The Accidental Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘So that’s your friend chatting up my friend then?’

  Catherine started as Sam’s friend appeared at her side, a little of her drink splashing onto the back of her hand.

  ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to make you jump. Just thought you might like some company. Looks like your friend’s got mine monopolised for the evening. I’m Dave, by the way.’

  He held out his hand and hesitantly Catherine took it. She hadn’t talked to a man she didn’t know and wasn’t somebody’s husband, including hers, in … well, it was certainly months and might even be years.

  ‘Hello,’ Catherine said. ‘I’m Catherine and I’m sure Kirsty won’t keep him all evening.’ She looked over at her friend in full flirt mode. ‘Actually, she might.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Kirsty,’ Dave said with a grin. ‘No wonder he was trying so hard not to notice her all evening. He digs her big time.’

  ‘Does he dig her big time?’ Catherine said, noticing Dave smile as she repeated his phrase. ‘That’s nice, because she digs him big time too. Like seriously a lot. I’m probably not meant to tell you that, but she never shuts up about him.’

  ‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ Dave said, taking a step closer to her. ‘So, anyway, enough about them, tell me about you.’

  ‘Me?’ Catherine tried to think of something, anything but the truth, which always sounded much worse when spoken out loud than in her head. This time was no exception. ‘I’ve got two kids and a sort of a husband, who I’m married to but don’t live with any more since he slept with another woman more or less right in front of my eyes, and I work in a local PR company. Oh, and I like growing my own vegetables. That’s about it.’

  ‘OK,’ Dave laughed. ‘Right, well – just an everyday kind of girl then.’

  ‘That’s me,’ Catherine said with a smile. She quite liked talking to Dave, as it happened.

  ‘So it looks like we’ve been abandoned then,’ Dave said, nodding at Kirsty and Sam, who in the blink of an eye had gone from chatting to deep, deep kissing.

  ‘I expected it,’ Catherine told him.

  ‘Well, why don’t we head off somewhere else then, somewhere a bit quieter. We can get a drink and talk, what do you think?’

  Catherine looked at him. She was fairly sure he was chatting her up. Either that or he just wanted to hang out for a chat with a still-married yet single mother of two who was two inches taller than he was.

  ‘I … look, I have to go,’ she lied. ‘I’ve got kids, two under eight. The babysitter goes mad if I’m late back.’

  ‘But it’s only just past ten,’ Dave said, seemingly unfazed by her children. ‘Have one more drink with me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Catherine said. ‘I can’t.’

  And she raced out of the pub and back home as fast as she could until she was safe, back behind her own front door, where she could grow the hair on her legs, cook dinner for her ex and where she could be safe and shut off and never have to worry about what to say to mildly attractive men in pubs or, worse still, what they might say to her.

  ‘Women,’ Dave muttered, perplexed, as the pub door slammed shut behind Catherine.

  ‘Girlfriend giving you grief?’ Marc asked him as he tried to edge his way past. ‘I know how you feel. I’m late and if I don’t get home in the next half-hour the wife’s going to kill me.’

  Dave took a step to one side to allow him to pass.

  ‘Beautiful women –’ Dave told Marc, glancing bitterly at Sam and his conquest –‘all the same, all think they’re too good for anyone normal.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Marc said, clapping him on the back in a conciliatory gesture. ‘And that’s why they’re the only ones worth chasing.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘MUM,’ ELOISE SAID through a mouthful of toast on Monday morning, ‘can I ask Gemma to tea this week, can I, please? She said she might be getting her pony this weekend, so can I, please?’

  Catherine looked at her daughter, who had twisted her long hair into her best approximation of a ballerina-style bun and secured it with some froufrou nonsense that Jimmy’s mother had probably inflicted on her during the girls’ last visit there. Catherine knew the scrunchie was a silent protest against what her daughter saw as a violation of her human rights, in that if she was not allowed to have ballet lessons on a Monday afternoon, she would do her best to look like the girls who were.

