Best Eaten Cold Page 9

  I took the small bag from my pocket and gently, but with no great ceremony, sprinkled the dirt around the base of the old oak, completing the circle of Nonno's life as I whispered soft words.

  'Bentornato, Nonno. Mi dispiace che sia voluto così tanto tempo.' 'Welcome home, Nonno. I'm sorry it took so long.'

  Breaking Point

  Hacking isn't confined to the internet. If you need to press your wireless key fob twice to unlock your car, a nearby hacker may be spoofing the sequential encryption by using a radio blocker to intercept and record your key signal. When they walk up to your vehicle a few minutes, hours, or days later, it will only take them one button press to get inside.

  "How much is your Life Worth? Protecting your Identity in a Digital World". JJ Martin, Insight Business Press 2015

  I started seeing a counsellor just before Christmas.

  A counsellor. Me. Those are words I thought I'd never say.

  But I had to do something. I'd thought I was getting better for a while after we got back from Italy, but my lapses were still happening. Not many and with no pattern, but I'd begun to avoid making any arrangements and preferred not to go out on my own. It wasn't only messed up appointments and emails, and it was generally little things, but each one built on the others and appeared huge to me. The evidence was building steadily. The evidence which said, 'This is happening in your mind. You have a mental illness.'.

  I was still fighting it though. I wasn't prepared to accept that I was losing control. Not quite. I made a note of each occurrence in my diary and read and re-read it, over and over, hiding myself away and desperately trying to find some other explanation for what was going on. But, however hard I tried, I couldn't find any patterns which made sense, and even I could see that I was starting to behave like a secretive, obsessive paranoiac.

  The most recent incident had happened a week earlier when I'd gone up to Marks and Spencer's food hall in Summertown. I couldn't ask Rupert to do everything. It wasn't fair as he was working so hard and then had to deal with my emotional baggage when he came home. I suppose the car park meltdown was the thing which finally pushed me over the edge and made me realise I couldn't go on without help.

  I was in a good mood. Sam was beginning to show signs that he might consider using the night as a time for sleeping, rather than an opportunity to torment me. He was also becoming very funny, especially as he learnt to eat solid food.

  Virginia and John had given us one of those Scandinavian Tripp Trapp high chairs; it had a big plastic tray with raised edges, which was proving to be extremely useful as Sam experimented with the myriad different approaches to solid food consumption.

  These were, in no particular order: spitting out, swallowing, gargling, biting the spoon and a skilful combination of simultaneous swallowing, spitting out and wiping everywhere. I was sure he would progress to the smiling cheekily and dropping on the floor stage soon enough but, for now, that was beyond him.

  He was still small, so didn't interfere with the shopping expedition as he dangled, face-forward in his baby carrier, happily distracted by the bright lights, the people everywhere, and the shiny shapes of tins, jars, bottles, boxes and bulging bags. It was more fun than the Early Learning Centre and Sam was vocal in his appreciation as each new delight went into the trolley. He had developed a particular stuck-pig squeal which he would mix up with his other new talent, that of blowing raspberries.

  The adventure was wearing thin after about half an hour and the checkout queue was definitely not as enjoyable. By the time we'd paid, I think he'd decided shopping might not actually be everything it was cracked up to be.

  It had been sunny when we arrived but, as we came out, a light drizzle was falling and it was already getting dark. No wonder people got sad, or rather S.A.D., over the winter months. Spring was a long way off and it was definitely going to get worse before it got better. I thought idly about moving to Italy.

  I dragged the trolley up over the conveniently placed curb, manhandled a grizzling Sam into his car seat and put the bags in the car. It was only after I'd got in and sat down that I saw the plastic envelope tucked under my wipers.

  I'd bought a parking ticket for two hours and had stuck it on the inside of the windscreen. I remembered fumbling about in the glove compartment for coins. I'd been there for less than an hour, so it couldn't have been a parking fine. But it was. Of course it was.

  Failure to display a valid ticket. It should have been easy enough to dispute as it patently wasn't true, but the ticket was nowhere. Not fallen on the floor, not on the dashboard. It was as though it had never existed. I couldn't believe this was happening. I knew that I'd bought a ticket.

  It wasn't as though I'd bought the bloody thing a week earlier, it was less than an hour and I could clearly remember looking for the coins, going to the machine, putting the money in, listening to the stupid beep-beep-beep noise that the machine made as though it was impersonating a reversing truck, taking the ticket and sticking it onto the windscreen. I didn't think I'd bought a ticket. I knew I had.

  Sam was screaming his head off by this point and my brain was about to explode. Every breath was tugging my head back and up with short, rapid gasps and pulling my stomach into my throat. This couldn't be happening to me. It couldn't. It simply couldn't.

  It was only when I heard tapping at the window that I realised I was making more noise than Sam, banging my hands on the steering wheel again and again, screaming and shouting obscenities at the top of my voice. I turned to see a small grey-haired woman leaning towards me and peering down through heavy glasses, obviously assuming I was a madwoman who'd stolen a car and a baby.

