‘Yes, it is,’ Marc said, brushing the hair from her face. ‘No point in letting the grass grow under our feet, is there?’
‘Marc, there is no way we’ll be ready to throw a big party in time.’
‘Well, like I said, half the invites are sent now, so yes we will.’ Marc grinned at her, that smile that said he’d made up his mind. ‘Come on, love, you’ve never let me down yet. And the kids will love it. They can invite all their friends. We’ll make it a real family event for the young ones too. It might help Amy settle in.’
‘Amy doesn’t like people, and I know how she feels,’ Alison mumbled wearily.
‘Well, people love you,’ Marc said, watching her face. ‘You look beautiful, by the way.’
Alison glanced up at him, the muscles in her shoulders tensing as she caught his look.
‘I don’t …’ she protested weakly. ‘I haven’t even had a shower …’
His hand ran down the side of her face, his forefinger tracing the curve of her neck and breast.
‘I remember the first time I saw you,’ Marc said, unbuttoning her shirt with practised ease to reveal the lace of her bra. ‘I wanted you right that minute.’ He ran his hands over her breasts and then, lowering his head, nipped at the lace of her bra. ‘The second I saw you all I could think about was what you would look like naked.’
‘I remember,’ Alison said. It was the version of events they had invented over the years, a version that was far more romantic and noble than the reality.
‘I was driving through the town today and I saw it – you know, the bedsit – still there. Looks exactly the same. The place where we first –’
‘Oh God, Marc,’ Alison covered her face. ‘Don’t remind me.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic place but thinking about it turned me on,’ Marc told her. ‘And I think it’s about time that you and I christened our new house, Mrs James.’ He pulled her to the floor, kissing her deeply as she folded onto his lap.
Alison made herself relax into his familiar embrace and waited, waited for that old hunger and need to return to her. As she felt his lips on her throat and breast she found herself thinking back to that day. The day they’d first had sex. It was an easy day to remember because it was also the day they first met.
It was the last week of the summer holidays. And up until that day everything was going in Alison’s life more or less just as she had planned and expected it to. She had one more year ahead of her at school. One more year to get the boy she really wanted to want her back, one more year to help Cathy keep sane and get free of her hateful parents from hell, and then she was off, free as a bird to study English at Bristol University. She’d meet a hundred new friends and a hundred new boys, none of whom she’d have a thing to do with because by then she’d have the boyfriend she really wanted and not the one she’d got. Not Aran Archer and his persistent wandering, groping, squeezing, bruising hands. She’d have the boy of her dreams, the boy she’d loved since she first clapped eyes on him.
She’d have Jimmy Ashley. She didn’t want him for ever, just for a few years while he was cool and everybody else wanted him, because anyone could see that Jimmy Ashley wasn’t the kind of man you married, but he was the perfect boyfriend for any seventeen-year-old girl. Especially now that he had left school and was in a band. It was almost impossible to be more cool than that. On that day fifteen years ago Alison had still been confidently waiting for him to realise that she was the perfect girlfriend for any eighteen-year-old to have. Her affection and desire for him had been unshakeable up until the very second she met Marc and the whole path of her life changed course.
It happened because she knew that Cathy had a secret, which in itself was unprecedented – Cathy never had anything interesting to hide unless it was some exploit that Alison had arranged for her. But even more surprising was that whatever Cathy’s secret was, she was also hiding it from Alison. And Alison absolutely had to know what it was, because, after all, the pair of them had been soul mates since they were eight years old on the day Alison started at her new school.
Cathy had been cowering in the centre of the playground, surrounded by a ring of girls, skipping, pointing and chanting, ‘Witch, witch, witch!’
‘What you doing?’ Alison had demanded of them, marching into the centre of the circle. The first thing she noticed about the girl standing next to her was that she was very tall, with the skinniest legs Alison had ever seen. Alison took a step in front of her.
‘Her mum’s a witch, which makes her a witch too,’ one of the other girls had crowed, her soft young face full of hate.
Alison had looked at the tall girl again, a tangle of arms and embarrassment.
