Leo cried. And then, as his eyes met mine briefly, he decided to put on his martyr face. His expression said it all: I never wanted this child, but I’ll do well by him, as it is my duty.

  At that moment, as I held Leo and slowly, slowly soothed him with my presence, my scent, my whispered words, I felt a part of my love for Ash leave me, painfully, inevitably. Like losing blood, I was losing love, pouring out of my heart and dissolving in the air between us. We sat in silence. All of a sudden, my husband seemed a stranger to me, and I wished he’d go and leave me alone with my son.

  One night, not long after we’d come home from hospital, Lara came to sit beside me as I nursed Leo. She touched his head with infinite gentleness. Around him, Lara was like this little instinctive animal, geared to protect and nurture. After all my fears about how she’d take his birth, I was immensely relieved.

  “I can’t remember who I lived with when I was a baby,” she whispered.

  “You lived with several foster families, my love, until you went to Uncle Peter and Aunt Beth, who loved you very much.” Peter and Beth were an older couple who had fostered Lara for two years after it was decided she couldn’t go back to her father and that an adoptive family was needed. The social workers had done everything they could not to separate her and her dad, after Lara’s mother’s traumatic death when she was two. During those two years with Peter and Beth they looked for a suitable family until they found us. An older child with a difficult history can be hard to place, as oppose
d to babies and toddlers, who usually find a family relatively quickly.

  “Yes, but I don’t know who looked after me when I was a baby.”

  “Well, it was your mother for a while. And then other kind people . . . Do you want me to ask Kirsty for their names? Would that help?”

  She shrugged. “No point.”

  I was flooded with regret, the pointless, useless regret that it hadn’t been me looking after her since the beginning. Because it felt that way, it felt like she’d been with us forever, that she was mine. Although she’d only been with us five years, it felt like that there could never have been a time in which we simply didn’t know each other.

  “They certainly did a good job, your foster parents. Look how lovely you are, how clever and smart and pretty.”

  Leo had stopped suckling and had fallen asleep at my breast. Lara rested a hand on his sleeping form, bundled up in blankets. “I’m happy Leo is here,” she whispered.

  “Yes. Lara and Leo. They sound good together, don’t they?”

  “Yes,” she said with a little smile, but I could see the ever-present spark of sadness in her eyes.

  3

  A house of straw

  Margherita

  Leo was now two. I delighted in him, and so did Lara. She was fiercely protective of her little brother and showered him with love. Ash mainly ignored both of them.

  To everyone else, my husband was a model father, coping with his daughter’s issues and a demanding job. Behind closed doors, it was a different matter. Things weren’t going well between us at all. He was distant, both in body and in soul, and I waned under his indifference, like my world was slowly being drained of colour.

  Love was leaving us both, slowly and silently, and I hurt, I hurt.

  And then Lara’s father died suddenly. Among his belongings they found a picture of Lara’s mum with Lara in her arms – it was the first photograph of Lara’s mum I’d ever seen. Apparently her father had destroyed them all when she’d died.

  When she saw the photograph, Lara said nothing.

  “You have her eyes, Lara. Beautiful blue eyes,” I said, my heart in my throat as I studied her solemn face.

  “I know why she died.”

  “You do?”

  “She killed herself. With pills.”

  I was speechless. Those words, so much bigger and darker than any child that age should contemplate. “Nobody knows for sure,” I whispered. Which was true. Lara’s mother had had a history of drug addiction, and it was unclear if she’d overdosed or if she’d decided she couldn’t keep on living.

  “I know she did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My dad told me. He said she left us because she didn’t care and she didn’t love me. That’s why he burnt her photographs.”

  “That is not true. Your dad was talking nonsense. Your mum was a vulnerable person, Lara, but I am so sure she loved you. Really, I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s impossible not to love you. But she was ill, and it all got too much for her . . .” I felt compassion for that strange woman who’d had so much darkness inside her that she had ended her own life, though she had unleashed a chain of consequences that had damaged her daughter so much.

  “She left me. What mother does that? I mean, you wouldn’t leave Leo, would you?”

  “No. And I wouldn’t leave you.”

  “But she did.”

  “We don’t know what went through her mind. You should forgive—”

  “I can’t forgive my mother,” she interrupted, her words sharp and cold, and I was silenced by her rage. “I don’t want to.”

  I reached out for her, but she’d taken a step back.

  “If I keep being angry at her, I won’t miss her as much,” she explained, her mouth in a hard line, her eyes steely.

  What else was there to say?

  After that, she became very withdrawn again, just like she was when she’d arrived. She was so quiet we hardly ever heard her voice. What worried me the most was that the portions on her plate became smaller and smaller, and so did she. She was like a fawn, all long, slim limbs and huge eyes, beautiful and fragile. I took to mixing cream into her mashed potatoes, breaking an egg into her soup, baking brownies with extra butter, anything to give her some extra calories.

  All throughout, Ash had no words for her, no time to help her.

