Liberate Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part One) (2 page)

Where does he go
?

That was what Gina said. Valentina was about to reply that she had no idea, and so what, she and Theo didn’t do jealousy, but when she saw Gina’s eyebrows beginning to arch, she changed her mind.

Work
. She took a sip of her red wine.
Going to exhibitions. Meeting artists. Buying art
, she expanded vaguely. A good excuse, and who knows, possibly true. But the fact of the matter is that Valentina has absolutely no idea where her lover disappears to once a month and for several days at a time. Yes, there have been articles and reviews, and before he met her, two books had been published, one on German expressionism and one on futurism in Italy in the twenties, but there is not nearly the volume of work one would expect from such a globetrotting art critic. And what is he doing in Milan? His part-time lecturing at the university hardly provides a good income. Surely he could get a better position in a university back in America? Yet when she asked Theo why he was in Italy, he avoided answering her, waving his arms around like
a true Italian and stating vaguely that it was where he needed to be right now. Every day she expects him to tell her he is going home. And yet here he is, still based in Milan nearly a year after she met him.

In the beginning, Valentina didn’t care where Theo went. In fact during the first couple of months of living together she looked forward to his little disappearances. She couldn’t help doubting her rash offer, and blamed her mother’s words for pushing her into making it.

‘Don’t let him possess you; that’s what they all want to do. And for God’s sake don’t move in together.’

As usual her mother had taken the wind out of her sails. What had induced Valentina to call her anyway? She had been on some kind of a high, after the first few exciting weeks with Theo, and she had had this foolish urge to share it with her mother. She had even sat up half the night to wait for a good time to call her in the States. Yet of course she should have known better. Instead of being happy for her, all her mother could see were the negatives.

‘Valentina,’ she warned, ‘you and I, we’re not able to give ourselves up totally to just one man. We need space. I learnt that the hard way, honey. Don’t rush into anything.’

Her advice made Valentina furious. She was
not
like her mother, who was vain and self-centred, an attention-seeker and unable to share, even with her own children. She had to prove her wrong. So that very evening, much to Theo’s astonishment, she invited him to move in with her. Why not?
His landlord had just given him notice, and he needed to find a place to live anyway. Her apartment was huge and cost her nothing, since it belonged to her mother. They were to be flatmates, she told him, who happened to have sex together. The incongruity of her proposition made him laugh and call her a crazy woman. Even so, he accepted.

Yet if she is honest with herself, Valentina has to admit that she is afraid her mother could be right. She finds it hard getting used to compromising. She and Theo rarely argue, and they have similar tastes in music, food and art, yet it is the little things that get to her. She likes the bedroom door open at night, and a light on in the hall, whereas Theo prefers complete darkness and a closed door. She likes silence when she works, and he plays music. Usually it is something they both like, but occasionally he puts on music from the eighties that her mother loved – Joy Division, The Cure – way too loud so that she can hear it even when she is in her studio or in her darkroom developing pictures. It always makes her grit her teeth. And sometimes he talks too much. He is careful not to talk about himself, or push for too many questions about her mother (something other lovers all end up doing, which puts her off them instantly), but he is obsessed with discussions. It could of course be on art, or a film they might have just seen, and that is fine. But Theo also loves to get stuck into talking about current affairs, economics or history. He is constantly quizzing her on Italian politics. What do people think of Mussolini now? What happened to her family during the Second World
War? Valentina has no interest. She had a stomach full of politics when she was a child. Her mother’s bedtime stories of what had happened to her father’s family during the war were enough to put her off for life, as well as her mother arguing over the rights and wrongs of communism with her brother Mattia, on the rare occasions she saw him. Somehow she equates the clash of her parents’ ideologies with the reason why her own father left all those years ago. Valentina doesn’t like idealists. Those who neglect their own families for the sake of the common good. Theo seems more pragmatic; how can he not be with his upbringing? And yet when he starts talking about the world and hope for change, it makes her edgy. Does he notice the tightness around her mouth as she sets it in an uncommunicative line, the clench of her jaw as he pushes her to give an opinion? It is no coincidence that usually the very next day Theo will announce that he is heading off on a work trip, as if he knows she needs to be on her own.