‘Is your mum a witch?’ she asked her conversationally. The girl shook her head.
‘Right then, she’s not a witch, but I am.’ Alison marched up to the ringleader until they were nose to nose. ‘And if you say another word to my friend over there I’ll put a curse on you that will make you die the most slowest and horrible and disgusting and painful death you can think of. And if you tell anyone I said that then I’ll curse you anyway. One more word and you’re a corpse.’
The girls had glared at Alison but she had remained silent, turning on her heel with a flash of a ponytail and marching off, chin in the air. Gradually the others drifted off too, whispering amongst themselves about the odd new girl.
‘Looks like we’re best friends now,’ Alison had said, holding out her hand, which Catherine took. ‘I’m Alison.’
‘Catherine.’
‘Right then, Cathy – want to play hopscotch?’
They had been twelve when Alison had got Catherine so drunk on cider that she had thrown up on her mother’s feet as soon as she opened the front door to her, and then lay on the floor laughing. Catherine’s parents hadn’t taken that incident too well and banned Alison from seeing Catherine outside of school for good. Alison remembered her mum going round to Catherine’s, certain she’d be able to reason with her, blame it on youthful experimentation, high spirits. But she hadn’t bargained for Catherine’s mum, the coldest and most unbendable human that had ever existed. But soul mates were soul mates, and a parental ban wasn’t about to keep them apart. Alison invented a web of complicated lies that allowed them both to go out sometimes to a school disco or a party for a couple of hours, and best of all she worked out that she could climb out of her own bedroom window and into her friend’s in less than ten minutes, if she sprinted in her slippers down the alley behind the houses that separated Catherine’s posh estate from her council housing, without either set of parents knowing.
As they got older, their open secret of a friendship fell into an easy pattern. There was Alison and Cathy and Alison and the rest of the world. Alison did her best to be the bridge that Catherine crossed over to the normal lives of their peers. She threatened anyone who wasn’t kind to Cathy and let those who were bask in her approval. But their friendship was always a two-way street. She was just Cathy’s crusader and protector, her lifeline to normality; Cathy was her heart and soul, keeping her tethered to the ground when otherwise her wilder thoughts and impulses would have had her spinning off into the wild blue yonder, to be lost for ever. Cathy grounded her and kept her safe, and she knew she could tell Cathy what she could never tell her mother. She always thought that Cathy had felt the same, which is why her friend’s secret puzzled her. After all, what sort of secret could Cathy have that would require so much guarding?
Alison couldn’t imagine it.
Cathy had told her that she wouldn’t be around that afternoon. Her mum was making her stay in and study again. But Alison knew it was an excuse, she knew that Catherine’s mum worked in the Christian bookshop on Thursdays and wouldn’t know if Cathy was studying at home or not. She couldn’t go round and knock for Cathy so she waited on the iron railing behind the buddleia just next to the old people’s bungalows. It was hot, and Alison was bored after ten minutes so it was lucky really that it didn’t
take much longer for Catherine to emerge, otherwise she might have gone to find Aran Archer after all.
Alison watched in fascination as her friend walked down the road. Something about Cathy had changed – no, that was wrong – everything had.
She was wearing a long white skirt that flowed around her ankles, a skinny-ribbed green vest top that set off the sway of her long red hair. She had bangles on her wrists and a long beaded necklace that fell between her breasts. Cathy looked beautiful and stylish, sexy even, with a new kind of confidence in the sway of her hips and the way she tossed her waist-length hair over her shoulder.
The way Cathy looked told Alison two things. First of all that Catherine’s mother was definitely out, otherwise Catherine would never have dared to leave the house in anything other than the clothes her mother allocated, and secondly, that she was going to meet a male of the species.
