The Accidental Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Alison,’ Jimmy said, stepping aside so that his daughters could race away from him unhindered.

  ‘Oh, you remembered me.’ Alison was thrilled. ‘Yay! Jimmy remembered me at last!’

  ‘Alison from school,’ Jimmy said. ‘That’s how I knew you. You hung about at band practice a lot. You were Catherine Parkin’s best friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alison said, a little more hesitantly this time. ‘Yes, that was me. I used to know Cathy.’

  ‘She got married, Cathy Parkin,’ Jimmy said. ‘Her name’s Catherine Ashley now.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alison said, her eyes widening. ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘We need to talk,’ Jimmy told her.

  A few minutes later, as his eyes adjusted to the light, Jimmy saw Alison perched on what looked like an upturned box with a bottle of champagne in her hand, her bare legs crossed, showing a little upper thigh. She had led him outside to a sort of a copse situated in a dip just behind the marquee.

  As he’d allowed her to lead him out into the darkness Jimmy had got the distinct feeing that he shouldn’t be following any woman, never mind this woman in particular, into any kind of woods and that he should really be taking the girls back to Catherine and getting her out of there like he’d promised. But he told himself that by talking to her he was trying to make things easier for Catherine. Alison had no idea about what had happened to Catherine after she ran away – Catherine had never had the chance to tell her – and now the only people in the world who knew about her were Catherine’s parents, Catherine and him. Jimmy clearly remembered the night she had told him. It was the same night that he’d first asked her to marry him. As she’d told him what had happened and how she would always feel about it, he was convinced that she was using it as a reason to say no to him, but then he realised it was her way of showing him she trusted him. It was her way of saying yes, maybe. If he kept asking her, even after knowing everything about her, then maybe one day she would say yes.

  Jimmy was afraid that there was every chance that Alison would treat the whole thing as if it were a joke, like something they could look back on and laugh over, but Jimmy knew that wasn’t the case. He felt he had to warn her, but not for her sake, for Catherine’s.

  ‘Well, talk then,’ Alison said, retrieving another bottle from one of the boxes next to where she was sitting. Marc had instructed the spare crates of champagne to be left there so they would keep cool. She twisted off the cork, unbalancing herself a little, and took a swig from the bottle. ‘Sooner or later my husband is going to find out that there isn’t anyone passing out drinks any more because the waiters have drunk it all and he’ll send someone down here to get some more. In fact he’ll probably want to send me, but he won’t be able to because I’ll be here with you! Jimmy Ashley Who Married Cathy Parkin. That’s poetic justice for you, isn’t it?’ She tipped her head back and laughed like a little girl, which made Jimmy smile, despite himself.

  She took a long draught from the bottle and then, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she handed it to Jimmy. ‘I’m a bit drunk, actually. Which is a good job because when Cathy sees me she’s going kill me.’

  ‘Catherine’s not like that,’ Jimmy told her as he took the bottle and a swig. ‘But you should know it’s going to be hard for her. When you went you left her in a real mess. A real mess.’

  ‘I know it must have hurt her losing him, Jimmy, but she got over it otherwise she wouldn’t have married you. You know, I bet she married you to get back at me.’

  ‘What?’ Jimmy asked her.

  ‘I fancied you at school for years, Jimmy – did you really not notice? God, that is so depressing. I still do fancy you, actually. You’re a very sexy man, bringing me out here to talk about your lady wife.’ Jimmy took a couple of steps away and glanced back at the lights of the house twinkling in the distance. Suddenly he felt very out of his depth.

  ‘But, Jimmy,’ Alison went on, ‘he might have loved her but he never would have been any good for her, not in a million years. Trust me, I know.’ Alison’s laugh was entirely mirthless. ‘Funny, really. I got her life and she got mine. All of this is your fault. If you had noticed me throwing myself at you back then, then I would have let her mess herself up with Marc and I would have had you. And we’d be happy.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jimmy said for want of anything else to say, ‘but the truth was I didn’t actually discover women until I was in my twenties. I was too much into my music to get serious with anyone. I never had girlfriends at school, never had anything serious until I met Catherine. I didn’t even know I’d gone to school with her for years. That’s how blind I was. And if I didn’t even notice the stunning tall girl with the bright red hair, how would I have noticed you?’