Valentina has always been used to solitude. She grew up as if she was an only child, since Mattia was thirteen and away at school by the time she was born. Her father left before she was old enough to remember him. Even Mattia claims he doesn’t know where he is. So it was just her and her mother, who taught her from an early age to be self-sufficient. When she was very young, Valentina’s mother took her with her on her photographic assignments, and the long hours spent waiting turned her into an avid reader.

Once Valentina was thirteen, her mother left her behind in
Milan, claiming she didn’t want to disrupt her education, but Valentina suspected that it was because she didn’t want her teenage daughter cramping her style. All the men loved Tina Rosselli. She was an icon in her world of glamour and style. To her credit, she never hid her age, but to be accompanied by a glaringly younger version of herself was a little too much for her vanity to bear. Thus Valentina would spend whole weeks at a time on her own in the apartment, her only company her mother’s sulky cat, Tash. She remembered bringing Gaby back with her one Friday after school, and her friend’s complete astonishment when she realised that Valentina had been alone all week. It was a fact she was careful not to broadcast when she was in school.

‘But who looks after you?’ Gaby asked her, wide eyed with pity.

‘I don’t need anyone to look after me,’ Valentina replied haughtily.

‘Do you do everything yourself?’ Gaby asked her. ‘Your clothes?’

Valentina couldn’t help but notice her friend looking down at her crumpled school skirt and blouse. The nuns were always telling her off for her messy uniform, a criticism she was careful never to relay to her mother, who was fiercely proud of her appearance and always left Valentina strict instructions to be neatly turned out.

‘I don’t care about how I look,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘It’s only school.’

Gaby gingerly hung her satchel on the back of a kitchen chair. The table was littered with unwashed cups and a couple of sticky plates.

‘So do you cook for yourself?’ she asked Valentina.

‘Sort of.’ Valentina sashayed over to the fridge, feeling very grown-up. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Always!’ Gaby grinned at her. ‘Hey, let’s eat everything we’re not supposed to. I’ll go to the bakery while you cook.’

Valentina limply hung over the fridge door, and stared inside. There was a jar of pesto, a block of Parmesan and a container of rigatoni. That was it. Gaby joined her by the fridge. She put her arm around her friend’s waist when she saw its paltry contents.

‘Is that it?’ she whispered in horror.

Valentina couldn’t reply. She was seeing the inside of her fridge with her friend’s eyes. She felt so ashamed of her mother.

‘Mama’s not that into food . . .’

Gaby squeezed her waist.

‘I can cook something nice for you. My mother taught me how.’

Valentina bit her lip. She loved Gaby, but sometimes she couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. Gaby’s mother was one of those traditional Italian mamas. Plump, doting, always feeding you. It was why, Gaby complained, she was twice the size of Valentina. Yet Valentina admired Gaby’s budding curves. She herself was still tall and narrow, with no shape at all. Her mother had never taught her to cook.

‘Okay, I’ll go to the bakery and buy us some little cakes,’ Valentina offered.

‘Get a selection, four different ones each!’ Gaby called as Valentina went out the door.

Not only did Gaby cook for her, a sumptuous meal of pesto and rigatoni, with a rich tomato sauce (where did she find the ingredients in the chaos of the kitchen cupboards?), but by the time Valentina returned with the cakes, she had also swept the floor, washed the dishes and wiped the kitchen table. Her friend’s desire to care for her filled Valentina with awe, for she knew she would not think of doing the same for her.

‘Aren’t you lonely?’ Gaby asked her as she polished off the tomato sauce, licking the spoon hungrily.

‘Never,’ Valentina said, sitting back and feeling the rare satisfaction of a full belly. ‘I like being on my own. Although I wouldn’t mind having you as my cook.’

This love of being in her own company has never gone away. So until Gina’s fateful words, Valentina had actually looked forward to Theo’s short absences. Only two, at the most three, days away. Long enough to relish her solitude and to miss him, but not too long to worry about where he is or what he is doing. The fact that he has never offered an explanation demonstrates that he believes they are above the possessiveness others can get bogged down by. They really are flatmates first, lovers second. He never asks her what she has been up to.

