‘In the clinic, with my parents sitting either side of me like prison guards while I gave the doctor my consent to abort, I hated her, because it was her fault that I was there alone with no one to stand up for me. And when the baby had gone, and when I felt so empty and used up and lost, I hated her more than anything.
‘It was like an energy, like a power source. It was hating her that finally got me away from home. I was hating Alison that night I slapped my mother back, whacked her hard around the face so that her head snapped round on her neck like a whip. That was the night I told her about you. I hated Alison when I walked out of home to live with you and told them I was never coming back. Even on the day that Eloise was born, even at the moment they put my baby in my arms and I was so full of joy and love, I hated Alison …
‘And then I saw her yesterday out of the blue after all these years and I …’ Catherine trailed off, gazing into the fire.
‘What?’ Jimmy asked.
‘I missed her,’ Catherine said, perplexed. ‘I looked at her and the first thing I wanted to say was, “Oh, hello, it’s you. I’ve missed you.”’
‘And then the hate came back?’ Jimmy asked her.
‘No,’ Catherine frowned. ‘Just sadness, a lot of sadness. And some bitterness and anger, but not hate. I didn’t hate her.’
‘What does that mean?’ Jimmy asked her, leaning forward in his seat.
‘I don’t know,’ Catherine said. ‘All I know is that she’s here now and I don’t think they are going anywhere. How I’ll cope with it I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Jimmy. I’m a mess. You’d think that in all of these years I’d have grown up, got stronger. I’m a mother now, and a wife … I’ve been a wife. I’ve had a life since they left. A whole huge, massive, wonderful, painful, important life. But I’m still that silly little girl, I’m still that child who couldn’t do a thing to stop her parents from aborting her baby.’
Jimmy had got up from the chair and down onto the rug, kneeling next to his wife before he realised what he was doing. The moment he put an arm around Catherine he felt certain she would bat it away. But she didn’t. Instead he felt her body relax and mould into his.
‘You are the strongest person I know,’ he told her. ‘Courageous, brave, fierce, loyal. You grew up with a woman who beat you, who hated you, and yet look at you. You are a wonderful mother to two girls. To be able to be the parent that you are after having grown up like that makes you incredible. What happened when you were seventeen wasn’t your fault, Catherine. You can’t go back in the past and change the person you used to be. It’s the person you used to be that’s made you how you are now. You were a child, with evil fuckers for parents and no one in the world to turn to. I just wish … I just wish …’
‘What?’ Catherine tipped her face to look up at him.
‘I wished I’d found you earlier,’ Jimmy told her, dropping his gaze from hers. ‘Before Marc did, before Alison left, before your mum could do what she did to you. I would have protected you. I’d have battered that old bag.’
Catherine smiled, her head dropping onto Jimmy’s shoulder, causing him to hold his breath in case the slightest movement from him would make her move away.
‘I can’t imagine you battering anyone,’ she said.
‘Only because I’ve never had to batter anyone yet,’ Jimmy told her. ‘But I will if the need comes. I’m like a tightly coiled spring. Ready for action at any minute.’
Catherine moved and sat up away from him, brushing her hair behind her ear.
‘Jimmy, I’ve known you a long time now; you’ve never once been tightly coiled in your life.’
‘How long is it?’ Jimmy asked her, even though he knew exactly. ‘Not counting all those years we were at school together. It must be almost twelve years. I remember the first time I saw you. The first time I really noticed you, that is. You were at that party where the band were playing, some bird’s twenty-first. We were on a break and I was at the bar getting a drink. You were standing at one end of it looking a bit lost, dressed all in black like you’d come to a funeral. I remember thinking to myself, that chick is tall.’ Catherine laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘You were looking like you’d rather be anywhere else but there, and then the girl whose party it was – what was her name? – Denise something, came over and hugged you and she said something to you that made you laugh. And you lit up, Cat, sort of from the inside out, like a lantern. I wanted to get to know you then. You didn’t make it easy.’