  ‘Mmmmphf,’ Alison said, pouting. ‘I have decided not to take offence.’

  ‘Look,’ Jimmy said, trying to get back to why he was here in the wood with her, ‘the fact is that you’re here now –’ he looked up at the house laden with a million twinkling lights – ‘and it looks as if you’re here to stay – but you’re going to have to be … sensitive with her, Alison. Allow for what she went through, give her time to adjust. She’s never had anyone to talk about it all to except for me. She still cries about it sometimes, Alison. That’s how much the whole thing hurt her. It damaged her.’

  ‘She still cries about Marc and me running off together?’ Alison’s laugh was harsh. ‘Seriously? As her husband, doesn’t that piss you off?’

  Jimmy looked at her. ‘She still cries about the abortion. The abortion her parents made her have when she found out that Marc had made her pregnant.’

  There was a long silence punctuated by a hiccup as Alison stared at Jimmy, the defiant smile on her face faltering and then finally fading.

  ‘You’ve got that wrong,’ Alison insisted. ‘What are you talking about, Jimmy? There was no abortion. She wasn’t the one who he got pregnant, it was me. I know because he never had sex with her – he told me that at the time. He never felt that way about her; they didn’t have the passion we had, have.’

  Alison swayed a little on her perch as she took another drink.

  ‘Where did you get the story of an abortion from anyway?’ she asked Jimmy defensively. ‘I had him, I had Marc’s baby – he’s in there now, probably secretly drinking and skulking around the waitresses.’

  Jimmy sighed. How it had fallen on him to break this news to Catherine’s archenemy was beyond him, but he felt it demanded some tact, some diplomacy – qualities that had never featured highly in what he considered his most obvious attributes.

  ‘Look, Alison, I don’t know what Marc told you back then. I expect he told you a lot of things that weren’t true. Men usually lie when they are sleeping with two women at once. What I do know for certain is that Catherine was pregnant when you left.’ Jimmy’s hot breath made his words visible, a mist in the chill of the air. ‘She was pregnant with Marc’s baby too, only she didn’t get to keep hers. Her parents saw to that.’

  Jimmy watched as Alison’s glassy eyes brightened and filled with tears that glittered in the reflected glory of the decorated house.

  ‘She was having his baby?’ Alison asked, her voice a whisper. ‘She was having his baby too?’

  ‘Yes, she was going to tell him – she wanted to tell you but in the end she decided she couldn’t …’

  ‘No, you see, that’s not right.’ Alison was determined. ‘Because it was me he wanted, me he needed. He played around with her, strung her along, but he didn’t do that with her. He told me. He told me that I was the one he couldn’t keep his hands off. That was what made us special and what made her and him nothing more than a childish fling. She bored him, he told me that. Jimmy, I’m sorry but Cathy’s made the whole thing up. I don’t know why – maybe to get you to feel sorry for her – but anyway, it’s a lie.’

  Jimmy’s face darkened as he took a step or two nearer to Alison. ‘Catherine doesn’t lie,’ he told her. ‘Does Marc?’

 
‘No!’ Alison stood up abruptly. ‘He doesn’t lie, he doesn’t … and anyway, don’t you see, Jimmy? I can’t not have known about that. I would have known. We knew everything about each other, Cathy and me.’

  ‘Not everything,’ Jimmy said. ‘Not this. I’m sorry, Alison, but it happened. Marc got Catherine pregnant, she had an abortion.’

  Without warning Alison flung her arms around Jimmy, buried her face in his neck and wept. At a loss as to how to react, Jimmy kept his arms stiffly held out at a steady ninety-degree angle, her shoulders shook and he felt her hot breath against his neck.

  ‘This is too much,’ she said, into his neck. ‘This is one lie too many, and it’s not fair because it was the first lie, and if I’d known about the first lie then maybe I wouldn’t have stuck around for the second or the third or the hundredth or the millionth lie.’ She paused and looked up at Jimmy, her face very close to his, and Jimmy couldn’t help but notice that despite the drinking and the tears she still looked beautiful. ‘It must have been hard for Cathy.’

