The Accidental Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  After a few moments he knocked again, and again, and then he went round the back and peered though the french windows. The living room was silent and dark. Sensing his daughters’ expectancy, Jimmy kneeled down and peered through the letterbox: the hallway light was on. But that could mean anything. His mother had always lived by the conviction that burglars would never rob a house with a hallway light on, on the off chance that the entire family plus a guard dog might be convening on the landing.

  Shepherding the girls under the meagre protection of the porch, Jimmy phoned both her home (although Leila had pointed out if she was in to answer it they wouldn’t have been standing outside in the rain) and mobile number several times. Then Eloise noticed a milk bottle with a note sticking out of the top of it.

  It was written in his mother’s fat, loose handwriting, the ink faded and bleeding into the paper where the rain had reached it. It read, ‘No milk for two weeks, please.’

  Jimmy stared at the note and got an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Mum never missed her chance to see the girls, and in the winter Jimmy always brought them here when it was his weekend. He didn’t like them spending the night in his boat at all, but especially not in this weather. He hated them having to see past the romance and fun of how he lived to the damp cold reality.

  Jimmy recalled the last conversation he’d had with his mum when he’d phoned to give her the dates they’d be visiting in March.

  ‘Now that first weekend I won’t be back from Spain till Saturday morning, OK? So bring them on Saturday at about eleven. It’ll be lovely to see their little faces and I’ll bring them back some presents.’

  ‘OK,’ Jimmy had said, or something like that.

  ‘Did you get that?’ his mum had persisted. ‘Bring them Saturday morning? Write it down, James. You know what you’re like.’

  ‘I don’t need to write it down,’ Jimmy now remembered saying testily. ‘I’m not an idiot, Mum.’

  As if he needed any further proof of his general inadequacy, it was official: he was an idiot.

  He had forgotten that his mum wasn’t going to be back until Saturday morning; probably from the moment he had put the phone down on her until this very second, that piece of vital information had floated out of his head. Jimmy looked at his girls huddled in the porch and did his best to hide his frustration from them. If he’d remembered that his mum wasn’t due back until tomorrow morning then he could have told Catherine, she would have let him pick up the girls dry and warm and happy then, and maybe he would have had one more night to stand between her and the next part of her life, the part that was not going to include him.

  At a loss over what to do, he’d taken the girls to McDonald’s, where they had sat over three Happy Meals (Jimmy didn’t have quite enough cash for anything else) until the early evening crowd thinned out and the late evening collections of angry-looking boys and bored-looking girls began to fill it up. At that point even Jimmy, who was noted for being hip with the kids, thought the girls probably didn’t need to hear language quite so Anglo-Saxon. By the time they got back to the boat it was almost ten and he could see his girls were cold and damp and miserable, even though they were trying their best to look as if they were having a good time, especially Eloise, who was determined to prove that nothing her father did could ever be wrong.

  Jimmy made them hot chocolate and they huddled together around the stove, singing Meat Loaf numbers until finally sleep overtook first Leila and then Eloise. Jimmy was still kicking himself when he drifted off at last, and finally the three of them slept sitting up, huddled like birds in a nest.

  The rain hadn’t stopped all night. It was just after six, when a hint of grey daylight was struggling to appear through the sodden gloom, that Jimmy woke up. He’d been phoning his mother’s mobile on and off ever since, though he knew she wouldn’t turn it on until she got back into the house. She always said she didn’t want to be a slave to it, because it was only for emergencies and she didn’t want to run the battery down. She never had quite grasped the mobile part of a mobile phone.

  ‘Try again,’ Eloise whined miserably, nodding at Jimmy’s phone. ‘It must be past eleven now and I want to be warm, Daddy.’

  ‘We’ve had lovely time,’ Leila said consolingly. ‘It’s just we can’t feel our noses now. It’s a bit like when Jesus spent forty days and nights in the desert. Only cold.’ She sank her chin into the neck of her coat, which she had worn all night, adding, ‘I love you, Daddy,’ just before the lower half of her face disappeared completely.

  Jimmy bit the inside of his mouth and pressed the redial on his phone.

  As his mother answered he knew at least one thing for certain. He was never going to hear the end of this.

