Set Me Free Read online

  “Look. I am sorry you had to go through this. I knew it wasn’t going to end well, but I couldn’t say no, they are your grandparents . . . There won’t be a next time. I promise.”

  “No. I’m never going back. Never!”

  “Oh, Lara,” I said, and held her tight. Thank God the gravy boat hadn’t actually hit Harriet, I thought. And then an uncomfortable notion made its way into my mind. Gravy spread everywhere on her perfect floors . . . the vision was actually quite satisfying.

  No. I couldn’t in any way condone Lara’s act. Even if Harriet was cruel and obnoxious and just horrific.

  Big brown stains on her linen tablecloth . . .

  I had to admit it. In my deepest heart, though I would never, never say this to Lara or anyone else, I thought that the woman had it coming. It was Lara I worried about, not Harriet’s feelings. She had pushed Lara’s buttons to the point she couldn’t take it any more, and although Lara’s reaction was in no way acceptable, for once Harriet hadn’t been able to get away with her cruelty.

  But Lara was never to know I thought that.

  “I know what I did was terrible. And I felt sorry for Dad, anyway,” she said. She’d taken off her glasses and was drying her tears.

  “You did?”

  “Yes. Grandma was horrible to him, too, bossing him around like he was a child. She was talking about gardening, and how they had their garden landscaped, and Dad said we needed to do that too. She laughed – her laugh is weird, isn’t it? All hi hi hi like only dogs can hear it.”

  My mouth curled up in spite of me, and then I felt terrible about it. “Lara, this is serious!”

  “I know! Anyway, she said to Dad, ‘You’ll never be able to afford that, the way you are going.’”

  I couldn’t help laughing openly this time. The way Lara imitated Harriet’s clipped tone was so accurate. “Is that an insult? That we can’t afford a landscaper? What planet do they live on?”

  Lara shrugged. “You know the way Dad gets with his mother. Trying to please, trying to impress them . . .”

  I was speechless at how precisely Lara had read the situation and understood the dynamics of Ash’s family. She’d never articulated her grasp of her father’s relationship with his mother as clearly as that before.

  “He started going on about all that he’d been doing, and how the company thought he was all that, and Grandma just went to the kitchen like she wasn’t interested and Grandpa just sat there stony-faced. It was sad.”

  It was. But I had no energy left to be sorry for Ash.

  I just wondered why our family, a family that could have been so loving, so close if only we’d allowed ourselves to be, was imploding slowly. And the epicentre of this destruction lay not in my troubled, fragile daughter, but in my husband, the man I’d loved for so long, and so deeply.

  That night Ash sat in the living room drinking glass after glass of some fancy wine he kept for show – which was out of character, because he seldom drank. I was worried after what his mother had said to him, and I hovered around him. Harriet was toxic. She had a destructive effect on Ash, and the sad thing was that he still looked for her approval. But he never got it.

  “You okay?”

  “As okay as I can be. I don’t understand Lara. I don’t know her any more.”

  “She’s going through a rough patch.”

  “She threw a piece of crockery at my mother, Margherita!”

  “Keep your voice down!” Lara and Leo were in bed, and Lara was a very troubled sleeper at the best of times. There was no way I could have her stumbling in on our conversation. “I know that’s unacceptable—”

  “Really? Is it? Because I didn’t see you being particularly angry at her . . .”

  “She’s grounded for two weeks. I took her laptop and her phone away—”

  “She’s out of control, Margherita!”

  “Tomorrow I’m going to speak to Lara about seeing Sheridan again.”

  “Like that’s going to help.”

  My heart sank. Why did he have such little faith in our daughter?

  “She’ll get better, Ash. I’m sure of that. Your mother wanted to spank Leo, and you know what Lara has been through with her dad.”

  “It’s not an excuse.”

  “No, it’s not. What she did is just . . . terrible. I’m not looking for excuses for her. I’m just explaining—”

  “Leo’s behaviour was appalling too.”

  “He toppled something, Ash. He’s three years old. What do you expect?”

  “He was hyper!”

  “He was excited! He doesn’t get to go out with you often. He was beside himself with happiness! He wanted to go dressed as Batman because you love the Batman films, for God’s sake! Try and understand!”

  “And who understands me, huh? You always take their side, Margherita.”

  “What is this? A competition between you and the children? You are a grown man!” I snapped.

  I’d always known that since Lara had come along, and then Leo, Ash felt like he didn’t have my full attention any more. But he had never spelled it out as clearly as that, as if I’d been taking sides. As if he and the children were on two different sides, instead of being a unit. A family.

  “Look, Ash. I’m sorry it didn’t go well with your mum.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Yeah, well, it would have been easier if I’d been there, but your mum didn’t invite me!”

  “Can’t she have some time alone with her son and her grandchildren?”

  “Of course. I mean, everyone involved had a great time!”

  Immediately, I felt guilty. With all his faults, Ash couldn’t help his mum’s unpleasantness, and I knew he’d tried, without success, to smooth things over between her and me. She was unconquerable.

  “Anyway. You didn’t let me finish. My mum says she never wants Lara in her house again.”

  And now she didn’t want to see Lara either.

