‘Have you ever done this with her?’ she’d asked him.
‘I’ve never done anything like that with her,’ he’d replied. He hadn’t lied; he couldn’t have been more blunt. Alison had chosen to believe what she wanted to.
Alison pressed the heels of her hands against her pounding forehead. Cathy had been pregnant. She had been pregnant with Marc’s baby, a baby that would only have been conceived a week or two apart from Dominic, maybe even on the same day as her son – it was quite possible. Looking back, Alison realised Jimmy was right: Cathy had tried to tell her, after it all came out. After she found out that Alison had been sleeping with Marc and everything started to disintegrate around her. Alison remembered she felt as if she was standing in the eye of a storm, perfectly calm, absolutely determined, while the rest of the world was whipped into chaos around her.
She remembered her last conversation with Cathy before she left.
It had been raining; thick rivulets of water blended with her friend’s tears as she stood on Alison’s doorstep and pleaded with her.
‘Please don’t do this, Alison,’ she’d begged her. ‘You don’t love him, not really. You only want him because I’ve got him. Please, you don’t understand what you’re doing to me!’
‘It’s no good,’ her seventeen-year-old self had replied. ‘He loves me, Cathy, he wants me – not you. You have to realise that. And besides, I need him now. I really need him.’
‘But what about us?’ Catherine had wept. ‘You and me? Who will I have if I don’t have you? If I lose him I lose you too. I don’t know what I’ll do, Alison. You don’t know what you’re doing to me. I need you, I’m –’
‘Look, I’m pregnant,’ Alison had hissed, taking a few steps forward into the rain and drawing the front door almost to a close behind her so that her parents would not hear. ‘Nobody knows yet, not even him, but I’m having his baby, Cathy. And I love him. I love him and he loves me, and that’s the way we’ve felt about each other since the minute we met because it was me that he should have met in the park, and not you. If it wasn’t for bloody Aran Archer, it would have been me. He’s angry now with both of us, but tonight I’m going to find him and I’m going to ask him to leave Farmington with me and he will. I’ll make him come with me because I know that he wants me more than anything else in the world. You were never anything important to him, you have to see that, Cathy. I mean, look at you – can you really picture the two of you together? Now I have to put myself and my baby first and if you can’t get used to that then …’ Alison had shrugged.
Catherine hadn’t said a word. She’d just stood there in the pouring rain, as if her whole body was melting into the salt water, her mouth open, speechless as she tried to understand what Alison was telling her. Alison had stepped back under the shelter of her porch and waited.
‘But you’re my best friend,’ Catherine had begun. ‘The only person in the world I could talk to and trust …’
‘Not any more,’ Alison had said. ‘Not any more. I’m sorry, Catherine. You’ll just have to get used to it. Marc belongs to me now.’
Now Alison tried her hardest to get back into the head of the girl she was then, and she asked herself what she would have done differently if she had known that her friend was pregnant too. And she couldn’t say that she wouldn’t have still left Cathy behind. Back then she didn’t know any better. She didn’t want to know anything except that she was meant to be with Marc and that he belonged to her.
Another nagging uneasy thought was tugging away at her as she lay in bed and that was the memory of her husband standing behind her downstairs at the party when she had told Cathy she didn’t know about the baby. It should have been news to Marc too, but there was nothing. Not a gasp, not a movement – there was no reaction at all. He was perfectly still. Did that mean that he knew about the baby when he ran away with Alison? It could have been that, or it could just have been Marc maintaining appearances no matter what sledgehammer came swinging out of the past to floor him. It was impossible to know and, Alison decidedly wearily, she didn’t want to know. Not yet, at least. She was growing weary of discovering secrets.
There was a knock at the door. Alison composed herself for Marc, and then she realised he would never knock.
‘It’s me,’ Dominic called. He opened the door a crack, the blaze of the hall light momentarily blinding Alison as she peered over the covers. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ Alison told him, mustering a smile. ‘I’ve just got a headache. What’s the time?’
Dominic shrugged, he didn’t wear a watch. Alison glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight.
‘You should be thinking about bed,’ she told him as he came in the room, shutting the door behind him.
‘What was all that about, Mum?’ Dominic asked her. ‘You shouting at him, and slapping him. You looked proper angry. It was mental, well cool.’
Alison frowned. She didn’t know how to feel about impressing her son with an act of violence, but it was hard not to feel pleased because he was so rarely impressed by her these days.
‘You should have arrived fifteen seconds earlier, he was all over that woman, the tall scary-looking one. Is she why you slapped him? Has he gone and done it again already?’
Alison, who had been rubbing her eyes, froze for a second. She hated that Dominic knew about Marc. She hated the fact that her son’s expectation of his father, of both of his parents, was now so low.
She sat up and turned on the bedside lamp.
‘Don’t be silly, Dom. Dad hasn’t done anything,’ she told her son, as he sat on the edge of the bed. She ventured out a hand and touched his soft as yet unshaven cheek with the back of it. ‘You know Dad: he’s a charmer and a flirt, all touchy-feely. But it doesn’t mean anything.’
