But that was a future that had always been impossible, even when they had first got together and for the first time in her life everything seemed possible. They had always been doomed to fail, at least at being together. What they could not allow themselves to fail at was being parents.
‘The neighbours hate it when you play that loudly,’ Catherine told him, dumping her assortment of bags, drawings and cartons on the dining table.
‘Sorry, babe,’ Jimmy said, stopping his guitar by placing the flat of his palm against the vibrating strings, before handing it to Eloise and getting up to join Catherine in the kitchen. ‘We’re laying down a new demo tomorrow and I need to hear how it sounds on the electric. If I tried it on the boat I’d probably sink it.’
‘You know I don’t mind – it’s just that … well, if you could think about the volume now and again. I’m sure it doesn’t have to be that loud.’
‘It’s rock and roll, babe,’ Jimmy said, looking confused. ‘Of course it does.’
He watched her for a few minutes as she crouched and peered in the fridge and began to take out the ingredients for dinner.
‘So what are you doing now?’ he asked her after a few minutes.
‘Chopping an onion,’ Catherine said as she sliced into the vegetable.
‘No, I don’t mean now this second. I mean this evening, generally,’ Jimmy explained. ‘Do you mind if I hang out, have dinner with you and the girls? Put them to bed – that sort of thing?’
Catherine paused briefly. She needed to talk about what Eloise had said.
‘Jimmy, do you ever think it’s weird that we still see so much of each other now?’ She tested the subject on him.
‘No,’ Jimmy said firmly, pulling himself up into a seated position on the worktop. ‘I think that after everything that happened, the fact we’re able to put our children first and be friends means we’re well adjusted and like, you know – cool.’
‘So why aren’t we divorced yet?’ Catherine asked him, lowering her voice.
Jimmy didn’t answer for a second or two, and then he said, ‘Because it costs a lot of money and we haven’t got any right now.’
‘It’s just sometimes I wonder …’ Catherine trailed off.
‘Wonder what?’
‘Eloise told me today that she thinks you’re going to move back in, that we’re going to get back together. She’s taking you and me getting on and you being here so much as a sign. We can’t let them have false hope, Jimmy. We need to talk to them again. Get them to see that this is the way things are for good.’
Jimmy drummed the heels of his cowboy boots against the kitchen cupboards. ‘I don’t want to do that,’ he said.
Catherine turned to look at him, onion tears standing in her eyes. ‘But why not? It’s the truth.’
Jimmy paused for a moment. ‘I know it’s the truth, but I don’t want to take hope away from an eight-year-old, let alone her kid sister. When you’re a kid is practically the only time when hope seems like a real possibility. We might as well tell them Father Christmas isn’t real, or that it’s been us they’ve been bankrupting and not the tooth fairy all this time. Next you’ll be wanting to tell Leila that Jesus is no more than a historical figure and not the son of God.’
‘This is different, Jimmy, and you know it,’ Catherine said in a low voice. ‘We can’t lie to them about this. It’s their lives we’re talking about.’
‘We’re not lying, we’re not doing anything,’ Jimmy corrected her. He hopped off the counter, put one hand on each of Catherine’s shoulders and looked into her eyes.
‘Look, we hurt each other pretty badly. We tore each other up and those two were in the middle of it. And now you don’t hate me any more, and that’s all right by me, and I’m not messed up by you any more and that’s all right by you. Those two girls in there have had enough pain in their lives already. It can’t be wrong to let an eight-year-old have hope, it just can’t.’
‘But it’s false hope,’ Catherine persisted, wiping the back of her hand under her eyes and feeling an instant sting.
‘All hope is false hope – that doesn’t make it a bad thing,’ Jimmy said. ‘Look, if they ask me anything like, “When are you moving back in, Dad?” then I’ll tell them I’m not, and you’ll do the same, and in a few months they’ll stop asking. In a year or two they won’t even think about it any more and the way we live will seem normal to them. The hope will fade all by itself, don’t you worry.’