  ‘Don’t talk while you’re chewing,’ Catherine told her. ‘And, anyway, if you are so keen to see her pony you should be visiting her house. It’s not as if she can bring it round here.’

  Catherine knew something that Eloise didn’t, but just for the moment she was refraining from telling her because she liked to be able to eat her breakfast in relative peace.

  ‘But she’s the new girl, like a guest at a party, and I am sort of the host. So I have to ask her first and then she’ll ask me back and I’ll get to see her pony. Please, Mum. You never let us do anything!’

  The oblique reference to lack of ballet lessons again thus reinforced how meagre her request was to have one paltry friend back to tea in the hope that it would elicit a return invitation and the chance to visit a pony, another treasured wish that Catherine was not able to fulfil for her daughter. Feeling inadequate and depressed, Catherine rather wished she had told Eloise what she had known before this conversation had even started.

  The new family were having a house-warming party, and Catherine and her daughters were both invited. Lois had rung her yesterday evening just after the girls got back, telling her that all of the PTA and their families had been invited to attend on the following Saturday. Lois told her it was a shameful bid on the part of the mysterious new mother to buy her way onto the PTA committee, despite the fact that new applicants weren’t normally considered until September. Still, Lois had pointed out, it would be an excuse to nose round her house. She’d being dying to look round one of those new builds for months – she’d heard they were terribly vulgar inside. Gold-effect taps. Then Lois told Catherine she had already RSVP’d on behalf of the whole committee.

  A huge party like that thrown only a couple of weeks after they had arrived meant that Gemma’s family must have a lot of money. Catherine was as proud of her daughters as any woman could be, and she loved the ramshackle cut-price charm of her terraced cottage. But it was difficult not to wonder what some of the other parents thought of her when they brought their children to one of the smallest houses in Farmington, with its second-hand sofa and only one loo. What did they really think of the thirty-two-year-old with a philandering, long-haired, largely unemployed, estranged husband, and vegetable patch in the back garden? Did they call each other at night and discuss the chipped enamel on her bath?

  Catherine never craved normality in the sense that she wanted things. She didn’t want things. She would just like sometimes not to feel self-conscious about who she was and the life that she had chosen, or rather the life that had chosen her when she wasn’t really paying attention. She supposed when she was a girl she had the same expectations as everybody else, that, as plain and as awkward as she was, one day somebody would love her and then hand in hand they would lead a normal life, married in her twenties, children, a nice home, a steady but modest income. When she married Jimmy she’d hoped for it, the kind of simple life that seemed to be the right of other people. Jimmy had been her friend and her lover but also her escape route, lending her the extra strength she needed to leave home and a place to go to once she had left. Eventually she would have had the courage to leave her childhood behind on her own, but Jimmy made it happen faster and she was grateful for that, even if the first thing she ever saw in him was a way out. But their marriage, though often wonderful and occasionally painful, had never been normal, because, Catherine felt, they hadn’t begun it the normal way. There had been hope and expectation but certainty had never been present, and only twelve years later did Catherine realise she had always expected it to fail somehow. She just hadn’t been able to pin down wh
en.

  Farmington normality was a three-car family and a five-bedroom house. Catherine, with her part-time job and reliance on tax credits, was not anything like the norm. Even so, she couldn’t deny Eloise a new friend with a pony because of her own insecurities. Besides, Eloise was right about one thing: she was one of the few girls at her school who didn’t take ballet, or do gymnastics, or have riding lessons at weekends after stage school. After the mortgage and the bills had been paid the money for those things simply wasn’t there, and guitar lessons for free from your dad didn’t have quite the same cachet. Catherine was forced to deny her daughters those things, and she knew they didn’t really understand why, no matter how often she talked through money with them (if you haven’t got very much, Leila would say, just go to the bank and get some more. It’s easy!), so she would not deny them their friends.

  ‘Well, actually,’ she said, bracing herself for the squeals of excitement that were sure to follow her announcement, ‘you are going to be Gemma’s guest, because her mum and dad have invited us all, and just about everyone else in Farmington, to a party at her house next Saturday night!’

