The Accidental Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘I can’t,’ Catherine said. ‘I think I would have but then I almost got off with her husband. Funny, I can stand her stealing him off me much better than I can stand the reverse, it seems. And anyway, while I’m off following my instincts and exploring my feelings, what about Jimmy?’ Catherine felt anxiety well in her chest when she thought of the expression on Jimmy’s face when he’d seen her and Marc together. Since that moment, whenever she thought about her husband, she felt jangled and disconnected, and she couldn’t quite work out why, except that it was something more than the embarrassment and discomfort she had felt at being found in such an unorthodox situation.

  ‘You should have seen him; he was so angry when he came back.’

  ‘Why do you care?’ Kirsty asked her flatly. ‘He has all the half-witted women in the county after him and you still make him Sunday dinner. You nearly snog the only other man you’ve slept with in your entire life and he goes nuclear. What a hypocrite! Ignore it, Catherine. He’s just getting all male and territorial when he had no business to be and, frankly, considering he wears his hair in a scrunchy, he should know better. Don’t feel bad about him. You’re not together any more, remember?’

  Catherine nodded. ‘I know, but he’s such a big part of my life, and the girls’, and I don’t want to fall out with him.’

  ‘You don’t fall out with him over his girlfriends, do you?’ Kirsty reminded her. ‘Why should you fall out with him over what you do?’

  Catherine didn’t answer because she could not think of any.

  ‘If I ask you a full and frank question will you give me a full and frank answer?’ Kirsty asked her, leaning a little closer and peering at Catherine in the darkness.

  ‘Suppose,’ Catherine replied cautiously.

  Kirsty smirked. ‘That’s not exactly the affirmative I was hoping for, but nevertheless it will have to do.’ She sat up straight. ‘Are you, Catherine Elizabeth Ashley, still in love with your sham of an ex-husband, the spandex-wearing Jimmy … er … Hendrix Ashley?’

  ‘No!’ Catherine said immediately. ‘No, don’t be stupid. Of course I’m not still in love with him. If I was still in love with him would I have been tempted to kiss Marc? No I wouldn’t. It was hard for me to get everything under control after he did what he did, but I have done that. And we’ve got a relationship now that I care about. But I don’t love him. Of course I don’t love him.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Kirsty said. ‘All I’m saying is that at some point you will have to make a choice between what you want for you, and being Jimmy’s friend. And if, when it comes to it, you put Jimmy’s friendship first then maybe you’ll want to rethink your answer.’

  ‘What does this mean?’ Catherine asked the sky, standing up suddenly. ‘If I still have one type of feeling for Jimmy and another altogether for Marc – what does that mean?’

  The two women were quiet for a moment as if both of them hoped for a reply, but the night was silent, except for the distant sound of traffic.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Catherine groaned. ‘I don’t know how to be, or how to feel about anything!’

  Kirsty stood up and put an arm around her friend. ‘This is actually all good,’ she said.

  ‘How is this good?’ Catherine asked her, her voice small.

  ‘Because you are awake and feeling, Catherine,’ Kirsty told her. ‘Your heart is racing, your blood is pumping, you’re scared and confused, and you have no idea what is going to happen to you. You’re alive, my friend, you’re alive!’

  Catherine looked up at the star-spangled sky. ‘I’m not sure I like it.’

  She glanced up at the window of her daughters’ bedroom, where the night-light behind the pink curtain glowed steadily. Eloise would be sucking her thumb, even though she vehemently denied she did any such thing, and Leila would have wound her finger so tightly into her hair that in the morning it would take Catherine minutes to extricate it. Catherine smiled and shivered in one instant. They were so small, her girls, and so fragile. It seemed wrong somehow that all that stood between them and the freezing fathomless universe was a thin stretch of atmosphere and their mother, who was only now waking up after one hundred years of slumber, with no idea what was still a dream and what could be a reality.

  ‘Something’s going to happen,’ Kirsty said after a little while with the confident air of an oracle.

  ‘Yes, piles, if we stay out here much longer,’ Catherine said, grimacing as she shifted on the seat.

