Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday. Cathy Kelly
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But the fear with Antonio: that was a different sort of fear entirely, a fear that bleached into her very bones.
Before they were married, he’d seemed like a different man – happy, merry, kind, good-humoured, full of life, the sort of man everyone wanted at their party.
‘Let’s have Antonio along, he’ll sing us a few songs and play the piano,’ people would cry.
Danae loved that. She was the girlfriend and then the fiancée of this wonderful man. Antonio Rahill, half-Italian half-Irish, with flashing dark eyes, gypsy dark hair, pale skin. Black Irish, they called them. Thanks to his mother, he could speak fluent Italian. His second name was Luigi. A Calzone family name for decades. Antonio’s Irish father had wanted his son’s first name to be a good, Irish saint’s name, like Anthony. His mother had resisted. By way of compromise, he was christened Antonio.
He may have had a saint’s name, but Antonio was no saint. Danae hadn’t known that when he proposed, slipping the small ring with the tiny diamond in the claw setting on to her finger. The happiness she’d felt at that moment was overwhelming. This man loved her, loved her enough to marry her. There was to be none of the pain her mother had gone through, no succession of men. She would build a life with this one man, the man who loved her.
They had no money at first. After they married, they lived in a top-floor flat where the decor was at least twenty years out of date. But it was clean and dry, and it had great views out over the city.
She was a dreadful cook, Antonio would say.
‘Get my mama to teach you,’ he’d say, and she’d promised she would.
Danae could do any number of things with eggs, because in the bad old days, she and Sybil could always afford a few eggs. Omelettes, scrambled eggs – you name it, she could do it. With the help of Rosa, Antonio’s mother, she began to broaden her repertoire. Rosa was delighted that her son’s new bride wanted to learn how to cook like a proper Italian wife.
The first time she had showcased her newly acquired Italian cooking skills, Danae set the formica table with a sheet as a table cloth so they wouldn’t have to look at the horrible blue-and-yellow pattern. She lit two red candles, got out their best glasses – a wedding gift from Antonio’s uncle, who owned a restaurant. She’d struggled hard with cannelloni. For dessert, there was tiramisu, Antonio’s favourite. Or rather, his second favourite. The dish he loved most was sweet cannoli, but Danae wasn’t to attempt that one, Antonio insisted. There was no point. She could never reach the culinary heights of his mother. And Danae, who was used to being in second place, meekly agreed.
Danae had asked Antonio to bring some wine for this special occasion. She rarely drank herself, but the glasses were ready. A jug of water was on the table. The oven was set on low with the cannelloni keeping warm inside. Having checked and doubled-checked that everything was ready, Danae waited patiently.
Seven came and went, eight, nine … She began to worry that something must have happened. Eventually she rang the restaurant, fearful that she’d made a mistake and tonight wasn’t the night they’d agreed on, maybe he was still working. But no, he’d left hours ago. So she sat on the couch, a second-hand couch from another of Antonio’s uncles, until eventually she fell asleep.
She woke with a start to find him standing over her, and her first instinct was to smile and reach her arms out and go: ‘Oh, darling, I was worried when you didn’t come.’
And then something inside her, some instinctive reaction, made her pull back a fraction.
The man who was glaring down at her didn’t look like her husband. He didn’t have the warmth in his eyes, the smile on his face. No, this man was different. He was Antonio, and yet not him.
‘Where’s my dinner?’ he growled.
The words, It was ready at seven o’clock when you were supposed to come home, died on her lips. She knew that this would not be the correct thing to say. Faded memories of fear surfaced.
Danae moved carefully off the couch, sliding away from him, as if the slightest touch might somehow inflame him. Afterwards, she never knew where the instinct came from, the awareness that there was danger here.
‘I’ll get it ready for you, darling,’ she said.
She wished she’d bought a bottle of wine herself. Perhaps that might have calmed him. But judging by the smell of alcohol on his breath, he’d been drinking already. Maybe more would make him worse; she didn’t know.
She set the dish on the table. The edges were burnt. Carefully, she served it up, her hands shaking.
He hadn’t moved from the couch. He stood staring at her, following her every move.
‘There,’ she said, putting down a simple tomato salad drizzled with olive oil, the way his mother made it. ‘I hope you like it.’
The matches were on the table and she tried to light the candles, but her hand was shaking so much that she couldn’t quite do it.
‘Can’t you do anything right?’ he snapped.
And then Danae was frightened, a pure cold fear that started deep in her belly, turning her bowels to water, making her stomach clench, creeping up her chest so that every muscle in her tightened, every part of her was coiled, ready to escape.
‘Maybe you could do it, darling,’ she said, turning to him.
‘Don’t look at me,’ he hissed.
He moved so quickly that he was beside her in an instant. The first blow went to the side of her head, and the pain that immediately followed was mingled with the strangest ringing in her ear.
She couldn’t compute, her mind couldn’t make sense of this.
She’d been hit, but how? Not by Antonio, not the man who loved her, he couldn’t have done this. She must be wrong, this must be a nightmare and any minute she would wake up.
The second blow went to her stomach, felling her. He was taller than she and much more powerful. His fist in her stomach sent her flying backwards, against the cooker. As she fell to the floor, her head bashed against the oven. Collapsed on the floor, one leg straight, one leg bent beneath her, her stomach spasmed with pain. Her head was ringing with the strength of his blows. She still couldn’t make sense of what had happened. Then she looked up at him again and he started kicking her.
When she came to, she had no idea what time it was, although the moon was shining in the windows and the oven was humming away on low. She tried to lift herself off the floor, but it was impossible. Every part of her body felt sore. As if someone had stood on her, tried to squash her flat like an ant. Nausea overwhelmed her, greater than the headache pounding through her head. Summoning all her strength, she pulled herself up. One eye couldn’t seem to focus properly and she kept blinking. The rooms were dark, the only light came from the moon outside, but she knew she wasn’t alone in the apartment – she felt his presence.
When she had managed to drag herself to her feet she stumbled to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face, hoping to revive herself, hoping that the coolness would make the pain go away.
She couldn’t move her left ankle properly and she didn’t know why until she realized it was swollen and there was a boot mark across it. Moving slowly so as not to wake him, she made it out of the kitchen and down the corridor into the tiny bathroom. Staring at her from the bathroom mirror was a horror story. Her face swollen on one side, lip split from something he must have done after she passed out. Gingerly she pulled up her blouse to see the beginnings of a huge bruise around her stomach, bruises on her arms, and in the bathroom light she could now see the marks on her legs too. Her ankles were swollen beyond belief.
Even with the bathroom door closed, she could hear Antonio snoring. It had always been a joke between them, how much he snored.
At the dinner to celebrate their engagement, his mother had announced: ‘My Antonio, always he snore! He wake us all up. Now he can wake you