‘Because the whole of the town was queuing up to go out with you, I couldn’t think why you’d want me,’ Catherine said.
‘I wanted to be the one to make you laugh,’ Jimmy said. ‘I wanted to be the one who lit you up every day. I blew that. I blew it big time.’
He’d blown it because he’d cheated on Catherine exactly like Marc had, Jimmy thought bitterly to himself. He’d behaved no better than the other man. In fact, his act of betrayal was far worse than Marc’s because Marc never loved Catherine and Jimmy did. He’d hurt her because he loved her, and what kind of coward does that?
‘No, you didn’t blow it,’ Catherine said. ‘I mean, you did, but it wasn’t just you. It was me too …’ She sat up, pushing her fingers through her hair, shaking it from her shoulders as if she were trying to wake herself up from a dream. ‘Look, Jimmy, let’s not rake all this over now. Not now when we are friends at last, OK? Let’s just agree that we both did things wrong. That we’re better suited to being friends than husband and wife. Now that Alison and Marc are here, well, I don’t know what’s going to happen but I know I’m going to need you to be my friend. And I don’t want us to run the risk of falling out again.’
‘That’s not what I was trying to do,’ Jimmy said awkwardly. ‘All I was trying to do was to … I don’t know actually; make you see that you have changed, you’re not the same kid you were at seventeen. You might feel like it tonight, but it’s temporary, I swear.’
‘Look, will you stay here tonight?’ Catherine asked him. Jimmy felt his chest tighten. ‘The sofa’s quite comfy.’
‘Yeah? I mean yeah, course. If you like.’
‘I would,’ Catherine said. ‘Do you want some more tea?’
‘Second thoughts, got any whisky?’ Jimmy had asked her and they’d found the bottle that had been in the understairs cupboard for two years since Catherine won it on a tombola at the school fair.
Catherine had had perhaps two or three sips from her glass before she had fallen asleep upright on the sofa. Gently, Jimmy had taken the glass from her hand and then with infinite care had lifted her legs up onto the sofa and eased her shoulders down, placing a cushion beneath her head and drawing her crocheted throw over her. That had been about four hours ago and she still lay there now, her hair trailing over her face, one hand clenched around the corner of the cushion as if it were the last straw.
Jimmy had tried to sleep in the chair, but sleep had not come. Every time he closed his eyes, fireworks went off behind his lids, his brain hummed and his body ached. At some point during the course of this day something had changed inside him because, whenever he looked over at Catherine sleeping on the sofa, he felt as if his whole body had been cleaved in half by the sight of her.
And then as the morning sun rose in the sky and burned the mist away, the realisation that had been nudging at his thoughts all night suddenly dawned. Nothing had changed, nothing was different. For the last twelve years he had always felt like this, only recently he’d managed to tell himself that he didn’t. But now when she needed him that pretence had fallen away like a sandcastle disintegrating under the incoming tide.
Jimmy still loved Catherine; he felt as if he always had.
He bit his lip and rested his head against the back of the chair. As he closed his eyes, he felt a stray tear trickle down his cheek and into the corner of his mouth, and he tasted the salt on his tongue.
The fact that he loved his wife was not in question.
Whether or not he’d have the
guts to try to do anything about it was another story entirely.
Chapter Thirteen
ALISON OPENED HER eyes and waited for the second or two it took for her to remember her life. She had been dreaming about being with Cathy. Not about any event in particular, but just about her and Cathy when they were around Gemma’s age, running along the canal towpath in the sunlight, the heat of the sun on their shoulders as Alison chased after Cathy, whose hair was made amber by the sunshine. That was all; nothing else had happened in the dream except that Alison had felt light inside, she had felt free like she thought Christina’s friend Sophie had looked that night in that bar in London.
Now that her eyes were open and she had reabsorbed her daily life back into her bones, she felt the weight of reality sinking into her skin. She truly had seen Cathy last night; she hadn’t dreamed that.
