The Princess and my Time

By Riccardo Tesoro

Autobiographic diary that narrates the 27 lived days by the author that beating the time, overcomes the scorching disappointment for the end of a cohabitation lasted eight years, with a girl much younger than him. The end of the planned family, his child, the investigator assumed by him , her refusal to justify the abandonment, the falling in love with a new girl, the strength, the described pain they reveal the protagonists in the spasmodic search of the faults , of the time and of the truth. A history of life that many have lived.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483503110

Book preview

I) THE BETRAYAL DISCOVERED

It was Saturday. I’d called her on the phone asking her to come back early from Siena, the hometown she visited rarely and where she had her official residence, at her father’s house. She had gone there the day before to see some lifelong friends.

I needed to talk to her. She told me that she’d had to go. We discussed the question:

"Are there any problems? Do you have you to talk to me about something too?"

She told me she was going through a rough period, that it was a difficult time in our relationship.

We talked. I asked if there was someone else and, surprisingly, she admitted there was. She confirmed it immediately. However, that wasn’t the reason for her crisis. It was simply someone she’d gotten to know through text messages. There wasn’t anything between them. I didn’t ask if they had already gone out together. She said: "I’ve never been unfaithful."

We didn’t make it to the next day. We decided in that phone call that she’d have to come back to talk, to pick up the bare essentials of what she’d need to live independently and not have to return to her home in the days after.

She’d go to a hotel that, in the meantime, I’d book for two weeks to let her think, to help her understand what she really wanted for herself and our future.

She was much farther ahead; she had already decided. devoid of all reason, the thought of which I’d convinced myself at the time, and also as I’m writing today, was that the person who had lived next to me for eight years wouldn’t disappear or change. I was convinced that I knew her good sense, intelligence, maturity…

When we met the next day, Sunday, September 9th, she probably had already spoken to her father and the aunts who had supported her financially for years. In a matter of hours, she had reached an agreement with them that increased their allowance to her so she could live in a house that was exclusively hers.

through this and a thousand other signs, I realized a few days later that she was light years away from me, compared to my Princess, the one I thought I knew and perhaps who I hadn’t known at all.

We talked for two hours that morning, saying meaningless words that just filled the silence. We didn’t say what we should have said to each other, or perhaps we said too much as there was nothing more to say.

Between the tears, desperate actions, and hugs, one continual cigarette, they were the mind, eyes, appearance, and words of someone I didn’t know.

She found a photo that I’d forgotten in the suitcase she was packing. It was the same one I’d taken with me a few days before on my most recent holiday to Formentera with my son Francesco. It was a picture of her as a child, the only one I could find that morning I’d left. I’d taken it with me on that short trip and hidden it from the others. It was a sailing holiday with my son Francesco and his friend Marino as well as three friends of mine who have shared my love of sailing for many years.

It was a special holiday because it was also Francesco’s first time on board. He was almost nineteen years old and we’d never had the opportunity before to go sailing together. Going to sea was certainly not his greatest ambition. Like his peers, he preferred a comfortable hotel with a nearby disco.

The hands that continued packing the suitcase were those of another person. It wasn’t Veronica at all – except when, in a fit of emotion, she threw the suitcase at the wardrobe. We ate lunch quickly, in a silence broken only by tension and by the hope on my part alone that this was a dream, a nightmare. I handed her a bag with a stuffed animal. It was my latest gift purchased a month earlier and not yet presented.

I foolishly thought of starting immediately to rebuild our relationship, our family. When she was ready, I told her to wait a moment because I too had to leave.

I prepared a small suitcase. I dressed with care as if I were meeting someone important. She asked, "Where are you going?"

I didn’t answer. She insisted, "Who are you going out with? Veronica, it’s no longer any of your business."

She was struck by that phrase. She tried asking again but it was useless because my silence continued.

The suitcase thrown against the closet, the hugs, the kisses of that day and the next two, these final few sentences plus a few more were the only signs of weakness she’d shown until today. The only ones in which I recognized my Princess.

Whatever else she thought or said, those actions were of someone convinced of her ironclad convictions and devoid of any sentiment.