  ‘Look at my girls,’ Pam said as she put another plate of toast in front of the children, who were bathed and changed into the brand-new and largely pink outfits that she had bought them in duty free. ‘Pretty as a picture.’

  Pam was always buying her granddaughters things, pretty things, nice things. The things their mother didn’t seem to give two hoots about. Her gifts and outfits went home with them, but since she never saw them wear anything she’d ever given them again, she wouldn’t put it past that woman to sell them on.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said, hugging first one and then the other, and then adjusting the bow in Leila’s hair.

  ‘We missed you too, Nana Pam,’ Leila said, with feeling. ‘Especially when we were freezing like ice cubes and penguins.’

  ‘Hmph …’ Pam caught her son’s look and bit her tongue. ‘Well, if your daddy didn’t love that leaky old boat so much …’

  ‘I’m like a pirate, girls,’ Jimmy said, mustering himself now that he had his own plate of toast, not to mention some dry old clothes that his mum still kept in his wardrobe, and which were only marginally too tight for him now. ‘I sail the high seas looking for adventure.’

  ‘You sail the canal, you mean,’ Leila said.

  ‘And you don’t even sail it ’cos you haven’t got a sail,’ Eloise added.

  Jimmy sipped his tea and said nothing. Sometimes he felt like he was the best father in the history of fathers. Like last night – yes, he’d got his daughters cold and wet, and with nowhere decent to sleep because of his own stupidity, but when he and the girls had been singing ‘Bat Out of Hell’ and he realised they knew all the words, at that moment he was officially the coolest father in the world. But then the real world came crashing in and he’d acknowledged that a comprehensive knowledge of the Meat Loaf catalogue was not what an eight- and five-year-old really needed from their father. When Eloise looked at him the way she just had, he felt inconsequential. Like someone his daughter had to endure in their lives because of the inconvenience of having him as a father. He knew they didn’t think or feel like that, at least not consciously, but somehow that made him feel worse because they didn’t know any different. They didn’t know exactly how much he’d stuffed up their little lives. And worse than that, just now Eloise was blaming the whole sorry mess on Catherine.

  This wasn’t what he had planned when he’d first met Catherine twelve years ago. He’d planned to marry her, yes, about twelve minutes after he’d met her. And after half an hour he wanted to have children with her. But not like this. He’d never seen his future panning out like this.

  ‘Well, it’s chucking it down out there,’ Leila said, making everyone laugh. ‘What are we going to do, Nana? Not another puzzle of kittens, please – I’m bored of puzzles of kittens.’

  ‘How about shopping?’ Pam suggested, which always got a roar of approval from the consumerism-starved girls. Their mother wouldn’t like it, which was principally why Pam did.

  ‘Ooh, yes, can I get some nail varnish?’ Leila asked her, her hands clasped to her face in excitement. ‘I really need some.’

  ‘I’d like some new bobbles, please, Nana,’ Eloise added. ‘Some of those floaty sparkly ones with the stars and hearts on that the girls who go to ballet cla
ss wear.’

  ‘OK. Well, you go and wash your hands and brush your hair and we’ll set off in a few minutes.’ Pam smiled at the girls scrambling up the stairs, climbing over each other in a race to the summit.

  ‘Why don’t they go to ballet class?’ she asked Jimmy. ‘Doesn’t she approve of ballet?’

  ‘It’s expensive, and money’s tight,’ Jimmy said.

  Pam spent several silent moments clearly trying to hold back the words that threatened. She failed.

  ‘All night in that … that … boat,’ she huffed at Jimmy, keeping her voice low so that only he would hear her disapproval. ‘That’s no way for two girls their age to live.’

  ‘It was one night,’ Jimmy sighed.

  ‘It’s no way for a man of your age to live,’ Pam added, her voice tight with frustration. ‘It’s a wonder you’re not dead of pneumonia.’

  ‘It’s temporary,’ Jimmy said. ‘I sent off a new demo to record and publishing companies last week. It’s the best material I’ve ever written. It’ll get picked up, you’ll see.’

  Pam sniffed dismissively. ‘Two years ago that boat was temporary. It’s been two years since you and Catherine separated and you’re still stuck living on that leaky old boat, still in the same situation as you were the day you left her. Why don’t you divorce her, James? At least then you can split your assets. It’s not right. Half that house is yours.’