  I grabbed hold of the steering wheel with both hands, squeezing as tightly as I could while I tried to bring my breathing back under control. Her patient, concerned face must have been hanging there for a long while, framed by the misty glass, before I felt it was safe to wind the window down.

  'Is everything all right dear?' she said.

  'Yes, thank you, I'm fine.' I managed to force a smile, or at least a grimace. 'It's just the third parking fine this week and my husband will kill me.'

  'Well, if you're sure you're all right ...' she said, and turned away, probably muttering to herself about the absence of decorum and self-control in the youth of today.

  I've never been emotionally fragile. Not even slightly. There were times when I'd wallowed in self-pity for a while after breaking up with someone or losing a job, and I was usually a major pain in the arse when I had PMS – but who wasn't? Until recently, though, my glass of water had always been half full.

  There had been one big exception; when my parents died, there was suddenly nothing left in the broken and empty glass. Not a single drop. Their death came out of the blue and shocked me to the core. One minute they were there and then suddenly they were gone.

  But my reaction didn't mean I was emotionally weak. Losing them had been totally unexpected and they were much too young.

  Which was probably why Deborah's first serious question rocked me back on my heels.

  Deborah was my counsellor. Deborah Horsley, mid thirties, gentle West Country accent slipping through from time to time, she appeared to be a kind person and exactly what I expected from a shrink.

  We'd done the form filling, introduction thing and spent about fifteen minutes talking over the story of my life so far. It was all very superficial and probably designed to put me at my ease. I also assumed she needed a bit of context if she was going to be able to help me, but I was impatient and I wanted to talk about what was happening to me there and then.

  'So, Fabiola, tell me about your relationship with your father,' she suddenly said, out of the blue.

  Talk about a sucker punch. Where had that come from?

  'Isn't that a bit of a cliche?' I said, crossing my arms and sitting back in my chair. 'Surely there's more to this than, "They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad"?'

  Deborah smiled. 'Yes, there's a bit more than that, but it wo
rks best if you go with the flow. I'll do my best to help you but it'll be much easier if you trust me. Tell me about your father. Were you close?'

  'Until a year before my parents died, we were very close,' I replied, picturing my dad's shiny-cheeked, smiling face as he welcomed someone new into the coffee shop. Everyone was his favourite customer and his easy, happy charm was universally captivating. 'I loved my mother as much, but Papa and I had a special bond. We were on the same wavelength.'

  Deborah leant towards me, holding my gaze. 'So what happened a year before they died? What happened to break your bond?'

  I looked away and down to my shoes. Over the past few months, I'd had a lot of time for introspection and the realisation that my parents would never meet Sam inevitably rose up in my thoughts – a dark leviathan writhing, sinuous and yellowed-eyed, just below the surface.

  Whenever I thought about them, my natural grief was muddied by guilt over the way I'd behaved in the year before they died; instead of embracing remorse, my perverse response was often to become angry instead. That was the peculiar thing about those times when you felt guilty and you actually deserved it. It was easy to become bitter and resentful of the people you'd wronged. After all, it was their fault that you felt bad in the first place.

  When they couldn't answer you back, the cycle of twisted self-justification fed on itself for a while but, unless you really were a total shit, it wasn't a healthy long-term approach. I'd been thinking a lot about that conflict but wasn't ready to share my fledgling conclusions with a stranger. 'Look Deborah, could we focus on what's been going on recently, please? After all, that is why I'm here.'

  'OK. If that's what you prefer. We can come back to your family later. I don't think we can ignore them though. These things are so often interrelated.' She looked at her notes. 'I understand you've been experiencing some confusion and memory lapses, is that right?'

  'Yes. It started soon after Sam, my son, was born – just under nine months ago. I've found myself mixing up appointments – arriving too early, too late or going to the wrong place. I've also imagined receiving emails and have forgotten about other emails which I've received or sent. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before and I'm beginning to think I'm losing my mind. I'm being so careful to check and double-check everything, but I keep slipping up. It's as though a hidden part of me is deliberately trying to sabotage my life.'

  'Yes. I see. I can understand how you might feel that way and it must be extremely distressing,' she said. 'Is it affecting your sleep? Other areas of your life? Social? Work?'

  'All of them,' I said. 'Sleeping was a mess anyway, but it's got worse. I was hoping to have started a part-time job by now, but that was one of the things I screwed up by going to the wrong place for an interview. I don't have any close friends around here and I was relying on getting back a little normal adult contact through work.'

  'I'm surprised to hear you don't have close friends. You come across as someone who'd have a good social life.'

  'I used to. I always used to. But I moved in a different circle for a while and lost touch with my school and university crowd. Since we've been here, it's been difficult. I've met a lot of Rupert's friends but it's going to take me a while to fit in.'

  'And you can't get back in touch with some of your old friends? We tend to have the most uncomplicated, trusting relationships with the people we bonded with during our formative years.'

  'I'd love to and I've tried, but it's actually a perfect example of how I'm behaving and how pathetically insecure I've become. I was invited to catch up with a lot of old university friends before Christmas and was really looking forward to seeing them, but then it didn't work out.'

  'What did you mean by, 'it didn't work out'?'

