The Accidental Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  Not twenty minutes ago she had asked Jimmy Ashley to have sex with her! She’d just gone and blurted it out as if she’d planned it. One minute he’d been telling her how much he loved Catherine, how Catherine was everything that she wasn’t, and the next, for some reason, she thought it would be a good idea to ask Jimmy if he wanted to have a teenage fling with her. No, that wasn’t true, she hadn’t been thinking at all.

  It was as if she were going a little bit more mad as each minute passed. As if after fifteen years of keeping herself on track, suddenly she’d derailed and was careering out of control downhill. Alison had no idea what was happening with her and Marc because since they’d talked on the lawn in the morning mist they hadn’t spoken at all. She had barely even seen him. He’d spent the rest of the weekend at the dealership and when he came home he went to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms.

  Somehow it was hard to believe that this was the beginning of the end of them, the start of unravelling her life from his. Then she had to go and do something stupid like ask Jimmy Ashley if he wanted to have sex with her, and she realised that everything was changing, including her, except she wasn’t changing into something new, but something old. It was as if returning to Farmington had restored her default factory settings. She felt stupid, crazy, impulsive and confused.

  She felt seventeen years old again.

  The door swung open and Kirsty walked in. Alison smiled at her. Kirsty didn’t smile back.

  ‘You might as well know I’m Catherine’s best friend,’ she said, crossing her arms under her chest. ‘I had no idea who you were when I started teaching you. But if it’s a question of sides then I’m on hers and don’t try and make it any different. Got it?’

  Alison looked at her. ‘God, it’s knackering always being the villain,’ she said, and she sat down on the floor and wept.

  ‘Well,’ Kirsty said, handing her a tissue she had retrieved from her handbag, ‘I didn’t expect you to cry. That’s kind of thrown me a bit.’

  ‘All this is happening to me too, you know,’ Alison sobbed into a tissue. ‘I don’t want you to take sides. I don’t want there to be sides. It’s just that I’m breaking up with my husband and I’ve just come face to face with my best friend again after fifteen years and it’s very confusing. I’m not evil, you know. I’m not some crazy scheming witch. I’m just trying to sort out this whole mess and put things right again.’

  ‘I didn’t know you and him were breaking up,’ Kirsty said. ‘Catherine doesn’t know that.’

  ‘No, well, I didn’t know it until I saw Cathy. Until I realised there was an alternative to being miserable married to him. I don’t love him any more and when I saw how he looked at her I don’t know if the way he loves me will ever be enough. And now my only friend is a fifteen-year-old boy who wears eyeliner and periodically despises me.’

  ‘Catherine doesn’t hate you, you know,’ Kirsty said after a while. ‘She’s extremely freaked out that you are back. But when we talked about it, about how she felt when she saw you, hate was not a word that cropped up.’

  ‘I miss her,’ Alison said, drying her tears. ‘Especially now. I feel like I’ve been in suspended animation for fifteen years, playing at being a grown-up but really I haven’t matured by one second. I even just asked Jimmy Ashley to have sex with me.’

  ‘You did what?’ Kirsty exclaimed. ‘You asked Catherine’s husband to have sex with you? I’m not judging you or anything, but are you mental? I just don’t think that is necessarily the best way to get back into her good books, given that the last time she saw you you were running off with the love of her life.’

  ‘They’ve split up, haven’t they?’ Alison challenged her weakly.

  ‘Technically, yes, but in my book splitting up means burning photos and never speaking to one another again, it doesn’t include sharing meals, taking long country walks and always living in each other’s pocket, which is pretty much what they do. There’s something unfinished going on there and if you want a hope of being Catherine’s friend I suggest you stay well out of it, at least until they’ve worked out how to finish it.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry,’ Alison sniffed. ‘He politely declined. But that’s what I’m talking about. I’m a mess. I’m a big fat useless pointless mess. I’ve got two little girls who don’t know their lives are about to fall apart, a son who holds me in contempt for about ninety-five per cent of the time, and a husband who … who I don’t love any more.’