Cathy had a boyfriend. Alison marvelled at the new-found information and wondered who it could be. Who at school could possibly have fallen for Cathy Parkin? None of the boys fancied Cathy, but not because she wasn’t beautiful, it was easy to see that she was, and Alison had always known it even if she hadn’t realised its full extent before. Still, Cathy’s beauty was too subtle and oblique for any boy at school to appreciate; she didn’t have the yellow hair, obvious breasts or the near-naked thighs that boys in their teens appreciated so much. Alison realised it couldn’t be a boy from school that Catherine was going to meet. For a split second the thought that it might be Jimmy Ashley, the boy who had barely spoken two words to Alison and none at all to Catherine as far as she could remember, flashed across her brain, but she dismissed it. Even if Jimmy fancied Cathy, which he never would because she was about as far away from being a rock chick as a girl could be, then Cathy would never be his secret girlfriend. She’d never betray Alison in that way; it just wasn’t in her nature.
There were only two ways to find out what was going on. She could either follow her or ask her.
Alison, who was always one to take the fun option, pulled her sunglasses down onto her nose and began trailing her best friend. She giggled as she hopped in and out of bus shelters, cowered behind trees, flattened herself against a shop window. Near to laughing out loud, Alison expected Cathy to turn around at any minute and ask her what she thought she was playing at. But then she realised Cathy was in a world of her own, an exclusive little bubble of her own feelings and thoughts that Alison could not even guess at. For the first time in the nine years she had known Cathy she was on the outside of her head and this boy she was going to meet was on the inside. It took a second or two for Alison to understand that what she was feeling as she slowed to a walk, now only a few feet behind Cathy, was jealousy.
She had to know that instant what exactly was going on in Cathy’s life.
‘Hi, Cathy, where are you going?’ she said, falling into step alongside her friend, making her jump.
‘I’m … oh, hello!’ Cathy smiled, her cheeks colouring. ‘I thought you were with Aran. Mum’s working so I sneaked out for a walk.’
‘Liar,’ Alison said lightly. ‘Come on, spill. You’re on the way to meet a boy, aren’t you? You might as well know, if it’s Jimmy Ashley then it’s over between you and me for good.’
‘Jimmy Ashley?’ Cathy stopped, wrinkling up her nose. ‘It’s not him!’
‘Aha! So it’s someone, then!’ Alison grabbed hold of Cathy’s wrist and swung it back and forth. ‘Come on, tell me! I’m your best friend, aren’t I? I tell you everything.’
‘I was going to tell you,’ Cathy said anxiously. ‘It’s just I wanted to see what would happen. I didn’t think it would last longer than one day. But it has.’ A slow shy smile crept over Cathy’s face. ‘We’ve been seeing each other almost all the holidays.’
‘Have you?’ Alison asked her. ‘That’s amazing. Can I meet him, then? The love of your life?’
Alison watched Cathy’s face as she thought for a moment, unable to believe that she didn’t agree immediately, trying not to take it personally but doing exactly that.
‘OK, OK,’ Cathy said, taking a deep breath and smiling. ‘You can meet him today. He’s amazing, Alison. When you see him you just won’t believe that he likes me. I know I don’t … except …’
‘Except?’ Alison prompted.
‘He keeps telling me that he does,’ Cathy said, her eyes shining so brightly that Alison almost wanted to slap her then and there and tell her to pull herself together.
‘It better be one of Take That,’ Alison said as they walked across the high street, down through the canal park and over the railway bridge. ‘I’m only going to forgive you if it’s one of Take That.’
Finally they stopped at a square-shaped detached house with a yellow sign hanging outside, which read ‘Rooms to Let’.
‘He’s staying here for now,’ Cathy said, leading Alison down the overgrown path and through the unkempt garden. A rusted bicycle languished in the seeded grass. ‘He’s on a contract for the railway. It runs out soon. I don’t know what will happen then, but he said he might try and get some more work locally, maybe in a garage or on a building site.’
‘So it’s not Jason Orange then?’ Alison said, wondering just exactly what kind of person Cathy had got herself mixed up with, because if he lived here it wasn’t any boy from school.
Cathy pushed the bell and waited, her fingers knotted behind her back.
And as both girls stood there, neither of them could have known that this was it: the fulcrum, the moment, the very second when suddenly their fates would tangle and turn for ever, and from that point on neither one of them would have the life that was meant for her.