Valentina gets out of bed and draws back the curtains, opening the French window slightly. She is cooled by the autumnal breeze, yet even though her skin is prickling from the chill, she likes to remain naked. She closes her eyes and the wind feels like a hand stroking her, all the way from her forehead, down her cheeks and neck to her throat and chest. She feels her nipples harden as the temperature drops inside the room, and wind licks between her legs. She can hear the constant stream of traffic through Milan, the heartbeat of the city, and yet she catches what peace there is as well. She visualises random images of tranquillity: a pigeon taking flight in the cloisters of Sant’Ambrogio, a boat drifting down the Naviglio canal, an empty swing in Parco Sempione rocking in the breeze. She smells the dying leaves, imagines them spinning off the trees on Via De Amicis. She likes this time of year in Milan. The city has finally cooled after the heavy, humid summer. August can be a nightmare, forty degrees and yet skies as grey as lead. Everyone tries to get away. This year she and Theo escaped to Sardinia for three weeks. Just as hot, yet the sea breezes lifted the oppressiveness of it.

She opens her eyes and feels such a longing to be back in Sardinia, outside in nature, naked on the warm sand, smelling the salty tang of the sea washing over her. As she walks across the bedroom, she imagines wading through the balmy sea. She feels the weight of her nakedness and catches a glimpse of her bottom as she passes the mirror. Men have always admired her behind. She has to admit she is rather proud of it. After
being such a skinny teenager, she was pleased when her curves finally developed. She hates to see other women ashamed of their bodies. Struggling into swimming costumes behind towels at the beach; self-conscious and eyes averted when trying on clothes in changing rooms. Can they not see how beautiful they are, in all their diversity, within their curved contours: the creamy velvet of their skin, breasts of all shapes and sizes, soft stomachs, broad hips, voluptuous thighs? The only other women she knows who are as open as she is about nudity are the models she photographs. Those stick-thin girls are past any kind of self-consciousness. Sometimes when she sees models who are obviously anorexic it makes her tense, almost angry. She is, as all her friends will tell you, one of the most non-judgemental people you will ever meet. Yet anorexia brings back ghosts for Valentina. Images of her mother she would like to forget.

By the time Theo returns to the bedroom with a tray laden with teapot, cups and saucers, Valentina is back in bed, sitting up expectantly, a pillow stuffed behind her back against the iron bedstead. This is one of the advantages of living with someone. Just by making her a pot of tea, Theo makes her feel cherished.

Her lover carefully places the tray in the middle of the bed, and climbs back into bed beside her.

‘Will you be mother?’ he asks her.

The English phrase amuses her. The last thing she could
imagine her mother ever doing is pouring tea out of a teapot like a duchess.

‘Of course,’ she says, looking at Theo from under her lashes. ‘As you know, I like to be in charge sometimes.’

He grins back at her as she picks up the teapot and begins to pour tea into his cup. As she does so, Theo leans forward and cups her breasts, one in each of his hands.

‘Don’t want my property getting splashed by hot tea,’ he explains, winking at her.

She swats him off nonchalantly, yet a part of her likes this. She leans back against the pillow, nursing her hot tea between her hands, and wonders if they are the image of an old married couple, sitting side by side in bed drinking Earl Grey tea for breakfast. Well at least we’re naked, she thinks comfortingly.

‘Are you okay now?’ Theo asks her.

She nods, sipping the tea. The warm liquid comforts her, and yes, she can honestly say that her night-time fears are banished for today. Theo puts his cup of tea down on the bedside table, leans over towards her and kisses her on the neck, just under her ear. It tickles, but also sets her heart racing a little.

‘I have something to ask you,’ he whispers, his breath lifting her hair.

Involuntarily she stiffens with unease. No, not now; she doesn’t want to talk about it this morning.

‘I have to get up. I want to develop some pictures before I go on the shoot,’ she says, placing her cup back down on the tray.

‘It’s just a little question, Valentina, don’t worry.’ She looks at him, and he is smiling at her, his eyes brimming with bemusement. Is he mocking her?