Marc was not in bed next to her. She rolled over and looked at his side of the bed. The pillow was plumped and smooth, the duvet unruffled. He had not come to bed at all. Briefly Alison wondered if he had followed Cathy home and was with her right now and some ember of jealousy flickered in her throat, but she swallowed it down.
Pushing herself up onto her elbows, Alison made herself get out of bed. Her legs were heavy, her arms ached and she felt as if her brain was somehow insulated by one or two layers from reality. Everything seemed just a little bit further away than it normally did.
It couldn’t be a hangover, she told herself. Yes, she had drunk quite a bit of champagne very quickly, but not that much. If she was hungover from anything it was not alcohol, it was her life and its culmination the previous night. The choices she had made that had somehow brought her life to this point had finally caught up with her. There was nowhere to hide any more.
In the bathroom Alison dunked her face in a bowlful of cold water once or twice and then rubbed some more on her neck and between her breasts with a sponge, feeling the cold water trickle down over her belly. Roughly rubbing herself dry, she took a deep breath and looked in the mirror. Her reflection looked tired, dark shadows under her eyes, her skin thin and frail. The trouble, Alison thought, was that when she never saw Cathy, it was easy not to think about her or about the kind of person that she herself had been. It was easy not to have to face up to that selfish spoiled little brat, the thoughtless girl that would wreck half a dozen lives just to get what she wanted.
But now Alison had seen Cathy face to face it was inevitable: she had to acknowledge the truth.
This person, the woman looking back out of the mirror at her was the very same girl who had abandoned Cathy, alone and in the hands of her parents. Of course Alison hadn’t known that Cathy was pregnant. But in the cold light of day, as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she knew that even if Cathy had told her she would have left anyway. She would have done anything to be with the man she loved.
Tired of looking at her tired self, Alison padded barefoot out of the bathroom and went to check on her children.
Dominic was sprawled face down diagonally across his bed, one arm flung over his guitar, his iPod still plugged into his ears. He looked fifteen again and nothing like the enraged and passionate young man that had visited her in her bedroom last night. Alison tiptoed carefully through the detritus of his teenage life smeared across the floor and gently pulled the earplug from his right ear. When she realised she couldn’t reach the left one she carefully located the iPod and switched it off.
Dominic mumbled something, brushing one hand outward in a spasm as if he were attempting to swot a fly, before settling back into sleep, and then he didn’t even look fifteen any more but five, his face relaxing into that little boy that had once been her guide and beacon. Alison looked at those dark lashes and that soft mouth that used to tremble whenever he was sad, frightened and furious, and, unable to resist, bent and kissed him lightly on the head.
He wanted her to leave Marc, to strike out on her own. But he was young and angry and full of fire. For the first time, last night Alison tried to think of a life without her husband and found she couldn’t imagine it. Perhaps she had created Marc, but he had made her too. He’d made her a mother and a wife, a woman who lived for her family or at least who told herself she did. But did she?
Alison dragged Dominic’s duvet cover over both boy and guitar and crept back out of the room to check on her daughters.
Gemma was arranged as neatly as always, the back of one hand resting demurely against her cheek, the other tucked neatly under the cover, like a true sleeping princess. She always looked so ordered and so tidy. For the first time Alison wondered if that was right, if it was natural for an eight-year-old always to be in such control of herself, even in sleep.
Amy, on the other hand, looked as if she had wrestled a crocodile in her dreams, which wasn’t past the realms of possibility, Alison thought, as she looked at her youngest child, one leg hanging out of bed, soft vulnerable toes touching the floor, her quilt flung to one end of the bed, her head twisted awkwardly to one side and her pillow on the floor. Although Amy had slept through the night since the age of two she seldom seemed to have a peaceful sleep, except for those rare occasions when she shared a room with Gemma on holiday or when she was allowed to creep in bed with her mum, which was only ever when Marc was away.
Alison crept over to the bed and, kneeling, tenderly lifted Amy’s leg back onto the mattress and covered her with the duvet again. She might have been imagining it but she thought she saw her daughter’s face relax as she became dimly aware that she was not alone any more.
