After Ever After

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘I’ll drop you at the end of the road, all right? Don’t want anyone asking questions, after all.’ He pulls into the curb. ‘So, how about tomorrow for a rematch. It’s supposed to be fine again.’

  I find myself laughing.

  ‘What?’ Gareth smiles awkwardly. ‘Not that bloody laughing again. I don’t know what’s so funny. You’re lucky I didn’t find it a turn-off.’

  I shake my head, my hand firmly gripping the escape route of the door handle.

  ‘The funny thing is that at no point today have you listened to me.’ I tell him. ‘You want to start an affair with someone who DOES. NOT. WANT. YOU. I didn’t want you to kiss me Gareth. I didn’t want you to grope me and I DIDN’T, I DID NOT, want you to have sex with me. You raped me, Gareth. Do you understand what that word means? None of this is okay. You raped me.’ My breath runs out before I can finish and the last three words become a whisper.

  Gareth just smiles.

  ‘I knew you’d be like this, all stuck up about it. Don’t worry, I understand. You feel guilty for having a bit of fun, and now you’re trying to twist it.’ He nods at the house. ‘You should relax and admit you’re just a married, middle-class whore. You’re like me.’

  Fury then erupts, wiping out my fear and disgust in a single moment.

  ‘Don’t you ever say that!’ I scream in his face, loud enough to fill the empty street with my anger. ‘I am nothing like you, and I swear if you come near me again, ever again, I’ll report you to the police and you’ll be back inside before you know it. You’ve had what you wanted, now just leave me alone.’

  Gareth lunges across me grabbing hold of my fingers, which are latched on to the door handle, and squeezing them tightly.

  ‘Well you’re right about one thing,’ he says, spitting into my face. ‘I did get what I wanted and it wasn’t that good – sex with some slack-cunted bitch never could be, so maybe I’ll just give my attentions to people who appreciate me. But I can’t promise to stay out of your way, Kitty. I mean, there’s the Players tonight and Berkhamsted’s a small town. You never know when I might bump into you. Or your husband.’

  I elbow him in the ribs and push open the door, stumbling out on to the street, gasping for air that he hasn’t breathed.

  As I scramble for my front door, I grip my own wrist to keep my fingers steady and jam the key into the lock, slamming its solid weight hard behind me and turning the deadlock. I run down the hallway and through the kitchen, fumbling through the cutlery draw until at last I find the seldom-used back door key. I lock it and, remembering Gareth’s copy, bolt it too and back away into the hallway, the only place I feel safe, and sit huddled on the stairs.

  ‘Just breathe, Kitty, just breathe,’ I say out loud. ‘After all it wasn’t so bad, not really. I mean it was nothing, hardly anything at all, it was …’ I run out of words and stare blankly ahead. Did that count as infidelity? I think of Fergus and the train I should have been on to see him and I wish with all my heart that I’d just taken the train, that I’d just said no right then and there. We’d have made up by now, Fergus and I, and maybe we’d have come home together and picked up Ella and maybe spent the evening with her and her Sticklebricks when she should have been in bed. All of those predictable, mundane, wonderful things could have happened if only I’d done what I should have in the first place.

  ‘God, he’ll know, he’ll know the moment he sees me,’ I say out loud. I look at the answerphone blinking cheerfully, showing three messages, and before I press play I know exactly what they will say.

  ‘Hey, darling, look, I’m sorry about before. I should never have told Tiff to hold your calls, I was just angry and … well, listen, it’s just gone two and I’m on my way home so I’ll see you in a bit, yeah?’

  I look at my watch. Ten to three. Before the message has even finished I am up the top of stairs and in the bathroom, filling the bath with the hot tap. The rush of the water and the clanking of the ancient pipes almost disguises the sweetly hopeful sound of Fergus’s voice in the following two messages. What have I done?

  I’ve ruined us.

