Fallen Women

by Sue Welfare

  ‘Oh, come on. It would only be for a little while until I get myself straight and in a way this is partly your fault.’

  Chrissie stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him. She couldn’t believe Joe had said what he just had. ‘What?’ she began, but Joe hadn’t finished.

  ‘Well, I’m right, aren’t I?’ he continued, oblivious. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Kate would still be here.’

  Chrissie was so angry she couldn’t speak.

  Kate waited in the surgery while Andrew X-rayed the cat.

  He appeared after a few minutes, smiling. ‘Well at least there’s nothing broken. I’ve given her something to ease the pain and I’ll keep her in overnight just to make sure everything’s okay. She should be fine but with a cat this age you can never be certain. Better safe than sorry.’

  ‘Thanks for coming out so quickly. I don’t know what we’d have done –’

  He shrugged. ‘Not a problem. My pleasure, bearing in mind that a couple of hours ago you told me never to darken your door again. Have you got time for a coffee before I run you back?’

  Kate didn’t move.

  ‘So, you want to go back now then?’

  Kate nodded. ‘I don’t want to give you any false encouragement or hope, Andrew. This is just one of those things. Horribly bad timing.’

  ‘Okay.’ He indicated the door. ‘Bad timing, my particular forte.’

  Kate opened her handbag. ‘How much do I owe you for rescuing Tiddles?’

  He grinned. ‘You can have this one on the house. Just don’t make a habit of running down or maiming small animals in a bid to get my attention. You can always drop by or phone for a chat without a corpse or a collision being involved.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Kate turned towards the door and then something made her turn back. ‘Andrew?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m serious, this really is the wrong time; I don’t want a relationship with you.’

  Somewhere close by a phone rang and then a bleeper sounded and Kate could sense that despite shepherding her towards the door, Andrew really wanted to deal with one or both of the noises. ‘Never?’ he said in a low even voice.

  For a moment Kate stared at him. How on earth could she answer? ‘I don’t know, Andrew. I can get myself home.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What I mean is that there’s no need to run me back. It’s no more than ten minutes’ walk back to my house from here. I know, I used to bring my rabbits to one of your predecessors when I was a kid. Go on, go see to business.’

  He hesitated but she waved him away. ‘Go on. I’ll be fine.’

  Andrew did as he was told and as he got to the door that divided the public space from the clinical said, ‘Can I ring you?’

  ‘As long as you’re not expecting me to fall head over heels into your arms or your bed.’

  He grinned. ‘Damn,’ and then as she stepped back out into the sunshine, added, ‘Don’t forget me, will you?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Kate with a grin.

  They watched TV in the evening, Jake sprawled on the floor, Danny curled up beside Kate on one of the sofas. Across the room Guy and Maggie snuggled up side by side on the other sofa. Kate felt still and relaxed and oddly calm.

  When the boys went up, she retired to the dining room to give Maggie and Guy some time to themselves, and logged on.

  It was no surprise to find that Sam was already there.

  ‘Hi Kate, how’s life been today?’

  As Kate picked up her glasses, she felt a sense of relief and lightness that had eluded her for days.

  ‘Funnily enough, it’s fine. Today I told my husband that I wanted him to leave. I’ve realised that I can’t live a lie and I don’t trust him anymore. The things I’m going to say aren’t meant to hurt you but you need to think about what you’re doing. It’s weird but I care about you, Sam – I feel as if we know each other. You’re out here fishing on the net. But unless you are a completely heartless sod either you need to make your marriage work or let her go. Doing this isn’t fair.

  Living together without any truth or hope is impossible and soul-destroying for both of you. She deserves better and so do you. It might not be easy to broach the subject but surely she must know that things aren’t right between you? And if she doesn’t then you have to tell her. If there is anything worth saving and changes that you can make to make it work then you owe it to her and to your kids to give it one last shot and if not, then go. Give yourself and her the chance to be happy. Alone or apart.

