“Not long after we were married, before Pauli was born, I started noticing the first signs of…instability. I suggested we separate but she threatened to kill herself if I left. I believed her. We had a sort of truce and, with desperate cunning, she made sure she got pregnant. She had an appalling pregnancy with a series of complications, but I couldn’t tell if they were real or imaginary. After the birth, Mercedes was exhausted and stayed in bed for a month. She rejected the baby. She wouldn’t touch her, she wouldn’t even let me bring her near her. I had terrible trouble convincing her to hold her long enough to breastfeed. She said Pauli had drained her completely and was now sucking the remaining life out of her. It was shocking to see: she really did seem to have lost something irrevocably during the pregnancy. Her face had become bloated, her features sunk in fat, and she didn’t get her figure back. When at last she got out of bed she started eating with cold determination, like an automaton, as if she wanted to do herself as much harm as possible. And, as if it had flown off and alighted intact, all her beauty was superimposed on Pauli’s little face. I’d never seen such a close resemblance, apparent so early, in a baby. She looked exactly like her mother, like Mercedes at her most luminously beautiful, when I first met her.

“Mercedes eventually came to accept her, but in the meantime Pauli had got used to me and she cried if Mercedes tried to hold her. This didn’t help, of course. I persuaded Mercedes to see a therapist and for a time things seemed to improve. She made an effort to get close to the baby and eventually Pauli stopped crying with her. She also tried to lose weight, but didn’t manage it. After a while, she gave up: she’d decided not to go back to work anyway. In fact she was entirely absorbed by one thing only: getting Pauli away from me. I’d taken care of the baby day and night for the first months so of course she was more attached to me. I adored that little girl, with a violent, absolute love that I’d never felt for anything or anyone. Not for Mercedes, and she knew it. She couldn’t conceal her jealousy and did everything she could to keep me away from the child. The first word Pauli said was ‘Daddy’ and Mercedes accused me of teaching her to say it, secretly, behind her back, just to humiliate her. In her madness she really believed we were at war. Things got even worse because Pauli took a long time to learn to say ‘Mummy’. That’s when I noticed the first symptoms of something that terrified me so much I couldn’t even admit it to myself: Pauli was afraid of being alone with her mother. I started finding small marks on her skin: scratches, sometimes a bruise. It only happened when the two were left alone. But there was always a reasonable explanation, because in her own way Mercedes was very clever. Sometimes, before I got a chance to ask, she’d say that Pauli had had an accident, or that she’d scratched herself because her little nails were too long. She pretended to be even more worried than I was by these small injuries. But I noticed that she left hot cups of coffee within Pauli’s reach, and didn’t rush after her if she started crawling towards the stairs. She seemed to be looking for ways for Pauli to injure herself. Of course that was too horrible to contemplate, and I couldn’t think how to confront Mercedes. I felt Pauli’s life was in danger and that I could only keep her safe if I had her in sight at all times. I made sure she learned to speak as early as possible: I wanted her to be able to tell me if her mother hurt her. And indeed as soon as Pauli could speak she no longer had any accidents or injured herself.

“For a while I thought the nightmare was over, but it was only a temporary reprieve while Mercedes planned her next move. She hated her daughter-there’s no other word to describe it. Especially because since Pauli had learned to speak she had made it even more obvious how much she adored me. Mercedes couldn’t stand it and, for the first time, she mentioned divorce. She’d been against separating but now, coldly, methodically, she started echoing the reasons for it that I’d given her years earlier. But the real reason, and we both knew it, was that she knew she’d get custody of Pauli. It was a perfect, simple way of taking her away from me. I was desperate. I bluffed, I pleaded, I humiliated myself. For the first time she sensed the power her threat gave her. And she made the most of it. It was a new toy, a source of unexpected pleasure. Like the fisherman’s wife in One Thousand and One Nights she demanded, demanded, demanded. And I gave her whatever she wanted. Mainly it was money-money we couldn’t afford. She delighted in squandering it on fripperies in front of me. She became cynical and when she made some particularly large expenditure she said it was for the good of literature, because now I’d have to write another novel. I made myself write a book in under a year, far quicker than usual, just to get the advance. In the novel a writer strangles his wife. I knew she wouldn’t even bother to read it. It’s exactly what I should have done-strangled her. Because then Pauli would be alive today. But I thought I’d found a way to appease her and that with our monstrous pact Pauli was safe. Mercedes made fun of her and her infatuation with me, but otherwise she left her alone.

“However, I never completely dropped my guard, so when I spent that month in Italy I hired the nurse who’d looked after my mother at the end as a nanny for Pauli. I spoke to her privately; she was the only person to whom I’d ever confided my fears for Pauli’s safety. She listened and promised she wouldn’t let Pauli out of her sight, and would watch over her even while the child was asleep. She’d once looked after a woman with Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, whose behaviour was very like Mercedes’s, and she suggested I seek medical help on my return. I telephoned every day and it all seemed to be going well. Too well. When I got back, I realised that Mercedes had given a perfect performance during that month, convincing the woman that she was a devoted mother and that I was a dangerous deviant who’d been trying to turn Pauli against her since she’d been born. I sensed that the two of them had formed an alliance. I found out later-much later, unfortunately-that the nurse had told Mercedes everything I’d said about her. This must have put her on the alert and precipitated her plans, but I didn’t pay enough attention to the signs. I was so happy to be back, to hug Pauli again, and especially to know I’d be seeing Luciana again the following day.”

He paused, and when he spoke again he sounded desolate, as if he still couldn’t make sense of the sequence of events.

“Then there was the business with Luciana, and suddenly Mercedes was holding that letter. Her letter of triumph. In less than forty-eight hours she’d initiated divorce proceedings and obtained a court order barring me from the house-the house bought entirely with my money. She stayed on there with Pauli. I had to go to a hotel while my solicitor appealed against the order. I’d never had to go to a lawyer before and now I was involved in two cases. In my first visit to the solicitor’s office I learned an unforgettable lesson about what I could expect from the justice system. I started to tell the solicitor what had happened with Luciana but he stopped me: what had taken place between the two of us when we were alone in a closed room would be of no interest to a judge as it was Luciana’s word against mine. Legally the accusation of sexual harassment had no importance: it was simply a way of officially stating that she’d been dismissed. “The law doesn’t care about the truth,” he said, “but only about versions that can be proved.” The discussion would shift to the question of unpaid social security contributions and pension payments. In other words, bits of paper that could be produced. I was to be quite clear that it all boiled down to money and I would have to decide whether I wanted to settle by offering such-and-such a sum during the conciliation phase, or wait for the judge to specify a different figure after the court case.