  ‘A party! A party at Gemma’s! Oh, thank you thank you thank you, Mum!’ Eloise jumped up and planted a buttery kiss on Catherine’s cheek, before scowling. ‘We are going, aren’t we?’

  ‘Of course we are going,’ Catherine said.

  ‘Is all of us going, me too?’ Leila asked her from the other end of the table, reserving her excitement until she had clarified that point.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Catherine smiled.

  ‘And do we get to stay up late?’ Leila asked happily.

  ‘A little bit later than normal,’ Catherine said.

  ‘Thank you, God!’ Leila grinned at the ceiling as the girls sprung up from the table and clung on to each other as they jumped up and down.

  ‘It’s going to be great,’ Eloise told Leila, her eyes wide. ‘We’ll be able to play with Gemma and Amy as much as we like!’

  ‘Will it be dark, though?’ Leila asked.

  ‘Pitch-black,’ Eloise replied.

  ‘Ooooh, goody, goody, goody!’ Leila shrieked.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jimmy asked as he appeared through the back door. ‘I’ve never seen them this keen to go to school on a Monday morning. I’ll have to brush up on their antiestablishment training.’

  ‘No, silly, we not being anti-dish-table-is-went, we’re all going to a party!’ Leila said, flinging herself at her dad’s legs, nearly knocking him off balance.

  ‘Are we?’ Jimmy asked, steadying himself against the door frame and smiling at Catherine. ‘Cool. Any chance of a quick shower? I’m laying down that demo today and then Mick’s going to take some photos after to put on the CD cover and I have to look my best. When’s this party?’

  ‘Help yourself to the shower,’ Catherine told him. ‘There are fresh towels in the cupboard and the thing is I don’t think you are exactly invited to the party. At least, not on my invitation. It’s for PTA members and their families.’

  ‘But Daddy is our family,’ Eloise said.

  ‘Yes, he’s our daddy,’ Leila added, as if Catherine was being a bit thick. ‘ ’Member? Plus mankind is one big family, Mummy.’

  ‘I know, darling, but …’ Catherine looked at Jimmy, who clearly wasn’t going to help her out if it meant forging an invitation to a party where there would be free booze, not to mention free food, two of his most favourite things.

  ‘I’m just saying I don’t think you were specifically invited. It was an open invitation to the PTA and you are not on the PTA.’

  ‘Well, I might as well be, the amount of discount I give your lot for my services. Look, if it’s an open invitation, how do you know if I was invited or not? Even the people who are doing the inviting don’t know who they’ve invited in that case.’

  ‘It’s Gemma’s mum and dad,’ Eloise told him with an air of pride. ‘She’s my new best friend and she’s getting a pony.’

  ‘And, Daddy, we’re going to stay up late in the dark!’ Leila told him, making a spooky face.

  ‘Are we?’ Jimmy grinned down at his daughter as he disengaged her and headed up to the bathroom. ‘Cool. Give me five minutes and I’ll walk with you to school.’

  ‘Mummy, why does Daddy come here for a shower?’ Leila asked as Jimmy’s heavy footsteps sounded on the bathroom floor above their heads.

  ‘Because Daddy doesn’t have a shower on the boat,’ Catherine said absently, distracted by the sound of his feet on the floorboards.

  ‘Daddy practically doesn’t even have a roof on the boat, it’s so leaky,’ Eloise mumbled.

  ‘Yes,’ Catherine looked thoughtful, ‘Daddy really needs somewhere better to live.’

  ‘Like here?’ Eloise asked hopefully.

  ‘Like a house or a flat with a decent roof,’ Catherine replied. ‘And some form of heating.’

  ‘Like here then,’ Eloise added, and Catherine remembered her agreement with Jimmy.

  ‘Somewhere like here, but either he’ll have to sign a record deal or I’ll have to win the lottery because at the moment we can’t afford it.’