After a final hug in the elevator, she drove away in her car. I followed her in mine. Ours. Going that short distance to the hotel, where we arrived around 2 o’clock, I had to go slow a lot when I began to feel really dizzy.

I went with her to her room. We talked a few minutes. I asked her for a glass of water when my head began to spin again. It wasn’t because of what had happened that day but rather because of the colic I’d had a few days before which had left me physically drained.

She seemed concerned, telling me that under no circumstances should I should drive on the motorway. We held each other with a last kiss on the lips. She walked me to the door of her room and told me that I should call her if I had problems. She was very worried.

It wasn’t a randomly chosen hotel chosen. We’d stayed there a few months earlier when we gave a gift to my ex-wife Maria Paola, leaving her mistress of the house where Veronica, Francesco, and I lived.

He was recovering from a serious accident in which he fractured three vertebrae and was stuck in bed for a month. We thought we’d give Maria Paola two nights together with him so we told them both that we’d planned a weekend away from Pistoia. In reality, we’d slept in that hotel which was one kilometer from our home.

I wasn’t leaving on for any trip. I went back home and spent an hour staring at the objects in the drawer of her bedside table. I didn’t touch or move anything.

Francesco called me and told me that, for some strange reason, he hadn’t been able to contact her. I answered by lying to him, telling the lie that she and I had agreed upon because the bond of affection that existed between them was too deep. He didn’t need to know; he would have suffered needlessly.

That day I still thought it was a simple temporary crisis that we’d have to weather. I thought it was useless to tell him about it. Veronica is in Milan for a course. She’ll be gone two weeks. Of course, she’ll be here next weekend. Don’t worry. She’s probably on the subway or her phone has died.

I tried immediately to contact her. Her phone was turned off. I too found it odd as she seemed worried about my physical condition and said to call her if I needed any help when we’d separated a short time before.

An hour later, her cell phone was still turned off. I decided to see for myself and returned to the hotel. I didn’t find her or even her car. It wasn’t parked where she had left a few hours earlier.

I thought she had gone out to buy cigarettes… No, the cell phone was turned off. She had certainly gone off somewhere, to think things over by herself, but where? Where would Veronica have chosen to go to think?

I remembered that she had often said that she loved taking long walks in the countryside outside the company where she worked. She’d told me many times of the lunchtime walks she’d taken with Carlo, her immediate supervisor.

I found her car parked on a side street, near the Maxicoop exit where I’d raced at full speed after that divine inspiration. "Well, she’s thinking", I thought. Then I realized that she had been doing it for too long. As darkness fell, my worry continued to grow.

Something had to have happened to her. She’d become ill. She often suffered from low blood pressure and, with the tension that day, she’d fainted somewhere in the countryside.

I began looking for her, then calling out to her. An hour later I hastily returned home to get a flashlight. After parking my car near hers, I continued the futile search in the dark through the narrow streets and adjacent fields.

It was ten past eleven. For almost an hour, I wanted to call the police to report an accident because it’d have been easier to find and rescue her. Amazingly, I received a text message from an unknown number.

There’s a surprise for you at half past eleven at the Maxicoop.

What was it? What did it mean? Who could have sent me a message like that?

In the days afterward, I didn’t try to discover who’d sent me that message, even if it would have been easy to have done. What I figured out a few hours later was enough for me. Certainly there were friends, neither mine nor hers, friends of the boy who arrived a few minutes later and parked his car inside of which I also saw Veronica.

I had moved mine in the meantime, hiding behind a hedge, as the various cars that passed all slowed down, seeing me alone in that dark and isolated street usually frequented by prostitutes and their customers of the moment.

What should I do? I’d never been involved in a situation like this. I thought I’d leave without showing myself. A second later I changed my mind. It was better to identify the car, with the license plate number. At least I’d know who that guy was.

I left with the lights off. I went around the block. I turned my headlights on a hundred meters from them, blinding them so they couldn’t identify me. The road was narrow. The passenger door was opening so I had to slow down. I thought they’d recognized me and decided to stop a few meters from those two parked cars.

