Slowly Catherine lifted her head, raking her hair off her face with her fingers. All trace of colour had drained from her cheeks and her expression was taut.
‘I … I don’t know what you want me to do,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you are saying all of this to me now, now, Jimmy, when things are finally at peace between us. Is it because of Marc? Is it because suddenly he’s back on the scene and you’ve decided to get protective of me? Jimmy, this is typical you. You think you love me but you don’t, not really. You care about me, you’re worried about what I might do, and you love your children and you’d like them to be happy. You’re thirty-three and the band isn’t taking off, maybe it never will do. You’re feeling low, and maybe all of those things muddled up inside you make you think that you love me, but you don’t. This is just a phase. It will pass.’
‘It won’t pass,’ Jimmy said urgently. ‘Yes, it is all of those things you said, but it’s more than that. I can’t stand to see you unhappy. I can’t stand seeing you and not being able to touch you. When I make you smile I feel like the king of the world, like I am someone important, and when I piss you off I want to punch myself in the face.’
‘Jimmy, stop it,’ Catherine pleaded with him urgently. ‘Don’t say all this, don’t make things difficult between us again. You and me being together that way is in the past. Finally, finally I can deal with that. I can accept it. We’ve made peace for us and for the children. I don’t want to rake it up again, Jimmy. I don’t want to –’
‘But don’t you see, you don’t have to accept it,’ Jimmy said, grabbing her hands in his. ‘You don’t have to. Because I love you and I think that finally you could love me if only you’d let yourself. We can be together again. After all, we’re still married. I could move back in tomorrow and it would be as if the last two years had never happened.’
Sharply Catherine pulled her hands out of his.
‘The last two years happened, Jimmy,’ she said, an edge of anger flashing on the blade of her voice. ‘Donna Clarke in the ladies’ loos happened. Me trying to get used to the idea that the man who begged me from one month to the next for almost a whole year to marry him, who promised me that he loved me and he would never let me down, and kept on promising until I believed him, just ripped all of those promises and that marriage to shreds and in a matter of minutes, happened.’ Catherine stopped, catching the rise in her voice, and closed her eyes for a second as she steadied herself. ‘You say you still love me, but I don’t think you do. And even if you did, even if you were as stupid and as arrogant as to think that after everything you’ve put me and your children through, you can just waltz back in here and pick up where you left off, well, I don’t love you. I got over you, Jimmy. It happened.’
Jimmy didn’t move, he didn’t breathe. He felt caught in that moment, afraid to break it because the very next second and every second that would ever follow it seemed pointless to him if she didn’t feel the same way.
‘We get on OK, don’t we?’ Catherine asked him, levelling her voice. ‘I like you being around. The girls need you around. So please let’s just both go to bed and forget we ever had this conversation. Let’s wake up in the morning, you on the boat and me here with our daughters, and carry on as if nothing has happened. Please, Jimmy.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Jimmy said, standing slowly. ‘I can’t because I’ve said it now, it’s out there, and I can’t hide it or lie about it any more. I can’t go back to the way things were before tonight.’ He paused, looking around him as if he didn’t recognise where he was any more. ‘Look, I knew you might not feel the same, I knew that maybe I had got it wrong but for a few seconds when I was holding you just then it felt so right, so perfect, Cat. And I thought … I thought I could sense you felt the same way.’
‘But you didn’t sense that,’ Catherine said doggedly. ‘I don’t feel that way about you.’
‘Right.’ Jimmy stood up straight and squared his shoulders, his voice taut and distant when he said, ‘I think I’ll catch the late train up to town. See my mates about that session work, after all. You’ve got the situation covered here. And besides, I could really do with the money and you never know what it might lead to.’
‘Jimmy, don’t,’ Catherine stood up. ‘Don’t go because of this. Please.’
