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Chapter Forty-One
I’d been standing here for almost five minutes.
The voice note was still recording.
My finger was hovering.
All I had to do was press the blue send button and like a bomb, Lorenzo’s relationship with Marta would explode. It would be toast. Evenhecouldn’t deny that she was manipulative with that kind of evidence. If I’d given her a script and asked her to read from it, she couldn’t have screwed herself over any better if she’d tried.
It was so simple.
I just had to presssendand it would go to Geli. Then I could forward or play it to him. Then he would see that I was right about his mother, come back to me and Leo and we’d be one happy little family all over again.
But if I pressedcancel, the evidence would be gone forever. It would just be Marta’s word against mine and right now, if I was a betting woman, as much as I hated to admit it, I wasn’t sure Leo and I would definitely win.
I paused again.
What was wrong with me? This was the perfect opportunity to take Marta down. Why wasn’t I grabbing it? This is what I’d wanted.
I didn’t know how or why, but it seemed like I’d been struck with a sudden crisis of conscience.
Half an hour ago, if I’d had a glimpse into the future and someone told me that this would happen, I’d have seen it as a victory. Been hanging the balloons and banners for aget rid of Martacelebration. Well, I probably wouldn’t have gone that far as that’d be mean, but you catch my drift. I would have been relieved. Felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But yet somehow, this didn’t feel like a happy moment. It felt sad.
If I sent Lorenzo the recording, then the perception he had of his mother being this wonderful woman would be erased. Gone forever. A bit like telling a five-year-old that Father Christmas didn’t exist.
In the cold light of day, now that I had the chance to, I didn’t want to be the one to ruin their relationship.As much as I didn’t like Marta, I also wouldn’t want to be responsible for breaking up a mother and a son.
Maybe I needed to take a step back and be more objective.
I thought about Leo and how I’d want him to feel about me when he was older. Naturally I’d hope he would love me and think that I was a great mother, as I’d always try to do my best by him. I wouldn’t expect him to think I was perfect or worship the ground I walked on, but I’d hope that at least he would respect me. And whilst it would be up to him who he settled down with, I’d hope that I’d like them. That they would be worthy of my son. That even though he would go his own way, I would still be an important person in his life. So how would I feel if after changing his nappies, feeding and clothing him for years and all the sacrifices I’d made, some girlfriend breezed in and told him to kick me to the curb during my time of need? I’d be pretty pissed.
But this situation wasn’t straightforward. Marta had done wrong. The whole lying thing and the stuff with the breast milk. That was unforgiveable.
Fuck it.
I couldn’t decide what was best right now. Too many thoughts were racing through my head and I still had things I needed to get done before we caught our flight. I would send the recording to Geli—otherwise it would get lost—and then I’d think about what to do with it whilst I was away.
I clicked on the button, gluing my eyes to the screen until it was safely delivered.
Done.
I finished stuffing the bits for Leo in a bag, threw some of my clothes in a suitcase and then called Geli.
‘Hey. Sorry I took so long to reply.’
‘It is okay. I put Leo back to sleep. I saw you were recording a message. I tried to wait for you to finish but then I decided to just do it.’
‘That’s good. Thank you. About the message… do me a favour, please, and don’t listen to it until I get there. You are not going to believe what just happened…’