  'I couldn't face going. It was straight after a couple of memory lapses or whatever you want to call them. I was too afraid to go.'

  'That's a great shame,' said Deborah. 'It's important to have people who you trust around you. And you're absolutely certain your problems aren't issues with technology or simple mistakes?'

  'I don't see how they can be,' I replied, biting back my irritation. 'There have been too many incidents plus we've checked my phone and iPad again and again and there's nothing wrong. My husband, Rupert, is good with techie stuff and he's double checked with other devices as well. I even persuaded him that I should have a new phone a few weeks ago and I've changed all my passwords. I want to believe it is something external, but I haven't found a single thing to back that up.'

  'What about your husband? Is all of this having an impact on your relationship?'

  'Absolutely. Rupert is being incredibly patient, but it's clear that he doesn't believe he can trust me any more. He's beginning to check up on me and to treat me like a child. I hate it obviously, but I do see his point. Some of my lapses have cost us real money.'

  'So, are you saying that the basis of your relationship with Rupert has changed?'

  'Yes. We're no longer equals. We've moved into some sort of warped parent-child relationship which isn't what either of us signed up for. Going back to your first question, I loved my father, but I never wanted to sleep with him.'

  'That doesn't sound good.' Deborah was writing a lot of notes. 'It's something we'll need to address in due course.'

  'I understand, but I'm sure Rupert and I will find a way to figure it out. We're both adults and we still love each other. The real elephant in the room is the danger that something I do could put Sam at risk. What if I forgot to pick him up from somewhere or left him behind? I would never forgive myself.'

  'I would be surprised if anything like that happened,' she said. 'The maternal instinct is deeply ingrained in our psychological make-up.'

  I wasn't convinced. Since the incident in the car park, I'd become certain Rupert and Virginia were spying on me and checking up on everything I did. They didn't trust me to be alone with Sam, I could tell.

  I lifted my head and looked up at her. 'Please help me to figure it out, Deborah. I can't go on like this. I really can't. I'm afraid of what might happen.'

  Deborah reached over and took my hand in hers. 'Don't worry,' she said in her calm, sensible voice. 'We'll find our way through to the other side. As I said at the start, we'll have a minimum of six sessions and more if we need them. I would like to go into more detail about these incidents but, before we do that, were you aware that confusion and memory lapses are well-documented consequences of the grieving process? It may not be a factor but, over the past few years, we've moved on a long way from the simple "five stages of grief" theories and we shouldn't exclude the possibility that you're undergoing a delayed response to the loss of your parents.'

  'I didn't know that, but I don't believe my parents' death has anything to do with what is going on. This is something that's changed recently, and is happening to me right now. They died six years ago. I was sad. I'm still sad. I do feel guilty and I will try and explain why at some point, but that isn't what's behind this.

  'This is as though some malevolent spirit in my subconscious is toying with me, tormenting me, punishing me for some reason. I'm still not sure whether I should be seeing a counsellor or an exorcist.'

  Deborah lived about twenty minutes walk from home but, as Virginia was looking after Sam until after lunch, I had the rare opportunity to take a solitary walk and clear my mind on the way home. I looped through Port Meadow to breathe a bit of green (ish) air, but my real destination was Brew – a special little coffee shop on the Banbury road which I loved.

  I liked Deborah and hadn't found the process as embarrassing or painful as I'd feared, but it was still difficult to imagine sharing my innermost thoughts and fears with a stranger. I suspected it would become easier and easier as we progressed, but would I ever share every sordid detail of my family history with Deborah? I wasn't sure.

  I was probably no worse than the average obnoxious teenage girl until Joe. It all started there, and the three months we spent together changed everythi
ng back in Bedford in ways which couldn't be undone. I probably always knew it would work out like that, but I went ahead anyway. It wasn't as though I was underage, I was seventeen, or almost seventeen, and he was only thirty-six. But that wasn't the point; I wanted to grow up, to become an adult woman so that I could make my escape and Joe was my exit visa, as well as being charming, intelligent, good looking and wanting me. He courted and seduced me and I was besotted.

  I should point out that, not only was he thirty-six, but he was married and with a second kid on the way. That added a bit of spice to the situation. Oh, and he was my politics teacher. Yes, I knew it was wrong, and I knew it would have consequences, but I didn't care. I wanted to break free from the chains which were holding me down, the chains of my conservative Italian family, the chains of the class system, the chains of the patriarchy, the chains of bloody Bedford. I don't think I wanted to shatter them quite as catastrophically as I did, but teenagers have never been renowned for measured judgement.

  It went much more wrong than I'd expected, although I hadn't thought much about the consequences anyway. The affair was too exciting and illicit and dangerous to worry about such petty details. He said he loved me and that he was going to leave his wife for me. I suspect I was mostly flattered and having fun but, when you're suddenly picked up and plonked down into the middle of a Hollywood movie, there's nothing to do but play your part until somebody shouts 'cut!'. And so I did.

  Looking back, it was easy to see that I was much more of a child than I thought I was at the time and, when the shit hit the fan, my world changed forever. He lost his job, his wife kicked him out, and there was some talk about whether he should be prosecuted.