  ‘Right, well, I didn’t know any of that either,’ Kirsty said. ‘You are in a pickle, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ Alison said, stifling a sob.

  ‘I tell you what,’ Kirsty said. ‘How about we sack the Pilates and go for a cup of coffee instead? Maybe between you and me we can work something out.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alison said with a watery smile. ‘The last time I went for a coffee I starting making random offers of sex to men who patently aren’t interested in me.’

  ‘Oh, honey,’ Kirsty told Alison as she pulled her up onto her feet, ‘welcome to my world.’

  Catherine lay on the sofa and stretched her toes. It was almost lunchtime and she had lain on the sofa all morning. Almost since the moment Kirsty had left to go and ignore Sam she had stayed there, a now cool cup of tea resting on her chest as the hours slipped past.

  For the first time ever in three years of employment at the Stratham and Shah agency Catherine had phoned in sick. Her boss had been sympathetic but had not sounded surprised, a fact which in itself was surprising, given Catherine’s previously spotless attendance record.

  For the first time it occurred to Catherine that other people must have seen what had happened between her and Marc and Alison on Saturday night. Certainly everybody had seen Alison slapping her husband, just as many must have witnessed Catherine and Alison’s brief but taut conversation. Every single person in that room knew who Catherine was. It probably wouldn’t have taken long for those in the know to work out that Mrs Alison James was the Alison, and that her husband must be that young railway labourer she ran off with in her teens, devastating her mother and scandalising Farmington.

  People were talking about her, Catherine realised, feeling discomfort and anxiety grip her belly like a vice. She hated to be noticed and known, and the thought that other people were discussing her private life appalled her. But as disturbing as that was, it wasn’t the reason that she had lain down on the sofa in her pyjamas and had not moved.

  Seeing Marc and Alison again had taken her by surprise, but somehow the way she felt about seeing them again surprised her more than the actual event. It was almost as if on some level she had always been expecting this moment, knowing that one day it would come. Now they were back she felt curiously complete, as if a missing part of her life had been returned to her. Knowing where they were and what they were doing released the pressure of the past that had been building inside her, like a dam that had burst, and she could feel it flowing free out of her fingers and toes.

  As she looked into the face of her old friend she’d felt happy and sad simultaneously, but the bitterness and anger she had expected were not there at all. Alison looked almost exactly the same, only in the brief moment Catherine had talked to her she hadn’t seen Alison’s fearlessness, that passion for life that had propelled Catherine through most of her teens, connecting her to the world outside of her parents’ house. Seeing Alison as she was now, the real woman and not some imagined paragon leading a perfect stolen life, Catherine found herself wondering what had changed her friend so much over the years. She found herself wondering how Alison was.

  Being confronted with Marc was altogether different. Jimmy asked her how seeing Marc again had made her feel, and she hadn’t exactly lied, but had edited the truth because she couldn’t tell anyone, especially not Jimmy, how it made her feel to look into his eyes again. There was no evolution of emotion, no surprise reaction as there had been with Alison. When she looked at Marc it was
as if the last fifteen years had been contracted into a single second and she was sitting in the sunshine in the park once again, her eyes closed, her lips parted, waiting for him to kiss her.

  The whole town might be gossiping about her, her oldest ally and enemy might be back in town, but it was that feeling, that troubling heavy feeling of unresolved longing that kept Catherine pinned to the sofa for all of the morning, staring at the ceiling wondering what on earth Alison and Marc’s return meant and what in God’s name she was supposed to do about it.

  Early that morning, still restless and unable to sleep because every time she closed her eyes her mind was flooded with sunshine and memories, Catherine had got up early and come downstairs to find Jimmy stretched out on this very sofa, his forearm across his forehead, his mouth open slightly as if he were on the verge of smiling.

  Jimmy had stayed all weekend because she asked him to, because she knew that having him around was like having a buffer zone, an insulation between herself and the chaotic feelings that Marc had stirred up in her.

