After Ever After

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘When?’ His voice is low but full of a fury that I never knew he was capable of. There’s no point in trying to hide anything now.

  ‘Wednesday,’ I say. ‘But …’

  ‘Wednesday! You went with him and then came home and said all that crap to me. You slept with me after him!’ Fergus’s face crumbles. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are. Don’t you remember how often we talked about what infidelity does to a marriage? How both of us knew that if it happened we could never go back? How we told each other it would never happen to us? Never?’

  ‘But Fergus, let me explain what …’

  Fergus shakes his head, chopping his hands through the air angrily to silence me.

  ‘How often?’ he demands.

  ‘Just once,’ I say rushing on. ‘Fergus, listen, please listen to me, it was …’

  He cuts across me, his force of emotion obliterating my voice.

  ‘Don’t tell me it was nothing, that it meant nothing to you, it was a mistake. Don’t tell me – you were unhappy, curious, vengeful.’ His voice is bitterly sarcastic. ‘There is no way back from this, Kitty, no way. None.’ Finally he looks at me. ‘When I came home today it didn’t matter about my job or the house because I had you and Ella, and I realised that wherever you two were that was my home. And then I played that message and now I know all I ever had was an empty sham. I have nothing; you’ve even taken my daughter.’

  He reaches behind a chair and pulls out his overnight bag. ‘I can’t talk to you at the moment, I’m going to Mum and Dad’s. In a few days I’ll be in touch to talk money and access to Ella …’ His voice breaks and his face is wet with tears.

  Galvanised by panic, I scramble to stop him leaving, to make him hear me. ‘But Fergus, I love you,’ I say as he heads for the door and turns, unable to look at me full in the face.

  ‘You just tell Ella that I love her, that I love her so much. You just tell her.’

  ‘I will,’ I say, and he’s gone.

  Caroline was wrong. It doesn’t matter what the truth is or what you think the truth is, sometimes the universe takes hold of its purity and pollutes it, ruins it beyond all recognition until it is something else entirely. My truth is no good to me now, it’s just a reminder of everything I’ve lost.

  ‘Daddy loves you,’ I tell Ella, who’s been sitting at my feet for the last few minutes bashing her stacking cups together. ‘He loves you, so much, and he always will.’ She won’t miss him yet, he’s hardly been in before eight the last few weeks. It’ll be the weekend when she begins to realise he’s not here any more.

  The front door slams and for a moment I think he’s come back and my head lifts … Then I remember. Dora.

  ‘Hi, hiya.’ She plonks her bag on the sofa and drops to the floor next to Ella and balances a cup on her head. ‘Got to tell you, Hemel Hempstead – a bit fuck me new town, but in general not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Pleasantly surprised. Wouldn’t move there but wouldn’t recommend its immediate annihilation either. Fuck, he’s found out about you and the gardener?’ She runs the revelation seamlessly into her sentence, keeping her tone even and calm.

  I nod, stuffing the hem of the T-shirt I’d changed into into my mouth, not wanting Ella to notice that I’m crying again.

  ‘Only he heard Gareth’s version first and now it’s just like I said it would be. He hates me for betraying him.’

  ‘How! What happened?’ Dora maintains a sing-song voice and rebalances the cup on her head, which make Ella laugh nearly as much as when it slides off.

  I tell her about Clare finding out and the message on the answerphone.

  ‘What a scum,’ Dora coos. ‘Jesus, whatever made you want to go with him, Kits?’ If ever I needed Dora the warrior princess it’s now.

  ‘I didn’t want to, not in the end. I mean at first, when he first came here, he was so gentle, Dora. And sexy and funny and he had this kind of powerful … presence. He made me feel like a woman again, instead of just a lump of flesh. Fergus loves me and wanted me, but when Gareth looked at me he just saw a woman, not a mother or a wife. At least, that’s what I thought he saw, but actually he was just seeing something he could never have.’ I formed each word with a careful calm tone. ‘Something he wanted to stamp out.’

  Ella lifts her head and looks at me frowning. She crawls towards me and pulls herself up, asking to be lifted on to my lap. I hold her and attempt a smile as she pats my cheeks with her hands.

  ‘Oh, mate, just let me think of who I know, of what I can do to sort him out. I can arrange it, you know.’ Dora’s stillness is the best indicator of her fury that I’ve ever seen.