  He took her shopping a couple of times and she came back laden with bags of clothes, which she barely looked at. I tried to explain to Ash that she didn’t need money spent on her, she needed tenderness. But it was like he didn’t hear me.

  I was at a loss. An American friend of mine, Sheridan, was a child counsellor. She agreed to see Lara privately. After a few months of sessions, Lara was speaking more, eating more and smiling again. Sheridan had a final chat with me. She said that Lara had been grieving, not so much for her father but for her mother. It had been the picture that triggered her distress more than the news of her father’s death. And that was understandable, with all Lara had been through. With the way her dad used to be with her.

  With the violence.

  With each of Sheridan’s words I felt I was sinker deeper into an icy pool. Ash and I didn’t know about any violence; nobody had told us about it, not Lara herself, not the social workers. There was nothing in her dossier.

  I phoned Kirsty and told her what Lara had confessed to Sheridan. Kirsty was silent for a moment.

  “We knew that Lara had been terribly neglected by her father, but we never saw signs of violence, and that is why this wasn’t in her dossier.”

  “How could you not know, Kirsty?”

  “It happens more often than you think: that nobody knows, not other members of the family, social workers, teachers. Violence can be very, very hard to spot; often bruises are hidden and there are no evident injuries.”

  At that point, I cried.

  Bruises and injuries.

  On my child’s body. That little body I had nourished, looked after, washed and dressed with such love and devotion, somebody else had hurt. I was full of rage, a rage I could have never imagined I had the potential to feel.

  I could not imagine anyone raising their hand to my daughter. I could not bear to think how she must have felt. A helpless, vulnerable child hurt by the person who should have loved her most.

  A year passed and Lara seemed to improve. She kept the picture of her mum in her diary, and many times I’d seen her looking at it, studying it as if she could somehow get her back, bring her back to life, be reunited with her.

  I could feel her heartbreak, I could feel the fury she carried inside her and had nowhere to go, a fury that must have been a thousand times stronger than mine. It was bound to spill out of her sooner or later, unstoppable, like a black flood. My heart bled for my daughter, and I held my breath, knowing in my bones that a storm was on the way.

  And it came. One weekend, to my surprise, Ash decided to take the children for Sunday lunch at their grandparents’ house, which was a very rare occurrence. Apparently, Harriet had summoned them. Them, not me. It was generally advisable for the two of us to avoid each other. My mother-in-law always thought her son had married down. After all, I was a daughter of humble bakers, Italian immigrants. It’s a wonder they came to our wedding – in all photographs we took that day, Harriet looked like she was drinking curdled milk.

  Later that day, Ash came home livid. He dropped Lara and Leo at the house without a word, ignoring my questions, and went for a drive. Lara looked mutinous and mortified at the same time, a tangle of emotions that I was left to deal with, and Leo was very pale and very quiet. I settled Leo in front of CBeebies so that Lara and I could talk.

  “What happened?” I asked as she leaned on the kitchen island, her body language tense and unsettled.

  “Well, Grandma was sort of horrible in general. She asked me if they teach us manners where I come from.”

  I gasped. The bitch!

  “I couldn’t
think of a smart remark fast enough, but Leo said, ‘Lara comes from England, like me,’ and gave her a look, you know that look he does when he’s mad at you? It was funny.”

  “Did you say anything?” I asked, fearing the answer.

  “No. But then Leo toppled the gravy boat and there was gravy everywhere. Apparently that was an expensive linen tablecloth.” She rolled her eyes.

  “The perfect choice for when you have a three-year-old at your table!”

  “Exactly. Leo was mortified, he was bright red and I thought he would cry. Dad shouted at him and then at that point he did cry. Grandma said he deserved a good spanking, and I couldn’t help it, Mum, I tried, but I was so angry. I don’t want anyone to hit Leo . . .”

  Like her father did to her, I thought, and my heart broke.

  “Lara, I understand you wanted to defend him. I really do. I would feel the same if that woman ever tried to lay a hand on Leo.”

  “You don’t know what I did.” She looked down. I felt my blood run cold.

  “What did you do?”

  “I threw the gravy boat at her.”

  “Oh, Lara.” I rubbed my forehead. There was no excuse for that.

  “It didn’t hit her. It landed on the floor and it shattered. It was horrible. She said nothing like that ever happened at her table. That I was crazy and probably my parents were crazy, too, and—”

  “Okay. Okay. We have established she’s a complete . . . witch, but Lara, seriously, you don’t throw stuff at people!” I said, aware of how lame my reprimand sounded. Of course she knew that.

  “I swear I couldn’t help it, Mum.” Her eyes were shiny and she was wringing her hands, the way she did when she was upset. My heart went out to her, but I steeled myself.

  “Lara, you need to try to control yourself! You’ll get into a huge amount of trouble.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” she said, and I could hear tears in her voice. One moment later she began to sob, lifting herself up on a stool and taking her face in her hands. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder.