And at his bidding, quiet, shy, awkward Catherine, who up until that point had been unable to hold anything other than the most stilted and awkward conversation with almost anyone other than Alison, started talking. Paralysed with social ineptitude in front of the skinniest spottiest seventeen-year-old, her response to this being, who was so palpably male, could not have been more different. It was as if by the simple act of noticing her he had burst a dam in her. Suddenly hundreds of words poured out of Catherine, thoughts and ideas that must have been building up pressure somewhere inside her for years. They talked about everything and nothing, and she looked at him, drinking him in like a thirsty person stumbling across an oasis in the desert: the light in his eyes as he watched her, the slope of his back as he shifted position, the set of his chin, the line of his nose. She was unable to stop looking at him and telling him about everything: school, her parents, her home life, her favourite books, music and films. Her hopes and dreams that she hadn’t even shared with Alison, and he listened. Not only could he hear her, he was seeing her. For the first time in her short life, Catherine felt like her own person and not just Alison’s friend or a neglected daughter. She knew what it was like to be truly seen.
Jimmy had asked her to remember the last time she was in love; looking back, Catherine realised that she was in love with Marc before they had even known each other half an hour. It had taken less than thirty minutes to happen, and how many years to shake off? Catherine wasn’t sure she could answer that yet.
‘So how about you, how come you’ve ended up drifting from town to town?’ she asked him at last, desperate to know more about him. ‘Why did you end up in Farmington?’
‘You’re here,’ he said to her, the roll of his Midlands accent washing over her. ‘That’s a good reason to come here and it’s a better reason than the one I’ve got. I follow the work. Labouring, railway stuff, mostly. I’ve not got any skills, see, or exams. I’ve not got a lot going for me.’
‘You have,’ Catherine had retorted automatically. ‘I mean, you just probably don’t know that you have.’
Marc shifted his position once again, crossing his legs, tucking his bare feet underneath each other so that Catherine could see the soft pale soles.
‘Girls like me,’ he said, with a one-sided smile. ‘And I like you, Catherine. You’re different.’
‘I know,’ Catherine replied in dismay.
‘It’s a good thing,’ Marc told her. ‘Most girls I try and talk to either won’t have anything to do with me, or if they like the look of me they turn themselves into idiots, flirting and pouting and showing themselves off. I’m not saying I don’t like it when a pretty girl flirts with me, but well … I don’t know the last time I really talked to anyone, the last time anyone ever gave a toss about what I’m thinking or feeling.’
‘Me neither,’ Catherine said, afraid to move in case she caused one second of the remaining time she had with him to fall away before she was ready.
Marc kneeled up and pulled his T-shirt on over his head and then shuffled over on his knees and stopped in front of her.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Got to get my head down.’
‘OK,’ Catherine replied.
‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ he asked her, and Catherine felt as if lightning had just struck the centre of her chest, leaving a gaping burning hole he could see right through.
‘Yes,’ she said, unable to manage any dissembling.
‘Can I meet you here again tomorrow at the same time?’ Marc asked, as he reached out and picked up her right hand. Catherine looked at the waxy alabaster of her fingers resting against the deep brown flesh of his.
‘Yes,’ she said again, her voice low.
He pulled her gently towards his body until she was kneeling opposite him.
‘Can I kiss you, Catherine?’ he asked her quietly, almost casually.
‘I …’ Catherine froze for a moment, her lips numb and immovable. ‘I don’t know … how to,’ she finished painfully, dropping her chin to her chest and closing her eyes.
The next thing she felt was the rough surface of Marc’s palms against the skin of her cheeks, drawing her face back up to look at him.
‘I do,’ he said.
What she felt then was the gentle pressure of his mouth on hers, the sensitive exploration of his tongue between her lips. And then his arm encircling her waist and the heat from his body radiating through the thin cotton of her dress and penetrating her bones. Finally, as Catherine began to echo and return his kiss, she realised that her arms had crept unbidden around his neck, and she felt the muscles of his shoulders contract beneath her fingers as she held him.