  ‘No, I mean something big is going to happen to help you decide how you feel, and you’ll have an epiphany and everything will be fine.’

  ‘I moan at you,’ Catherine said, hugging Kirsty and resting her hot cheek against her friend’s cool one for a moment. ‘But I think you are actually the best friend I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Including Alison?’ Kirsty asked her. ‘Before she turned to the dark side, I mean.’

  Catherine thought for a moment. ‘She was so important to me. I don’t know what my childhood would have been without her. She was my lifeline.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Kirsty said. ‘The girls are off with partman part-poodle this weekend, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Catherine said. ‘He’s taking them to his mother’s on the boat.’

  ‘Come over to mine, we’ll have girly night in. I’ll cook, we’ll drink a load of wine, we won’t talk about any type of man or male thing, not your love interests, not even mine, principally because mine seems to have dumped me as he hasn’t spoken to me once even though we’ve seen each other loads today, so now I’ve got to retrospectively dump him, which is going to be tough, as first of all I’m ignoring him and second of all we weren’t going out and third of all I really bloody liked him, the bastard arsehole, and I thought he liked me and in eight years’ time I’ll be forty! I haven’t got time any more to go around falling in love with people who don’t love me back …’ Kirsty paused for breath and smiled sheepishly at Catherine. ‘Sorry, it’s just it’s been you, you, you all bloody night. Anyway, we’ll have a proper girls’ night in and it will be lovely. You can stay over.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Catherine asked her. ‘I mean, I know you hate cooking, and cleaning your house so that it’s fit for visitors.’

  ‘For you, my love, I’ll get in a takeaway and push things under the sofa.’

  ‘It’s a lovely idea, but we could always do it here, if you like,’ Catherine offered.

  ‘No.’ Kirsty was quite firm. ‘You’d only be looking at your table and thinking about Marc bending you backwards over it all the time. No, my place it is. I’ve decided.’

  ‘Thank you, Kirsty,’ Catherine said, picking up both of the tea mugs and heading indoors. ‘I couldn’t have a better friend than you.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Kirsty said under her breath as she paused to look up at the sky, nipping at her bottom lip. ‘And then again, possibly not.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ALISON HAD SIGNED the late book four more times that week, and on Friday morning the secretary asked if she could spare five minutes to talk to the head. Alison sat on a chair that was far too small for her outside of Mrs Woodruff’s office, feeling as if she was about to be given detention.

  ‘The thing is,’ Mrs Woodruff said when Alison had taken a seat opposite her on a full-sized chair in her office, which somehow didn’t make her feel any more grown up, ‘you’ve only been here a few weeks and you’ve signed that book more often than not. I’ve made allowances, Mrs James, for the settling-in period. I know young Amy has found it hard, and I know that moving your family to a new house, a new town can be chaotic. But there are rules, procedures. There is the school-parent contract. If this carries on I’ll have it put on your children’s attendance record and you wouldn’t want that, would you?’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t. It’s just …’ Alison paused and wondered exactly how she could explain that the reason she and her children were late every morning was because she was desperate to avoid the friend she had onc
e long ago betrayed, and the friend’s husband, whom she had recently offered to have sex with. Alison decided there was no way to explain that.

  ‘It’s just things at home … we have family problems. And I know I shouldn’t let it affect the girls at all, let alone getting them to school on time, but hopefully, after this weekend, it will be a lot less … difficult.’

  Mrs Woodruff looked concerned, but chose not to pry any further, for which Alison was silently grateful.

  ‘Can you give me your word that the girls will be on time for the remainder of this half term?’ she asked Alison.

  ‘Probably,’ Alison said and, seeing Mrs Woodruff’s frown deepen, added hastily, ‘I mean definitely. Whatever happens on Saturday I promise they’ll be here on time.’

  ‘Good, because I’ve been watching Amy this week in assembly and in the playground. She seems to have formed an attachment to Leila Ashley. Leila’s a bubbly little girl, full of fun and mischief. I think she’ll bring Amy out of herself.’

