Chapter 1: Back

Palermo, Sicily

Claudia

I’m turning a corner. I haven’t opened the fridge or rearranged the cushions in the last hour. Alright, it’s not even nine o’clock, but it’s a good start. And now I’m ready to get going and catch up on work.

Step One. Open laptop

Step Two. Crack knuckles purposefully.

Step Three. Start typing.

‘The big bad wolf threatened the three little pigs, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in— and by the way, I’m running a temperature so I’ll give you my nasty virus too!”.’ Sorry, scrap the last bit. With what’s going on around me, it’s just too close to the truth.

The doorbell. It must be the neighbours but I have no toilet paper to give away— or lend, yuk!—and I’m out of paper tissues, kitchen roll and even…sandpaper. My bidet is broken too so I’m about to reach the level of desperation which makes a writer contemplate using her own books to wipe her arse, which would be tantamount to eating my own children—only, through my arse, which is even more disgusting.

I scrape my chair back, drag my ridiculously oversized Winnie Pooh slippers across the room, and open the door. A man in a police uniform stands before me. “Signora Geraci?”

That name makes my skin curl. Nobody’s called me with my ex’s name for years. Only problem is Gianluca isn’t my ex. Technically, we’re still married. So I say, “yes?”

“I’ve brought you back your husband.”

It’s only then that I notice that the policeman isn’t alone. Someone is sort-of-hiding behind him. And it’s Gianluca. I thought I would never have to see him again. He should be in Singapore. He looks more muscly than I remembered him, more tanned, and he’s shiny with sweat. My skin prickles because I hate him, but a rogue part of me feels attracted because he’s still extremely hot.

“We’ve caught him jogging further than the two hundred meters from his home he’s allowed under lockdown rules.”

“This is not my home! I told you already!” Gianluca protests.

He sounds as arsy as before.

“This is the address on your driving licence and identity card,” the officer tells him.

“I couldn’t change it, I was living abroad!”

I find a wicked enjoyment in seeing him suffer. This is a good little show.

The officer turns to me. “Can you confirm that you are his wife?”

Technically I am. We didn’t have time to register the separation before he left the country, and we never got round to divorcing. So I’m still his wife. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Come on, Claudia, be a good girl and tell him that I don’t live here,” Gianluca says.

‘Be a good girl’? There’s no way I’ll do anything he asks if he talks to me like that. I push out my chest, tilt my chin up and say with a smirk, “He lives here.”

Gianluca’s eyes turn manga-big, with angry flames in his pupils. He mouths “bitch” to me.

“If he gets caught again, he’ll be charged against article six hundred and fifty of the penal code and can be fined up to two hundred and six euros and imprisoned for up to three months,” the officer tells me seriously.

I try my best to look impressed, even though prisons don’t sound very scary now that we’re all under lockdown-house-arrests, and perhaps they even have toilet paper there.

“Keep him at home, Signora.”

The officer speaks to me as if I had any power over Gianluca—like one has over, say, a child or a dog. It gives me a frisson of pleasure because I know that Gianluca must be hating it.

Until I realise what the man is asking me.

“Sorry, do you meant that you want me to keep him… here?”

He looks at me like I’m asking something so obvious that it’s stupid. And I feel like dying.

~~~

Gianluca

The policeman has gone and now it’s just Claudia and me, facing each other, she standing at her door and me just outside.

“Aren’t you letting me in?” I ask her.

She looks confused as if she hasn’t just told the policeman that I live here. Why the cazzo has she done that?

“You’re not really going to stay here,” she says, defiant.

“Then you shouldn’t have told the officer that I live here. Why did you do that?”

“I wanted you to get a fine.”

At least she’s honest.

“But now you have to let me in. You’ve cut off your nose to spite your face.”

She automatically touches her nose before remembering that it’s just a saying.

“What are you doing in Palermo? You were supposed to be in Singapore.” She’s still standing in the doorway, not letting me in.

“Why, do I need your permission to come back?”

“Certainly not. It’s none of my business now. But you should have updated your address in your documents.”

“I haven’t had time.” I haven’t built a company worth billions out of nothing in three years by wasting time. But there’s no need for her to know any of that. “And now, because of your clever idea, you’re stuck with me.”