  Jimmy was the only person who Catherine had ever allowed herself to be truly angry with. The only man she’d ever screamed and shouted at, hit and even hated, and now all of that rage had receded she found that he was the only person who could calm her. As angry with him as she had been for telling Alison about the baby, at exactly the same moment she had known she needed him around to keep her anchored.

  Just having Jimmy listen to her, trying not to fall asleep as she talked the night away, had made her feel safe and sort of complete. With him around she was Catherine the woman, steady, reliable and strong. Without him she could have been that frenzied teenager again. That foolish girl who would have done anything to have a few more minutes with the boy she loved. Catherine didn’t want to be that girl again. That girl, with all her raw emotion and her heart pulsating on her sleeve, frightened her. That girl was all too easily crushed.

  Sunday with Jimmy at home had been a perfect, happy, simple day, the four of them enclosed within the walls of their house from morning until night as if together they had the power to take themselves outside of time just for a little while.

  But Catherine knew she couldn’t keep asking Jimmy to stay, even if she was sure that he would in his own affable whyever-not, go-with-the-flow way. It would confuse the girls; it would confuse her. As frightening as the thought of him not being around to come between her and her fears was, she had to face whatever came next on her own. After all, her problems were not Jimmy’s problems any more.

  Just before Jimmy had taken the girls to school he’d found her in the kitchen, her bare feet cooling on the tiles, looking at a packet of cereal.

  ‘I don’t have to go to London,’ he’d offered.

  ‘Yes you do,’ Catherine had said, setting the cereal packet down. ‘You need that job. Deposit on a flat, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, but if I get it I’ll be away for a few weeks … Will you be OK?’ Jimmy asked her. ‘Without me, like.’

  Catherine had turned round and made herself smile at him. ‘Of course I’ll be OK. I’ve been OK on my own for the last two years, I don’t need you to stick around now, honestly.’

  It had been a total lie. Of course, more than anything she wanted him to stick around and be the magic ingredient that brought back a sense of rhythm to her life. But she needed to let him have his own life now, find his own way and be free of her.

  The thought of him going to London hadn’t helped her move her body from the sofa, though.

  Stretching her arms out over her head, Catherine sat up and looked at the clock. It was almost two. She had to get up, shower, get dressed and go to get the girls in just over an hour.

  The knock at the front door made Catherine jump, and she put her feet on the floor, sitting forward on the sofa. She looked at the door for a few long seconds and considered the possibility of not opening it because she knew who was standing on the other side.

  She was still in her pyjamas, at two in the afternoon, with her hair unbrushed and her face unwashed, and the very last person in the whole world she wanted to see was on the other side of that door. But Catherine didn’t seem to have any control over her own limbs. Just as she was thinking about sneaking out of the back door and taking refuge in Kirsty’s shed, her body had got up and opened the door.

  And there he was. There was Marc.

  And with the cooling insulation of her husband gone, all she could feel was how he burned with heat, as if he had somehow captured all the sunshine from that distant summer in his eyes.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Marc said, looking at her pyjamas and then looking away. ‘I looked you up in the phone book. I was going to phone but the address was there and I just got this feeling I should call round, see for myself how you were after the party. Maybe talk a bit about … everything.’

  He gestured at her attire. ‘Are you ill?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Catherine said, her rebellious body stepping aside to allow him in even though her head was shouting at her to slam the door in his face. ‘Just tired.’

  She held her breath as Marc walked into her tiny living room. She saw her home through new eyes, through his eyes: the tiny room, the shabby sofa, the grubby carpet and breakfast things still piled on the dining table. She wondered if it would have been possible for their lives to take more divergent paths than they had.

  Marc turned and looked at her where she was still standing by the front door. He was wearing a camel coat over a suit and he held a pair of black leather gloves in his hand. The living-room light that had been burning all morning reflected in the leather of his shoes. She could still feel the heat of him, even from three or four feet away.

  ‘Drink?’ she asked him, unable to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Coffee?’ Marc suggested. ‘I tell you what, I’ll make it, you go and get dressed, OK?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Catherine said, dropping her head so that her hair fell over her face.