  Chapter Twenty

  I’m still sitting on the toilet looking at the steaming calm surface of the untouched bath when I hear Fergus close the front door behind him, sending the faintest ripple shivering across the surface of the water. It had seemed to me a defeat to get into the bath, an admission of failure. After all, what happened with … him … it was nothing, so why should I feel the need to wash it away, as if a bath could do that anyway?

  ‘Kits?’ Fergus calls up the stairs. ‘Where’s my two best girls?’

  I test my dry lips with my tongue and splash a little of the water over my tear-stained, rash-reddened face.

  ‘Ella’s at Clare’s and I’m up here,’ I call out at last, listening to each note of my voice for any nuances that would give away anything that had happened in the vacuum of this morning.

  Fergus takes the stairs two at a time, pausing to knock before pushing open the bathroom door.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ he says. ‘Were you just getting in?’ He catches my swollen eyes and reddened nose then sinks to his knees beside me – he thinks that he’s done this to me.

  ‘Oh God, darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for behaving like such a shit, you’ve been beating yourself up over nothing and I didn’t even have the good grace to talk to you when you tried to make up. I’m so sorry.’ He closes his arms around my neck and I rest my head on his shoulder, inhaling his presence as if it’s a drug, a tranquilliser.

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ I say, finding my voice cracked and strained. ‘Everything, everything that happened was my fault.’

  Fergus moves away from me, his hand still resting on my shoulder, and examines my face.

  ‘No, you’re wrong. It’s not your fault, not all of it. It’s not mine either, really. If it’s anything, you can blame it on how much we love each other.’ He drops his hands and settles back against the closed bathroom door, and for the first time I notice he looks exhausted.

  ‘There have been redundancies at work, Kits. Not today, I mean – about two months ago the first wave went and last week another twenty. Voluntary, most of them, and a few new people, but the time is coming when it might be me. It’s stupid really. I mean, if anyone should know what a precarious business I’m in it’s me. If the markets are suffering, so are my clients. If my clients are suffering, they don’t want to spend thousands on new IT systems that might not pay off for months or even years. I’ve been working all these hours trying to pick up the business that’s going to keep my name on the pay roll, and my salary packet up to what we’re used to.’

  Fergus’s shoulders slump and in front of my eyes he seems to deflate, as if months of private worry and stress-fuelled adrenalin have been the only thing maintaining his three dimensions.

  ‘But it hasn’t worked,’ he continues, almost languorously. ‘I’ve been running to stand still, to go backwards even. If I keep earning at the rate I am today, we’ll be twenty thousand worse off at the end of this year than last. And I’m not even sure I can keep that up.’ He lifts his head, holding his hair off of his forehead, and I can see the wash of tears brightening the blue of his eyes. ‘When I met you I wanted everything that was you, all of you, all to myself, all at once. I thought that was how it was supposed to be. I thought that was all that we needed, to be together. I don’t know, Kitty, maybe we did get married too soon, maybe it would have been better if Ella had come along two or three years later. But one thing I do know, Kitty, is that I still love you. It doesn’t matter what may come, you and Ella are still everything to me. It’s just that by trying to rescue you I’ve pushed you to the brink. I realise that now, and I’m sorry, and, oh God, Kitty … please don’t leave me.’

  I sink on to the floor and hold him close, pinching my eyes tight shut. I should tell him now, if I’m going to. I should tell him while we’re alone in this moment, when for the first time in our relationship it is okay to be wr
ong or have doubts, where everything doesn’t have to be a textbook fairy tale to be acceptable. I should tell him that I think I’ve been raped and why I let it happen. But I can’t, because if I do it will sweep away all the bridges he’s just begun to build for ever. I don’t want to lie to him, but I can’t tell him, I can’t. Not now. It would kill him.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I say, sniffing loudly. ‘I mean, what would be the point of going anywhere without you?’

