The Accidental Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘I carried it off, though,’ Marc said. ‘And anyway, I understand, because I felt the same way.’

  ‘Embarrassed?’ Alison asked him, tucking the hem of her nightgown under her toes.

  ‘No, when I saw her, I missed her. Missed the way she used to make me feel back then … missed who I was when I was with her.’

  They sat in silence and Alison tried to work out if the burning she felt in her chest was caused by hurt or relief. Because although Marc’s comments were painful, at least he was being honest with her.

  ‘What would you have done,’ Alison asked him, ‘if you’d known she was pregnant too? Would you have stood by her as well? That would have given the town something to talk about. Man fathers two children born within a week of each other.’

  Marc’s laugh surprised Alison. Mirthless and sharp as it was, it seemed inappropriate.

  ‘I knew she was pregnant,’ he explained. ‘I think I knew long before she did. I was waiting for her to tell me that we couldn’t go to bed because her period had come. I waited for three weeks, four weeks, five weeks and the subject never came up. I knew we couldn’t carry on for ever then. I knew there would be a crunch and I wanted to leave before it arrived.’

  ‘You knew she was pregnant and you still chose me?’ Alison asked him. Once she would have left it at that, let herself believe that that one action fifteen years ago stood as a testament to how much she had meant to Marc, but not today. Because for once in his life he was being honest and she needed to know the truth, so she asked him another question. ‘Why?’

  Marc didn’t answer for a moment, as he looked out towards the horizon. Then, taking a breath, he began to talk.

  ‘You told Catherine about us. I knew you would sooner or later,’ he said. ‘I’d been expecting it since that first afternoon. It must have been a schoolday because Catherine turned up at the bedsit in her uniform. I’ll never forget it, seeing her there in her blue checked kilt and school sweater. She was crying. She asked me if it was true that I’d been sleeping with you and I said that it was. And she asked me if that meant me and her were over. I was shocked, upset for her even if I didn’t show it. She should have told me it was over, not asked me. She should have been stronger than she was. But she wasn’t strong, I knew that when I got involved with her. I warned her. So I told her that it was; it was over.

  ‘I braced myself, waiting for her to tell me she was pregnant, but she didn’t. She must have known by then but she didn’t mention it. She just turned on her heel and walked away.’ Marc looked up at the clear sky. ‘It was pouring with rain.’

  ‘She was coming to see me,’ Alison said, more to herself than to Marc. ‘She tried to tell me about the baby. But I wouldn’t let her.’

  ‘I went to the pub that night, my first night off in ages. I wanted to get bladdered, really out of it. I didn’t want to think about anything. The work in Farmington was coming to an end; I heard there was some work coming up near Croyden. Not that far away, but on that night it seemed like a welcome refuge. And then suddenly you appeared. I don’t know how you found me …’

  ‘I looked in every single pub.’

  ‘Well, you found me. You walked in and all the blokes looked at you, your hair all wet, your top soaked through. All that eyeliner you used to wear running down your cheeks. I saw you and my heart sank. I thought, here we go again. Ding, ding, round two. But I was ready to take whatever you wanted to dish out. I thought I deserved it.’

  ‘I asked you to go outside with me,’ Alison remembered. ‘Told you I needed to talk to you. I had no idea what I was going to do if you didn’t come, but you did come.’

  ‘We stood outside in the rain,’ Marc went on. ‘I had both my hands in my pockets and I was staring at my work boots. I couldn’t look at you, because you were the one thing I hadn’t been able to resist, like a bloody greedy kid in a sweet shop. You were the one thing that made me mess up again.’

  ‘I said, I’m running away from home. I’ve done it already. I’m going anyway, whatever. But I want you to come with me. Will you come with me? And I felt like screaming because I was so frightened,’ Alison recalled.

  ‘I just kept on staring at my boots, I heard you talking but the words weren’t going in. And then you said, I want to be with you more than anything, I have to be with you and you have to be with me because I know that we are meant to be together. Come with me and I’ll be your family. I’ll stand by you, I’ll help you. I’ll look after you. That’s what you said: I’ll look after you.’

