The Silent Wife Quotes
"The broken, the dreamers, the unhinged – Mum just made cheese on toast and let them park their feckless backsides on our couch."
"After all these years of dredging around in the bargain bucket for the most ridiculous of men, I’d found someone who didn’t need fixing."
"I wanted to savour this moment, when the man who not only complemented me but completed me, was prepared to make a leap of faith and marry me."
"I’d have been delighted to have had a warm, jolly stepmother to help me along."
"I felt envious of that burning intensity of new love. Of their optimism. Of their hopes for the future."
"It was like offering a reward for the woman I was ten years ago, before Massimo wooed me with his Victorian home, his senior position at work, his desire for children."
"I couldn’t give up on her: just today Sandro and I had done another round of our neighbourhood, pinning up little pictures of her staring into the camera with her gorgeous amber eyes, urging people to search their sheds and garages."
"The ability to be kind, practical, and stoic was worth so much more than any amount of draping skill with a scarf."
"He did find it hard at the end. Everyone did. She was so young."
"She just can’t accept Caitlin’s not coming back. I thought it would help her but maybe it’s still too soon."
"Anyone would seem like they were making a right racket after their little boy. Never seen a child so quiet."
"Mind you, it’s fine. I can easily make a few sandwiches."
"I knew I’d never replace Caitlin, but no one has ever hated me as much as Francesca."
"I thought we should take it in turns to share our favourite memory of Caitlin."
"I’m going to have my own workshop, make an area of the house mine, rather than squat in a space belonging to another woman."
"That’s what couples do. They share each other’s problems and work out solutions."
"I felt a bit queasy seeing Caitlin’s writing there, big and bold. The confident form captain writing I associated with someone who’d been goal attack in netball and centre in the hockey team."
"But to her, I was extraordinary, in a way no one else could ever be."
"Whenever I hear this music, I will think of you and wish we’d made different choices."
"Thank God Nico hadn’t thought up a Caity-Cat equivalent for me."
"Would she have enjoyed all of these concerts, these places, these dinners just that little bit more, sought to wring a fraction more fun out of every minute, if she’d known that her minutes were in limited supply?"
"I don’t want you getting run-down because you’re stretched too thinly."
"No point in participating if you don’t intend to win. Why be mediocre when you can be the best?"
"It’s so difficult to tell what’s she thinking half the time."
"You’re in charge, Sandro. You decide when and how long the dog can play for."
"Any intelligent woman knew no intelligent woman would stay with a man like that."
"The point on my life barometer for normal was probably everyone else’s emergency appointment with a psychoanalyst."
"I burst into the house, racing up the stairs to where Massimo was packing his shirts, smoothing the sleeves with precision."
"That man who left the outside light on for me and waited up to see I was safely home even when I was in my twenties."
"This was my moment. The time I needed to harness my rage and accept that Massimo would never be who I needed him to be."
"I sank back onto the tarmac, not caring that my jeans were soaking up mud and water."
"The loving son-in-law who paid a fortune for my father to receive the best care?"
"I couldn’t believe how quickly Thursdays came round, carrying the great gloom cloud of dread for Sandro and me."
"If he managed to get into the water at all, he’d cling rigidly to the side, little rumbles of terror leaching out of his throat."
"The roads are different now – when I learnt to drive, there was so much less traffic. It’s not safe."
"But that was then. Now, my dad was disappearing into darkness and I was stranded, miles away, reliant on the stars, moon and Massimo’s moods aligning to give me a lift to see him."
"I had no plans to tell him that Dad was getting worse."
"And none of them with a pull as powerful as my fear of Massimo and what he would say when he found out that we hadn’t been to a swimming lesson."
"In that moment, I had to cling onto every fibre of maturity and resist turning into a toddler myself."
"I wanted to be the type that planned picnics, days to the beach where we all held hands and jumped over waves, flew kites at the Seven Sisters, our laughter swept away on the wind."
"I longed for her to think her life was richer for having me in it."
"Clearly I’d been far too Disney and nowhere near enough Jeremy Kyle."
"I didn’t know whether to give into irritation that Massimo had raised Sam’s expectations or be grateful that with all the shit going on with Francesca, at least someone was taking notice of Sam."
"Instead here I was, swallowing down the big burning ball of anger into my stomach."
"We could go to the Eden project – I think I can swap my Tesco vouchers for tickets."
"You’re all the same, you posh people. It ain’t a limited pot of love and kindness, you know."
"It’s a bit of an adjustment period for all of us, isn’t it?"