  ‘Dora, don’t be foolish, you’d just get yourself into trouble, really.’

  Dora’s dark eyes flash at me. ‘I’m not joking,’ she says, her voice cold.

  ‘I know, and that’s what scares me.’ I manage a weak smile.

  ‘Would he be at Clare’s now?’ she says with quite menace.

  ‘Dora, no, you can’t go round there, you’ll make things a hundred time worse and anyway, he’d snap you in two.’ I plead with her, lost in the strangely surreal conversation where each one of us is trying to keep the emotional charge out of our voice.

  ‘I just want to talk to Clare, set her straight, that’s all,’ Dora says. ‘Then maybe she can talk to Fergus.’

  ‘No,’ I tell her with determination.

  ‘Well Fergus then,’ she begs.

  ‘No! God, no!’

  Dora comes and sits next to me, taking one of Ella’s hands in hers and shaking it.

  ‘Let me do something! Please! You can’t let that … thing ruin what you have. You need Fergus. I need you to have Fergus, you are my family. I can’t let that slip away, Kitty. I don’t think you realise what it means to me.’

  I squeeze her hand and lay my head on her shoulder. ‘You are here and that’s all I need.’

  Dora kisses my forehead and pulls herself up off of the sofa.

  ‘I’m calling Camille, it time to get the musketeers together. The three of us, we’ll sort it out. I promise you.’ She pauses in the door frame. ‘Fergus loves you more than life. This won’t be the end. It can’t be.’

  Camille will be here soon. After Dora called her they spoke for a long time on the phone while I gave Ella her tea, and then Dora came into the kitchen and smiled at me, her kind of gung-ho battle-frenzy smile which means she is making an attempt at looking reassuring. It’s unnerving.

  ‘She says she’ll be here by seven; she’ll phone in sick tomorrow and that gives her five working days off, and then if we need her after that she’ll get a doctor’s note.’

  I breathe a sigh of relief before saying, ‘Hang on, don’t you have to be properly ill to get a doctor’s note? Propping up a terminally tragic friend doesn’t count, does it?’

  Dora rolls her eyes and, taking Ella’s spoon out of my hand, flies it into her mouth with kamikaze special effects.

  ‘You can’t be me for as long as I have been,’ she tells me mid-dive bomb, ‘without getting some official-looking headed notepaper and sick-note pads, duh.’

  ‘Of course!’ I say. ‘Of course, how could be I be so stupid?’

  Dora shrugs and begins to clean Ella up, lifting her out of her chair and wiping her face.

  ‘Can I give her a bath?’ Dora says. ‘I know the basics – not too much hot water, not too much water full stop, can’t leave her alone for longer than a couple of minutes.’ I open my mouth in horror. ‘Joke – just a minute. Joke! Not at all.’

  I press my lips together and cross my arms over my chest.

  ‘One day you can explain this new-found maternal instinct to me. But yes, I guess you can give her a bath, but please be careful. That thing about babies being able to swim instantly – it’s a myth.’

  Dora and Ella giggle complicitly as if they know differently, and she hikes her over her shoulder and heads for the stairs.

  The phone starts ringing in the hallway. I want to kno
w how it happened and when – when this small instrument became so pivotal in the lives of millions. What did they do before the phone? How did people know if their romantic existence was doomed or not? Did whey-faced ladies sit around parlours staring hard at the butler, wishing he’d bring them a note? Did they go to the front door and check the doorbell to make sure it was working? I want it to be Fergus. I want it to be him but I can’t bear it if it is.

  ‘Hello?’ I pick up finally, before the caller rings off. I hold the receiver in both hands.

  ‘Kitty? How are you? What’s going on?’

  It’s Georgina. He can’t have told her what’s going on, otherwise she’d never sound so civilised. I’m trying to think of the best thing to say when I hear the sound of my own voice running on without me.

  ‘He’s got it wrong, Georgina. He thinks I wanted someone else, that I wanted us to break up. But I didn’t want it to happen. I mean, I don’t mean that it was a mistake, I mean, it was a mistake, of course it was. What I mean is, I didn’t want it to happen in the first place. I was angry and I lost my temper, but then things got out of hand and … Does Fergus really hate me? I’d do anything. Anything,’ I say, out of breath and scrambling up everything I want to say in one frantic speech.