  The two sat in silence for a moment, each separately remembering the same event.

  ‘I could see that you were shaking from nerves,’ Marc said, ‘and the cold probably, I don’t know, but I just stood there with my hands in my pockets looking at my boots and …’

  ‘… thinking.’ Alison completed the sentence for him. ‘Deciding whether or not to come or go back in the pub and finish your pint. I remember. I couldn’t even believe that you were thinking about it. I mean, I knew that you wanted me, I knew we had this physical thing but, even as naïve as I was, I didn’t think you’d run away with me, not really. I think, even if I didn’t admit it, it was really just some grand crazy gesture. Something I had to prove to myself. I think if you’d gone back in for the pint, like I thought you were going to, I’d have gone back home and gone to bed and my mum would never have known I’d run away at all.’

  ‘But you said you’d look after me,’ Marc said. ‘And I knew that there was no way a seventeen-year-old girl would be able to look after me, but nobody had ever said that to me before. Not anyone. I didn’t realise how much I wanted to hear it.’

  ‘And is that why?’ Alison prompted him. ‘Is that why you came with me?’

  Marc shook his head, taking a deep breath.

  ‘It was one reason, but there was another one. A stronger one.’ He looked Alison in the eyes. ‘I was in love with Cathy, Alison. Back then at that very moment, standing outside of the pub in the rain, when you asked me to run away with you like I was some kid in a play and not a twenty-year-old railway labourer, I was in love with Catherine. I loved her, but I couldn’t be a better person for her. I couldn’t make myself be good enough to deserve her. She was the first person I had ever loved and even though I knew how important and how special that was I still went to bed with you, and I kept on going to bed with you because I couldn’t stop. Because for most of my life I’d had nothing. When I got the chance to have everything I took it. But I loved her. If I hadn’t have met you then she would have been enough. She would have been enough until I met the next girl I couldn’t keep my hands off. I loved her, and I knew she was having my baby and I knew I couldn’t be there for her or her kid. I knew I’d mess it up sooner or later. And there you were, standing in the rain, shivering, asking me to run away with you, telling me you’d take care of me. And that meant a lot to me. I didn’t love you, but I knew you loved me. I needed to be loved, I needed to change. So I took my hands out my pockets and put my arms around you and held you until you stopped shivering and I said, “OK then.” I said, “OK, come on, let’s go.”

  ‘I didn’t run away with you, Al. I ran away from her.’

  Alison, still with her chin on her knees, rubbed her toes.

  ‘So when I told you about my baby, why didn’t you leave me then?’ she asked.

  Marc stood up and shrugged his coat off. Underneath it he was still wearing the shirt and trousers he’d worn to the party. He draped the coat around Alison’s shoulders and she gathered the edges close over her.

  ‘You had the most balls of anyone I’d ever seen,’ Marc told her. ‘Fronting it out in that shitty flea-ridden hostel when I knew you wanted to go home about a million times a day. You stuck it out, you didn’t cave in. The longer you did that, the more I respected you. The more I believed you meant what you said. And then you told me. You said, “Well, I’m having a baby, so there. You know about it now. I’m keeping it, it’s up to you what you do – stay or go, I d
on’t care.”’

  ‘I was scared shitless,’ Alison said. ‘I wanted my mum, I wanted Cathy.’

  ‘I know,’ Marc told her. ‘I looked at you, seventeen, run away from home with some bloke you hardly knew and bollocks all clue about how to look after yourself, let alone my baby in your belly, and I knew I couldn’t leave you. You needed me, and I liked you needing me. I started to need you. Looking after you made me get things done. Made me look for regular work and a decent place to live. Why I couldn’t do that for the girl I loved I don’t know, but I could do it for you. You made it easy.’

  ‘But you say you love me now,’ Alison said. ‘You are always saying that you love me. Is that a lie too?’

  ‘Dominic was born and we got the flat, I got the job in the garage. Your dad came round a few times and threatened to kill me. Those first couple of years seemed like a blur and I didn’t have time to think about Catherine, I didn’t have time to think about what had happened to her and the baby. Before I knew it Dominic was four and I’d got the promotion at the garage, remember?’