  Jimmy looked at his mum and took a painful breath.

  ‘All of that house is Leila and Eloise’s; it’s their home. It’s about the one steady thing they’ve got. Even if we did get the divorce I wouldn’t have them move out. They need stability, Mum. It’s not their fault that me and Catherine didn’t work out.’

  ‘No, well, if you’d listened to me and never married her in the first place –’

  ‘Then there would be no Leila or Ellie – would you want that?’ Jimmy asked her wearily. If he had a pound for every time he and Pam had had this identical conversation then he’d be living in one of those penthouses in the new warehouse conversion they were building across the canal from his boat. But his mum never tired of saying it. She never tired of being right.

  ‘You need to get a flat of your own,’ she told him. ‘Start afresh, face up to reality. Honestly, James, you’ve lived your life in limbo since you were seventeen years old. When are you going to grow up? Get a proper job, a teaching qualification like we’ve talked about. They’ll take anyone these days. I’d help you. You could live here while you went back to college.’

  ‘No, that is not who I am,’ Jimmy said, gesturing down at himself. ‘This is who I am. I’m a musician, a song writer – a guitarist. This is my life. I’m not going to get a qualification or a “proper job”, as you call it. I love what I do, Mum. I’m going to keep on doing it until I get my break or I die, whichever comes first, and if either one of those things happens while I’m living on a rotting old boat then so be it. But what I’m not going to do is give up. You don’t give up your passion.’

  Pam sat back in her chair so that one chin tucked into another.

  ‘Is that why you’ve never divorced her?’ she asked him, as he knew she would.

  ‘I cheated on her, I left her,’ Jimmy repeated painfully. ‘I was the one who broke the marriage up. I did it. The reason we haven’t got the divorce settled is for the girls. The girls aren’t ready to deal with it yet.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s the girls who aren’t ready?’ Pam asked him, sighing heavily. ‘I don’t know what your father would have said.’ Jimmy looked sideways at his mother.

  ‘He’d support me,’ he said quietly. ‘Because he always told me to follow my dream and not let myself get trapped in a life that didn’t belong to me like he …’ Jimmy trailed off. His dad had died of bowel cancer when Jimmy was seventeen, something that neither he nor his mother had ever quite recovered from. ‘Dad always told me to give it my best shot, never give up. Don’t be a quitter, son – that’s what he said.’

  ‘Well, he should have said, quit while you’re ahead, James. Look, if everyone who ever wanted to be a pop star made it then you wouldn’t be able to walk out your front door without bumping into them. Wanting something to happen is not enough to make it happen. You can chase your dreams when you’re thirteen or twenty-three, but you’re thirty-three now. It’s time you grew up.’ Pam leaned forward so the girls wouldn’t hear her. ‘James, you’ve got two smashing girls. Wouldn’t you like to give them what they want – a few bobbles and some nail varnish, a couple of ballet lessons? It’s not that much to ask.’

  ‘I …’ Jimmy had been about to launch his usual defence when suddenly all his strength left him and he reached out across the table and gripped his mother’s hand. Pam looked up, startled.

  ‘What is it, son?’ she asked.

  ‘I still love her, Mum,’ he said. ‘I love her and I’m going to lose her. After everything I did, two years after we split up, and I’ve only just realised it. I thought I could go on pretending that everything was fine between us, but I can’t. I’m going to lose her and there’s nothing I can do about it now.’

  Pam watched him for a moment, her lipsticked lips pressed into a thin line, and then she covered his wrist with her free hand.

  ‘There’s more out there for you, James, a whole world of nice decent women who’ll treat you the way you deserve to be treated. Who’ll appreciate you like she never has. Look at that lovely Sally Mitchell from the bingo. She’s a lovely girl, steady, does a lovely roast. I could invite her for lunch tomorrow.’

  ‘No, Mum,’ Jim said sadly. ‘It doesn’t matter how nice Sally Mitchell is, or how many other women there are out there who’d be good for me. It’s her I love, it’s her I want. It will always be her.’