  He wasn’t looking at me. He couldn’t. Silent rage filled me, and I had to be quiet for a moment. Good riddance, I thought finally.

  “If my daughter is not welcome there, then I am not welcome either.” Of course I wasn’t welcome, I’d never been. “And Leo. I won’t have your mum poisoning him against his sister and me!”

  “Margherita. My dad phoned me. He had a message for me from my mother . . .” he said quietly.

  “What else, now?”

  “That she won’t speak to me until I’ve left you.”

  Wide and black, the chasm between us kept getting deeper.

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said nothing.”

  How could she? How could she put such a choice in front of Ash? How could he be forced to choose between his wife and children, and his parents?

  I felt sick, and I had run out of words.

  “We shouldn’t have had children,” he said. “Our life would be so much better now if we hadn’t.”

  I blinked, letting his words sink in.

  The pain in my heart was almost physical as I realised the full extent of what he’d just said, and all my limbs started to shake. I stood up slowly, taking a step away from him as if suddenly I couldn’t breathe the same air as him. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” I murmured.

  “I am,” he said. He was wallowing in self-pity now. “But I can’t help how I feel.”

  A sense of déjà vu floated in my mind. The conversation we’d had when I’d found out I was pregnant with Leo. I know I need to make the best of a bad situation, but I can’t help how I feel.

  Nothing had changed. Things had only got worse.

  “That’s true. You can’t,” I said calmly.

  He must have sensed a change in my tone, because he looked up. “Margherita—”

  “Check yourself into some hotel, or go stay with Steven, because I don’t want you here tonight.”

  “Listen—”

  “No. I won’t listen, Ash. I want you out of my sight.”r />
  I turned around; I turned my back to him. I went upstairs with a sense of inevitability, of finality in every step I took. Every step took me further away from him, not only in body but also in heart and soul. I stood on the landing for a while, holding the banister to try to stop the shaking in my hands, until I heard the front door opening and then closing again. He was gone. I took a breath. It felt like I’d been holding it throughout our argument.

  I checked on Lara. She was sleeping, thankfully, exhausted after her troubled day, and then I slipped into Leo’s room. He lay sprawled across the bed, clutching Pingu, his favourite toy, one little leg out of the duvet. I covered him with his blue and green duvet, tucking both him and Pingu in, and then I sat on the armchair, to guard him through the night. I watched the fluorescent stars glued on his ceiling, a mini Milky Way inside his room, and listened to his breathing until I fell asleep too – a light sleep that brought no respite, full of anxious dreams.

  When I awoke, still on Leo’s armchair, the world looked different. There was no going back for me. The hairline crack, the fault line that had opened between us when Leo was born, had turned into an abyss. I knew then that Ash could make no reparation, that even if we stayed together, the bond between us was forever broken.

  The following night Ash came home pretending nothing had happened. The week went by in silence while we avoided each other’s company, until the weekend arrived. Ash was getting ready to go and play golf with his brother, and Lara and Leo were at my sister’s.

  There was a strange atmosphere in the house. Electric, like the air before a storm. And I was at the centre of it. I hurried about with a million things to do, finishing nothing. I couldn’t find peace, so I decided to cook – my default mode when I’m anxious. Cooking and baking focused me: the act of lining up all the ingredients and mixing them together in a miraculous alchemy, to create something beautiful and nourishing out of nothing, was like meditation. Making bread was one of my favourite stress-busters: I loved seeing the yeast bubble up in warm water and the dough coming together and rising as if it were something alive. Sinking my hands into it was therapeutic.

  I was busy working the dough when Ash walked into the kitchen. There had been a lot of silence between us, but in the last couple of days we’d been speaking again, although not more than was strictly necessary.

  “Maggie, have you seen my Pringle jumper? The yellow one? I must be off in twenty minutes.”

  Now, I can’t stand it when people call me Maggie. It’s a lovely name, it really is, but it’s not my name. I had told Ash many times that I didn’t like my name shortened like that, and after years of marriage he still hadn’t got the message. I bit my tongue.

  “I haven’t seen it, no.” The dough took a beating.

  “Right. Never mind, I’ll wear a polo shirt. Thanks,” he said, and stepped out.

  I stopped pounding the dough and straightened myself.

  “Ash.”

  “Yes?” He peeped through the door. “I’m late,” he said, tapping his expensive Omega watch, the one he had tweeted about and Facebooked about so that everyone would know he could afford it.

  The words came out by themselves. “We need a break. I need a break.”

  There was a silence. For a moment he looked bewildered.

  “What?”

  “I need a break. From you.”

  His eyes widened some more; then his features rearranged themselves into his pious, martyred look. “Well, if you want to destroy this family—”

  In a moment, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d thrown the ball of dough at him. It hit him on the shoulder and fell to the floor, bits of it strewn on his T-shirt.

  “What did you do that for! You are deranged!”

  “I am destroying the family? I am?” I shouted back. The dough was on the floor, and everything was ruined, and tears began to fall from my eyes. They weren’t tears of sadness yet – those would come later – just fury.

  “Well, it’s you who needs a break. Not me. Not even when my mother said I had to leave you! And we wonder why Lara can’t control her temper! You are throwing stuff at me! You are mental!”

