One Night in Italy (9 page)

She glanced over at the portable television her mum had left on the chest of drawers. Did that mean she was not allowed to watch the big flatscreen she’d glimpsed downstairs, then? Was the plan that they’d be sitting in separate rooms every evening?

Oh Lord. For all the creature comforts, it was going to be very
un
comfortable living under the same roof as her mum for any amount of time. The sooner they were out of each other’s lives again, the better. But to do that, she needed some money . . .

She took her laptop downstairs. ‘Do you have wifi here?’ she asked, opening it up on the kitchen table.

Trish hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said guardedly.

‘Can I have the password, please? I’m going to start looking for a job.’

Trish’s mouth fell open. ‘You’re looking for a job? Here in Sheffield?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘I can’t exactly go abroad again while Dad’s still ill, can I?’

Trish muttered something which might have been ‘Never stopped you before.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing.’

Sophie gritted her teeth. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be out of here as soon as I can. I don’t like this any more than you do.’

‘I never said—’

‘Yeah, well, you didn’t have to. Look, I need to earn some money so I can go travelling again. Hopefully there’ll be a bit of Christmas work going at one of the shops or cafés in town.’

‘Oh. Do you think you’ll be here that long?’

Sophie bristled. ‘Why? Is that a problem?’ Just give me the frigging password, she thought impatiently. Was everything going to be such a power struggle?

‘No, of course it’s not a problem,’ said Trish, although her voice conveyed the exact opposite. ‘Here.’ She unpinned a small card from the kitchen noticeboard with the wifi log-in details and put it next to Sophie.

‘Thank you.’ Just like the old days, it seemed impossible to have an ordinary conversation with her mum without some petty sniping in the mix. Staying here was going to be more exhausting than the hostel, she could tell already.

‘Sophie’s looking for a job,’ Trish said to Jim that evening when they went back to visit him.

‘Oh aye? Where are you off to this time? And can I come with you? I could do with some sunshine to shake off this cough.’

Sophie scowled at her mum. It wasn’t that her job quest was a state secret or anything, but she didn’t like the way Trish had announced it, with a hint of mockery as if it was all a big joke. ‘I’m not off anywhere yet. That’s why I need a job.’

‘Ahh.’ He thought about this for a moment. ‘Where do you think you’ll go next time, then? Any ideas?’

‘Maybe a ski resort over the winter,’ she replied. ‘Or I might save a bit more and travel around south-east Asia for a few months. Wherever the wind takes me.’

He nodded, his eyes on her keenly. ‘And then what? Are you just planning to keep on moving, year after year, until you’re my age? Do you never think about putting down roots, making a go of anything properly?’

The questions felt like an attack.
Making a go of anything properly?
That was a bit harsh.

‘Dad, you have no idea what I’ve been doing for the last few years,’ she said, hackles rising.

‘I do, actually. I know quite a lot. What’s it called again, that blog of yours? “Independent Traveller”, is it?’

‘You . . . You’ve been reading my blog?’

‘Well, of course we have. It’s up there for the world to see, isn’t it? How glad you are to be shot of your interfering parents, how delighted you are to be free of the shackles of home life . . .’ His eyes narrowed. ‘How lonely you’ve been at times. How you hate having to pretend that you’re having a wonderful adventure when occasionally you’re downright miserable.’

‘How . . . ? But . . .’ She couldn’t actually speak for a moment, just gaped. Oh shit. They’d
read
it?

‘What are you running away from, Soph?’ he asked, gentler now. ‘Surely not us any more. Yourself?’

‘I’m not running away from anything!’ she cried, feeling as if she was a teenager all over again. Why couldn’t they just get off her back? ‘What’s it to do with you anyway?’ Then she whirled around and rushed out of the room.

She ran blindly down the corridor, her heart pounding, her breath tight and short in her lungs. The thought of her parents spying on her like that, reading about her intimate experiences – and some had been
really
intimate – was mortifying. How could they? How
dare
they?

Leaning against a wall, she shut her eyes, feeling sick as detail after detail flashed up in her mind. So they’d have read about her being hospitalized in Wellington when she came off her bike and was knocked unconscious. They’d have read about her tempestuous affair with Dan, and how broken she’d been left afterwards. And they’d have read all the nasty stuff about
them
, too; she’d savagely ripped them apart in print, blaming them for her hang-ups, mocking them for their dull suburban lives.

Shit. She thought she might throw up. No wonder her mum had been so off with her. No wonder she’d freaked out when Sophie had asked about the wifi code – she probably thought a new blog entry was in the making, all about how dreadful it was to be back
chez
Mum and Dad!

The impulse to run beat loudly through her. She’d known all along she wasn’t welcome back in Ranmoor. She’d collect her stuff then get a train somewhere and start afresh. Her dad was on the mend, wasn’t he? Anywhere was better than here.

Then she hesitated. It was already eight in the evening and dark outside. A horrible sleety rain had pelted them as they’d dashed from the car park to the hospital; her coat was still wet. Besides, she only had thirty or so quid left. She was trapped.

She pushed a hand through her short blonde hair, trying to make a decision, her dad’s words still echoing in her head.
What are you running away from, Soph? Surely not us any more. Yourself?

Chapter Seven

Una amica
– A friend (female)

After Mike left, Catherine did nothing but lie unmoving in bed, tears leaking into the pillow. The world seemed to have shrunk around her to the lavender-painted walls of her bedroom, a telescope closing up as she lay there, willing Mike to come back. He didn’t.

Any minute now, she kept thinking, I’ll wake up from this terrible dream and it’ll be Sunday morning again, with the twins still here, ready to go to uni. Because this can’t have happened in real life. It just can’t.