  There is a long pause, and I get the feeling that Georgina’s hand is over the receiver and that she’s talking to someone, maybe Fergus. When she does speak again, her voice is measured, not hostile exactly, but not far off.

  ‘He told me you had an affair. I can’t believe it, Kitty, I really can’t. I know we’ve had our differences, but I said to him it didn’t seem like you at all, that you may not have been the best at the practical side of things, but that it was plain that you loved him. He said you confessed it, that there was no doubt, and something about a message? I just wanted to hear it from you myself.’

  I look up the length of the stairs to where Ella’s near-hysterical shrieks are drowning out Dora’s experienced rendition of ‘What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?’

  ‘It wasn’t an affair, Georgina. It was … I don’t know how it happened. I felt trapped and almost beguiled. It happened only once, it was the most revolting and degrading experience of my life. I only thought that if I told Fergus, if it came out, I’d attach some meaning to it, and I didn’t want there to be any. So I tried to forget about it, but, well, everyone knows now. I love Fergus, I love him so much, I’d do anything to make him see that, but at the very least I want the chance to explain it to him.’

  Georgina is silent for a moment.

  ‘He’s asleep now, has been since he got here. Went up to his room and refuses to come out. He was always like this as a boy – the first hint of worry and he’d take to his bed.’ I can hear her nail tapping against the phone. ‘Listen, I’m not sure what you’re telling me, but whatever happened I do believe that you love my son and that he loves you. I’ve had a second chance once, and you deserve one. Come and see him tomorrow. He’ll be a bit calmer and maybe you’ll be able to explain.’

  Tears of gratitude prick at my eyes and I swallow hard.

  ‘I never thought you’d be so kind,’ I say at last.

  Georgina sort of huffs. ‘Neither did I,’ she says. ‘But let me tell you, if it turns out you’re lying to me, things will be quite different. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  As I hang up the phone, feeling faintly buoyed, Dora comes down the stairs with Ella, resplendent in a pair of bear pyjamas complete with a hood, ears and a tail.

  ‘Good God,’ I say. ‘What have you done to my daughter. More to the point, what have you done with my best friend? You might know her – short blonde hair, skinny, incurable cynic and fatalist with disdain for small children?’

  ‘I know!’ Dora coos. ‘It’s so cute, isn’t it? I saw it in the shop in Hemel and it was meant to be a surprise to say thanks for having me. She looks gorgeous, like an ickle bear! Don’t you, an ickle-ickle baby bear!’

  I stare at Dora, wondering if her years of inebriation have covered up the fact that she’s actually Julie Andrews, in which case maybe sobriety isn’t the answer.

  ‘Come on mate, let’s get your milk on and let Mum have a sit-down.’ Dora winks at me as she heads for the kitchen.

  When the doorbell rings I pray that it’s Camille, somehow miraculously early, and hopefully with an Indian takeaway for six. It isn’t – it’s Mr Crawley. He looks at me reproachfully.

  ‘Caroline sent me … for the dress?’ he explains. ‘She said she thought the chances of you remembering to take it to the dry-cleaner’s were pretty slim under the circumstances, and Sketchley’s opens till eight on a Thursday, so she sent me to pick it up.’

  I step aside and let him in, marvelling at Caroline’s single-minded relentlessness, which she seems to apply to every part of her life except her novel.

  ‘How are you, my dear?’ Mr Crawley stops and looks at me so tenderly that I can feel the tears threatening instantly behind my eyes.

  ‘Am I okay? Yep, yep, fine,’ I say stiffly. ‘Did Caroline tell you anything else?’ I challenge him.

  ‘She told me everything else …’ Mr Crawley begins.

  ‘Oh great!’ I fling my hands out in exasperation. ‘That’s fantastic. The whole of bloody Berkhamsted is going to know about it by tomorrow, aren’t they?’

  Mr Crawley shakes his head, catches my angry hands, and holds them tight before nodding to the sitting room.

  ‘Let’s sit down. Now, Caroline won’t tell anyone else. She told me because she knows that you and I are friends, and because, well, she and I are … well, we have an arrangement.’ He smiles a little shyly.