‘That sounds wrong coming from you, the eternal optimist,’ she said, catching a low note in his voice with some concern.
‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ Jimmy said, mustering a grin. ‘I’m still an optimist. It’s just that I’m starting to realise eternity is a very long time. So what do you say – is that a plan?’
Catherine looked into the living room where Eloise was picking out the riff from ‘Hotel California’ on Jimmy’s acoustic guitar, her head bent over the strings while Leila watched her fingers, trying to pick up the notes herself. Just at that moment her children felt safe and happy, and it was a feeling that Catherine was as desperate to preserve as her husband was.
‘OK, we’ll do that then,’ she said. ‘We won’t lie but we won’t say anything either.’
The two of them stood in silence for a moment in the small galley kitchen, sensing another thread of the lives they had once woven together so confidently and hopefully, unravelling and drifting apart. Somehow the closer they got now as individuals, the further away the reality of the couple they once were seemed, and it was a loss that Catherine, at least, still mourned. Not because the relationship they had once shared was right, but because she had wanted it to be so much.
‘So are you staying for dinner then?’ she asked him finally, breaking the thread in two.
Jimmy’s smile was weary. ‘I thought you were never going to ask.’
It was past eight when Catherine finally got the girls into bed. It was Jimmy’s fault. After his quiet resolve in the kitchen he’d returned to his tall-tale self by the time Catherine served dessert, regaling the girls with stories of what a wonderful life they were going to lead as soon as the band was discovered and he hit the big time – which would be any time soon, now that they had the funds in place to make a new demo. Eloise asked for a pony and Jimmy told her she could have a field full if she wanted, and there was to be an unending supply of sweets for Leila who planned to distribute them to the world’s less privileged children.
Jimmy and the girls had still been singing by the time Catherine finally managed to shepherd the little ones up the stairs, and she did have to admit, as they hummed whilst brushing their teeth, that Jimmy’s new song had a catchy tune. Jimmy was good at catchy tunes, but somehow they never seemed to fit his rock-and-roll image. Surely a man who wore leather trousers to go to the supermarket shouldn’t be writing soppy love songs; he should be writing about mayhem and devil worship and possibly drugs of some description. But Jimmy had never been like that. Yes, he had a skull and crossbones tattooed on his right shoulder, but it was wreathed in roses and once, many years ago, when Catherine had teased him about his rock credentials he’d replied, ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter, babe.’
He’d more than proved himself right since then.
When she came down Jimmy was still there strumming on his guitar and humming the now-familiar tune. He’d opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses out, which meant he wasn’t planning on going back to the boat any time soon. Catherine realised that she was glad. They would sit and talk about the girls, and her job and the PTA, and he’d entertain her with stories of the band’s latest exploits or whichever kid he was teaching in Rock Club had the most promise, and things would be easy between them, and comfortable. What Catherine missed most about being with him was simply having him in the room on a weekday night sipping a glass of wine and talking. Loving each other had been a trick they had never quite pulled off, but even after everything that had happened they still had the knack of likin
g each other.
‘Do you mind?’ Jimmy asked her, nodding at the wine. ‘I’ll go back to the boat in a mo, but the forecast said frost overnight. I could do with a drink to help keep the cold out.’
‘You need a proper home, really,’ Catherine said as she sat down, picking up her glass.
‘I’ve got one,’ Jimmy said with a shrug. ‘It’s just that I don’t live in it any more.’
Catherine took a sip of wine.
‘I mean, you need a proper home for you. You can’t go on living in that boat. It’s not even a proper boat, just some floating rust bucket that Billy cobbled together when he was half cut and off his face.’