  Alison smiled. ‘Yes, they said they’d put you on sales because all the ladies loved you.’

  ‘And we’d taken that flat. The two-bed on Seven Sisters Road. I came home from work and you were sitting on the living-room floor with Dominic, playing with Lego or something. You had the window open, and it was a sunny evening. It sort of lit up the back of your hair like a halo. I looked at you and my son sitting on the floor and I felt as if I’d been kicked in the chest by a mule. I realised I loved you both more than anything. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but it was then that I realised. I loved you. I love you. I still do.’

  Alison looked out across the horizon. A horse in a field on the hillside opposite was galloping through the wet grass, mane and tail flying, tossing its head in sheer abandon. Alison shut her eyes and tried with all her might to will herself onto that hillside with that horse. But when she opened them again Marc was still sitting on the white-painted wrought-iron garden furniture watching her.

  ‘Everything’s changed now that we’ve moved back here,’ she said. ‘Now that we’ve found Cathy again. Things can’t go on as they are.’

  ‘Yes they can,’ Marc insisted. ‘Yes they can. I know it’s weird seeing Cathy again, I know we put her through a lot, but we can come through it, Al, like we always do. We’ve had our problems, and coming back here has stirred up old memories and opened up old wounds, but maybe that is a good thing. Because maybe now we can clean them and let them heal for good. And I love you, I love you so much, Alison.’

  Alison looked at him, shielding her eyes against the advancing sun so that she could see his face clearly. He was watching her intently, waiting for her to smile and acquiesce like she always did.

  ‘The trouble is, Marc,’ she said after a long pause, ‘I’m not sure that I love you any more.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘ARE YOU SURE you don’t mind?’ Catherine asked Jimmy again as he stood at the door with the girls.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Jimmy said. ‘Why would I mind taking my own daughters to school? I’ve done it loads of times before.’

  ‘I just feel so …’ Catherine looked at her two girls kicking at pebbles in the front garden, Leila with her coat hanging off her shoulders as always, and Eloise pointing her toes like a dancer. ‘I can’t see her today. Or anyone. I’m not ready. I’ll probably never be ready actually, so while you’re out I’ll be checking property prices in the Outer Hebrides.’

  ‘That seems like a long way to go to visit,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Well, obviously you’d have to come too,’ Catherine said, lifting Jimmy’s heart for a fraction of a second. ‘You could buy the house next door.’

  ‘Right, well,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this thing up in London later.’

  ‘What thing? Don’t tell me you’ve been discovered at last?’

  ‘No, well, not exactly. Maybe some session work coming up. I’m going to a sort of informal audition. Pays well, so if I can land it I could maybe get a deposit together on a flat, couple of months’ rent to get me sorted.’

  ‘That would be fantastic, Jimmy.’ Catherine’s face lit up.

  ‘Yeah, I’d probably have to stay up in London for a few weeks … you know how these musicians are. Sometimes it’s a twenty-four-hour job.’

  ‘Well, if that’s what it takes to get you off that boat,’ Catherine said, without hesitation. ‘And it’s not as if we’re that far away. There’ll be weekends.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jimmy said slowly. ‘It’s not really a nine-to-five sort of gig. But anyway, I haven’t got it yet. Let’s wait and see. Might not have to worry about it at all.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Catherine said, kissing him briefly on the lips. ‘Oh, and …’

  Jimmy waited.

  ‘If she’s there, if you see her, just … don’t tell her anything we talked about, OK? I don’t know what’s going to happen between us. I’m just not ready to face up to it all yet.’

  ‘OK,’ Jimmy said. ‘Probably won’t see her, probably wouldn’t say anything to her even if I did see her.’

  ‘She used to have the major hots for you, you know,’ Catherine said. ‘In all the years we’ve been married I’ve never told you that. Didn’t want to. But she was mental about you, to basic stalker level.’

  ‘Well,’ Jimmy said lightly, ‘she’s only human, right?’

  Catherine looked at the girls, who were peering rather nosily into Kirsty’s front-room window.

  ‘She probably still fancies you,’ she added, lowering her voice.

