Set Me Free (4 page)

“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.”

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.

But the moment passed.

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

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 . . .”

I had to take a breath before I answered. “I don't know. I don't know if it is. Some things he said . . . I don't know. Maybe. I hope so.”

“I just hope that whatever happens, you'll be happier than you've been in the last few years, because I know that things have been very hard for you.”

I was too choked to reply.

“Why don't I come down for a couple of weeks?” she said, and I was so happy she'd offered. I didn't want to ask because I knew she was under so much pressure running a busy coffee shop.

“That would be wonderful. Thank you, Mum.”

“I'll speak to Michael and see what we can arrange for cover, okay? Don't worry about a thing. I'll come down soon.”

When I put the phone down, the house didn't seem so empty any more.

That night, at dinner, the children didn't notice their dad wasn't there. He was hardly ever with us in the evenings anyway. But I felt Lara's eyes on me, studying me. She was no doubt wondering why I was so pale and why my eyes were rimmed with red. She was quiet during dinner, and later she stood in the bathroom doorway as I bathed Leo.

“Are you okay, Mum?”

“Yes. Don't worry. We'll speak in a little while, after I put this young man to bed.” I began lathering my son's dark hair with no-tears shampoo.

“Okay,” she said in a small voice.

“Nothing to worry about,” I called as she walked away, but my tone denied my words.

Later, after Leo's bedtime stories, it was time to share a cup of chamomile tea on Lara's bed. It was a little ritual we'd started when she began having trouble sleeping, and it had become precious to both of us. The tea and honey helped her sleep better, but it was having some time together, alone and in peace, that made the difference for both of us. She probably felt it was a terribly uncool thing to do for a teenager and would have died if her friends knew, but they didn't need to – when it was just the two of us, she could still be my little girl.

Tonight, though, there would be no peace. I had to tell her about her father and me. I hesitated in front of her room and rested my forehead on the bright-yellow wooden plaque with her name painted on it. I braced myself and knocked at the door.

“Hey.” She was on her bed, writing in her journal. Since she'd read Anne Frank's diary a couple of years ago she'd taken to writing to “Kitty”, just like Anne had done. There was a little pile of books on her bedside table, as always, topped by her yellow iPod.

“What are you reading?”

“
Jane Eyre
. It's brilliant. It's part of next year's curriculum, but Mrs Akerele gave me the reading list and I'd thought I'd start it now.”

“That's good,” I said, resting her steaming mug on her bedside table. She sat up cross-legged, her back against the pillows. Her dark-golden hair was up in a bun and blue-rimmed glasses framed her face. A spattering of yellow flower stickers decorated the wall behind her, still unchanged since she'd first arrived. I'd offered to refresh it for her many times, to make the decor a bit more suitable for a fourteen-year-old, but she always refused. I think her old room made her feel safe.

“Mum, what's wrong? Is it me? Is it me upsetting you?”

“No, of course not, sweetheart.” Another painful breath. “Something happened between your dad and me today. We decided to take a little break from each other.”

I felt so guilty. With all the upheaval she'd experienced in her life, I couldn't believe we were going to unsettle her again. When we'd adopted her, we never, never thought it would come to this. I hadn't, anyway.

“You are separating,” she said matter-of-factly, and stirred her chamomile, gently blowing to cool it down.

“I'm sorry.”

“I knew it would happen. I mean, I'm not blind.”

The same thing my mum had said. It seemed like the people around me could see my life more clearly than I could.

“I suppose we didn't hide it very well.”

“He's never here. When he is, you don't talk, apart from what you really need to say to each other, like stuff about the house or us or things to do. You don't even look at each other sometimes,” she said.

To hear it spelled out – the reality of it, and the fact that our daughter had been so aware of it all along – hit me hard.

“What happened at Grandma's . . . well, that was bound to make things worse.”

“I'm sorry,” I repeated, too choked to say anything else. “We tried. We just don't seem to get on, we don't agree on anything. We just . . .” I shook my head, unable to say any more.

“I think it's also because of me. Because of . . . you know, the way I've been. The way I get angry.”

“No, no, Lara! It's not like that at all!” I exclaimed, putting my mug down. “Oh, please don't think it's your fault. None of this is your fault. Your dad hates seeing you upset. He finds it hard to see you going through this.” I would never, never tell her what he'd really said. “It's not because of you or Leo. It's us, it's Dad and I. We just don't understand each other. We haven't understood each other for a long time now.”

“I think that if we hadn't come along maybe you'd still be together,” she said, and I saw her scrutinising my face, like she was frightened of what I would say and at the same time desperate for reassurance. The thing was, from Ash's point of view she was probably right. If the children hadn't opened this deep, deep fracture between us we would still be together, Ash unthreatened in his selfish little world of work and golf and fancy watches, in his never-ending, never-to-be satisfied quest to impress his parents and make them proud of him. He'd still have me all for himself, exclusively his. Lara's words echoed Ash's, in a way; they certainly echoed his thoughts.

I looked into her eyes, and told her the truth. I told her
my
truth, not Ash's.