‘Hi.’ Catherine’s voice was small when he opened the door. ‘Um, this is Alison. Remember I told you about her? She wanted to meet you … I thought it would be OK. Do you mind?’
Marc had stopped smiling at Cathy and looked right at Alison and said, ‘I don’t mind.’
Alison remembered staring at Marc, open-mouthed.
Yes, in her memory she was definitely open-mouthed, awestruck, as she gawped at him, in his tight black T-shirt and blue jeans, with his skin turned to amber by the sun and his dark eyes taking her in under the sweep of his black brows. The first thing she thought, in the first minute of her new life, was that he was the most beautiful living thing she had ever seen. And the second thing she thought was how on earth did Catherine get him? That couldn’t be right.
And then Marc looked into her eyes and Alison knew that he was seeing her in exactly the same way that the boys at school saw her: her breasts first, her short skirt and bare golden thighs, her smooth blonde hair and her soft full mouth. Last of all he’d noticed her eyes, her pretty blue smiling eyes. And she could tell even as Cathy chatted away, introducing them to each other, that he wanted her. She could feel it in every stroke of his gaze.
‘All right?’ Marc stepped forward and shook her hand lightly, letting his gaze fall from face to her chest and below.
‘So I was thinking maybe the three of us could have a picnic instead of … you know … what we were planning, down in the park. Under our tree?’ Catherine suggested sweetly, her happiness so thick that Alison could almost taste it.
Alison did her best to stop looking at Marc. ‘You have a tree?’ she teased Cathy gently. ‘How romantic.’
‘It’s not really our tree, it’s just a tree … oh, stop it, Ali,’ Cathy said, blushing and laughing all at once.
Alison watched as Marc dropped his arm around Cathy’s pale shoulders and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘We can call it our tree if you like,’ he said, challenging Alison with a lazy smile.
The tips of Catherine’s ears went pink.
‘We could go to the supermarket and get a few things,’ Cathy offered. ‘Mum won’t see us, she’s at work, so we should be safe.’
‘Good idea,’ Marc said, picking her hand up easily as if it was something he had often done. It was the easy intimacy between them that shock
ed Alison almost as much as it would have done if she’d come across them having sex. Somehow she found it impossible to imagine Cathy and this creature together. It seemed all wrong that it was Cathy who was the confident one, the knowing one, and that it was Alison who was feeling awkward, uncomfortable and out of things. Alison didn’t like it one little bit.
She didn’t say a single word as she listened to Cathy chatter on the way to the supermarket. She couldn’t say anything. The feelings of jealousy and rage and longing that were churning inside her the whole way kept her mouth firmly shut. She was afraid, not of what she might say but of how her voice would sound when she said anything. All she knew was that this was wrong, it was all wrong. Cathy wasn’t meant to have someone like him. Marc wasn’t meant to be with a girl like Cathy.
They had been seeing each other nearly all the summer holidays, Alison thought back. Cathy must have met him that afternoon in the park when she had been waiting for Alison, and Alison had been with Aran Archer. If Alison had shown up that afternoon then there would have been no way that Marc would have looked at Catherine, no way. It would be her holding hands with him in the sunshine now, and Catherine walking on her own. And Cathy would have been happy with that, because she would have understood that that was the right thing, that was the way things were.
It must have been about four when Cathy looked at her watch and scrambled to her feet.
‘I’ve got go. Mum’ll be back in half an hour. Are you walking back, Ali?’ Cathy stood, waiting for her friend. Alison guessed she couldn’t wait to hear what she thought of him.
‘Um … no, I can’t. I said I’d drop by Aran’s on the way back. I’ll see you later, though, OK?’
Cathy nodded and smiled. She looked so happy, as if she felt special for the first time in her life. ‘See you at ten,’ she said.
Alison watched as Marc got up and, putting his heavy arms over Cathy’s fragile shoulder, whispered something in her ear that brought the blood to her cheeks. And then he kissed her, a long slow tender kiss.
The Accidental Wife Page 9