‘You’re not being fair to me, Cat,’ Jimmy said. ‘You don’t want me, but you want me to stay. And I can’t live like that any more. I can’t hang around and be your friend and your babysitter, because I need more. So I have to go for a bit. Tell the girls I’ll call them and I’ll see them soon, but right now I have to go.’ He paused. ‘I can’t be around you now.’
‘Please, Jimmy, don’t go like this –’ Catherine began.
‘Don’t!’ Jimmy raised his voice, making Catherine start a little. ‘Don’t ask me to stay if you don’t feel the same. It’s not fair. You must see that.’
Catherine reached out a hesitant hand and touched his face. ‘Take care up there,’ she said.
‘You know me,’ Jimmy said, with a twist of a smile. ‘It’s London that had better take care.’ He leaned forward and kissed her just barely on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you.’
‘See you,’ Catherine said, standing perfectly still in the middle of the room.
Softly, slowly Jimmy closed the front door behind him so as not to wake the girls. He headed for the boat. He should just about have enough time to pick up his guitar and catch the late train into town.
After that he had no idea what he was going to do.
Alison sat down opposite Marc at the table and waited for him to say something. When he had arrived back with Dominic, the boy had run upstairs and slammed his bedroom door shut, and Marc had gone into the kitchen, opened a bottle of beer, which he had not taken a sip from, and sat at the kitchen table. That was three hours ago.
Alison had stood looking up the stairs towards Dom’s room and then back at the kitchen towards Marc. After a moment’s thought she’d started up the stairs and as she reached the top Amy’s door opened, spilling a wedge of rose-tinted lamplight onto the landing.
‘Is he back, Mummy?’ Gemma asked her as she and her sister appeared in the doorway. They must have been in there together, listening, waiting to hear something. Alison had been so frantic phoning all of Dom’s friends that she hadn’t given them a thought until Dom was back. Now she kneeled and held her arms out to them.
‘Yes,’ Alison said, as she gathered up her girls. ‘He’s back and he’s absolutely fine. Hey, listen, I’ll make you some tea soon. What would you like as a Sunday treat? Beans on toast with Marmite, followed by chocolate ice cream?’
‘Can we see him?’ Amy asked her, padding towards Dominic’s bedroom door at the end of the corridor.
‘Of course you can,’ Alison said, a lot less certain about Dominic’s state of mind than she sounded.
The three of them stood outside his door and Alison knocked.
‘Dom? It’s Mum, Gemma and Amy,’ she called out, careful to alert him to the presence of his sisters. ‘Can we come in?’
A moment passed and then Dominic opened the door.
‘I was going to have a shower,’ he said, with a rueful smile. ‘I smell a bit. Of countryside. It’s rank.’
He and Alison looked at each other across the top of the girls’ heads.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Dom said.
‘We missed you!’ Amy said, before Alison could speak, running into him so hard that he staggered back a couple of paces. Dominic was soon engulfed by both sisters.
‘Daddy took us out looking for you in the car in the dark,’ Gemma told him. ‘It was scary, but we didn’t find you.’
‘Daddy said you would be fine, but we were worried. And I said you should have had the stranger danger class at school,’ Amy said, ‘like me.’
‘Dad was really worried,’ Gemma told Dom carefully. ‘He stayed up all night waiting for you. We tried to, but we fell asleep.’
‘Lightweights,’ Dom said
, ruffling their hair. ‘I’m sorry, Gems. I’m sorry, Muffin, OK?’
‘You do rather stink actually,’ Gemma said, wrinkling up her nose fastidiously.
‘You do. You stink of smelly socks and cow poo!’ Amy said giggling, as Dominic tickled her.
‘Right then,’ Alison said. ‘I think we’d better let your brother have his shower, don’t you?’ She bundled the girls out of the room. ‘Go down and think about what you want for tea. I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘OK, Mummy!’ the girls called as they raced down the stairs.
‘You look like shit,’ Dominic said. ‘Were you up all night too?’