“I don't even want to
think
about you and Leo not being in my life.”

I saw her relaxing a little at my reply, and I stroked her face, tucking a wavy strand of hair behind her ear.

“I'm sorry you're upset, Mum.”

“I'm sorry too.”

“We'll be fine.”

I smiled a little. It should have been me comforting her; instead
she
was trying to reassure
me
. “Yes. We will be.”

My mum came to London and worked her magic on all of us. She was such a positive, loving, cheerful person; it was impossible not to be happier around her. But when she left, things started going downhill again. Ash barely saw the children, and he'd started phoning less and less. Every time he did, we fought. Lara kept having night terrors and she seemed to explode for no reason. Her anger was never directed towards Leo or me, but she seemed to be falling out with all her friends. She got a few warnings in school – they were shocked, because Lara had always been a model pupil. I'd explained to them about her background and I'd told them that Lara's dad and I had just separated, but there was only so many allowances they could make for her rages.

One morning I got a call from Lara's school, summoning me. I knew it would happen, sooner or later, but I was horrified all the same.

They said that Lara had shouted at Mrs Akerele, her English teacher, in the middle of a lesson, that she'd gone into a complete rage in front of the whole class and would not calm down. They'd sent her to the head teacher's office, but she was so distraught that she'd ended up in the nurse's room with a cup of sugary tea. A million thoughts raced in my mind – and of those thoughts, the one that screamed the loudest was that I'd
failed
her. I'd seen this coming, and I'd done nothing.

But what could I have done?

How easy, how
automatic
, even, it is for mothers to take the weight of the world on their shoulders, to feel responsible for every little piece of their children's world. As if we were omnipotent, as if somehow we should know how to shield them from everything, and we should do that all the time. And if anything goes wrong, it is our fault – we should have predicted it, we should have stopped it, we should have done
something
.

I was flustered, my thoughts scattered like leaves to the wind as I ran up the school's steps. I stopped for a moment and breathed as deeply as I could – three shaky breaths that didn't quite clear my mind.

The first thing I saw when I walked into the head teacher's office was Lara's back in a chair. She looked very small.

Mr Kearns rose with a greeting I didn't really hear and he offered me a seat. Lara kept looking down.

I sat beside my daughter and I touched her shoulder. She turned towards me – she was very pale and looked shocked, as if she couldn't quite believe what she'd just done. Her eyes were red behind her glasses; in her hands there was a mug that said Little Miss Smiley. For some reason, I found the combination of my daughter's face and the cheery mug terribly sad. I wanted to hug her, but I was worried it would not be appropriate, so I just held her hand as we sat and waited for Mr Kearns to speak.

“Mrs Ward, like I said to you on the phone, Lara's behaviour was unacceptable. Mrs Akerele is shaken and upset, as you can imagine. She said she feared Lara would hit her.”

My eyes widened. I looked at Lara, who in turn was gazing down at her black ballerinas. “Now, this is a bit much. I mean, she lost her temper, and that's bad, but to say Lara was going to hit her is outrageous!”

“Well, we were surprised ourselves. Mrs Akerele and Lara have always had a good relationship, haven't you? She's been teaching you for two years now, and with all the extra work you took on . . .”

Mrs Akerele, a young, vibrant woman, had always encouraged Lara's passion for language, and she had involved her in a few projects with more advanced classes. They seemed to have a great relationship, which made the incident all the more baffling.

“What happened, Lara?”

She swallowed. She looked very young and very scared. “She said she was going. She's moving away.”

“That's why you shouted? You were upset that she's moving away?”

She shuffled in her seat. I noticed that her eyelashes were still wet. “Sam and Mosi were acting up. For a change.” She rolled her eyes. “Mrs Akerele said she was glad she was moving on, so she wouldn't need to put up with all that any more. I . . .” Her voice trailed away.

“What went through your mind, Lara?” I encouraged. I had a lump in my throat.

“That it's not fair.”

“What's not fair, that Mrs Akerele is going?” Mr Kearns intervened.

“That someone ups and goes like that and leaves us because she doesn't care enough.”

My heart swelled for my daughter.

“Oh, Lara . . .”

Mr Kearns cleared his throat. “Shouting at a teacher is not acceptable, Lara. But I understand you were upset, and you have never been in trouble before. Usually for something like this I would look to suspend a student for a day, Mrs Ward . . .” I nodded, ashamed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Lara's head drop further. “But I spoke to Mrs Akerele and she agrees that what we'll look for at this time is simply an apology. We'll move on. There will be no consequences. Now, should this behaviour present itself again . . .” – he glanced at me again, and I could sense a private conversation, without Lara present, was to follow – “I won't be able to be so lenient.”

I nodded once more. He knew about Lara's background and he was taking her circumstances into consideration, though of course he couldn't have been aware of what we ourselves had just recently found out.

“Will you apologise, Lara?” I said, clutching my bag, eager to get out of that office, out of that school, and to be alone with my daughter. There was no doubt in my mind that she would.

“Yes. I'm sorry,” she whispered, still looking at her shoes.