‘I call fucking some tart a bit more than being touchy-feely, Mum,’ Dominic said, his words but not his tone brutal. ‘Look, I’m not a kid any more. I see things, I hear things. We both know that everyone was talking about him before we left London, and you – they talked about you too. About what kind of woman you must be to put up with what he did. I know you like to tell everyone including yourselves that we moved because I’m such a dead loss and on the verge of becoming a hardened criminal. I don’t even care if that’s what people think about me, but we both know that’s not the real reason. We left London because you finally found out Dad was fucking that tart at the showroom. But not because of the actual fucking, because you’ve put up with that in the past and it didn’t seem to bother you. No, this time we had to leave because you realised that everybody, all your friends, all his slimy mates, knew about it for months and you didn’t.’ Dominic shrugged. ‘Dad did what he always does and promised that it would never happen again and you did what you always do and believed him. Only this time you couldn’t stand living in the same street, going to the same gym and the same school where everybody knew what he’d done to you, and what a fool you were. So you made us move back here and blamed it on me.’
‘Dominic,’ Alison said steadily, reeling from the so nearly accurate portrayal of her life her son had just related to her, ‘you can always talk to me, but please don’t use that language. It doesn’t shock me, it doesn’t mean anything. Talk to me like an adult, not some foul-mouthed kid who hasn’t got the brains to know better.’
‘Oh, come on, Mum,’ Dominic said. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t do the middle-aged parent thing with me. That’s not who you are. Not with me.’
‘That’s not true,’ Alison said, about to deny all of it, but then, weary of deceit, choosing only to deny the inaccurate parts of her son’s interpretation. ‘I didn’t want to come back here. You father wanted to come here.’
‘Why?’ Dominic asked her, his confusion framing her own.
‘Because …’ Alison remembered Marc’s reasons but none of them seemed very plausible any more. ‘He said it’s a nice place. It’s the place where we started and the place where he still has something to prove. A
nd as much as you’d like to deny it, moving here had got plenty to do with you. You of all people shouldn’t listen to gossip, Dom. People say things that aren’t true … maybe that was part of the reason for leaving, but it wasn’t all of it. Both your dad and I wanted a fresh start.’
‘A fresh start?’ Dominic looked disgusted with her. ‘Mum, I don’t know what was going on back there with that woman, but this isn’t a fresh start. It’s an … old ending. Are you sure Dad didn’t just come here for that. For her?’
Alison stared at her son, the boy who might have been conceived on the same day as Cathy’s baby, Cathy’s long-gone child.
‘You don’t have to worry about any of this …’ she began, reaching out to pat his hand.
Dominic snatched it away. ‘Yes I do,’ he told her, making some effort to keep his voice down. ‘Of course I bloody do. Do you think your shit marriage only happens to you two? Do you think the rest of us aren’t involved? And it’s not just me. Gemma puts on a front but before we moved away she came and asked me to go to her school and beat up this boy who’d been saying things about Dad …’
‘You didn’t, did you?’ Alison asked him, horrified on all fronts.
‘Of course I didn’t. I’m not a psycho. I told her to tell him I would if he ever talked about it again and it seemed to shut him up. And do you think Amy would really be so shit-scared of everything if it wasn’t for the fear of you and Dad busting it all wide open? You think that everyone else looks at us and sees a perfect family, living in a nice house, with a perfect life. But you’re wrong. Everyone in London knew the truth about us and before long everyone in this dump will too.’
Alison didn’t say anything for a moment. She just stared at her hands on the bed covers, flat and immobile.
‘You’d be better off without him.’ Dominic said.
‘I … you can’t say that, Dom,’ Alison reacted at last. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know what we went through to be together and how hard we’ve fought for everything, we were only a little bit older than you when we met. No one thought we’d make it, and look at us. Grown-up life isn’t pretty, it isn’t easy. You do your best, you keep going, you wait for things to even out.’
‘Me,’ Dom said matter-of-factly.
‘What?’
‘What you two had to go through to be together was me. I can do maths, Mum. I know he got you pregnant with me when you were seventeen. You two got together because you had to, because of me, and you’ve been stuck together ever since, even though you don’t fit.’
‘No, no,’ Alison said firmly, leaning forward and holding his wrists. ‘You’re a clever boy, Dom, but you’ve got that bit wrong. I loved your father so much. I wanted him so much. I was mad for him. When I realised I was having you it was a bit of shock. I was frightened and it was hard to know how to cope. But when your dad and I got together it was because we thought we could make a go of it, not because we had to. Not because of you, even though you would be the best reason in the world. We loved each other.’
‘But not any more,’ Dom stated.
‘That’s not … stop it, Dom, stop saying all of these things, just because you are angry with us. This is your father you are talking about and no matter what you say about him he loves you and you love him.’
‘I don’t,’ Dom said simply.
‘You do,’ Alison insisted.
‘Mum, I don’t even know him. I never see him except when he wants to bollock me. I never speak to him. He never even looks at me when we’re in the same room together. At least you shout at me sometimes – he doesn’t even do that. It’s because he resents me, because it was me in your belly that got him tied up in this family he’s so keen on wrecking.’
