‘I’m literally Italian,’ she was saying. ‘My father was Italian – Sorrento, born and bred – it’s in my blood.’
‘Oh, Sorrento’s just down the road,’ Joy replied, like she was referring to the nearest convenience store, when Sorrento was at least ten miles from where we were staying. ‘Do you speak any Italian?’ Joy asked hopefully.
‘A little,’ Ella said, lifting wisps of white lace underwear from one of her shopping bags and laying them out on the bed. I looked away. It felt like a rather intimate thing to do in front of your new husband’s family.
‘I’d love you to teach me some Italian,’ Joy said, always eager to impress, and a whole Italian sentence taught by her new daughter-in-law would certainly impress ‘the girls’ （all in their seventies） back home.
I was smiling to myself at this when Dan appeared in the doorway. He too saw the underwear, and I instantly wondered if he wished she was wearing it for him? It was an unwanted, irrational thought, and I pushed it to the back of my mind as he beckoned me with his head to go to him outside the room, as though if he walked over the threshold he might be cursed.
I reluctantly stood up and followed him out of the room and down the hall. ‘What, Dan?’ I said, slightly irritated, like Violet when she was told it was time to come off her tablet.
‘I feel bad that they’re on their honeymoon and they’re sharing a single bed,’ he said in an earnest whisper.
‘Jamie said they were fine,’ I responded.
‘Yes, but I don’t think she will be – imagine if you’d been told we’d be crammed into a tiny bed on our honeymoon?’ he added.
‘It’s not the same. There was no chance we’d be crammed in a single bed because we planned our holiday, like normal people do,’ I said, unable to risk a dig at the spontaneous lovebirds now in our midst. I’ll admit I was also a little disappointed; I’d hoped Jamie would spend time with me and Dan on the holiday. Now Jamie was going to be working with Dan I’d assumed we would get back to being the three musketeers, playing cards and drinking too much together. As Joy had offered to watch the kids while we were there, I’d looked forward to us all venturing out one evening. But now Jamie was married, it seemed like things had changed already.
‘I just think…’ Dan was saying, then took a breath. ‘I just think that perhaps we might offer them our room?’
‘That’d be a nice gesture, Dan, but where would we sleep?’
‘I thought… perhaps we could sleep in the single room? Or one of us could sleep with the kids, and the other could sleep in the single room?’
I couldn’t believe what he was suggesting. ‘But we don’t get any time as it is to relax together at home, this is our holiday, our marriage… What about us healing, Dan?’
‘We can still have our holiday, spend time together, but I just feel like we should be the grown-ups, and offer them the double room.’
At that point, Joy popped her head out of the bedroom doorway. ‘You two okay?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, yeah, we’re fine,’ Dan said, uncertainly, which Joy must have picked up on.
But by now I could feel myself tearing up: it wasn’t just about a room, it was about the way Dan always put everything before me, before us. Jamie had just turned up and announced he was married and now Dan was suggesting we vacate our lovely room for them, like it was too late for us, we were a lost cause. I was hurt that he could dismiss us like this. Giving our room away to his brother was giving away our only chance to reconnect.
I turned and walked quickly down the hall to our room leaving Dan and his mother in the hallway. I didn’t want Joy to see me upset, she’d want to know why and then she’d try to fix it. But for once I wanted Dan to understand how important this was to me and not leave it to Joy to sort out our problems.
I lay on the bed for some time, hoping he might come in and we could at least talk about it, on our own, but I could hear Dan’s voice as he headed downstairs. He was laughing about something and clearly had no intention of coming to see me, and I wondered, not for the first time, how much he really cared. A few minutes later, I heard Violet asking where Mummy was. She was just outside the room, and I was about to get up and open the door, but Joy’s soothing voice coerced her away with the promise of a swim and a story.
‘Mummy’s tired, darling,’ she said.
I wanted to go to Violet, but my face was puffy from crying, so I didn’t call out. I continued to lie on the king-sized bed with the beautiful cool bed linen where Dan and I had cautiously begun to rebuild a marriage which needed intensive care. How could he even suggest we give up the loveliness of the big white bed to sleep in a single bed or even separate rooms?