‘Actually,’ Alison started slowly, ‘I stayed with a friend last night. I didn’t know you’d gone until this afternoon because my phone had gone dead. But if I had known I would have been up all night worrying myself sick, just like your father was. What were you thinking, Dom? Were you trying to punish him by putting yourself in danger?’
‘Mum, don’t start defending him,’ Dominic said wearily, sitting down heavily on his bed.
‘I’m not defending him. I’m just asking you to think about what you did, about how bloody stupid you were.’
‘Mr Ashley reckons I hate Dad so much because I love him,’ Dom said, picking up his towel.
Alison thought for a moment. She had been both intrigued and relieved when she found out that the first adult Dom had gone to was Jimmy. He’d only known him properly for a few weeks and yet he felt he could turn to him about his father. It was good that there was someone in his life he felt that way about, but it broke her heart that it wasn’t Marc.
‘Maybe he’s right about that,’ she suggested tentatively.
‘I thought Dad was going to bollock me, rip me to shreds when he picked me up but he didn’t say anything, not a word,’ Dom said. ‘It was like I was invisible.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t know what to say,’ Alison said, ‘or how to say it.’
She took a step closer to her son and put her hands on his shoulders, chasing his constantly averting gaze until she finally made eye contact with him.
‘You’re fifteen, Dom,’ she said. ‘I know you feel like you’re invincible but anything could have happened to you out there, anything.’
‘I know,’ Dom said. ‘I didn’t mean to sleep rough all night. It was shit and freezing fucking cold. I was going to ask Mr Ashley if I could stay with him, but his boat wasn’t there.’
‘You could have been mugged, beaten up … murdered, even,’ Alison said, feeling her voice vibrate like a drum. ‘Don’t ever do that again, not ever. I probably should have come home last night, I should have been there for you. But I promise you from now on I always will be, so no matter how angry you feel or how hurt, never ever run away from me like that again. Promise me? I couldn’t stand for anything to happen to you.’
‘I won’t do it again,’ Dominic said, dropping his head. ‘I don’t know how you ran away for good when you were seventeen, Mum. It was bloody horrible.’
‘It was bloody horrible for me too,’ Alison said. ‘But I had your dad and he looked after me.’
‘Are you really going to stay with Dad?’ Dom asked.
Alison was silent for a long moment. ‘I need to talk to your dad before I talk to anyone else about that, OK? But I’m going to need you a lot over the next few weeks, Dom. I’m going to need you to support me and the girls, OK?’
‘I will,’ he promised her, dipping his head, mumbling a barely audible, ‘Love you, Mum’ into his T-shirt.
‘So what do you want to do now?’ Alison asked him. ‘Do you want to talk about it? Tell me what happened yesterday with you and Dad? What it was like out there all night?’
‘Honestly?’ Dom said, looking back up at her, his eyes filling with tears. ‘I want to cry.’
The girls had eaten Sunday tea, a feast of sausage and beans, around Marc, chattering away to him while he sat with that same flat and warm bottle of beer at the table, nodding and smiling. He wasn’t the same as he usually was when he was with them, revelling in their attention. He was reserved and withdrawn. Alison thought he seemed almost bruised.
Still touched by guilt that she had been absent last night she bathed both the girls together and spent an extra long time reading them each their favourite story, making sure that each one was tucked in their separate rooms, night-lights on and favourite toys tucked under arms. As she brushed Gemma’s hair back from her forehead and kissed the top of her nose, Gemma put her hand on her wrist.
‘Love you, Mummy,’ she said.
‘I love you too, darling,’ Alison replied.
Next she walked along the corridor to Dominic’s room where he was lying in his bed in a T-shirt and jogging bottoms, his iPod plugs in his ears, strumming the tune he was listening to on his guitar. He sat up when he saw Alison was there, pulling the earpieces out.
‘You must be starving,’ Alison said. ‘Why don’t you come down and I’ll make you something. I’ve got sausages.’
