Another Woman's Man

by Carrie-Ann Schless

  When I told him Kat was pregnant, he replied saying, ‘Wow’. He would have known that was hard for me, but he didn’t ask if I was feeling ok or anything. Danny could be self-centred, but this was odd even for his standards. After about four months of almost total silence, I decided to ask him outright.

  Me - Are you seeing somebody?

  He didn’t reply straight away. The tiny picture of him next to my message gave away he had read it, but it wasn’t until late the following evening that he eventually replied. I saw that three-letter word I had been dreading.

  Danny - Yes x

  I didn’t ask details. I didn’t want to know. I cried and called Kat. I had a lovely evening at hers, but her just watching me drink wasn’t quite the same. Still feeling low, I called Becky and cried down the phone at her. She had her own drama going on, and we ended up talking about Andy getting arrested and her five-year-old getting in trouble for calling his friend a dickhead at school.

  Christina made it clear how angry she was with him, Larissa said I should have it out with him, but I knew it was entirely my own fault. I had played it so cool about the fact we were just friends. I had told him so many times his friendship was important to me. What had I done? I’d given him so much space he’d filled in the gaps with somebody else.

  Gradually Kat’s belly started to expand, and my job as the excited auntie was getting harder. Don’t get me wrong, I was over the moon for Kat, but I could have been married to Max and mum to a ten-year-old by now, worrying about SATs results and secondary school choices. Instead, I was single, and everyone around me was going forwards.

  I felt like someone was pressing pause on my life. I threw Kat a baby shower. It was nothing like her cousin’s. There were no giant bottles made out of tissue. This was a classy event, catered with everything Kat would have wanted, and alcohol for me. I drank a lot more than I should have – or had planned to – but Becky had come down for it, so throwing down a few glasses of bubbly was easy, even if we were getting glares from some of Kat’s more conservative friends. Sneaking a bottle of prosecco under her coat, we went outside so Becky could have a fag. She wasn’t her usual self. ‘What’s wrong with you tonight?’

  ‘Oh babe, my marriage is over. I’ve told him to get out.’

  ‘Really? Oh hun, you should have said.’ I should have guessed. Her three-page Facebook rants never really gave the full story, but enough that I could tell things were not great between them. He wasn’t on Facebook, so I was used to her calling him every name under the sun on there.

  ‘He’s got this weekend at home with the kids, and then he’s gone. I’ve had enough, Case. I’m done.’

  We were sitting outside a bar in Brighton, looking out onto a busy street. I had hired a Hummer limo to drive us from Eastbourne. Kat kept saying it was the best shower she’d ever been to, much to Laura’s dismay.

  Suddenly, I saw a slim figure walking along the street ahead of us. She strutted past, head up in the air. Loving herself as usual, I thought. It was Erica. She looked really annoyed, and spun to look behind her and screamed, ‘Hurry up, we haven’t got all night!’

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ a familiar voice floated on the air, and I went cold. Why was Danny with Erica? As he ran to catch her up and came into view, Becky recognised him.

  ‘Hey, ain’t that your mate? Hey, Danny! Alright, babe?’

  He paused in front of us like a deer in the headlights. ‘Oh, hiya.’

  ‘So good to see ya, babe, give us a kiss.’ Becky grabbed him with her cigarette hand and planted a smooch on his cheek, branding him with hot pink lipstick.

  Erica huffed in the background and didn’t bother to come over. Not that I wanted her nearer to me. I was devastated. He wasn’t seeing somebody. He was back with his girlfriend. With her.

  He turned to look at me and said, ‘Good to see you.’

  I couldn’t talk. My mouth was open, and I could feel tears prickling my eyes. I nodded.

  He pointed towards Erica. ‘I better…’

  I managed a weak, ‘Bye.’

  ‘Aww, it’s nice to see him. Who’s that with him?’

  ‘I want to go home.’ I ran inside before the tears took over.

  Feeling sad and really alone, I sat in the corner. All the conversations were about personal stitches and after-birth. I was one of only three people there that hadn’t had a baby. Caitlin, Kat’s younger cousin, had just got engaged, and Marilyn, the Saturday girl from her work, was only just going off to University and was worried it could affect her relationship with her boyfriend of five months.