  I keep looking back at the past and of all the things that hurt it’s the lie the hurts the most – more than the adultery. People I’ve trusted and loved for most of my adult life have been lying to me every single day. If you genuinely want to talk and meet up then once you’ve got this sorted out then sure, but not until then, Sam – even if just to say goodbye. Talking to you has helped me no end, but I’m going home tomorrow to get on with my life and you should do the same. It’s been nice to know you, Sam. With love and best wishes Venus.’

  And then Kate rang Bill, and without even saying hello, for fear if she did she might lose the impetus, said, ‘I’ve asked Joe to leave.’

  It took him a few seconds and then he said, ‘I can’t say I’m altogether surprised. Anything you need me to do?’

  Kate laughed. ‘Well for a start, help me to stay strong when the shit hits the fan. Things are probably going to get a lot worse before they get any better. Don’t let me feel sorry for him and let him back in and remind me what he’s really like when he’s not charming and doing that puppy abandoned in the pound face.’

  ‘Okay. And?’

  ‘No, that just about covers it.’

  ‘When are you coming home?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Afternoon or early evening probably.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see you then. Do you want me to be waiting to lend a helping hand or are you planning to do the first bit on your own without the aid of a safety net?’

  ‘I think I can manage. I just want you to be around in case I waver.’

  She could hear the warmth in his voice when he said, ‘Whatever you need.’

  Kate smiled. ‘Thanks, Bill. I owe you.’

  He laughed warmly and wished her goodnight.

  And that’s exactly what she had; for the first time in days Kate fell straight to sleep, a sweet dreamless sleep that – almost as soon as she closed her eyes – carried her away into the soft velvety black.

  Joe had felt a kind of pre-apocalypse euphoria when he climbed the stairs, and oddly enough, a deep sense of relief, too, as if knowing what fate awaited him somehow set him free.

  So here he was, his last night in the marital bed, and, said some dark wild maniacal voice deep inside his head, he might as well make the most of it.

  Joe couldn’t understand for the life of him why Chrissie had declined his invitation to stay, after all they had been outed now, everyone knew about them. They were a couple, an item. It was way, way too late to pull back from the edge, but for some reason she had refused point blank and scurried off home. Women, eh? You offer them what they’ve always wanted and what do you get? A big solid, concrete No. Ah well, she’d come round and they’d have plenty of time to indulge themselves while he was staying there. Not that Chrissie had actually agreed to him staying with her but Joe couldn’t believe that she was the kind of woman who’d see him homeless.

  He’d have to take Chrissie’s boys out for a drink, man to man, and explain how things were and how things were going to be. After all, they were almost family now.

  Joe grinned and scratched his belly while pondering all manner of possible futures. The way things were going he’d soon be father to four boys, well, stepfather to two. Maybe they could form a group and he could manage then – a Jackson thing or maybe the Osmonds. He sniffed; maybe not.

  In Chrissie’s absence he drank the last of the Jack Daniels and ate all the chocolate digestives while re-running a few o
ld favourite fantasies. He settled, after a few false starts, on the one featuring a Page Three model, a family-sized tub of plain yoghurt and a children’s slide, which up until now Joe had always saved for lonely nights out on the road in hotel rooms. It seemed appropriate to re-run this particular one now, just before he hit the road again.

  Joe closed his eyes; on the road again, Jack Kerouac revisited – a contemporary odyssey for a new age. Maybe it was time to start writing the book he’d always known he had inside him. After all, he hadn’t got a lot of work to worry about now, other than the poxy margarine commercial, and he could do that anywhere.

  The idea made Joe nod to himself while wondering where he had put that nicely scuffed-up flying jacket he used to wear all the time. It had to be somewhere, maybe the loft or in one of the kids’ bedrooms tucked away in the back of the wardrobe. He ought to find it before he left. It would make a great picture for the front cover of his first bestselling travelogue – part diary, part modern philosophy, part social commentary, a handbook for twenty-first century hip, him leaning against the side of some wonderful sleek new car – perhaps a Jag like the one he’d seen on the hoardings or maybe something sexy and classic from across the pond, a Pontiac or a big black Buick, Raybans – obviously – and the flying jacket slung on a curled finger over one shoulder, faded jeans and his favourite cream cotton shirt, rolled up to elbows to show off a healthy tan.

