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Even now his gut churned, his heart twisted just like the flames in his imagination...because it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory. Or had been until he’d seen Maria over his father’s shoulders, looking down at him as she caressed her heavily pregnant bump, seemingly unaware of the danger she was in. She had looked at him with trust, with complete acceptance, as if she truly believed that he, in the body of an eleven-year-old, would find a way to save her.
In the dream he had screamed until his throat was raw and, now awake, it felt scratched, thick with an ache that wouldn’t quit. Casting one last look at his wife, serene in her peaceful sleep, he peeled back the damp sheets and padded from the room, each step rippling beneath the icicles that covered his back and chest.
He turned on the shower, not seeing past the images that had haunted his nights and even sometimes during his days, during moments of weakness that he had come to hate as much as his memories. It had been fifteen years since he’d last had these dreams, since he’d built up his mental and emotional defences to protect himself from them.
And now they were back. Because of Maria. Because of his wife.
Because on the brink of fatherhood himself, he could no longer understand the actions of his father. Or worse...because for the first time in his life, he actually did. He did understand why his father chose to seek out his wife that night, rather than finding his own freedom, rather than choosing his son. He understood the sheer magnitude of what tied his father to his mother, and him to Maria.
Matthieu’s legs buckled in the shower, as if he’d been sucker punched low in his belly and every single thing in him hurt, ached, cried out for...the devil knew what. He stifled the cry that raged and thrashed within his chest, furious for release, desperate to be heard. He thrust his fisted hand, white knuckled, into his mouth and bit down to prevent its escape.
Nausea swirled in his stomach and he tried to suck in lungsful of air around the streaming water, around the hand in his mouth. He hadn’t had a panic attack for years and he knew what he should do, but was helpless against the thick clogging fear that had descended over his mind.
The sound of his heartbeat mixed with the pounding of the water’s jets from the shower head and all he wanted to do was curl up on the smooth white flooring beneath him. But something, somewhere deep within him, prevented it. A sign of weakness that even in his darkest moment he refused to succumb to.
He had no idea of how long he had stayed like that but finally, and only when the pain in his muscles cut through his lost thoughts, he reached up to turn off the water. As he towelled himself off, choosing not to return to his bed, their bed, he stalked the corridors of his home and sought out the gym, even though every instinct in him wanted to go back to Maria. Instead he turned to the treadmill, exhausting himself further until he might eventually fall back into a dreamless sleep where nothing and no one could reach him.
* * *
Maria stretched an arm out to Matthieu’s side of the bed and frowned at once again finding it empty. She had tried to ask him about it after the first night, but he had brushed aside her concerns and insisted that he was fine. That he was distracted by an issue with one of the mining companies. The next time his absence was explained by a midnight international phone call. And Maria honestly couldn’t remember the following reasons.
In the deep reaches of her heart, she knew he was pulling away. Could feel him almost imperceptibly slipping through her fingers, even as her love for him made her grip tighter, hold on as hard as she could. As if it was the only thing that would keep him with her. So she half believed his excuses and instead focused on making the spark of an idea she’d had back in Siena a reality.
She had sought out a studio in Lucerne, not too far from their home, and the moment Matthieu left for work, she would leave herself. She would share a conspiratorial smile with the driver she had sworn to secrecy and pass the ride to the studio with images of Matthieu’s happy surprise when she presented her gift to him. She was sure, so sure, that he would be filled with joy when he saw what she had created for him.
Days before she had sneaked into his bedroom and retrieved the small box hidden in a drawer of the side cabinet. Opening the badly burned box had revealed a thick, broad silver ring, blackened by fire and partially melted. Her heart had ached for the small boy who had lost everything but this. Ached for the man who felt that he had to hide it away, rarely to be looked at or acknowledged. Remembering how happy he had been for her that she had her mother’s necklace, something she could have with her every day, had given her the confidence that she was right in her plans for him to have the same. She had taken it from its allotted space and wrapped it as carefully as she imagined she would one day swaddle their child. From that moment in her room in Siena she had been consumed with need to give Matthieu something of his past that he could keep with him at all times. Something that he could cherish. The moment she laid eyes on it, she saw how she could clean the dirt and damage from the precious metal and had seen what she could do with it. How she could reforge the symbol of his grief into something new. She would use the silver of the ring to form the basis of a new piece, a new creation, from both past and present that he could carry with him into his future.
* * *
Still a little concerned about the impact of the fumes on her unborn child, she had instead focused on the mould for the piece she wanted to create. For hours she would lose herself in the design, carefully choosing how much additional silver would be needed to create the bracelet she wanted to give him, where to place it in order
to retain the purity of precious metal belonging to the ring and how to join the two representations of the past and present. For hours she would lose herself in the shaping of the mould, pouring her love for Matthieu, for their unborn child, layering every single ounce of it she had, into the work that became almost her sole focus. Because even though she would deny it to herself, deep down she couldn’t help but feel that time was running out for her. For them.