I got out of my car and headed towards the boy who meanwhile had gotten out of his car and was coming to meet me. He said, "This is no way to act …"

I didn’t let him finish the sentence. I told him: "You’re the one who should shut up. Are you Fausto?"

Yes, I am.

"Congratulations, I’m Riccardo. Best of luck."

I laid my hand on his shoulder: "Well done. You got a beautiful girl, but be careful. She’s not easy and she’s quite a handful."

Finally I looked at her, incredulous and pale, sitting in the care. "Congratulations to you, too, Veronica. I see you’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Now say good night to Fausto. We need to talk."

Her attitude made me understand in a second what I hadn’t understood in the last year. She didn’t immediately accept my invitation to get out of the car. For a fraction of a second, she looked at Fausto, looking for his approval. She defended him, not the person who had been at her side and had loved her for the past eight years. The person she felt closer to was another, the person to whom she had to justify her actions.

The second fact surprised me greatly, although rationally it shouldn’t have. She got out of the, walked up to him, said good-by to him by squeezing his hand and kissing him on both cheeks. Brazenly, without the least consideration for what that gesture naturally cost me, they kissed in front of me. He was not the guilty party; she was the one responsible.

Three days before, she’d kissed me good- morning. That afternoon, as she was leaving for Siena, she’d said: "Bye, darling. You’ve been so sweet." I’d gone to buy her contact lenses because she was running late. I knew she’d used them all and that she’d have lost more time as she absolutely needed them before she left.

A few hours before, she’d told me that she was worried about my health. She’d told me to call her and then she’d turned off her phone for hours and hours.

In the face of the promise made, of the genuine concern she felt towards me, she’d immediately gone out to be with him, turning off the cell that would have transmitted my request for help. The thought that had been with me in the hours before, when I thought that something serious had happened, gave me a great relief.

It gave me the strength at the point to not feel anything, besides the momentary surprise. I didn’t fell any disappointment or embarrassment for that look of approval or that greeting.

Fausto left. We talked for a few minutes. I was rational. I still hoped she’d return to me. It was a surprising state of affairs. It didn’t have to happen. In spite of everything, I understood in those moments that my real goal hadn’t changed. I wanted to win her back

In the end I was the one who, by leaving the hotel, had pushed her to that meeting. I relied on the fact that she had used those fifteen days to be with Fausto as much as possible and mainly to think about our future. I never imagined that just two hours after her advice that, instead of using the time to think, she’d have immediately used that time to go out with him.

We said good-bye. I went home. I was upset about everything that had happened that day. One thought continued to pound in my head: what had made this woman with whom I had lived for a long time, and who had been at my side until the day before, become so distant in a few hours?

She had been saying "I love you" to me for eight years. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. It was the first of many that followed.

In those hours I thought only of her. I could hear her voice phoning Fausto. She was telling him what had happened after I told him to leave us alone.

Maybe she was saying, "Fausto, don’t worry. It’s impossible for me to go back after what happened tonight. I’m staying with you. Don’t worry. I told him it was the first time we’d gone out together and kissed. So, what was I supposed to tell him? He wouldn’t have believed it. He absolutely wouldn’t have believed it… What should I have said? "

Veronica could have told the truth and not lied. She should have done it at least for herself, for her self-respect that I’d always believed she’d had.

Sometimes a person’s entire life – one’s character and values – is contained in a simple sentence, sometimes in a single second more than in eight years of living together.

II) MEETINGS WITH FRIENDS AND FRANCESCO

On Monday, September 10th, with a humility that I had never shown before, I immediately asked three friends for help.

I asked Mario first, who is my best friend. He’s more than that; he is like me.

I phoned him that morning. He was surprised, stunned by the news that I had known for the past two days. He had thought I was joking as usual, because he was familiar with Veronica’s devotion, sincerity, and the harmony that existed in our family.

Next, I asked another great friend, Emanuele, who is one of my closest and the one in whom I most often have confided. Intelligent, mature and wise, he was Simona’s partner and had been one of Veronica’s best friends for some years. He was probably the one in Pistoia with whom she’d spent the most time. And he was one of the few to