  ‘We could afford it, if he lived here,’ Eloise said, and Catherine decided it was impossible to argue with her because, after all, she was right.

  ‘No,’ Catherine said again as the four of them walked briskly to school, running a good five minutes late because Jimmy wanted to blow-dry his hair so it didn’t go all frizzy, and the girls would not leave without him.

  ‘But do you really mean no?’ Jimmy asked her, striding along beside her. ‘Think of what an experience it will be for them, how much great music they will hear live.’

  ‘No, Jimmy, no, you are not combining your tour of Oxfordshire with your turn to take the girls on holiday. You are not going to drive them around unsecured in the back of a van, make them stay up all night in pubs while you perforate their eardrums and then put them God knows where while you do what you … whatever you do.’

  ‘Nothing. I do nothing after gigs. I have a pint or two and then go to bed alone in whichever B & B we’re staying,’ Jimmy said, obviously offended.

  ‘Well, even if that’s true, you can’t do that with a five- and an eight-year-old!’ Catherine protested, flinging out her hand in exasperation.

  ‘But the van’s just passed its MOT and I’d put car seats in the front for them to sit on. I’d even throw in a seat belt.’

  ‘No,’ Catherine repeated, throwing him her warrior queen look. ‘End of. It’s not going to happen.’

  ‘But why, Mum?’ Eloise asked her. ‘We could be roadies. Please, it will be fun.’

  ‘Daddy said we could be backing singers,’ Leila urged her. ‘Plus the van’s just passed its PMT!’

  Catherine narrowed her eyes at Jimmy. ‘I will never forgive you for bringing this up in front of them.’

  ‘I’ll add that to the list then,’ Jimmy said in exasperation.

  ‘That’s not fair, Jim, and you know it. I cook for you; wives do not cook for husbands if they still give a damn about … well, you know what. Anyway, this isn’t about us. It’s about our two little girls. Sometimes I think you forget that you are their father and not just their friend.’

  ‘I know that,’ Jimmy replied, hurrying to keep up with Catherine’s long strides. ‘That’s the one thing I definitely do know. Look, OK, you’re probably right, taking them gigging isn’t my best plan. I suppose I thought it would be economical, like killing two birds with one stone. Multitasking – I know you dig that, right?’

  Catherine scowled.

  ‘OK, so how about I take them to the Donnington Monsters of Rock Festival, because you never know who on the line-up might be dead this time next year. I’d be taking them to see history in the making.’

  ‘No.’ Catherine had to raise her voice to be heard over the chorus of pleases that followed Jimmy’s suggestion. ‘Take them somewhere rife with drunkards and drug addicts, where it will probably be raining and cold �
� are you insane?’

  ‘You’re the one who’s always saying modern children are too pampered, and that they need exposure to bacteria and germs to toughen them up,’ Jimmy countered.

  ‘To bacteria, yes; to subzero temperatures and crack cocaine, no,’ Catherine said. She suddenly stopped dead, which meant her disparate little family overshot her by a few steps before coming to a juddering halt.

  ‘Jim, please, think about what you are suggesting,’ she said, looking up into his eyes. Jimmy held her gaze for a moment or two and then dropped his eyes to his cowboy boots.

  ‘It’s probably not a good idea, after all, girls,’ he said, his comment greeted by a selection of groans. ‘Mum’s right. When you’re a bit older I’m definitely going to take you, but right now you are too young. We’ll think of something else to do. We could go and visit Nana Pam.’

  Catherine glanced at him before walking on at speed, giving him that look of hers, her speciality, the look that said that as her husband he was more of a burden than a partner. It had become a frequent expression of hers during the last year or so they were living together. That constant unspoken disappointment was partly what had driven him to go with Donna Clarke to the ladies’ loos.

  ‘Look,’ Catherine said as she charged along at double-quick pace. ‘I know you love the girls, I know you do your best for them. But I just wish sometimes that you’d think further ahead than five seconds. You never seem to plan anything.’