  ‘You know I don’t think she is good enough for you,’ Pam said, catching hold of Jimmy’s hand when he tried to withdraw it from her. ‘But I must say, I’m surprised at you, James Ashley.’

  ‘What? Why?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘You’re the boy who spent his entire adult life chasing after one dream and never giving up. You had good A levels. You could have gone to university, could have a good job now doing something in an office with a pension plan. But no, not my Jimmy. My Jimmy never said, “It’s no good, I’m never going to make it. I think I’ll chuck it all in and become an accountant,” worst luck. You never give up, Jimmy, you never do. And yet here you are telling me you’re giving her up without even the ghost of fight. Now, after all these years of devoting yourself to her and your children, you’re rolling over and playing dead while she does as she pleases. That’s not my Jimmy.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Jimmy asked warily, looking sideways at her.

  ‘She’s the mother of your children, and I suppose a good one judging on how those angels have turned out, despite the clothes she puts them in. And you say you’ve only just realised now. But I don’t think that’s true, James. I think the light went out of you when you walked out on her and I’ve been waiting for it to come back on but it hasn’t, so … so just think – what would your father say? What did he say when he was encouraging you to learn the guitar?’ Pam asked him.

  Jimmy looked puzzled for a moment, and then his face cleared.

  ‘He’d say, give it your best shot, never give up, don’t be a quitter. If he was here now he’d tell me I’ve got to fight for her, go back to Farmington and tell her how I feel, tell her how she feels and why we were meant to be together. Why we were never meant to be apart. Tell her she can’t make any choices about what to do next until she knows that I still love her and that I always have. That’s what he’d tell me.’ Jimmy sat up a little straighter and squared his shoulders. ‘That’s what he’d say, wouldn’t he, Mum? He’d tell me to give it one more shot to make sure that I knew, absolutely knew, that I had done my best.’

  Pam nodded, pursing her lips.

  ‘He talked a lot of rubbish, your father,’ she said, but she squeezed his hand as she said it.

  Chapt
er Nineteen

  ‘OH MY GOD, look at the face on you,’ Kirsty said when she opened the door to Alison. She quickly glanced over Alison’s shoulder and then dragged her indoors, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Alison asked, smoothing herself down as she slipped off her coat.

  ‘What was what all about?’ Kirsty looked perplexed, as if she always greeted her visitors by hurling them into the living room. She looked Alison up and down, admiring her straight knee-length claret cord skirt, worn with soft light brown leather heeled boots and topped off with a tightly fitting cream cashmere sweater. ‘Is that your standard reunion with an estranged friend outfit? I’m just asking because it doesn’t seem to provide the option for a cat fight. You’d never get the blood out of that sweater.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ Alison said mirthlessly. ‘Don’t wind me up, Kirsty. I don’t care how much this sweater costs, the way I’m feeling …’ Alison clenched her fists and actually growled.

  ‘What’s up?’ Kirsty asked her, hurriedly pouring Alison a large glass of white wine.

  ‘When we moved here, back when I still thought we could salvage something from the wreckage of our marriage, Marc agreed that Friday afternoons would be family time. The one day of the week when we could guarantee that we would all sit down together and eat as a family. I knew it wouldn’t ever happen and it hasn’t. Yesterday Dominic turned up and went ballistic, just wound Marc up until he blew his top and they both walked out. The girls were there. They got so upset that Gemma asked me if Marc and I were going to divorce.’ Alison looked unhappily at Kirsty. ‘I couldn’t bear to see her any more upset, so I said no, and I meant it. I thought, I don’t care about anything except making my children happy. Oh, I know Dominic wanted me to leave him, but that’s just because he’s fifteen and angry. I thought I could talk him round, explain things to him like an adult. And Marc has seemed so altered since I told him how I felt, as if he is really affected. And I thought maybe this is it, maybe this is enough to get him to really commit to us. I told myself that it didn’t matter that I didn’t love him at the moment because in a few months or years I’d love him again. You see those old couples, don’t you, couples who’ve been married for about a hundred years, and you think, there is no way they have loved each other for all that time. At some point they must have hated each other’s guts. But then they come to a point where they can just rub along. And for the girls’ sakes, for all our sakes, I thought I could do that too.’