  ‘Yes,’ he smiled. Maybe things weren’t going to be so bad after all. Joe closed his eyes to work out some of the finer details and was momentarily put out by the arrival of a statuesque blonde with large pneumatic breasts and a tub of Greek’s finest, but he soon got over it. A few minutes later Joe was sleeping like a baby, all curled up in the cosy little nest he’d made himself in the big sleigh bed.

  Chrissie, meanwhile, lay wide awake still staring up at the cracks in her ceiling; not that they would be her cracks or her responsibility for much longer.

  ‘Just a few days, just till I get myself sorted out, after all if it hadn’t been for you Kate would still be here,’ Joe’s voice seemed to be on a loop tape linked directly to her conscience.

  This wasn’t how Chrissie had imagined her life going at all. None of her recent wish lists had ever included Joe.

  Outside the For Sale sign caught the tail of the evening breeze and whistled and flapped. It was going to be another long night.

  Chapter 18

  There was a holdall on the floor in the hall of Kate’s house in Windsor Street. Standing alongside it were one of Joe’s precious guitars, a pair of shoes, a briefcase and his old leather flying jacket. It looked as if Joe planned to go away for the weekend rather than move out.

  Kate eyed the pile without a word.

  Joe said flatly, in response to the unspoken comment, ‘This isn’t fair, Kate, or reasonable.’ As he spoke he fidgeted with his keys. ‘Asking me to leave and move out in the space of a day. It’s crazy. You know that I’ve got nowhere to go, don’t you? What am I supposed to do; sleep in the bloody car?’

  ‘There’s always your mum’s,’ Kate said, dropping her own bag onto the bottom of the stairs.

  One in, one out, and astonishing, she thought, how even now Joe was expecting her to problem solve for him. Or was she being unreasonable?

  ‘Oh right, of course, my mum’s, I’d forgotten,’ Joe snapped sarcastically. ‘You have got to be bloody joking. I’m not going to tell her that you’ve thrown me out, how does it sound, for God’s sake?’

  Kate’s expression didn’t falter but her mind did. Wouldn’t it be better, kinder, to let him stay until he found a place to go? How long would it take to find a flat or a room? Kate squared her shoulders to strengthen her resolve. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to snuff out that renegade voice in her head, the one that always saw the other point of view, the one that always pointed out her mistakes with such snippy accuracy? Kate had no idea when she would have this much strength again; maybe it was a one-shot deal. Maybe it was now or never.

  Kate shrugged. ‘To be honest, Joe, I don’t care how it sounds. What about going to your sister’s in Welwyn Garden City?’

  ‘Yeh,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘And tell her what?’

  Kate said nothing, so Joe continued, ‘It’s not right in this day and age, we could have gone to counselling, worked it through. We still could. Maybe you should go to see the doctor.’

  Still Kate said nothing. Working it through, to her mind, meant being persuaded by Joe that what he had done was perfectly reasonable and that she was the one with the problem. Even if that was true, Kate had no wish to hear it from some intense well-spoken neurotic who said ‘we’ all the time and tried to look totally involved while surreptitiously glancing at his or her watch. Kate paused, wondering where on earth that image came from and then realised with a start that it was the way Chrissie had described a counselling session she and her ex had had with a woman from Relate. Kate closed her eyes for an instant; God what was she ever going to do without Chrissie?

  Meanwhile Joe looked past her towards the door. ‘So where are the boys now, then?’

  Kate hesitated before framing her reply. Was everything she ever said or did going be considered and reconsidered to gauge the effects? It would’ve been a cheap shot to say if Joe was that bothered about the boys he wouldn’t have shagged Chrissie in the family bed while there was any chance they might catch him in the act, but she didn’t use it. ‘They’re still up at Mum’s. She said they could stay there for a couple more days. Guy’ll put them on the train on Sunday morning.’