  Becky was sharing her horrid labour stories with a few other women, and by horror I mean that the baby had come a day too early, so she hadn’t had her spray tan or her eyelashes done yet. ‘Oh no, love,’ I heard her say, ‘nobody likes a hairy minge. I don’t care how pregnant you are. There is no excuse.’

  Kat kept crying. It was the hormones, she said. Her mum was so excited about being a grandma. Ben’s mum was excited about finally having a baby boy in the family, as her other son had given her three girls and she couldn’t cope with the bickering any more.

  I couldn’t get the fact that Danny was back with Erica out of my mind. Who could I talk to about it? I decided the only person I wanted to talk to was him. I sat at the bar and tried focussing clearly on my phone, looking for his number. It rang once before it cut off to answerphone. I thought he had probably cancelled my call, as I had forgotten he was with her.

  ‘Hello, Mr Danny. Sorry I didn’t talk much when I saw you earlier, but I was a little confused,’ I said. Some strange laugh crept out of my throat. I probably sounded insane. ‘Now, I know we are just friends. Good friends. Fucking friends. Well, we were. But then we spend this great time together. So great. The way you were with my cousin’s kids was amazing – you’re really good with kids, by the way. But then I don’t hear hardly anything from you, and then I see you with… Well, what do you even want me to say? I see you with that. It. After everything you said about her. Why?’ I could feel tears coming again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you want…’

  I stopped myself. I was drunk. I had to remember that he saw us as fuck-buddies and nothing more. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry, I’m really drunk. It’s Kat’s baby shower. She’s going to be a mum.’ I instantly cried again. ‘I want to be a mum. Danny, I miss you. I miss talking to you every day. You told Billy when we were at Becky’s that I was important to you.’ My sadness made way for anger. ‘Well, maybe it’s time you showed it, unless you only said that so you could fuck me. All you guys are the same.’

  Making sure I had ended the call, I looked at the barman who was watching me weirdly. ‘What? Haven’t you seen a drunken stupid woman ranting on the phone to some poor dickhead’s answerphone who is completely oblivious to her feelings and is back with his ex-fucking-girlfriend?’

  As he slowly shook his head, it suddenly hit me what had I done. I had just left the cringiest message on Danny’s machine. How could I get it back?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  My mother’s place in New York was stunning. I had only seen these kinds of houses on programmes like Cribs on MTV. I didn’t think people actually lived in them. I knew Jonathan had money, but wow! It was perfect timing when I got the invite. A good excuse to get away from everything for a while. Kat had random members of her family visiting pretty much from now until the birth, and then probably after, so I knew she would be okay without me for a few days.

  I loved the sights of New York. The buzz of the busy streets. People from all walks of life knocking shoulders and clambering past each other. Most people were in a rush; some were meandering slowly, stopping to take photographs of Times Square and the Empire State Building. A ferry ride to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. All the things we had seen hundreds of times in pictures, all looked so much bigger and better in real life.

  The food was amazing, too. On my second day, I discovered an Italian restaurant just off Times Square, a
nd I hardly ate anything else when I was sight-seeing. There were also breakfasts so big they filled you up for the rest of the day. If I had been staying for more than a week, I would have ended up the size of a house.

  I did most of the touristy bits alone. Mum wasn’t the best tour guide. She had been here, seen it, and done it for so many years now that she got bored easily. She had shown me around before, so she reckoned I should know it all. I knew if I had brought some friends with me, she would have started showing off and sharing her wealth of knowledge with us all. My mother did love an audience.

  One morning, I was flicking through a magazine while eating breakfast. Mum’s husband Jonathan’s face grinned at me across the table. He was so proud of my mum and the things she had done in her life. In his eyes, she could do no wrong. He was a lovely guy, but a million miles away from my dad.

