Broken Chord by Margaret Moore

shiver. She looked at the bed. It was large, big enough for them to sleep in together without touching, which was the way it had been for some time. She didn’t know what he wanted. He was driving her crazy with his constant criticism and this last week, since they’d come to stay with his mother, as they did every year in the summer, he’d seemed to step back and look at her through his family’s eyes, which had made it all so much worse. They all made her feel like some kind of serving wench. Who did they think they were? That bloody Ursula was little more than a whore, always with at least one man on a string and often more than one, and that revolting Guido was the last straw. How dare he look down his nose at her as though she didn’t know which fork to use. God, it was depressing.
    She took off her summer dress and looked at her body in the mirror. She realised she’d let herself go. She was overweight and the depressing flabbiness of her striated belly, the result of two pregnancies, made her look older than she was. Thirty wasn’t old these days, yet somehow she looked old. She tried to look classy but she never quite managed it, no matter how much she spent. Perhaps the whole secret was not to have to try to look classy but to just be it. Her family had never had much taste. Her father, a self-made man, had retained the love of the kitschy style he’d likedbefore he made his pile. He believed that more is better and at least she’d learnt enough to know that wasn’t so. Less was better. Understated was good, and simple perfection was what she aimed at without ever achieving it. She realised her hair was too brassily blonde, her make-up too heavy. She felt great until she stood face-to-face with Ursula and Marianna, who didn’t even have to try, they just knew, they just were. A tear rolled down one cheek. She looked pathetic. She was pathetic. No wonder Teo didn’t care for her. Who would? What was she? They all thought she was useless, not right for Teo, especially Ursula, who was so quietly and calculatingly rude to her that she sometimes longed to strangle her. God how she hated her. She imagined beating her mother-in-law with a horsewhip and actually managed to smile.
     
    Ursula lay on the bed with her eyes shut listening to the throbbing in her head. It felt as though her brain was going to explode. The slightest movement sent ripples of hammering agony through her skull as though her brain was crashing against the bone. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the awfulness of that afternoon had driven her brain into overdrive and it was pulsating with rage and horror. The implications of what that vile delinquent had hissed in her ear were quite clear and Guido’s reaction to her accusations had been hysterical, but not that of a man unjustly accused, no, it was the hysteria of a man who knew he was discovered and undone, like a snared animal terrified of death. Of course he’d denied everything, he’d begged her to remember how much he loved her and pleaded with her not to believe anything bad of him, but she knew. Deep down she had always known that what Guido did with her in bed was called servicing and now she had to accept that she’d been a complete and utter fool.
    That vile Rossi family! They were like a dreadful canker in her life, the worm in the apple. Their repulsive way of living was an evil thing that had poisoned her life. Her lovely villa was contaminated by their presence and she knew she would never get rid of them. Tears poured down her cheeks and as she sobbed, her body moved and the pain in her head reached a new and terrifying peak.
    Guido had rushed out of the house and jumped into his car without any idea of where he was going. He was shaking with fear. That stupid little clod Claudio Rossi had told Ursula, of all people, about him. Well, at the very least he’d hinted and that was more than enough for Ursula. Now he was going to be thrown out, after all the hard work he’d put into