Set Me Free (3 page)

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.

“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.