  ‘I think that is a bit of an understatement,’ Jimmy said, swiftly disentangling himself from her embrace and stepping away from her. ‘Like I said before, it damaged her and that’s why I’m asking you to back off, to take it easy.’

  ‘I’m going to kill him,’ Alison said, having to steady herself without Jimmy to lean on. ‘He fucked us both up and now I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘Look,’ Jimmy said, suddenly feeling uneasy. ‘I suppose it’s an obvious question, but Marc? He is here somewhere, isn’t he? And sooner or later he’ll find Catherine. She’s kind of hard to miss.’

  Alison’s head snapped up and before Jimmy realised what was happening she was marching past him back towards the house. He had to jog to keep up with her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Marc asked Catherine.

  ‘I’m fine, really. Go and talk to your guests, please. I’m waiting for my husband,’ Catherine said, but Marc stood stock-still.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you like this,’ he said.

  Catherine bit her lip, repressing the obvious retort. She shook her head and conjured an approximation of a smile, ‘Go, I’ll be fine.’

  Catherine watched him watching her, his dark eyes intense. He’d looked at her in exactly that way on the day when they had first met and he’d kissed her. For one heady petrifying second Catherine got the feeling he might do exactly the same thing now. He took a step closer to her, his hand grazed her shoulder, striking sparks as it passed.

  ‘Liar!’ Suddenly Alison was in between them, causing Catherine to stagger backwards and into Jimmy, who was following at her heels.

  ‘What?’ she asked him.

  ‘Thing is …’ Jimmy began, but it was then that Alison slapped her husband hard around the face. The whole room stopped and looked.

  ‘Ouch, darling.’ Marc smiled at his wife. ‘The caterers weren’t that bad.’

  ‘Liar!’ Alison repeated, and was about to slap him again, but this time he caught her wrist.

  ‘Let’s take this outside, shall we?’ he said in a low voice as he gripped her wrist. ‘Remember our guests?’

  ‘You told me you never had sex with her,’ Alison accused him. ‘You were sleeping with both of us the whole time.’

  ‘Look, Alison,’ Marc pulled her closer to him, trying desperately to keep the conversation between themselves. ‘Please, we’ll talk about this later.’

  ‘You’ve lied to me for fifteen years,’ Alison said, her voice hard and cold. ‘After everything we’ve been through and all the promises you made, you’ve kept on lying. You’re still lying now. I used to think it would end one day, but it won’t ever end, will it, Marc? It comes as naturally to you as breathing.’

  She jerked her wrist out of his grasp and looked around at the crowd of guests.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this party is now over due to the unforeseen circumstance of my husband being a disgusting lying pig. Please collect your coats and make an orderly exit.’

  Spinning on her heel she came face to face with Catherine. The two women stared at each other, aware that not one guest had made an attempt to leave yet.

  ‘Cathy,’ Alison said quietly, carefully avoiding looking at her husband because she was afraid of how he would react to what she was about to say. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know about the baby.’

  ‘Would it have changed anything?’ Catherine asked her, and Alison knew she was avoiding looking at Marc too. ‘If you’d known?’

  ‘It might have,’ Alison said. ‘It would have changed something.’

  Catherine felt the scrutiny of all of those around her and knew that she had to be out of it within the next five seconds.

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. She looked at Jimmy. ‘We’ll find the girls and go, OK?’ He nodded.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Alison said to her foolishly. ‘Will you believe me if I say that it’s really good to see you again?’

  Catherine nodded, tears standing in her eyes. ‘I do.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll see you in the school playground. Perhaps we can talk, sort things out, put things … to rest.’

  Catherine paused to look directly at Alison. ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘To rescue my family,’ Alison said. ‘I don’t think it’s working out quite as we planned.’

  Catherine nodded and then without saying another word she turned on her heel and, slotting her hand into Jimmy’s, walked out of the room as the crowd parted before her.

  The cool air soothed Catherine’s hot face as they began their walk back home, Leila asleep on her shoulder and Eloise in Jimmy’s arms.

