He laughed. ‘But you’re a girl, Maggie. You can get away with it.’

Jesus. The Farinellis did like their handsome prince, distressed princess up the tower shit. A fortnight of ‘my willy’s bigger than yours’ might get pretty wearing. I hoped I’d have a little bit of time on my own with Nico. I wondered if it would be sacrilege to suggest slipping off for a meal one evening just the two of us. I tested the water. ‘If you and Lara want to go out for dinner one night on your own, I’d be more than happy to babysit Sandro.’

Massimo grinned. ‘That would be great, Maggie. I’ll see if I can get Lara to agree, she doesn’t really like leaving him.’

Anna butted in. ‘Sandro doesn’t know you very well yet, though, does he?’

‘No, but if it was towards the end of the holiday, hopefully we’ll have built up a bit more of a bond. And anyway, he’s very comfortable with Nico, isn’t he?’

I don’t think that woman had been contradicted enough in her life. She sat back in her chair with a surprised sigh that someone other than her had an opinion. She paused for a moment, as though she was formulating a strategy to keep me in my place, then picked up her handbag. ‘Right, Massimo, let’s make a move.’

I’d tread carefully for the moment, but however much she pontificated on the fact that the Farinellis did this, that or the other, she was forgetting one thing: in my head, I was still a Parker and Parkers hadn’t made much of a career out of toeing the line.

After they’d left, with Anna practically looking over her right shoulder as I pecked her on the cheek, Nico pulled me into his arms. ‘It will be fun, I promise. Mum will calm down when she gets there.’

I flopped into an armchair, deliberately hanging my legs over the arm in a childish rebellion against Anna always telling Sandro to sit up straight or Sam to take his shoes off or even nagging Nico not to leave his coat on the back of the chair in his own bloody house, aged forty.

Nico poured me a glass of wine and massaged my shoulders. ‘You’re all tense.’

‘Sorry. I don’t want to be ungrateful. I’m not used to all these family dynamics as an only child myself and just having Sam. I always wanted a sibling – I didn’t realise there would be so much rivalry.’

‘Massimo’s all right, just likes to be the top dog. He was a nightmare when we were kids. Whatever I had, he always wanted it – my bike, my Action Man, even my friends. Even if we had exactly the same thing, he’d want mine.’

‘Do you mind?’

‘I’m used to it. He’s all bluster anyway. We look out for each other now. It really rocked him when Dawn left him because they couldn’t agree on having kids. I don’t think anyone had ever refused him anything before. He was a bit of a lost soul, so we used to invite him round a lot.’

He winced at his use of ‘we’.

I smiled, trying to be a grown-up. ‘It’s okay. I do know you were married before.’

He hugged me to him. ‘I know, I just feel awkward. I don’t want you to think I don’t love you, well, as much…’

‘I don’t think that at all, I know it’s just different,’ I said, blushing slightly at his accurate reading of my mind.

He paused. ‘Anyway, Massimo’s been great for Francesca, really encouraged her with her swimming. Of course, I’m interested in how she’s getting on but I don’t understand the whole training programme the way he does.’

I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew it sounded mean. ‘It’s brilliant that he can help Francesca but it wouldn’t do him any harm to pay a bit more attention to Sandro. They’ve got a right nightmare going on next door.’

I filled in Nico on the whole dog saga and how Lara wouldn’t tell Massimo what had happened, plus my dog training plan.

‘Just be careful. Lara shouldn’t be risking anyone getting bitten. I don’t know why she acts as though we’re judging her. It’s so difficult to tell what’s she thinking half the time. Dawn was much more open. Lara’s so prickly about everything.’

He ruffled my hair.

‘You wouldn’t struggle on your own, would you? I’d hate it if you felt you had to bottle things up because of what I might think of you.’

I didn’t meet his eye. My thoughts strayed to that box in the attic. It wasn’t what he would think of me that was the problem.

Now, thanks to Caitlin, I had to make a call on which wife was going to be the bad guy.

15

LARA

Maggie was as good as her word. Armed with dog-whispering manuals, the smelliest sausage and a shrill whistle that made me jump every time someone blew it, the training of Lupo – and Sandro – began in earnest. Straight after school, every day. I concentrated on not feeling threatened she could get Sandro to step out of his comfort zone with such ease, doing things that if I had asked him he would have run off and hidden with his pens and paper. Or become entrenched in a stalemate with Massimo that would have had me dancing about, cooking Massimo’s favourite spaghetti alle vongole, taking all his suits to the dry cleaners, changing the beds every two days, anything to keep his mood cheery and his attention away from Sandro.

Maggie had the Midas touch. Her calm, no-nonsense approach, her expectation that Sandro was capable, that ‘everyone has to learn’, that he would – of course – get it wrong a few times but then get it right, seemed to rub off on him. After a series of shrieks and dashes behind Maggie and Sam when Lupo started to run towards him, Maggie persuaded him to whistle the dog and feed him a treat from his open palm. After two months of making sure the dog couldn’t get anywhere near Sandro when I wasn’t around, I had to force myself not to rush out and shout, ‘Careful!’

I was my father’s daughter.

From there, Sandro graduated to feeding the dog his dinner. Instead of me preparing it in the utility room and then diving out while Lupo charged in, Maggie decreed that Lupo would learn to eat to a whistle command.

Whistle, sit, stay, wait, eat was the new routine. Maggie would allow Sandro to throw the ball ten times, then put it away when Lupo still wanted to play. ‘You’re in charge, Sandro. You decide when and how long the dog can play for.’ And then she came up with some funny rule about not letting the dog walk through the door in front of any human.

But, weirdly, it seemed to work. Encouraged by Sam who had designs on making Lupo the star of Britain’s Got Talent, over the next month, the training regime slowly turned from survival into a hobby.

And all the while, Maggie’s bemusement that I hadn’t made Massimo get rid of the damn dog if my son was in danger hung over us like an organza canopy. A couple of times while she’d been standing watching Sam and Sandro teach Lupo to lie down, she asked leading questions like, ‘Has Massimo ever seen Lupo get aggressive with Sandro?’ ‘Did you tell Massimo that Lupo trapped Sandro in the treehouse?’

There was something so honest about her, so down-to-earth that I nearly told her the truth: that if I dared to question any decision Massimo had made, the stakes would rocket from just about manageable to unbearable. The disrespect he would feel if I dared to put forward an opinion different from his would deliver a consequence.

And never a pleasant one.

It wouldn’t be beyond him to decide Sandro needed more exposure to a variety of dogs. I had visions of him turning up with a posse of mongrels from the local rescue centre. The staff would forever talk about him as the kind-hearted, generous Massimo, ‘offering a home to some of our most challenging dogs’, while, in reality, he’d be berating both of us for our fear, screaming about how pathetic we were, how we just needed to get a grip.

She wouldn’t believe me. Who would? The man who anticipated everyone’s needs, pulling out chairs, opening doors, noticing new hairstyles, successful dieting, remembering children’s names, holiday destinations, elderly parents? The loving son-in-law who paid a fortune for my father to receive the best care? The man who modestly brushed away any praise with ‘It’s the least I can do. Anything that makes things easier for Lara…’

They’d think I was deranged, their faces screwing up in disbelief: ‘I can’t imagine him acting like that, can you? She must be making it up.’

If I hadn’t experienced every sorry little minute of the sham that I was living, I would have been the first to pull that face. Any intelligent woman knew no intelligent woman would stay with a man like that.

Or so I thought, before I had my life.