  ‘Cat,’ Jimmy looked offended as he thought about Alison’s arms around his neck at the party. ‘She’s a married woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ Catherine said, ‘and you’re a married man, but that’s never stopped you before.’

  Catherine’s smile faltered when she saw the stricken look on Jimmy’s face.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was only joking,’ she said. ‘What you get up to is your business. I was trying to lighten the mood, you know, after the whole depressing, soul-searching, mortifying weekend of doom. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.’

  ‘I know,’ Jimmy told her. ‘But it was only once. I only did it once.’

  The two looked at each other for a moment, but just as Catherine was about to speak she heard the girls burst into excited laughter as Kirsty slammed her front door shut and climbed over the low brick wall, still wearing her red checked flannel pyjamas and pink fluffy slippers.

  ‘Bloody men,’ she said, staring hard at Jimmy. ‘Bloody bastard men. And by the way, where did you go to at that party?’

  ‘Not up to scratch then?’ Catherine asked Kirsty as she opened the door to her friend. ‘Not the love of your life after all? All those steroids shrunk his man parts away to nothing?’

  Kirsty wandered into the front room and sat heavily on the sofa.

  ‘No, his man parts were all present and erect,’ she said sulkily, staring at the carpet. ‘Everything went great. He was funny, charming and gorgeous, and so was I. At the party we were chatting away, getting on like a house on fire one minute, and then the next we were in the downstairs loo, going at it like a pair of freight trains. I thought, this is it; this is the end of my life as a single philandering hussy and the beginning of my life with the love of my life, with Steve.’

  ‘Sam, and doing it with a man you hardly know in a loo was your perfect scenario for true love?’

  ‘It wasn’t where we did it, it was how. It was so sexy, Cat. And the sink was pretty sturdy too, so that was a bonus. Anyway, we made ourselves presentable and came out, and you’d gone. I couldn’t find you anywhere. So I let Sam walk me home. And I let him come in and I let him stay for the whole weekend. It was wonderful. The whole weekend, just the two of us in bed. Getting up to make bacon sandwiches, or uncork a bottle of wine, but mainly just us in bed doing it and laughing and talking and sometimes sleeping. It was lovely.’

  ‘So?’ Cat
herine pressed her, sitting down beside her on the sofa. Sooner or later she’d fill Kirsty in on the Alison débâcle, but Kirsty’s love life was a more than welcome diversion. ‘If it was all so wonderful why are you so down? Wait – was the “doing it” bit not up to scratch? Was he funny, charming, handsome and willing but a narcissistic and selfish lover? After all that build-up did you have to endure a weekend of anticlimactic sex?’

  Kirsty sat up and straightened her shoulders. ‘No, my dear, the sex was perfect. It was multiclimactic. He was attentive, generous and very well hung. God, can that man ever fuck.’

  ‘Right – so why are you here looking all cross and fed up?’ Catherine was perplexed. ‘Did he snore or talk in his sleep? Has he unwittingly revealed he has a thing for ladies’ underwear?’

  ‘None of those would necessarily be a deal breaker,’ Kirsty said on a heavy sigh. ‘I’m here because he’s gone. I woke up, and it was so nice, Catherine, to be all achy and sore in all the right places, the sort of feeling you only ever have after a great night of sex, and I thought I was about ready for some more, so I rolled over to wake him up and … he was gone.’ She shrugged, dropping her chin onto her chest.

  ‘To the loo?’ Catherine asked her, optimistically.

  ‘Nope, gone out of the house. Left. Not a goodbye, not a note, not a nothing. After that whole lovely long weekend he just got up before dawn and went home. I don’t even have his number.’

  ‘Well, he probably knows he’ll see you at the gym later,’ Catherine said.

  ‘Yes, he probably does,’ Kirsty said miserably. ‘But after a whole weekend of sex and talking and laughing and kissing, Catherine, you don’t just get up and leave without saying goodbye. It’s not done. It isn’t sex etiquette. It’s not sexiquette.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘I really thought he liked me.’

  ‘Are you going to cry?’ Catherine asked her nervously.