  ‘Really?’ Alison could not have sounded less enthusiastic and she was aware of what a terrible mother and terrible person she must appear to be. She forced herself to sit up straighter. ‘I mean, that’s great! It’s great. Leila Ashley, great, because Gemma’s already fond of Eloise Ashley so that is just perfect.’

  Mrs Woodruff said nothing but Alison suspected that the head teacher was examining her and searching for traces of drunkenness or madness or both.

  Pull your socks up and concentrate, Alison warned herself inwardly. She knew she had to drag herself back out of her seventeen-year-old self and into the real world, the world where she was a parent and wife. Where she had children to care for and a husband to … to deal with. She’d been so good at it for so long, that it came as something of a shock that letting go of that role for even just one reckless moment was like pulling the thread on a sweater; she was watching the entire fabric of her adult life disintegrate into nothing before her eyes, and the more she tried to get a grip on it the faster it unravelled.

  ‘Well, then, if you ever need to talk,’ Mrs Woodruff said, gesturing at the door, ‘I could always put you in touch with a family counsellor.’

  Feeling like the epitome of a failure, Alison got up and walked out into the empty playground.

  This had to be it, she thought to herself, the rock bottom that people are so fond of talking about. Surely things have to take an upward turn from here?

  Saturday night, Alison hoped, would change everything one way or another. After Saturday she’d know what to do. Because tomorrow night she and Cathy were meeting at Kirsty’s for dinner. The very fact that Cathy had agreed to go gave Alison hope that something good would come out of their move to Farmington, because now more than ever she longed to see her friend again. To hug her and laugh with her and ask her, ‘What should I do?’

  For the rest of the day Alison had gone through the motions of walking around the supermarket and picking up the girls from school, all in preparation for this moment. This hour, four o’clock on Friday afternoon, was family time, the afternoon when Marc was supposed to come home early and they were all supposed to eat dinner together.

  Gemma and Amy were sitting at the table already in anticipation of the roast chicken Mummy was cooking, even though it was a good half-hour away from being ready. The men of the household were nowhere to be seen, though, and Alison wasn’t surprised. Dominic made it his business to be late for everything, and if Marc arrived back at all before the entire family had gone to bed Alison would be stunned. In a way she was relieved that he wouldn’t turn up, just as she had been relieved that he’d been avoiding her all week, because she had no idea that he’d react to her revelation in the way that he had. And so far she had no idea how to deal with it.

  They had sat in the cold on the white wrought-iron chairs and she had told him that she didn’t love him. And he had cried. Not sobbed or anything, but he’d shut his eyes and two tears had rolled down, followed by two more and then two more, until the water ran in rivulets over his cheeks, meeting in the corners of his mouth. They were the first tears she had ever seen him cry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Alison had said. ‘I didn’t expect you to … I didn’t think you’d really care.’

  Marc had looked at her, rubbing the tears away with the heels of his hand.

  ‘Of course I care. I’m not made of stone, Alison. I love you, I love my children. I love this family. I don’t want us to end.’ He dropped his chin and took a deep breath, exhaled a plume of warm air in the chill of the morning.

  ‘I’ve done my best to give you and the children the life you wanted, but I expect I’ve never really fitted into it, never really felt comfortable. Maybe that was why I did the things I did. Or maybe it’s just because that’s what I’m like. I’m just half a man who can never quite love anyone enough to be true to them. I don’t know, Alison, but I must love you as much I possibly can love anyone, because right now … I feel pain.’

  Alison looked at him, the tears falling, and she wondered why on earth she wasn’t going to him, putting her arms around him and hugging him and kissing the salt off his face, and promising that everything would be all right between them, that everything would be fine. It was what she wanted, longed to be able to do. To set things the right side up again, settle back into the routine of happy families.

  But she couldn’t, because as much as the sanctuary of appearances appealed to her, when she looked at her husband crying she didn’t feel anything, except remorse that she had made him sad.