  ‘You and the she-Hitler are an item?’ I exclaim, temporarily diverted.

  ‘Well, close friends at least. We choose to keep it under our hats, though, if you don’t mind. It’s a casual thing, not love’s middle-aged dream.’

  I shrug and muse that I wouldn’t be surprised right now if Colin turned up on the doorstep to tell me he’d been turned straight by Barbara in the prop cupboard.

  ‘So, how are you? Really?’ Mr Crawley asks me again.

  ‘Hysterical and not drunk, unfortunately,’ I say. ‘And oddly all right. You sort of expect the sky to fall in, don’t you, when something disastrous happens, but it hasn’t and I’m still breathing and talking.’ I consider the miracle momentarily before continuing. ‘Fergus’s mum called me just before you came and, well, I think she’s sort of on my side. I mean, she’s not totally against me and she’s suggested I come round tomorrow to talk to him and to try and explain …’ I trail off as I wonder what on earth I will be able to say to change the full force of fate that has landed on me like a ton of cosmic bricks over the last week. ‘It will probably be a futile exercise, but it’s a chink of light to keeping me going,’ I tell him with an improbable smile.

  ‘Good. And now what are you going to do about Gareth?’ Mr Crawley looks awkward. ‘Caroline says you won’t call the police?’

  I shake my head. ‘I know I should, I know I have a responsibility, but I just can’t go to the police because when you say it out loud it sounds like nothing happened! It’s only here.’ I tap the side of my head. ‘It’s only in here where it’s terrible and dreadful. They’ll listen to what I have to say, and that’ll be that. Just like everyone else, they’ll think it’s an affair that went wrong and that I’m making it all up to try and get my husband back.’ Even I think that sometimes, I think bitterly to myself. ‘I’d like to be certain that I was blameless, but I can’t.’

  Mr Crawley puts an arm around my shoulder and I lay my head gratefully on his.

  ‘I understand. Don’t worry about Gareth,’ he says as if he’s arranging a fishing trip. ‘I’ll make sure he won’t hurt you or anyone again.’

  I sit up and look up him. ‘Please don’t tell me you know the Mafia too?’ I plead with him.

  He laughs and squeezes my shoulder reassuringly.

  ‘I don’t know the Mafia,’ he
says. ‘But I do know how to get rid of a rat.’

  Camille rushes into the room like a tropical hurricane, hot and furious.

  ‘Oh baby!’ she squeezes me tight, her warm skin branding me. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Cam, it’s okay, it’s okay,’ I say, disentangling myself from her long arms. ‘I’m okay, really I am.’

  Clearly disbelieving me, Camille grips my face between her hands and tips my head back, examining me like I’m a horse or something and she needs to see my teeth.

  ‘Christ, you look like shit.’ Her diagnosis is typically blunt. ‘I’m so sorry I was late but just as I was about to leave … oh fuck it.’ She clearly thinks better of offering up one of her stock excuses. ‘I’m late because I am the sort of person who can never get their arse into gear. It’s not my fault. It’s genes. Or sheer ineptitude, one or the other.’ She delves into her Valentino bag and brings out a half-bottle of brandy. ‘I bought this because I thought you probably wouldn’t be able to sleep very well.’ She glances at Dora as she returns from putting Ella to bed. ‘So I thought, Dors, that to make it fair I wouldn’t have any either, and we’d just ply her with it until she’s blotto and then I’ll hide it or something, okay? And because Dora told me what happened and because I’m a coward and I don’t know what to say to you, I thought it’d be easier to get you drunk. I’m sorry.’

  I shrug and smile. ‘Fair enough,’ I say.

  Camille makes us mugs of hot chocolate and I only have to smell mine to know that it is at least 31 per cent proof. The first sip burns my mouth and throat, but after the third or fourth sip I feel pleasantly numb and distant. Dora and Camille chatter on about anything they can think of that isn’t about me, and the requisite number of hours before bedtime is allowed slowly – almost painlessly – to pass.

  ‘This is sort of like old times, isn’t it?’ Camille says suddenly, no doubt trying to think of one of my nan’s silver linings. ‘I mean, it’s a long time since we’ve sat around gossiping like this, and I know we’ve never actually lived together, unless you count that holiday cottage in Blackpool, but it sort of feels like we did, doesn’t it?’