"Giving him the benefit of the doubt didn’t rush to the top of my tick list."
"But my conversations with him ended with me feeling slightly more irritated than before."
"I wanted to row back towards her and scoop her into the boat with us, not leave her stranded."
"I couldn’t work out whether he was insinuating Sam or Mum had snaffled it, thought I’d pinched it myself or was simply trying to eliminate potential scenarios."
"But wasn’t that the same for everyone who got married? Otherwise I might as well have stayed single."
"I didn’t want her to feel taken advantage of."
"The only thought running round my brain was ‘rock, hard place’."
"I took her hand. ‘I’m sorry that I’ve made you feel like that. It’s a bit of an adjustment period for all of us, isn’t it?’"
"I wanted to find a way back to how we were before the jewellery box saga."
"A flicker of exasperation passed across Massimo’s face."
"If she’d been in primary school, she’d have probably drawn her, Nico and Sam holding hands in front of a house with me standing alone by a tree."
"Two teams, you’re the goalie for that one, Nico; I’ll be the other."
"Line it up, stand back, take a run, NOT your left foot, aim past his head, try for the corner of the net…"
"Josh! You’re going to be playing for Man U at this rate!"
"Typical Massimo, always has to take it one step further."
"I love looking after people who just need a bit of comfort at the end of their lives."
"I popped home for some clothes, resisting the temptation to sit in our lounge for ten minutes’ peace and quiet."
"Sorry, mate. Are you all right? I missed my footing."
"Sunflowers in Italian are called girasoli – girare means to turn, and sole is sun – because they turn their faces to the sun."
"I’m not having you mollycoddling him until he’s scared of his own bloody shadow."
"But I couldn’t pretend any more. He didn’t love me. He loved himself."
"Far easier to absorb his unpleasantness than to challenge it."
"My lot in life was to support, to anchor this flawed man, to save him from himself."
"Mad bad behaviour became normal, until you lost sight of how people like Maggie and Nico resolved things."
"I’d believed him. I’d been sure deep down that Massimo loved me."
"I couldn’t risk being tempted to tell the truth."
"Thank God what made me happy hadn’t made Sam miserable."
"I swore Anna had put little marks on the gin bottle in case I had an unauthorised slurp."
"I pretended I needed to cool down to escape the conversation."
"I tried to imagine tackling him. Sitting at a family dinner under the arches."
"That poor little mite needs to get out and get over his fright."
"A bit like one of Nico’s ‘easy groundcover plants’ ivying over the sharper, more resistant edges of the family boundaries."
"You never know, you might realise that you made a duff choice."
"We don’t worry too much about that, as long as we’re not seeing double."
"I’ve never been to the opera. I’m worried I won’t understand it."
"You’ll love it… words and wisdom joined together in perfect musical harmony."
"If I’d drawn a template of our holidays, I was sure Massimo’s graph would look the same, year on year."
"I ground my feet. I rubbed my lips together and swallowed, preparing to produce a scream to shatter the stained glass in the chapel below if he so much as jabbed a finger in my direction."
"He’d been sorry. Then. And hundreds of times since."
"I felt hot just thinking about sitting through two hours with everyone else nodding along, following the story whereas I’d probably feel like Sandro, forced to go to Mandarin lessons, unable to distinguish between the word for a marshmallow or a mop bucket."
"We all do things at different times – some children walk and talk long after everyone else, some stop wetting the bed late – we all get there in the end."
"His stoicism – or low expectations of life – would have finished me off if I’d had any more despair left to squeeze out."
"You haven’t done anything wrong; it isn’t your responsibility to make us happy. Only Mummy and Daddy can make each other happy."
"Telling Massimo what I thought was like opening the door to an aviary."
"You make a list of all the things you want to change and give me till Christmas to do it."
"I wanted to say no. I wanted to pack my bag and run."
"You’re talking yourself out of it. I can see the cogs whirring."
"I love how you assume everyone is your friend. How you chat to everyone, the woman in the post office, the dog tied up outside the supermarket, the bloke with the toffee vodka at the checkout."
"I’d blundered through life for the last thirty-five years expecting a welcoming reception."
"Poor woman. Here I was all secret squirrel when she was probably just a family acquaintance."
"I recognised her shift in attitude. It was the same one I felt when someone said to me, ‘Ah, you’re Nico’s wife…’"
"Not that he’s ever had anything to do with him."
"I was trying to jam the last piece of a puzzle into the only remaining hole yet finding that it didn’t fit."