  Joe didn’t ask her who Guy was, instead he said, ‘Kate, about the boys –’ and took a step towards her.

  Kate leapt back.

  ‘What? What?’ he demanded furiously, throwing up his hands up in the air. ‘What do you think I’m going to do? Bite? Hit you? What?’ He looked totally shocked by her behaviour.

  Kate shook her head; it had been an instinctive reaction, certainly not something she was able to rationalise. ‘I don’t know what you’re capable of any more, Joe, in fact I don’t think I’ve known you at all for years.’

  ‘Oh that’s it, here we go again, you’re always so bloody melodramatic. What is it you don’t know about me, Kate? Eh? What? Tell me? You know everything, you always have, all except for that one thing.’

  She couldn’t believe what he was saying. ‘Can’t you see that it was that one thing that made everything else a lie?’

  Kate had already seen the For Sale board up in the garden next door. Had felt the dull ripping pain, had acknowledged it as the confirmation that all this hadn’t been a bad dream after all. Chrissie was going. Joe was going. Everything was changing even though it was still hard to believe it was real. Kate had braced herself for whatever she was going to find as she unlocked the front door. It had come as a surprise that inside everywhere looked so remarkably normal. How was that possible when everything had changed?

  ‘I don’t want to have this conversation,’ said Kate, ‘I just want you to go, Joe.’

  For a moment, Kate thought he might protest, or plead or, worse still, just stand there with that lost, sad, puppy dog look on his face. But no, Joe sighed, picked up his belongings and walked out of the front door as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

  ‘I’ll call you about my stuff as soon as I’ve got myself sorted out. All right?’

  The way he said it, Kate guessed he was hoping that she would change her mind and call him back. He seemed genuinely surprised when she let him go.

  Closing the door behind him, Kate dropped the catch on the Yale; surely to God it couldn’t be this easy?

  ‘So how did it go? Shoot him, did you?’

  Kate had been dozing in an armchair in front of the television and picked the phone up as a reflex as she resurfaced from sleep. ‘Sorry?’ she mumbled thickly. ‘What? Who is this?’ Her mouth felt – and tasted – as if a family of pigeons had been nesting in it.

  ‘I saw your light on and wond
ered if you were all right or whether I needed to ring the armed response team – talk you into putting the gun down, giving yourself up?’

  ‘Piss off, Bill,’ Kate groaned, ‘I was asleep.’

  ‘And there was me thinking I was being a conscientious member of the community.’

  Kate grunted, while her mind busied itself replaying the last few hours.

  There had been the long slow trawl through the house a room at a time, cleaning and washing and opening windows, throwing away all kinds of things that had lingered on the shoreline of shall we keep it for months, in some cases years. It seemed as if somehow Kate could exorcise some of the pain by clearing out, cleaning and scrubbing it away. The terrace outside their back door was now stacked with refuse sacks and boxes and bags.

  The pain had receded a little but, despite the sleep, Kate felt tired and hungry.

  ‘Have you eaten yet?’

  ‘Christ,’ said Bill. ‘Don’t tell me that you whacked him and cooked him and you want me to help eat the evidence? Phuh, no way, I’m very conservative when it comes to diet.’

  Kate sighed; bloody creatives. ‘Stop trying to come up with something clever,’ she snapped. ‘It’s beginning to annoy me. I was thinking more along the lines of a Chinese takeaway rather than a foray into cannibalism. Besides, there’s no way I could haul him into the bath and dismember him all on my own.’

  ‘And me without a chainsaw.’

  Kate glanced around the sitting room. Despite the big clear-up she hadn’t touched any of Joe’s things, afraid that somehow in the touch, or the smell, or the feel of a jumper or the shiny rub of a CD case she might unleash some genie, some memory long forgotten, that would leap out and undo her resolve. So in amongst the cleaning frenzy there remained peculiar outcrops of Joe’s possessions, islets and archipelagos, all around the house left for stronger, more resolute times. Kate was worried that if she touched them she might discover that secretly she still wanted Joe back, an emotional connection rekindled by contagion.