‘Is he down there?’ Dominic asked her. Alison thought about her husband sitting at the kitchen table.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s been sitting downstairs thinking since you got back. I think he’s waiting to talk to you – and I mean talk, not shout. Come down and eat with us. Please, Dom.’
Dominic hesitated. ‘OK,’ he said eventually, steeling himself to his decision by squaring his shoulders and brushing his hair off his face. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘Thank you,’ Alison said.
Just as she was leaving Dominic’s room, she noticed Amy’s door being pushed closed again. Wondering if she’d got up to go to the loo, Alison carefully pushed Amy’s door open to check she was OK.
She found that both her daughters were curled up together in the same bed.
‘She can’t sleep without me,’ Gemma explained, sitting up.
‘I can’t, Mama,’ Amy told her. ‘Please can she stay?’
‘Otherwise she won’t sleep and it’s school tomorrow,’ Gemma said. ‘I can sleep fine on my own, but you know what Amy’s like. She’ll only worry. Besides, I don’t mind looking after her, Mummy.’
Alison crossed the room and pulled the cover across both of them, tucking them in.
‘Of course you can stay here,’ she said, kissing both of them again. ‘And, if you like, tomorrow we can move both your beds into one room so you don’t have such a squash and a squeeze.’
‘Thank you, Mummy,’ Gemma and Amy said together.
‘Girls,’ Alison started, ‘I’m sorry that everything is so up and down at the moment. It will settle down one way or another soon, I promise you.’
‘We know, Mummy,’ Amy said on a yawn. ‘We know.’
When Alison got downstairs Dom was already in the kitchen hovering around the fridge in his bare feet and jogging bottoms. Marc was still sitting at the table, the two of them ignoring each other as if they were standing in parallel universes where the other one simply did not exist.
‘Right then,’ Alison said, determined to draw their realities together, ‘sausages and beans all round because I can’t be bothered to make anything more demanding than that.’ She glanced at Dom. ‘Sit down.’
Warily Dominic sat down at the table at the furthest possible position from Marc. Marc did not look at him.
‘Do you want another beer?’ Alison asked him, hoping to break his silence. ‘That one’s sat there for hours.’
Marc looked up at her, ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m fine really.’
As Alison set the food down in front of them and also sat down, she prepared herself; even hoped for another silent meal. This strange shuttered version of her husband sitting just to her right was better at least than the shouting and threatening one that had emerged recently. It seemed to Alison that both Marc and Dom appeared surprised by what last night had turned into for both of them. And perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps silent reflection was exactly what they needed.
But Alison had not f
inished chewing her first mouthful when Marc spoke.
‘Dom,’ he said, looking at his son at last and making the boy start. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you the way I did last night. And I shouldn’t have threatened you like I did on Friday. I’m sorry.’
Dom stared at his plate, holding his knife and fork in each hand as if he were afraid to move.
‘I haven’t got an excuse or even a good reason really,’ Marc continued. ‘I never had a dad. I never knew who he was or what he was like, don’t have a single memory of him. Not even a photo. I hardly knew my mum either, to be honest. She was out of my life by the time I was three. I know that you know all of this, I know I’ve told you a hundred times how I pulled myself up by my boot strings and created myself from nothing. But that’s not the truth, is it? I didn’t come out of nothing. Probably somewhere out there still are the man and the woman that made me. And I suppose I might take after them, I don’t know. Like I don’t know sometimes how to be a dad, especially now. Especially now that you are becoming a young man yourself. It was easier when you were little, when you thought I was the best thing since sliced bread. But now you know that I’m not perfect. You’ve judged me and I failed you, Dom, and I’m sorry but I love you, son, and somehow I’m going to put this right between us. I think I’m going to need your help, though.’
Alison found that she was holding her breath as Dominic looked across the table at Marc. ‘And what about what you’ve done to Mum?’ Dominic asked him. ‘Are you sorry about that too?’
The Accidental Wife Page 35