  “Do you love them, Ash?” I said quietly.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Do you love our children?”

  “Of course I do. I do. Oh, I see what this is about. God, are you still thinking about what I said that night? I thought it was finished, but no, you have to drag it up. I was drunk. Do you understand? Drunk. I think you do, because I’ve seen you and your sister having a good time before. You don’t say stupid things when you’re drunk?”

  “I don’t say that I wish my children weren’t here!”

  I banged my sticky hands on the granite, and it hurt, but I didn’t care.

  “For God’s sake, Margherita. You don’t realise how hard it is for me.”

  “For you?”

  “Yes. For me. The children adore you, both of them. You’re like this little unit, the three of you, and I’m left out.” He spread his arms. “Lara is so difficult, and Leo doesn’t even like me. I’m always working, trying to earn a living. My parents hate you—”

  “Your parents hate me for no good reason except they think I’m not good enough for you or for them! Lara is difficult because her birth mum died and her father beat her up, Ash! What do you want us to do? Return her, like damaged goods? What do you want me to do? Go and beg your mother to finally accept me?”

  The bitterness of those words made the back of my throat burn.

  “You turned Leo against me—”

  “How can you say that! How can you say it’s my fault if you and Leo have no relationship to speak of! Leo is a clever little boy and he knows how you’ve always felt about him. He tries to catch your attention, he tries to impress you, to make you happy . . . just like you do with your mother, can’t you see?”

  But Ash wasn’t listening any more. “You put him up to it, Margherita. Your precious little boy, he can’t have anyone else but you! You put him up to hating his father.” His mouth was twisted in a bitter curve, his eyes cold. Where was my husband? Because this man wasn’t him. Couldn’t be him.

  We just kept shouting, both of us. We threw accusations at each other until we ran out of steam and were both drained. The air was acidic with resentment. He leaned on the wall; I leaned on the kitchen island, just like Lara had after the argument at her grandma’s. I was too angry to cry, but I knew the tears would come soon; I could feel them gathering in the coldness of my heart.

  “We can’t go on like this, Ash,” I said softly. “Can’t you see? Can’t you see how we need a break?”

  “Fine.” He sounded defeated. “Fine.”

  “You need to go now. I can’t take any more of this,” I whispered.

  He must have seen something on my face, something that spoke of heartbreak, because he opened his mouth to reply, and then he closed it again.

  He went upstairs without another word, and I waited in the kitchen until he came back, a suitcase by his side and a rucksack on his back.

  His eyes met mine briefly. “I’m off then.”

  I almost felt sorry for him. “Yes. Your mother will be relieved.”

  “I suppose she will be, yes.”

  Suddenly it was all very civilised. No more shouting, no more recriminations, no more accusations. The quiet death of love. Or maybe the ugliest part was still to come, if we found we weren’t able to move on from all this. If we were faced with the reality of it all, its inevitability.

  “I’m sorry, Maggie,” he said, and he looked devastated, truly devastated. Gone was the angry man, the patronising, fake-pious husband who made a big show of being lumbered with a troublesome family. For a moment he looked a bit like a little boy; and for a moment, for the briefest of instants, I contemplated asking him to stay. In that split second I wanted to start again, to forget the past and be the unit we used to be, that we’d been for years. I wanted my husband back.

&nbs
p; But the moment passed.

  “My name is not Maggie,” I said quietly, and turned around before he saw my tears.

  4

  Aftermath

  Margherita

  I sat there, stunned and trembling. Suddenly, the house seemed enormous. Empty. There was dough everywhere and everything was broken, everything was ruined. I needed to speak to someone. I needed to speak to my mum. I dialled the number of her coffee shop with shaking hands.

  “Hello, La Piazza?”

  “Mum?”

  “Margherita? Are you okay?”

  She’d heard the distress in my voice. For a moment I couldn’t speak.

  “I’ve been better, I suppose. Mum, Ash just left . . .” I began, wearily gathering crumbs from the table. It all seemed so futile. So pointless. Cleaning up the kitchen, cleaning up the house, cleaning up the wreckage of my marriage.

  “He left you?”

  “I asked him to leave.” Tears began to break my voice.

  “Oh Margherita, I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t sound surprised. “She smells us and knows what we’re thinking,” Anna had said once. It sounded weird, but it was true.

  “You’re not surprised, are you?”

  “Not really.”

  “You knew it would happen. You knew . . .”

  “I’m not blind, Margherita. Even being away up here, it’s not hard to guess. I had my doubts about Ash, and so did your dad, but you always had our support, you know that, don’t you? It’s not like I wished this on you, tesoro mio. Please believe that.”

  “I know you didn’t. And I know that you and dad never thought that Ash was right for me, and here I am—”

  “Margherita, there’s no point in looking back right now . . .”

  “You and Dad stayed together until the end.”

  “Some people do, and some don’t. It’s just the way it is. You and Ash made a wonderful child together. Something very, very good came from your love for him. And anyway, we’re talking like you’ve filed for divorce! This is just a temporary separation . . . maybe it’s just a blip . . .”