The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

my best to straighten the sheets. ‘Meg?’

Her eyes flicked open but she looked through me, and beyond.

After she had quietened, I went downstairs and took out the two bottles of wine – Vigna L’Apparita (the merlot grape) – which had been given to me by our host at La Foce, from where I had racked them in the kitchen. These were worth dying for, and I hid them under a cache of cardboard.

Upstairs, I searched for aspirins for my aching head and upended the contents of my handbag on the bed. My new mobile phone dropped out and I switched it on. A text message flashed up: ‘I LV U Mum Cxxx’.

I sat down and wept tears for my father and Chloe’s absence. Tears of confusion and-more than a little-of regret.

The next morning I left Meg, still asleep, in Casa Rosa.

It was market day in Fiertino, and the square was choked with vans and stalls selling cut-price kitchenware, mounds of vegetables and raffia baskets. I bought a bucket from a stall and rubber gloves, a broom, disinfectant, cream cleanser, descaler and polish in the supermarket.

‘Signora.’ The dark-eyed woman serving me spotted the red bumps on my arm and tossed a tube into the purchases. ‘Per i morsi,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Grails.’

I thanked her and trudged back to the house in the now broiling sun. I tied a scarf round my head, boiled water and began the cleaning.

I scrubbed the table. The kitchen floor. The bathroom. I brushed every nook and cranny of the house and the dead insects piled into heaps. I cleaned the windows, chipped away at the fur-encrusted taps, washed the walls, erasing with scourer and chemical the stain of doubt on myself.

Perhaps, in life, one regrets more the things that one did not do than those one did?

What would my father have thought?

Surely what was important was the affirmation of passionate feeling? The resolve never to have an empty heart?

The chemicals and the immersion in water puckered my fingers into pink prunes. My back grew stiff from stooping, and I was soaked with sweat from head to foot. To clean Casa Rosa properly was a hopeless task, but I was going to do it.

‘Looks to me like a bad conscience,’ Meg commented, when she eventually appeared. ‘Scrubbing away the sins. Don’t ask me to join in.’ There was a red mark on one cheek where she had slept on it and her fair hair was mussed. ‘Any hot water?’

‘I’ve used it up.’

Meg looked thoughtful. ‘It’s very frontier,’ she said. ‘Still, if that’s what’s required, Fanny, I’ll wash in cold to join you in spirit.’

From where I knelt on my hands and knees, I said, ‘Ring up the airport, Meg, and book a flight home.’

‘Please Fanny. Let me stay. Please.’

‘Why is she here?’ Benedetta whispered to me when, later in the morning, I took Meg over to see her. ‘To make the trouble?’

‘I hope not.’

Benedetta opened her dark eyes wide and I saw how beautiful they still were and remembered how my father had once loved them. ‘Big nuisance, Fanny.’

Meg was on her best behaviour, but she was not offered a fresh tomato from Benedetta’s crop and I took the hint.

Strangely enough, Meg was still in situ at Casa Rosa the following morning and we ate breakfast at Angelo’s.

‘Amore!’ Maria, who was busy at the coffee machine, called.

‘That’s what mothers call their sons in Italy,’ I informed Meg.

‘A mummy’s boy?’ Meg smiled winningly at Angelo, who blushed, and watched his well-covered form as he hastened inside to answer his mother.

‘No more than Sacha.’

Meg tried to frown and failed. ‘Sacha does not always obey his mummy’

Meg’s brioche had been reduced to crumbs, but not much had been eaten. ‘You should eat,’ I said. ‘Eat breakfast like a king.’

‘Funny how we repeat the same things. I used to say that to Will. He was bullied at school and it took away his appetite.’

‘Will? Bullied?’

Meg seemed surprised. ‘Didn’t he tell you? No, well, I suppose he wouldn’t. He’d probably die rather than admit he’d been frightened. But he was.’

‘Go on.’

Meg wet the tip of her finger, picked up a crumb on it and put it into her mouth. ‘I was frightened of the grandparents. Not that they were evil or anything, but just so old and boring, and they preached all the time. I was always terrified I’d go home and find two dead bodies. That’s why Will always waited for me after school. That was one of the reasons he was bullied. Loves his sis.’

‘And the others?’

Meg sounded impatient. ‘There were so many.’

A horn tooted. It was Raoul. He parked under a tree and walked over to join us. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye. As it turns out, I can’t stay.’

Meg searched in her bag and produced a lipstick, which she proceeded to apply. Its dark pink glistened on her mouth.

Raoul’s departure did not surprise me. There was no point in his staying. We both needed a polite gap and to make the readjustments. I thought with a flash of bitterness and regret of how I would miss our conversations.

When Raoul got up to go, he bent over and kissed me. ‘I will be in the UK later in the year,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I will ring you. I would like to talk to you about the business.’

‘Have you decided where to bury Alfredo’s ashes?’ Meg watched Raoul’s car negotiate the traffic around the piazza and vanish.

‘No.’

‘I thought that was why you came here,’ she remarked innocently. Her attention was now drawn to a van unloading pallets of spinach and melons. Are you planning changes, Fanny? I didn’t quite buy the burying-my-father’s-ashes story. Especially when I saw that Raoul had put in an appearance. This little escape is more of a not-waving-but-drowning gesture, which must be to do with my brother.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps you’re thinking that the marriage has run its course. Marriages do. You start out full of good intentions, the best intentions, and life gets in the way’ She flicked me a look. ‘You’re well rid of Raoul. What’s it worth for my silence?’

‘I’ll tell Will. Of course.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ she said.

I fiddled with a packet of sugar. ‘I bought myself some time.’

‘I’m sorry I cramped your style.’

‘No, you’re not.’ I gave Angelo the money for the bill. ‘Go home, Meg and don’t interfere.’

‘Consider me warned.’ Meg got to her feet. ‘Other people’s lives are just that. Other people’s lives. And a complete mystery’

*

Meg did not go home after a few days. Of course, she didn’t. Initially, there were difficulties in changing her ticket. Then it appeared there were no available seats to London for a couple of weeks. Then she said. ‘Look, I might as well stay on until you leave. It’s only one more week.’

Each day that I spent in the valley, I grew more detached from my former life. I looked back at it, dim and blurred, through the glass, without nostalgia, only half remembered, imperfect in detail. An inner sleepiness folded