  ‘You handled that amazingly well,’ Jimmy said. ‘I was so proud of you, Cat. You were so serene and dignified. Even with him, the bastard. You were brilliant.’

  ‘I can’t believe you told her,’ Catherine replied. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  They were silent for the rest of the walk home.

  Chapter Eleven

  ALISON LAY ON her bed, staring at the ceiling. The room lights were out but the thousand or so fairy lights outside her bedroom window illuminated the room in pulsating glittering bursts of radiance.

  Much to her deep irritation the party had not finished when she had declared that it was over. Far from it. That had been a good hour ago, and the chatter of Marc’s guests still rose in the hallway as if nothing had happened. After Cathy had made her exit, splitting the party crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, with Jimmy Ashley loyally following in her wake, the room had fallen silent save for the background thrum of the disco in the marquee.

  Glancing about, Marc had laughed, then put his arm around her and kissed her hard on the cheek.

  ‘May I introduce you all to my wonderful, fiery, impetuous and amazing wife, Alison James, a woman who certainly knows how to make an entrance almost as well as she does an exit.’

  And somehow Alison had found herself standing side by side with Marc, her arm linked through his, smiling graciously while she received a round of applause from the good people of Farmington. Only Marc could have done this; only Marc could have the front and magic to turn a marital brawl into a social nicety, something that was even romantic, and, still reeling from the news that Jimmy had given her, Alison could quite happily have slapped him again for doing it.

  However, with everyone’s eyes on her and the buzz of the champagne having eroded into a head-churning fuzz, not to mention the sight of her two daughters come to find her, Alison realised she didn’t have any choice but to go along with the illusion that Marc had created.

  She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘Anyone for more champagne?’ Marc asked the crowd in general the second the kiss was broken, leaving Alison’s side to go and arrange it before anyone could answer.

  ‘I’m tired, Mama,’ Amy said, putting her arms around Alison’s waist and resting her chin on her tummy. ‘When are all these people going home?’

  ‘Ellie’s mummy came a
nd made her and Leila go home. She looked really cross,’ Gemma said. ‘I’m not tired, by the way. Can I stay up some more? You could come and dance with us, Mummy. And Daddy and Dominic – we could all dance together.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Alison said, crouching down so that her youngest could hook her arms around her neck, then hefting Amy onto her hip. ‘I think you two girls have had a good run and now it’s time for bed, OK?’

  ‘ ’K,’ Amy said, resting her head on Alison’s shoulder, her thumb in her mouth.

  ‘ ’Spose,’ Gemma sighed. ‘Although I could dance for at least another hour without getting tired.’

  And Alison was finally able to make her escape, leading her two girls to bed, both of them falling asleep as soon as their heads touched the pillow. She briefly peered over the banister to the throng of people below. Marc was the centre of attention, talking, throwing his head back with laughter, gesturing like a hypnotist who had a whole room in his thrall. He was rescuing the situation, turning it around, making it happen, recreating the façade of their lives from scratch yet again, doing all the things he was so good at – except he hadn’t seemed to notice that she was up here on her own and he was down there running all of their lives single-handed as if he hadn’t lied to her for fifteen years. As if he hadn’t been sleeping with them both.

  Alison closed her eyes, but the lights still twinkled cheerfully behind her lids, so she pulled the duvet over her head to blot them out, breathing in the scent of her relationship, her life, that was embedded in the sheets.

  Of course he had been sleeping with them both, of course he had. If she had any kind of knowledge or experience of men back then other than trying to fend off the wandering hands of the boys from school she would have realised it was inevitable. She and Cathy were still girls – almost women but only just, and only in body. They were still making the choices and decisions that girls made when it felt as if there would be no consequences and no tomorrow.

  And Marc had been a man – just a young man, that was for sure – but he had had to grow up fast, thrown out of the children’s home at the age of sixteen and left to fend for himself in a world of brutal and unsympathetic adults. At the age of seventeen Alison had believed that she had a sexual power over him. She had the breasts and the legs and the heat between them that he really wanted. But she was wrong. Cathy had it too, it was just that with Cathy it was much less obvious.