‘Don’t talk that way about Billy,’ Jimmy said mildly. His oldest friend and one-time bandmate had died – some said deliberately, although never in front of Jimmy – from an alcohol and prescription drug overdose almost three years ago. ‘If anybody had a good reason to drink it was him. He went from the brightest, best-looking, most talented bloke I’ve ever known to a shell of himself in less than five years. He could never let go of what he had once been, that’s the worst tragedy of schizophrenia. He knew he’d never be that bloke again, never get married and have kids. So he loved that boat instead. He poured every ounce of love and dedication he could have given to a family into it, if only he’d ever got the chance. I miss him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Catherine said. ‘I know you do. And it’s a great boat, but it’s not a home, not for you. If paying the mortgage on this place is stopping you getting a flat or something, then we need to think again. I might be able to manage if we cut down a bit.’
‘Cut down on what?’ Jimmy asked her. ‘You haven’t got anything to cut down on, Catherine. And it’s not a rust bucket. Billy might have been a drunk but he was a master craftsman, a carpenter. He poured his soul into that boat.’
‘I just don’t think it’s fair that you should be freezing to death on a canal boat,’ Catherine said.
‘It is fair,’ Jimmy said. ‘The girls need something constant in their lives. They’ve grown up here, Leila was born here while I played Clapton to her so it would be the first thing she’d ever hear. I want to keep this place for them. And besides, I’m moaning now but you wait. In the summer that boat’s a little paradise. The chicks really dig it.’
Catherine found herself laughing. ‘It’s just that you’re getting on now,’ she reminded Jimmy playfully. ‘You don’t want to be getting arthritis in this weather.’
‘Hey, lady,’ Jimmy warned her with a grin, ‘I’m still young. I’ve still got it all ahead of me.’
‘Have you?’ Catherine asked him sceptically.
‘Course I have, and so have you.’
‘Have I? Sometimes I think I don’t want anything new in my life. I think that just the way it is now is enough for me. I love the girls, and you and I are friends now, more or less. Everything’s ordered and calm. If all I had in front of me was fifty more years of the same I’d be happy enough.’
‘Happy enough? Happy enough isn’t enough. If it was, then Billy would have kept taking his medication and living a half-life, and I’d have given up my music years ago and become a postman. I’ve thought I’d quite like the early mornings and the uniform,’ Jimmy said, making Catherine smile just as he intended. ‘Everybody needs to be loved, everybody needs to love someone.’
‘And some people need to love everyone,’ Catherine added wryly.
‘I don’t, though,’ Jimmy said, tipping his head back on the sofa and looking at the ceiling. ‘I don’t love anyone. Not since us. But I know I will love someone again and that someone will love me, because I need that to happen and so do you. It’s what makes us human.’
Catherine wanted to disagree with him but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
‘I’d better get going,’ Jimmy said after a while, finishing his glass of wine. ‘If I don’t get the stove lit now I’ll be a block of ice in the morning and frozen corpses hardly ever have number-one hits on iTunes. I’ll leave the electric here, if you don’t mind. If the damp gets into her she’ll be knackered.’
He kissed Catherine briefly on the lips as she stood up to let him out, and then with his hand on the latch of the door he turned round and looked at her.
‘Look, I don’t know why I’m saying this – but try and remember the last time you were really in love, Catherine, the last time your heart burst out of your chest every time you thought about that person. The nights you spent awake just dreaming about what it would feel like to touch them, longing for their arms around you. He hurt you, I know he did, and she let you down and left you alone to cope with everything. But sometimes I think when you buried the hurt and the pain they left you with, you buried a bit of yourself as well. I know it’s none of my business any more but I’m only saying you deserve to be loved, so try and remember what it felt like and then maybe, when the time comes, you’ll be able to let it happen again. I just want you to be happy. Really happy.’
Jimmy nodded once and then closed the door carefully behind him so as not to wake the girls.
Catherine tweaked back her curtains and watched him hunched up against the cold as he marched stalwartly towards the canal, his long hair whipped by the wind, clutching his acoustic guitar by its neck.