It wasn’t a long kiss, or a particularly passionate one, but it was perfect. It was a perfect first kiss. A kiss that every other she might receive in her life would have to live up to.
Afterwards, with his arms still around her waist, Marc smiled into her eyes.
‘I’ve never been with a girl like you,’ he said almost regretfully. ‘And I’m guessing you’ve probably never been with someone like me. You’re different, Catherine, fragile and … nice. And I’m not that nice.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’ve made a lot of girls angry with me in my time and I don’t take things too seriously. I like you, I want to see you again, but I want to be straight with you, make sure you know what you’re doing.’ Marc sat back on his heels, dropping his arms from her waist, and Catherine felt the chill of their absence.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want to come tomorrow, I get it.’
‘I’ll be here tomorrow,’ she told him steadily.
‘Will you?’ He watched her as he stood up, a faint frown between his brows.
Catherine swallowed and took a breath. ‘You said I’m not like the girls you normally go with. You said I’m different, so if I’m different then maybe … this will be different. Maybe you’ll be different and anyway …’ she had to force every single tendon in her body to relax sufficiently to allow her to say what she had to, ‘I’ve never had anything like this before, that’s mine just for me. I just want to feel like this again – I don’t care what happens.’
Marc smiled. ‘Someday you’ll learn not to wear your heart on your sleeve,’ he said, and then he nodded. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Catherine, same place, same time.’
Later that night, while her parents had been watching the ten o’clock news, Alison had crept through Catherine’s bedroom window, as she had done every night she could get away with it since they were twelve years old.
‘Are you mad at me?’ she whispered, easing first one bare leg and then the other through the window.
Catherine, who had been lying on her bed reliving every single moment of her afternoon, had sat up on her elbows and shaken her head.
‘No, I’m not, you’ll never –’
Alison interrupted her. ‘When you hear what happened you’ll understand,’ she said.
Alison was so used to telling her stories, it would never cross her mind that Catherine might have one to tell in return.
‘Go on then, but be quick. Mum’ll be up as soon as the news is finished to tell me to turn my light off.’
‘I was just leaving to meet you when Aran Archer rang me up and asked me if I wanted to watch a video at his. Well, I had to go, didn’t I? Samantha Redditch has been after him since Easter. I thought she’ll die if she knows I’ve bagged him.’
‘But I thought you like –’
‘Yes, of course I like him, I love him, but he’s never noticed me yet so while I’m waiting, why not go out with Aran Archer? There’ll be parties and I’ll get to hang out with my true love more.’
‘If you say so,’ Catherine said. She’d learned never to question Alison’s plans, because Alison did what she wanted to do and worried about the consequences later.
‘So I go round to Aran’s, and his mum is out, of course. He draws all the curtains in the living room, tells me to sit on the sofa, and gives me a drink of oran
ge squash!’ Alison shook her head. ‘What a saddo! Of course the film hadn’t been on five minutes before we were kissing. His tongue was down my throat straight away and his hand was up my top, squeezing them like they were lemons.’
Alison laughed, remembering to cover her mouth with her hand at the last second in case Catherine’s parents heard her.
‘It was so not sexy,’ she said. ‘So I pushed him off me and he says, “Oh, go on, Alison, let me see them, please!” And I said to him, “Are we going out or what?” And he says, yeah we are, all sort of desperate and pathetic. So I said, “OK then.”
‘I couldn’t get him off of me for the rest of the afternoon. He wanted to go further but I wasn’t having any of that. I’m not losing it to him. Still, he’s quite sweet really when he’s not with his mates. He said he’s fancied me for ages.’
‘So you’ve chucked Ryan, then?’
‘Well, I will do,’ Alison said, glancing at her watch. ‘What about you? What did you do? I would have phoned you here to tell you but I knew you’d rather get out than be stuck in here all afternoon.’