  Fergus half smiles and tips his head back to look at me. ‘We can sort out money,’ I say. ‘We’ve still got a lot more than most people, and if we cut back on loads of things it’ll be fine. I can begin to work, and I should make up the shortfall even if I work locally and, well,’ I take his hands in mine, ‘maybe we could sell the house? It’s not as if the three of us need all this … emptiness?’ I say hopefully.

  Fergus cups my face in his hands.

  ‘Darling, whatever happens we won’t have to sell your house, not your home.’

  I hold his eye for a moment and make the decision to be honest with him about one thing at least.

  ‘I hate this house,’ I say, avoiding his eye.

  Fergus’s hand drops away from me like a dead weight.

  ‘But I thought …?’ he begins, and I press the tips of my fingers to his lips.

  ‘I know you did. That day you brought me down here and told me we were buying it I tried to believe it when you said it was perfect for us, a dream house – the perfect setting for our family. But it’s your dream, Fergus, and everything in it is yours, your choice, your taste. To be perfectly honest, I’ve always felt as if I’ve been intruding here. And anyway, it’s far too big and it’s too grand. Even with all the work Mr Crawley’s done to it and, and the garden, I still don’t love it – I actually hate it.’ I glance over at the bath, now full of tepid water. ‘When I was sitting waiting for you to come home, I realised that during the year I’ve been here I’ve lived practically my whole life in this house – it’s become like a mausoleum. I know that sounds dramatic, but I’d like somewhere smaller, just three bedrooms and a small garden that I can make nice for Ella on my own and, well, all the renovation work should have put thousands on the price. We could decrease the mortgage, ease things a little bit.’

  Fergus just shakes his head, his face confused and hurt.

  ‘I know you wanted this to be perfect. We both wanted that,’ I say, mirroring his earlier gesture by taking his face in my hands. ‘Not just the house, but our marriage, our lives together, our baby, us. But life isn’t perfect, Fergus, not even when you’re lucky enough to love the person you’re married too. And I do love you, more now than ever.’

  Our arms close around each other and our bodies interlock on the blue and white tiled floor of the Victorian bathroom and both of us weep – for different reasons, perhaps, but together. Together, as a partnership, at last.

  My nan always used to say that every cloud has a silver lining. I used to lie on the windowsill of her living room staring up at the passing clouds and wonder where it was, this silver lining, and what it was made of. Was it like the purple lining in my duffle coat, for example? One rainy day I asked Nan to show me the lining and she laughed and led me to the window. The sky was heavy and grey, brushing the tops of the surrounding high-rises with their cumbersome girths, but no silver lining was to be seen. Nan sat me on her knee and told me about when she and Granddad used to run a pub in Tottenham and the cat they used to have that was as big as a dog and twice as fierce. Then we played I Spy, and then, just as Nan told me I had to get down to save her legs, it happened. The sun blossomed through the rain and for a second gilded the sky with its silver light.

  ‘There you go,’ Nan said. ‘Silver lining. What did I tell you – look, you can almost see enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers!’

  She’d bustled off to the kitchen then, leaving me to puzzle over how you could possibly make trousers out of the sky?

  After a while, Fergus and I settle in each other’s arms on the bathroom floor.

  ‘They never tell you about this bit, do they?’ Fergus says. I feel his smile against my forehead.

  ‘They? Who do you mean?’ I ask him.

  ‘You know – they, the people who have constructed this whole myth about fairy-tale endings and say that the getting to the wedding bit is the bit that’s hard and that everything else is plain sailing. There’s no version of Cinderella where a few weeks later Prince Charming gets deposed and they have to go and live in a council house in never-never land is there?’

  I manage a smile and sit up.

  ‘I think you’re getting your fairy tales mixed up. But you’re right, and I sort of think it’s a good thing in a way.’ Fergus raises an eyebrow, clearly too tired to question me verbally. ‘Well, I mean, yes, you’re right, we all need to believe we should be a certain way – thin, successful in a career, excellent at fellatio – and we all suspect that if we are going to be happy things have to turn out a certain way. Married, house, kids, etc. Well, I know that our journey together isn’t a walk in the park, but I do still believe in our happy ending, because it’s now and tomorrow and … for ever and a day. The trick is to make sure it’s every day and not to keep waiting for it to arrive when it might never come.’