Despite everything he was still the only person alive who really knew her, who understood her better than she ever understood herself.
Chapter Five
IT HAD BEEN almost unbearably hot the day Catherine had met Marc James.
She been waiting for Alison, of course; a lot of her childhood had been spent sitting in parks, loitering in corridors or sheltering in rainswept bus stops, waiting for her best friend. As the two girls reached the age of seventeen in tandem it was no different. If anything, it took Alison longer to get anywhere, particularly since she had learned that most people, especially boys, would wait for her arrival almost indefinitely. And that summer, even though Alison was nursing her own secret crush, she started getting boyfriends. Not the kind she used to have – some fleeting alliance that would begin at registration and be over by the afternoon break – but dates with real boys to the cinema, McDonald’s and sometimes even the pub, where Alison would sip Cinzano Bianco and lemonade.
Catherine had both laughed and listened wide-eyed to her friend’s detailed descriptions of her first kiss, the first time a boy put his hand up her top, and how it had taken David Jenkins ages to undo the hook of her bra because his hands had been shaking so much in excitement. It was a development in her friend’s life that was as alien as it was fascinating to Catherine. Her imagination simply could not conceive what it would be like to touch a boy, hold his hand or even kiss him, so limited was her experience of the opposite sex. All she knew was that ever since Alison started properly going out with boys, her lateness had increased, and once or twice she hadn’t shown at all.
The trouble was, Catherine had thought on that day, as she sat, her back against a tree, feeling its rough bark imprinting her skin through the thin cotton of her dress, she often felt a little bit as if her life wasn’t real when Alison wasn’t in it. It was like that riddle about the falling tree in an empty forest and whether or not it made any sound as it crashed to the ground because there was no one there to hear it. When Alison wasn’t there to see her, Catherine felt entirely invisible.
She closed her eyes briefly and pushed her sunglasses up her nose, tapping her feet as she hummed quietly to herself. And then the sunlight had dimmed behind her eyelids and the skin on her legs cooled as a shadow fell over them.
‘Well, about time,’ she said easily, pushing her sunglasses into her hair and opening her eyes, expecting to find Alison. Her vision was momentarily dazzled by the bright light. The shape that loomed above in the instant it took her to focus was male. It was boy – no, not a boy. It was a young man.
He was shorter than Catherine, she judged instantly, stocky, with muscular arms and a bare chest. He was holding his T-shirt in one arm and a can of S
pecial Brew in the other. And yet Catherine remembered quite clearly she hadn’t felt intimidated by him. Not even then.
She had sat up, pushing her hair off her shoulders, straightening her back a little. She waited.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump,’ he said, even though Catherine hadn’t jumped, as he sat down on the grass with bare feet. Catherine noticed the soles of them were surprisingly soft and white. ‘I’m just so tired. I’m working nights on the railway line. I should be sleeping right now, but I can’t. It’s too nice outside to be trying to get some kip in some stinking bedsit. I wanted to come out and sit in the sun for a bit, but every time I relax I fall asleep, and I can’t have that. I’ll turn the colour of your hair and if I miss the start of my shift I’ll get laid off. So I thought I’d talk to you for a bit, if that’s all right. At least while you’re waiting for your friend … boyfriend?’
‘Friend,’ Catherine had corrected him hastily. For once she was glad Alison was late because she knew that if her golden friend had been here this creature would not be talking to her. He would not have even seen her.
He sat down on a patch of grass just beyond where the shade of the tree’s canopy ended, the sunlight reflecting off his amber skin.
Catherine had never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in her whole life before. The sight of him made her heart stop in anticipation.
‘My name’s Marc,’ he said, leaning back on his arms so the muscles in his shoulders and biceps stood out in sharp relief. ‘I’m from Birmingham. I go where the work is and this month the work’s here. That’s pretty much my story. Now it’s your turn. Tell me what your name is and why you are sitting under this tree all alone.’
The Accidental Wife Page 5