  I turned to a page of ads, and there was Erica’s pointy face staring back at me. I imagined her gloating and speaking to me, ‘Danny is mine and there is nothing you can do to change that.’ I slammed the magazine shut and started ranting at Jonathan about my mother, how she invited me over then acted as if I was in the way.

  He tried to change the conversation by telling me about the latest awards they had both won in the world of musical theatre. Jonathan loved a name-drop. Andrew Lloyd-Webber this, and Alfie Boe that. There were a few pictures on the wall of my mum and him with different people they had worked with. Not as many as I remembered from before.

  Slightly annoyed that he hadn’t joined in slagging my mother as the selfish cow she was, I interrupted him talking about the night they had filmed Les Miserables at the Royal Albert Hall and how they had met Colm Wilkinson backstage afterwards.

  ‘Hey, Jon.’ I knew he hated being called Jon. ‘Where are all the other pictures? I’m used to you guys having a gallery in the living room.’

  ‘Oh.’ He chewed his crumpet – he had begged me to bring some over for him. ‘They are in the achievements room.’

  ‘The achievements room?’ I marvelled. Only my mother would have a whole room to brag about what she’s done.

  ‘Yeah. It was your mum’s idea. She had a lot of stuff to display. I reckon you should check it out before you go home.’

  I pulled a face. ‘I’m ok, thanks.’

  ‘I really think you should. You might be surprised. It’s the door next to my office.’

  Loading my empty plate into the dishwasher and finishing my orange juice, I shrugged. Why would I want another reminder of how much better she was than everybody else?

  ‘I’m going to take a shower and get ready to meet Lexi.’

  Climbing the stairs, I could hear Mum doing warm-up exercises behind the closed door of her studio. I had chosen to use bathroom number three; it was a wet room – something I’d always wanted.

  Only two doors away was Jonathan’s office, so I guessed the door with the star on it was what he was talking about. Curiosity got the better of me. Would a small peek hurt?

  Pushing down the gold handle and slowly opening the door, I walked into a generous sized, brightly lit room. Pictures lined the two smaller walls, each with their own lighting source. Shelving units with trophies stood proudly in the centre of the room; mannequins with some of Mother’s famous costumes decorated the corners. I had seen all these before. Not in quite as grand a manner, but none of it was a surprise to me. I wondered why Jonathan had even mentioned it.

  Then my eyes fell on the largest wall in the room. This wall was different. Again, the pictures that lined the walls, I had seen before. The brightly coloured swirls and dots. Animal faces, and people alongside flowers and rainbows. These were not photographs. They were paintings. Drawings in crayons and pencil; a few just rough smudges with charcoal. Each one with a name at the top, written in child’s scrawl. Casey. Every single picture I had ever given her was displayed on this wall. A few of my poems in frames. My graduation photo. Everything I had ever done and ever achieved had pride of place in my mother’s special room. It was almost like a shrine.

  Alongside it, there were pictures of me in ballet and tap classes, certificates from school; a small cabinet housed my first outfits and tiny shoes. There was a picture of me and my mum when I was about six. I was looking at the camera, and she was looking at me. I couldn’t remember seeing that look on her face ever. It was the look of pure love. Postcards and letters which I had sent her on her various tours, and on my brief trips away with Dad, were stuck along the centre of the wall.

  I heard a noise behind me, and turned to see Jonathan standing in the doorway.

  ‘You have always been your mother’s greatest achievement, Casey. I’m just really sorry she’s never shown you it.’ Then he left, and I heard the door to his office open and shut.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about that room. ‘I always thought I was just a huge inconvenience in her life. Yeah, we sent her pictures all the time, but I always assumed she just threw them away.’

  ‘Oh Casey, don’t be silly.’ Lexi had been one of the chorus members in Mum’s show when I visited when I was eighteen, and we had gotten on really well. We became pen pals and then later Facebook friends, and when she heard I was coming to New York she said we just had to meet up. She had moved onto more TV work than musicals these days, but had just started working with Mum again on Phantom of the Opera. ‘She is always talking about you. She asks if I’ve seen your Facebook status, if I’ve spoken to you. Of course, she loves you. She’s your mother.’

  We strolled through Central Park, sipping smoothies in plastic cups.