  ‘What for?’ Marc asked her.

  ‘For being in my pyjamas.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ he said, walking into the kitchen. ‘Just get dressed. You look far too appealing that way.’

  Catherine practically ran up the stairs and set the shower to freezing cold.

  Twenty minutes later, when she came down in her black trousers and black long-sleeved top, with her skin still rosy from the cold water, Marc was sitting at the table and the breakfast dishes had been cleared.

  ‘I could only find instant,’ he said, gesturing to a mug he had set on a coaster that Catherine had forgotten she’d ever had.

  ‘I’ve only got instant,’ Catherine said.

  She sat down at the table and took a sip of the coffee. All the time she was trying to adjust to this new reality. Marc James, the Marc James, the man that had stalked her dreams for so long, was sitting at her table in her house drinking instant coffee. He’d even cleared away her breakfast things. It was as if by somehow allowing her to think about him again, to dream about him, she had conjured him up out of thin air, like letting a genie loose from its lantern.

  ‘This is all a bit odd, isn’t it?’ Marc said finally.

  ‘Yes,’ Catherine agreed. ‘I sort of can’t believe that you’re here.’

  ‘Do you hate me?’ Marc asked, glancing briefly sideways at her.

  ‘I don’t think I ever hated you,’ Catherine said. ‘But even if I did, all of that business was a long time ago. I’ve got married, had children, moved on.’

  Catherine wasn’t sure if she was lying or not, but it seemed like a sensible thing to say. It was a way to put distance between herself and him, even across this three-foot-wide table.

  He looked at her, his sudden smile causing her to grip the sides of her chair beneath the table.

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ he said.

  ‘I have,’ Catherine replied. ‘And so have you.’ Marc laughed once and nodded.

  ‘I think about the kid I was back then, and wonder if I am the same
person. I mean, I can’t understand how I turned from him into me. It doesn’t seem possible.’

  ‘Alison made it possible, I suppose,’ Catherine said carefully. ‘It looks as if you two were meant to be together after all.’

  ‘I didn’t want to let her down,’ Marc said. ‘But I have. I never learned to resist that urge to spoil things that were good for me. You were good for me, you made me feel human. I couldn’t wait to ruin that.’

  Catherine didn’t say anything for a long time.

  ‘We were all young,’ she replied eventually. ‘How many twenty-year-old men would turn down the chance to have two teenage girls on the go? I was naïve and you were you. I was passive. Alison fought for you, she won you. She deserved you.’

  ‘Some would say she got what she deserved,’ Marc said. ‘You do realise I only left with her because I didn’t love her? It seemed easier to be with a girl I didn’t love than to be with one I did.’

  Catherine looked out of the back window, down her long thin garden where the grass was overgrown and the vegetable patch was covered in polythene sheeting to protect the seedlings from the frost.

  She had absolutely no idea where the next few minutes would take her, and knowing that made her feel dizzy, as if she were balancing on a knife edge.

  ‘Why are you here, Marc?’ she asked. ‘Not why are you back in Farmington, although I could ask you that too, I mean why are you here now, sitting at my table, drinking instant coffee?’

  ‘For the same reason I’m back in Farmington,’ Marc said, sitting very still. ‘To find you.’ Catherine heard the sound of her own indrawn breath, and she knew that Marc must have heard it too.

  ‘I don’t suppose I expected to actually find you standing in my hallway at a party. I honestly thought you’d be long gone. But I wanted to find the memory of you. I wanted to get close to that person I was for those few weeks I was with you. I’ve never been like him before or since then, Catherine. That person was the best I’ve ever been. Almost since the day Alison and I left I keep letting people down. I keep hurting them even when I don’t want to. It just seems to happen around me. I thought in this place I might find you and I might find the man I was when I was with you. I thought that you, the memory of you at least, might heal me and make me whole.’ Marc smiled and looked at his hands. ‘And then there you were, the living, breathing you, standing right in front of me in the hallway and now I don’t know what to do.’