‘Now you’re just being silly,’ Alison said. ‘You and Dad talk and spend time together. Look at … well, what about when …?’ Alison trailed off. She couldn’t remember the two of them talking in the last month, let alone the last week. ‘He’s very busy at the moment,’ she said instead.
Dominic dropped his head so that his dark hair fell over his face and Alison wondered if he was crying.
‘Look, I maybe haven’t been the best mum in the world. You and I grew up together, and I’m still growing up, still wondering how to be your mum even now, especially now you are turning into a man. But I love you, Dom. I love you.’
Dominic looked up at her and his eyes were bright with tears.
‘Leave him, then,’ he said. It was the first time he’d asked her.
‘I can’t just …’ Alison began.
‘Leave him. We’d be all right on our own. I’d help look after you and the girls, and you could be you again. You say I don’t understand what life for an adult is like but even I know that if your life is shit and if you are unhappy then you have to change it, because you are the only one who can. Sometimes, Mum, you have to be brave.’
‘I can’t just leave him,’ Alison said, with some surprise because, despite everything, the thought had never once occurred to her until then.
‘You could,’ Dominic said. ‘If you wanted to.’
‘But I don’t want to,’ Alison said automatically. ‘Look, Dom, I’m glad we’ve talked, I really am, and the things you feel are so important, but you’ve got everything muddled. Dad and I are having a rough patch and it will be over soon. We’re not going to split up because, well, we’re just not. We are meant to be together. In the morning I’ll talk to him about you, about how you’re feeling. We’ll sort out some time for you two to spend together – how about that?’
‘Whatever,’ Dominic said, standing. Alison sensed the connection between them had gone.
‘I promise you everything will be fine,’ Alison told him just as he closed the door on her.
After Dom had gone Alison lay back on the bed and covered her eyes with her hands.
Of course it was easy for Dominic to imagine that she could just walk away from this life, her marriage with Marc. That it was simply a question of making a choice and abiding by it. After all, she’d believed exactly the same thing at almost his age. She’d made the choice to be with Marc, to leave behind her home, her parents, her exams, her future, and it had been a simple choice to make. At the time it hadn’t even felt like a choice. It was simply something she had to do.
Now, though, she was living with the consequences of that decision, and at thirty-two it wasn’t that easy simply to overturn a lifetime of consequences. You don’t just pack your bags, dump your old life and take off. It was impossible to imagine living without Marc and all the complications he created. Trying to picture it made Alison’s head hurt. Then she remembered something, or more accurately someone, that she had met only briefly last year but whose story kept coming back to her again and again.
Every Tuesday evening Alison had gone to aerobics at her local gym. She could have done it during the day much more easily but she liked the evening class better, she liked the female instructor who took it, and the energetic women who had worked all day but were still prepared to jump around for an hour just to justify the takeaway they were going to buy on the way home. Alison had made a few friends there, but especially a woman called Christina she used to giggle with in the back row, and who made Alison laugh because whenever the instructor wasn’t looking she’d stop with her hands on her hips for a breather.
Just before Christmas, Christina had invited Alison out for a drink with her and some of the others from the class and Alison had accepted gladly. Even then, before she had found out about Marc’s latest affair, Alison had been able to sense the barely tangible build-up of tension at home. At the time she put it down to the approach of Christmas, which always wound her daughters up, Dominic’s erratic behaviour and the fact that Marc was under so much pressure at work. The period of calm and contentment that Marc went through when he first met another woman must have passed by then because he was becomingly increasing terse and short-tempered with her. How Alison hadn’t guessed what was really going on she didn’t kno
w. Perhaps she just hadn’t wanted to know. On the evening she went to meet Christina, though, she felt that she needed a drink.
Everyone else had already arrived when Alison got there, over an hour late and flustered because Marc had not got back from the office when he said he would and she’d had to wait, sitting on the bottom step in her make-up and going-out shoes, watching the clock until his key finally turned in the latch.
Christina had not been sitting with the other women from the class but was at the bar, deep in conversation with a blonde woman that Alison didn’t recognise. Pretty, with waist-length poker-straight hair, she was laughing with Christina about something.
‘Alison!’ Christina said finally, catching her eye as she hovered on the periphery of the occasion. ‘Come here. Come and meet my friend Sophie. She’s turned up this evening completely unannounced on a whirlwind visit back to London from her new life in the country, didn’t you, Soph?’
‘Well, I was going to stay in and be a good daughter but then my mum started getting her dogs to sing in harmony to the EastEnders theme tune and I thought a quick drink out couldn’t hurt.’
Alison laughed. ‘Hi, I’m Alison James.’
‘Sophie Mills,’ the woman had smiled at her. Alison guessed they were probably about the same age but Sophie looked, not younger than her exactly, but lighter, as if her life hardly weighed her down at all.
‘A new life in the country sounds exciting,’ Alison had observed politely.
‘Exciting! That’s an understatement,’ Christina jumped in as her friend rolled her eyes. ‘Listen to this. One minute Sophie here was über careerwoman, living for her job and nailing a massive promotion, and then out of the blue guess what happened.’
The Accidental Wife Page 17