Perhaps Dominic was right, perhaps she had been so busy creating and recreating this perfect family life for her children that she didn’t noticed how the stress and tension between her and Marc was affecting them. Gemma was so easy – that’s how Alison always described her middle child. She assumed that Gemma’s confidence was due to happiness but perhaps it was like armour, hiding away her anxieties. Maybe her eight-year-old was trying to protect her. And Amy’s fears weren’t nameless or imaginary, not if she sensed that the fairy-tale castle her parents had built for her to live in might crumble away to nothing. If that was true then no wonder she only ever relaxed when the whole family was in one room.
Alison sat on the pink wicker chair opposite Amy’s bed and put her face in her hands.
Her life had come full circle back here to her home town. It was ironic that she had had to walk back into her past to finally face her future. The trick was going to be trying to work out exactly how to face it, how to face Cathy and Jimmy, and especially her husband. How to make sense of the accidental life she had forced herself into, and of the accidental wife she had become.
It was impossible to shake the feeling that she was not meant for this life, that she was the interloper, the impostor. And for the sake of the children, herself and even Marc, she had to try finally to make some sense of that, make sense of the person she had become since the day she ran away from Cathy.
The house smelled of stale alcohol and egg and cress sandwiches, some of which were trodden into the stair carpet or ground into the hall tiles. Abandoned glasses were everywhere, filled with various liquids to varying degrees, giving Alison the almost irresistible urge to pick up her son’s drumsticks and play them.
Marc was not in the kitchen, or any of the downstairs rooms, and from the look of things he hadn’t even slept on the sofa.
Alison walked gingerly over broken crisps to the french windows.
The sun was almost up, burning mist off the lawn, which spiralled up into the air like magician’s smoke. Marc was in the garden, huddled up in his wool coat, sitting on the white wrought-iron garden furniture he had bought in a job lot from the show home on the development. He had his back to the house and was looking at hills that swelled and rolled across the valley, lush green and gold in the early morning, the horizon garlanded with trees. Above the mist, the sky looked bright blue and clear. Alison thought that this might be the first sunny day of the year.
The grass
was wet and cold under her bare feet, slick with dew, but she didn’t go in to find shoes or slippers, sensing that if she turned back she might not return, and this moment, this clear new day, might be lost in the routine of their lives again.
As she approached Marc, he looked up and smiled at her.
‘Good morning, beautiful,’ he said. ‘You really should have something on your feet. It’s a bit nippy out here. Thought I’d take the morning air and survey my kingdom. Have a bit of a think.’
Alison sat down on one of the wrought-iron chairs. Drawing her feet up onto its seat and tucking her knees beneath her chin, she felt the cold of the dew seep through her nightdress.
They smiled at each other for a moment, like two old cohorts who were finally realising the game was up.
‘Well, I certainly didn’t picture this when we came back,’ Marc said. ‘I just didn’t think Cathy Parkin would still be here. That was a turn-up, wasn’t it?’
‘Didn’t you?’ Alison asked him. He looked at her. His nose and cheeks were red from the chill and his eyes looked puffy and sore. Briefly Alison wondered if Marc had been crying, but in all the years she had been with him she’d never seen him shed a tear.
‘I didn’t plan it,’ Marc said. ‘I swear to you.’
‘I’m sorry I slapped you,’ Alison said, hugging her knees, the thin cotton of her nightgown proving inefficient at protecting her from the ice in the air.
‘I deserved it,’ Marc said.
‘Maybe fifteen years ago you did. I mean, of course you were sleeping with her,’ Alison said. ‘I don’t know why I hadn’t worked that out years ago. I don’t even think that was why I slapped you. Or the fact that you’d got her pregnant too. It was seeing her there in front of me. I saw her and I missed her, and blamed you. So I slapped you. And I shouldn’t have. It must have been very embarrassing.’
The Accidental Wife Page 19