Catherine thought about her kiss with Marc and she thought of how it would sound if she tried to explain to Alison in the way Alison had just described her afternoon with Aran Archer. The moment was too precious for her to share with anyone, even Alison. Especially Alison, because once she knew she’d have questions like, whose hand went where and what did it feel like and when could she meet him? Catherine realised with a sudden lurch she didn’t want Alison to meet him. The afternoon she had spent with Marc, the talk they’d had and the kiss was hers. It was perhaps the very first thing that she had properly owned in her entire life, even if it was something as transient as memories and sensations, and Catherine wasn’t ready to share them.
‘We can do something tomorrow, if you like,’ Alison said. ‘Aran will be begging me to see him but I don’t think I should, do you? I’ll be fighting him off again all afternoon and it’s such a drag.’
‘Actually, I can’t tomorrow,’ Catherine said quickly.
‘Really?’ Alison looked surprised and Catherine was sure she’d be caught out in her lie. ‘Parents?’ Alison asked.
Catherine nodded.
Alison gave her a sympathetic hug. ‘Just think, one more year and you’ll have A levels and we’ll be off to university. Then you’ll never have to see them again. One more year and you’ll be free.’
‘Yes,’ Catherine said thoughtfully. ‘One more year.’
They heard a footfall on the bottom stairs.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ Alison hissed as she climbed out of the window. ‘Same time, same place, OK?’
Hastily Catherine pulled the window shut after her, and glimpsed the silhouette of her friend on the garage roof before scrambling back into bed.
‘Lights out now,’ her mother said, opening the door.
‘Yes, Mum,’ Catherine said.
Her mother paused for a moment, looking at the window, the curtain a little askew.
‘Have you had the window open?’ she asked Catherine.
‘Sorry,’ Catherine said.
‘No windows open at night. Any mad man could get in.’
Her mother had shut the door behind her, snapping the light switch off as she went. Catherine lay back in her bed, stretching from the ends of her fingers to the tips of her toes, knowing. At last she had something to dream about.
Things would have been so different, Catherine thought as she finished her glass of wine, if Marc just hadn’t turned up the next day.
She had told her mother she was going to study at the library, taking a big net bag of books and several pens to prove it. Her mother, who didn’t like her being around the house anyway, didn’t question her. She was glad to see the back of her.
Catherine deliberately walked along the canal towards the park in a bid to avoid meeting anyone she might know, including Alison, on the high street. The spot in the park where Marc had found her was out of the way, beyond the swings and roundabout, under the canal bridge towards the back of the field where the park met the railway embankment. The grass was long, untouched by the council mower. Catherine felt confident that once she was there she would not be spotted by anyone.
Which was reassuring because she didn’t expect him to be there at all. She prepared herself for disappointment, relieved that she hadn’t told Alison about him because then, when he didn’t show, when she didn’t see him again, it wouldn’t matter as nobody would know about him, and after a few days or weeks, Catherine would stop thinking about him and her life would get back to exactly the way it had been before.
But as she made her way under the bridge she could see that Marc was already there waiting for her, leaning against the trunk of the tree they had met under, the August sun painting his bare chest with patches of gold as it danced through the tree’s canopy.
Catherine stopped in her tracks and looked at him. She was seventeen, the most inexperienced girl in her year, if not the whole school. She was thin and flat-chested, with long bony fingers and feet. What did Marc want with her truly? Because he could not want her like that. He couldn’t look at her the way boys looked at Alison and actually want her. Besides, he wasn’t a mere boy. He was a man, more than three years her senior. Seeing him waiting there under the tree for her didn’t make any kind of sense.
Instinctively Catherine knew that now was the time she should turn back. It was her chance to heed the warning he had given her yesterday and leave. But even as in her mind’s eye she was rotating on her heel and scurrying away to the shelter of the library, her treacherous body was carrying her right to his side.