  I reach over the bath and pull out the plug.

  ‘I want Ella to be optimistic about life – realistic, yes, but optimistic too. I’m going to read her Cinderella when she’s big enough, but with a short paragraph on after ever after appended.’

  As the last of the cold water glugs noisily down the drain I restop the plug and turn the hot water back on again.

  ‘I think I will have a bath after all, if you don’t mind.’ I smile at Fergus. ‘After all, Clare’s got Ella for another hour or so, so if you like you could join me?’ I’m shaking at the thought of him touching me, but I know that I need it. I know that I need this to wipe out the memory of the morning, even if only for a short time.

  Fergus’s eyes light up as steam begins to cloud the mirror and the windows, frosting them with a silver mist. Smiling and silent, we undress each other, our eyes fixed on each other until Fergus pulls me hard into the length of his body and kisses me, so sweetly that just the faintest touch of his lips washes me cleaner than an ocean full of water ever could.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The hum of the Players buzzes in the wood-panelled hallway of the town hall before I even push open the double door into what our esteemed director calls the auditorium and most of the rest of us would call a rather large hall with a makeshift stage. I scan the crowd for Mr Crawley as I enter, and then Clare, who didn’t need Fergus to baby sit after all tonight, but at first glance I can’t see either one of them. At the back of the hall, though, through the literally vibrating throng of the cast, I can see the freshly painted scenery stacked neatly against the wall. My mouth feels suddenly dry and my heart races, but I take a glass of red wine from the trestle table in the corner and take a long draught, despite the protest of my nauseous empty stomach. Before the image can materialise I pinch it forcibly out of my mind’s eye.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I say quietly to myself. ‘He is nothing. I’m just going to forget it ever happened. Nothing happened.’

  I wait until my heart gradually begins to slow to a normal beat and until I breathe again. The bruises, the shock, the anger are all still there just below the surface of my skin, but I know that if I am to have any chance of escaping Gareth once and for all, no one can know what really happened to me. I have to make it go away, pretend that it never happened. At last, something that I know I’m good at.

  I’ve tried, I really have tried not to come tonight, but Fergus was determined that I should.

  ‘You love it, why wouldn’t you go?’ he’d said as he’d dried my hair gently with a towel. ‘It’s the one thing I’ve seen you do that makes you laugh – besides Ella, that is – and what’s more it’s free! I demand you go. I’ll pick up Ella from C
lare’s and tell her she can meet you there. Okay, Calamity?’

  He was so sweetly pleased with himself that I could hardly refuse him, so I came. And on the short walk into town I kept repeating to myself, ‘He’s nothing. What happened was nothing. Nothing happened,’ until I was certain that my head knew the truth as well as my heart did.

  Intuitively I knew that Gareth would not come here tonight. It would be too obvious, not his style at all really, but even so just the thought of him swaggering into the room to the eager ministration of a dozen or so lonely ladies with long-untended gardens makes my heart lurch and stomach contract until my mantra doesn’t work any more.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Mr Crawley’s hand on my shoulder seems to instantly steady me and I lean into it, just slightly.

  ‘Me? I’m fine, much better, I mean, after my cold.’ I remember slightly too late my drunken excuses to him on the phone. He scrutinises me closely and I resist the temptation to close my eyes against his examination.

  ‘Kitty,’ he begins quietly. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’

  I laugh heartily. ‘You know me too well!’ I giggle stupidly. ‘A glass of wine would be lovely. Thanks ever so.’ Mr Crawley presses his lips together but seems to decide to let the moment pass and disappears instantly into the crowd.

  Eager to attach myself to a group I see Barbara talking animatedly to Bill, her shiny bob jiggling with agitation as she rises repeatedly on to her toes in an excited discussion.