  ‘Think about us poor mere mortals that have to work underneath her. She is this big Broadway star. Nobody cares about little Lexi Cooper when Jill McArthur is in the programme.’ She led me to a bench. We had already talked about work and friends and home lives, and I was dreading her bringing up men. I knew it was coming.

  ‘Soooo,’ she elongated the word. ‘What are you doing here, Case?’

  ‘What do you mean? I’m over to visit Mother. She invited me.’

  ‘She invites you pretty much twice a year, every year. Why now? What’s going on?’ She knew me too well.

  ‘Erm, nothing.’ I fiddled with my straw.

  ‘Why the hesitation?’ She put her head down to look at me. ‘Awww, hunny. Why so sad? What’s he done, and more importantly who is he, and do you want me to kill him? I will, you know, if you need me to.’

  I smiled at her. ‘It’s a very long story. There was a guy, kind of, but he went back.’

  ‘Ahh, there is always a guy. Went back where? Like, to prison?’

  ‘No.’ I paused, not really wanting to finish the sentence. ‘To his girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh.’ She took a long slurp of her drink.

  I suddenly noticed a tall guy in sunglasses and a leather jacket, with a group of girls crowded round him. They were throwing notebooks in his face and taking pictures with him. He was signing them, and being pulled in all directions. A large man stood next to him, trying to keep the girls at bay.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked Lexi.

  ‘Oh, that’s Mark. He’s the new up-and-coming star around here. He’s the main guy in a new sitcom.’

  ‘He’s fit.’ I couldn’t help but notice.

  ‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘He’s also very taken.’ She held up her left hand to show me the rock on her ring finger. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before now.

  ‘Wow, congratulations!’

  ‘I brought him here to meet you. Hey, wait a min.’ She ran over to her man, shooing the girls away like a flock of birds surrounding a picnic, before grabbing his hand and dragging him over to me.

  ‘Mark, this is Casey. She’s Jill’s daughter.’

  ‘Oh wow.’ He tilted his hat. What a gentleman. ‘How you doing, miss?’ He reminded me of Sawyer from Lost. He turned to Lexi. ‘Is she coming tonight?’

  ‘Oh yes, Casey, you have to. It’s the premiere of Mark’s pilot, then an after-party.
Oh, come on, last time you were over neither of us was legally old enough to drink.’

  ‘Ok, I suppose a première would be fun. What the hell! You only live once, right?’

  Premières for TV shows were very different from the ones for films. The head of the TV network had a house so big it made my mum’s look like a garden shed.

  The cinema room in his basement was impressive. It was a small gathering. A few bigwigs, the cast and some of the crew, a handful of proud mums, wives, and girlfriends… and me. The show was really good, and I was wondering how long it would be until it was available on our side of the pond.

  Mark introduced me to a few of his co-stars. Richard, who played his brother, was twice as handsome as Mark was. Normally, I would have gone weak at the knees, but all I could think about was why Danny had chosen Erica. For the after-party we transferred to a nightclub, where we were all VIPs. I had never been a real VIP before.

  Richard didn’t really leave my side. He wanted to know how long I was staying in New York, and seemed disappointed when I said I was going home in just two days’ time.

  ‘Maybe I can get in touch when I next head to London,’ he suggested.

  I didn’t see the harm in swapping numbers with the guy. It wasn’t me, though. TV stars, premières, and VIP areas. But at least it would be a story to tell the girls at work. As nice as New York was, I was ready to go back to my normal and get some routine into my life.

  Chapter Thirty

  I had never been so happy to walk back through my own front door as I was the evening I got home from New York. I vowed I would someday go over there without Mum knowing I was even in the country. I suppose I didn’t really know how to have my mum in my life for more than a day or two at a time. I had just survived seven whole days in her company. I had been unlucky enough to meet her mother-in-law during my visit, too.

  The taxi driver, John, helped me in with my cases. He had been a few years above me at school and had become my regular taxi driver since I’d moved back to Eastbourne. I had paid the fare in advance, so I fished in my English purse for a good tip.