But the clock went on ticking, quiet and insistent. The room became darker as night fell, then suffused with pinky-gold light when the sun rose. Cars growled outside as people went to work. Footsteps clicked down the street.

Any minute now, she thought, I’ll hear his key in the door. He’ll bring flowers, apologies, explanations. He’ll tell me how sorry he is, how wrong he was.

He didn’t.

On Monday, she peeled herself out of bed and made a few phone calls. The care home, to say that she wouldn’t be in to do her voluntary shift. The primary school, to say she couldn’t read with the Year 3s that afternoon. The charity shop, to say she’d fallen ill and wouldn’t be able to help out for a few days. Flu. Really bad flu.

Exhausted by all the lies and at a loss for what to do next, she turned to the computer and opened up a search engine.

I feel s—
she typed and a whole list of options appeared.

I feel sick

I feel suicidal

I feel so lonely

I feel sad

God, there was so much pain on the internet. So many unhappy souls calling out for comfort.

I feel scared
she typed, and again more options popped up.

I feel scared all the time

I feel scared

I feel scared for no reason

I feel scared and alone

Tears pricked her eyes. All of the above, she thought, as a list of mental health websites appeared below the prompt box, along with the Samaritans helpline number and various anxiety forums. The letters blurred and swam, her brain too fogged to make any sense of them.

She backspaced through her words and took a deep breath.
My husband left me
she typed, her fingers shaking, and a new string of results appeared instantly.

My husband left me for another woman

My husband left me for a man

My husband left me after I cheated

All those leaving husbands, all those front doors slammed, all those wives left behind, weeping and lonely. It would have been enough to break your heart if Catherine’s wasn’t already pulverized.

She switched off the computer, unable to cope with anybody else’s misery, then went back to bed and pulled the covers over her head.

Mike had been living in a grungey student house in Nottingham when Catherine eventually tracked him down and broke the news that she was pregnant. His eyes had bulged in horror. ‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ he said.

‘I’m not,’ Catherine replied.

Left to his own devices, Catherine suspected Mike would have washed his hands of her and the babies, but Shirley wasn’t about to let him – or Catherine – off the hook. They were married just two months later. ‘God has willed it,’ she said simply, drawing up the invitation list and unearthing her best hat. ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’

All Catherine’s friends thought she had lost the plot. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ they kept asking fearfully, eyes darting to her swollen belly. ‘You really want to give up uni and be a
wife
?’

Her mum thought she was nuts, too. She had split up with Catherine’s dad many years earlier and since then had made no bones about the fact that she preferred cats to men. ‘You’re only twenty, darling. Don’t write yourself off with a bloke and kiddies yet, whatever you do.’

Buffeted by the rollercoaster she seemed to be on – the exhausting pregnancy, the wedding, the plans to live with Mike’s parents while he continued his degree in Nottingham (‘I think it’ll be for the best,’ Shirley said in the no-arguments voice Catherine had already come to dread) – Catherine felt powerless to make any decisions, as if she’d had her chance at a life and blown it. ‘I’ll finish my degree another year,’ she promised her friends vaguely, but she already knew she wouldn’t.

It had not been an easy time. Shirley was firmly in the ‘You’ve made your bed now lie on it’ camp and, when the babies arrived, she left Catherine to cope with them alone, all day every day, while she busied herself organizing prayer sessions for starving children in Uganda in the nearby church hall. The first few months were a blur of snatched naps, feeding, nappies and long, limb-aching walks around the local park in an attempt to soothe the babies to sleep. Her student life of essays and lectures and parties seemed very far away, on another galaxy, impossibly out of reach.

Once Mike graduated, he came to join her in Sheffield and she thought the balance might even out between them, especially when they moved into their own little house – but no. He was working insane hours trying to prove himself in his first job at the hospital. She, on the other hand, felt like a milch-cow put out to pasture. Although for a while she clung to the faint hope of returning to university, she never did. After a few years, she stopped mentioning it altogether.

‘What do you need a degree for anyway?’ Mike once asked. ‘It’s not like you were ever going to be an academic. Besides, who would look after the kids?’

It wasn’t until Tuesday, when the doorbell rang insistently, followed by some energetic knocking, that the real world intruded. ‘Cath? Are you in there? Catherine!’

Catherine jerked at the noise. The voice was strident and loud. It was Penny, she realized, Penny from down the road, with whom she played tennis every Tuesday. Was it Tuesday already? It must be.

She staggered out of bed and pushed open the bedroom window. Her hair was lank and straggling, her body unwashed; her tears had probably worn grooves into her face. ‘Oh, Pen,’ she began. ‘I . . .’ She meant to say she was unwell again – flu, really bad flu – but she was caught off guard and the lie refused to trip off her tongue.

Penny tipped her head back and stared up at Catherine in alarm. She was used to seeing Catherine clean and wholesome, with lipstick and a sensible coat, not like something recently exhumed. ‘Bloody Nora, you look terrible, girl,’ she said, as tactful and sensitive as ever. ‘What the frig is up with you?’

‘I’m . . .’ To Catherine’s horror, tears plopped from her eyes and onto the roof of her car below. Drip drop drip drop, little puddles on the Toyota. ‘I’m . . .’

‘Let me in,’ Penny ordered. ‘Let me in this minute. You need sorting out.’

Catherine had never been very good at covering up. Her resistance was at an all-time low, too. It was only a matter of seconds, therefore, before Penny was in her kitchen, making them both strong coffee and hunting out the last few chocolate digestives with the air of a woman well used to crisis management.

‘Go on then, tell me,’ Penny said, plonking down their steaming mugs and sitting opposite her at the old scrubbed pine table. Tall and rangy, she had a glossy black bob with an electric-blue streak in the fringe, and sharp brown eyes that didn’t miss a thing. ‘What in chuff’s name has happened?’