  ‘I’m going in,’ Marc had said, sniffing and getting up. ‘I think I’ll go into the dealership. The weekend’s a busy time. They’ll need me.’ He paused and turned round. ‘You’re not … you’re not going to go anywhere? I mean, you’re not going to leave me today? You’ll be here with the children when I get back?’

  ‘I’m not going to leave today,’ Alison told him. Their affair might be over but she had no idea how to end their marriage. He nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets, walking back up to the house slowly, as if he were very tired.

  Alison had barely seen him since.

  Perhaps he was giving her space, or perhaps he thought if she didn’t have to see him there was more chance of her staying.

  Alison didn’t know, but in any event she didn’t expect to see him tonight.

  ‘Mummy, it’s nearly quarter past four, where is everyone?’ Gemma asked her primly. ‘Where is Daddy?’

  ‘Well, the thing is, Daddy …’ Alison was just about to conjure up some explanation when she heard the front door close.

  ‘Here’s Dom, anyway,’ she said brightly, winking at the girls and calling out, ‘Count yourself lucky that you’ve showed up more or less on time, young man. Ten more minutes and your dinner would have been in the … dog. Oh, hello, darling.’

  Alison masked her surprise with a smile for Marc as he walked into the kitchen and kissed her lightly on the cheek. He’d shaved that morning, and his skin was cool, soft and smooth against the heat of hers.

  They held each other’s gaze for a moment but Marc did not return her smile.

  ‘Daddy!’ Amy exclaimed, running to hug him around his legs. ‘I had the best day today, Daddy. We saw an actual play at the school, actual real people came and did a play and it wasn’t on the TV or anything, and I sat next to Leila Ashley, who is my new friend. She let me eat her carrots at snack, which her mummy grew in the ground.’

  ‘Did she, darling?’ Marc said, ruffling her hair and sitting her on his knee as the two of them joined Gemma at the table. ‘Well, it’s great that you two are friends with the Ashley sisters. It’s sort of like history repeating itself, right, Al?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Alison said uneasily, as she peered into the oven. Having tested one leg, she took the chicken out to rest, covering it with foil. Marc had come to eat dinner at ‘family time’ to make a point, and it was clear what it was.

  ‘What do you mean, Daddy?’ Gemma asked as he shifted Amy off h
is knee and unbuttoned his shirt collar. ‘How can the past repeat itself. Is it like Dr Who?’

  ‘Not like Dr Who. You know, don’t you,’ Marc asked his daughters, ‘that once, a long time ago, when Mummy was a little girl, she used to live in Farmington?’

  ‘Yes,’ the girls chorused at once.

  ‘Well, Mummy used to be best friends with Leila and Eloise’s mummy, didn’t you, darling?’

  Alison felt her shoulders tense. Her back to her family, she strained her supermarket-bought carrots, tipping the water into the pan to make gravy. There was an edge of anger to Marc’s voice that unnerved her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘A long time ago now, though. Practically a lifetime.’

  ‘Does Eloise’s mummy know that you are you?’ Gemma asked her excitedly. ‘I bet she’ll be so pleased to see you, Mummy! Then all of us can be friends and we can all go round to teas and things. Won’t it be great, Mummy?’

  ‘Well,’ Alison said. ‘Maybe, we’ll see.’

  ‘Pleeeaasssse,’ Gemma pleaded, which was her stock response to the phrase ‘We’ll see’.

  ‘The thing is that Mummy and Eloise and Leila’s mummy fell out and they’ve never made up since.’

  ‘Why, Mama?’ Leila asked her. ‘Didn’t you do make up, make up, never, never break up?’

  ‘Anyway, why did you fall out?’ Gemma asked her. ‘Was it over sharing?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Marc said before Alison could answer. ‘Your mummy and Eloise’s mummy fell out over me.’ He grinned and a waggled his eyebrows, making the girls giggle.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Daddy,’ Amy said. ‘Mama didn’t even know you when she was little.’

  ‘Well, Mummy wasn’t quite as little as you when she fell out with Eloise’s mum,’ Marc explained. Alison shot him a glance across the kitchen as she stirred the gravy but he ignored her.