She had met with Georges Sennate and had immediately found a kindred spirit. The owner of the small studio was perhaps nearing seventy, even though his eyes twinkled like those of a teenager. She had come to relish his owl-like stare as he’d opened his space to her, shared the excitement of the piece she was creating for her husband. And had been touched as he’d offered his thoughts and knowledge of his own silverwork with her. And Maria had been so thankful that she had met someone that she could entrust such an important part of the process to. She could tell from the way that he showed as much care to her work as his own that he was the right person to melt the silver for her. Heat it to the point where the dark smoke stains could be swept aside, cleansed in the same way she had come to realise Matthieu had cleansed her, her childhood hurts slipping away with the hours she spent creating her gift to him.
She watched Georges’s form bent over the forge, pouring the silver into the moulds below a large air vent from about three metres away. The heated silver glowing in the darkness like a living thing. It would set and then she’d be able to go to work. She knew that soldering would be okay, if she wore a mask to protect her, and her fingers itched to get to work on the piece she wanted to present to him at dinner in just four days’ time.
She had only told Matthieu that it was a special occasion. Some strange inclination had her withholding the fact that it was her birthday. Because she didn’t want that night to have the burden of history. Maria wanted to start that celebration anew with Matthieu. The new beginning she had never known she’d wanted.
* * *
Matthieu sat in his leather chair staring out of the window of his office in Zurich almost obsessively counting the minutes passing the hour he should have met Maria in the restaurant. But he couldn’t move. In the last few days, Maria’s simple acceptance of his withdrawal had become somehow worse than any kind of argument or demand. The beast within him wanted to rage, wanted to snarl and gnash its teeth and, although he wouldn’t want to unleash that onto Maria, the fact that she accepted his behaviour caused it only to increase. He felt as if he were building to some impossible point where he would explode and his head pounded with the need of it. A combination of lack of sleep, the nightmares and his wife was almost too much to bear.
All his assurances that he would never treat her like her father, that he would be there for her, came back to haunt him as he struggled almost by the second with what he wanted and what he feared the most. Because in the last few days, his nightmare had morphed and changed into something new, something far more terrifying. He was no longer the small boy looking up at his father in the window. Now he had assumed the role of the father, looking down at his child and being torn between his wife and his son. It had played out in each and every conceivable way. Sometimes he went to his child, sometimes he went to Maria...but each and every time it hurt, sliced open his heart as he was only ever able to save one without the other.
He rubbed a hand over his face, all the while watching the minute hand jerk across the clock face and, even knowing the pain he would be causing Maria, he simply couldn’t move. Instinctively, he knew. He knew that by failing to show up that evening, he would force her hand, he would hurt her so greatly that she would have to walk away. He hated himself for it, but knew that it was the only option he had...for his own sanity but, more importantly, for Maria. Because he could not tie her to this life, to him. Not without destroying the very thing that he loved about her.
* * *
Maria sat in the restaurant in Lucerne, her back straight and her head high. She could see them. The stares, the supposedly surreptitious glances her way. She could feel the curiosity from the other diners in the restaurant washing over her in waves.
The waiter approached and asked if he could get her anything and she smiled, a barely audible ‘no’ falling from her lips. She steeled her hand, hiding the tremors at her fingers, as she reached for the water glass and hoped that she would be able to swallow it past the clogged ache in her throat.
As she placed the glass back on the table, her gaze was drawn to the small black box she had placed on the plate opposite her. She had wanted it to be one of the first things Matthieu would see. She had wanted to watch the curiosity from his face turn to delight and, even deeper, to recognition of what she had done for him. The revelation that she had understood his pain and transformed it into something new.
Instead, in the space of his absence, the fear of a different reaction had begun to invade her imagination. One of anger, one of horror as he raged at how she should never have done such a thing, how she had no right, how she had trespassed on a hurt she had no possible way of understanding.
As the minutes had ticked across the hour, her thoughts had turned from the gift to herself, as her heart lurched between him and her. Stuck between the past and the present, what she could see around her had shimmered before her eyes and instinctively she knew that there would be no rescuer tonight. Her mind battered and bargained with itself. Just five more minutes... Just another one. He might have been caught in traffic. In a meeting. In an accident. Anything that would excuse the four unanswered calls to his mobile phone. And although she would never wish that upon him, she was desperate, reaching for an excuse. Because the reality was so much more painful to bear.