‘I saw you watching me,’ he said, smiling up at her, blinking against the bright sunlight. ‘Having second thoughts?’
‘No,’ Catherine said. He reached out, catching her hand and pulled her down onto the grass. ‘It’s just, I look at you and I … I don’t know what you want with me.’
Marc laughed. ‘Me neither, but it must be something pretty strong because after we said goodbye yesterday I swore blind to myself I wasn’t coming here today. But here I am. And now you’re here I feel happy. I hardly ever feel happy.’
The two of them watched each other and the anticipation that he might kiss her again made Catherine’s insides burn.
‘So what do you want to do today?’ Catherine asked him.
Applying a very gentle pressure on her shoulders Marc pushed her back into the long grass and lay alongside her, his head propped up on one elbow. ‘I want to lie here in the grass, talking and kissing you,’ he told her. And that was exactly what they did.
They met every chance that they could, every free hour that Catherine could steal from her mother and explain away to Alison. She would have been content to lie in the long grass with Marc day after day, but on the third day Marc pulled her to her feet and said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’
‘Where else?’ Catherine was reluctant, afraid of who might see her and afraid to tell Marc that she felt that way, in case she hurt him.
‘The pictures,’ Marc told her, raising his eyebrows. ‘They’ve got a showing of that film Ghost on at the cinema. I’ve heard it’s rubbish, but girls like it, right?’
‘You’re taking me to Ghost?’ she said, repressing a laugh because it seemed like such a normal thing for a boy and girl to do and exactly the sort of thing she thought she would never do, especially not with Marc.
‘I’m doing better than that.’ He grinned, tugging at her hand. ‘Come on.’
Never in her life as the tallest thinnest most ginger haired girl in the school had Catherine ever felt as self-conscious as she did that afternoon, walking hand in hand with the shorter, compact, shirtless Marc through the town towards the Rex cinema. She was sure that this would be it, this would be the moment when one of her mother’s friends or worse still her mother, caught her in a lie and the daydream she had been living would be over. Amazingly her luck held and as they approached the grand but shabby
art deco building, Catherine saw a small queue forming outside its doors.
‘This way,’ Marc said, leading her not to the entrance but pulling her down a narrow alley that ran along side the building.
‘What are we doing?’ Catherine asked him, giggling.
‘I met this guy in the pub last night, works in the projection room.’ He drew her into a doorway with a locked fire door that was marked ‘Fire Escape, Keep Clear!’.
‘Years ago this old heap was the go-to place for miles around, he reckons. Gold paint on the ceiling, velvet chairs, cocktails brought to your table.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard that,’ Catherine said with an uncertain smile. ‘I’ve seen some of the old photos in the local history books. So?’
‘So, there were boxes, just like you get in a theatre for the really posh people to sit in. They don’t use them now, except for storage but they are still there …’ He smiled at her and kissed her gently on the lips. ‘And the bloke said if I bought him a pint, he’d let us in the side entrance and we could watch the film in a box for free.’
‘Really?’ Catherine gasped, more delighted that Marc had been thinking of her when he came up with the plan, than the plan itself. Ghost was one of Alison’s favourite films and they had seen it so many times she was fairly sure she knew the script better than Demi Moore did.
Marc nodded, looking pleased with himself as he banged several times on the door. After a while the door swung open and Marc and the projectionist exchanged a few words.
‘Don’t get up to anything too energetic in there,’ the projectionist told Marc as he pointed them towards the box, chuckling to himself.
‘Do you mind,’ Marc said, smiling at Catherine as he held the door open for her. ‘I’m with a real lady here.’
They sat side by side on upturned boxes, Marc’s warm arm around her shoulders.
‘This film is crap,’ Marc said after about twenty minutes, making Catherine laugh.
‘Do you want to leave?’ she asked him.
‘No,’ he said looking into her eyes. ‘I want to kiss you.’
The Accidental Wife Page 6
