“That’s what I thought,” Kirsty said, pulling Catherine into a sitting position. “We take baby steps, Catherine, baby steps. Now, where’s your razor?”
When Alison got home from the supermarket, her reluctant son in tow, Marc was in the kitchen with the girls. Their heads were bent over the drawings they were creating, felt tips fanned out across the marble counter. As she entered, Rosie skipped around her feet in greeting before sticking her head in the bags that Alison set on the floor.
“This dog is a hooligan,” she said, picking the bags up once again and putting them on the countertop. “You can’t take your eyes off of her.”
Alison looked at her husband leaning over the girls as they colored. The last sixteen years hadn’t been as kind to him as they had to Jimmy. Marc had filled out too, but it was a slight paunch and not muscle that had materialized underneath his shirt. And his hair had receded quite considerably, not that either of them ever mentioned it.
Of course the change in his appearance wouldn’t matter if she could love him again. If things were right between her and Marc, it wouldn’t matter that she had never had the life she’d dreamed of as a girl, never got to university or had a job of her own or really had any part of herself that wasn’t wholly dependent on Marc or their children. Take her away from her family and she might as well not exist, she had made such a little mark on the world.
“This is nice!” Amy said happily as she kissed Alison on the cheek. “We’re all here in our new big house.”
“All right, Muffin.” Dom greeted his little sister with the first hint of a smile that Alison had seen since she’d announced to him he was helping her do the food shopping for the weekend. “How was school today?”
“It was okay today,” Amy said. “There’s this one nice girl I like.”
“I had the best time,” Gemma told him, glancing up from her coloring. “My teacher is lovely and all the girls like me. Eloise is going to be my best friend, though, because she understands me.”
“Oh, does she now?” Marc said, handing Alison a cup of tea. “Eloise must be a very clever girl.”
“She is and she’s the tallest in our class,” Gemma said. “She’s the tallest and I’m the prettiest and we’re both clever, so we can’t fail.”
“Except in modesty exams,” Dom said, opening the fridge door, looking at the remaining shopping bags at his feet, and closing the door again.
Alison looked at her entire family gathered under one roof, her successful husband who made cups of tea unbidden, her musical son and her two smiling daughters. For a few rare minutes during which nobody was shouting, lying, or crying she could pretend that she had it all. If any other woman was to see her life laid out in a magazine or on a TV show, then chances were she’d feel envious. Three lovely children, a handsome husband who provided for them, a wonderful new home fitted with every luxury. But the one thing Alison didn’t have, the one essential ingredient that would enable her to enjoy all of this perfection, was a sense of herself. Somewhere between running away at the age of seventeen and now, she had lost the woman she had always meant to become, and her waning feelings for Marc threw the realization into sharp relief. Despite all the outward trappings of a happy and successful life, Alison was not happy, she was not fulfilled, and worst of all she was not herself.
“How nice, all of us will be in for dinner tonight!” she said brightly, determined to conjure happiness out of so many good things.
“Ah,” Marc said, his tone immediately dashing her attempt.
Alison looked at him and realized where the cup of tea had come from. It was a rather low-rent peace offering. “You said you’d be in tonight. It’s Friday night, Marc. Remember, you said you’d always be home by four every Friday. That was part of our deal. Family time.”
“You sound so surprised,” Dominic said sarcastically.
“I know I did and it will be usually,” Marc said, ignoring his son’s comment, causing the boy to slam out of the room, banging the door behind him. “But it’s the lads I’ve taken on at the showroom. They want to take me out for a drink and I think I need to go. It’s a team-building thing, Al. They’re young blokes, they need a bit of direction. It’ll just be a few drinks at some local pub. I’ll be back by ten at the latest.”
“Mum, look at this.” Gemma held up her drawing. “This is me and Rosie winning The Crufts Dog Show. This is the big silver trophy. I’m going to teach her to sit and stay this weekend. She’s going to be brilliant at it.”
“That’s beautiful, darling,” Alison said, not taking her eyes off of Marc’s face.
“But you’re not looking!” Gemma protested, thrusting the picture in front of her. For a second Alison took in the bright blue sky, huge smiling sun, and a portrait of Rosie surrounded by deliriously happy smiling stick people. That was how Gemma saw her family. Not like this. Why couldn’t she be there, Alison wondered, in the space between the sky and the grass, where the mother and father always held hands?
“Al.” Marc offered her a conciliatory smile. “Look, its just a one-time thing, I promise you. And you know I need to network, meet as many people as I can before the party next week, which reminds me, have you sent your invites out?”
Alison noticed his deft change of subject but wearily decided to ignore it, taking a sip of tea instead. She didn’t want the kids to witness another fight. They were so rarely all together that even if it was only for a few minutes, she wanted that time to be happy.
“Well, I don’t exactly know anyone yet.” She thought of Jimmy Ashley. “So I left my invites with this woman named Lois at the school and told her to invite the PTA, and I’ve asked the girls’ teachers and the head. Anyway, how many people are coming to this party, Marc?”
“Couple of hundred, give or take,” Marc said, bending over to help Amy color in the remainder of her smiling, benevolent sun.
“And when do you have to confirm final numbers for the caterers?” Alison asked.
“The caterers?” Marc looked up at her sharply.
“You know, the people you found to cater the party at such short notice?”
Marc looked thoughtful, then went back to coloring studiously while Alison began to feel her insides simmer.
“I sort of thought you’d be doing that,” he said.
“You thought I’d be making sandwiches for two hundred people?” Alison asked him. “Me?”
“I sort of thought so,” Marc said, winking at Gemma, which made her giggle.
“Marc!” Alison exclaimed. “I just can’t believe that after everything …” She trailed off, unable to detail exactly what “everything” was.
“What I meant,” Marc added hastily, “is I thought you’d find the caterers. That’s the sort of thing you usually do, isn’t it?”
“You said all I had to do was send invitations, open my house to the whole of Farmington, and look glamorous. You didn’t say anything about catering. And no, I don’t usually organize it, usually your PA organizes it, or have you forgotten?”
A brief flash of the Christmas party burned across Alison’s eyes and she knew that Marc had seen it too.
They stared at each other for a beat of silence.
“Well, look, darling,” Marc said, choosing to brush the bad memory aside like he always did. “How about you find a caterer—there’s still over a week to go, after all. Don’t worry about the cost—however much it takes.”
“It will be ‘however much it takes’ to find a caterer at this short notice, and if I do end up making two hundred egg mayonnaise sandwiches, there will never be an upper limit on how much it’s going to cost you!”
At last Marc got up and came around the table. He put his arms round her waist, and at almost exactly her height, he looked straight into her eyes.
“I messed up,” he said frankly. “I forgot something huge and big and I tried to pass the buck on to you. Balloons I remembered, fairy lights and music. I’ve ordered the champagne, the wine, and the beer. But I forgo
t food and you remembered it. Which is why I need you, Al. Remember that kid I was when we met? Working nights for the railways? I’d still be doing it now if I hadn’t found you. And if you can turn me from that kid into this man, the man who is lucky enough to be your husband, then you can sort out the catering for the party, can’t you?”
“Yes, I can,” Alison said despite herself. The trouble was he was right. She knew him inside out, just like he knew her. In the end it always came back to this. They’d found each other when they were very young and they had clung to each other from that moment on, riding their choices with the conviction of those who are determined never to be wrong. She’d made her bed a long time ago, and now who was she to complain that it wasn’t comfortable anymore?
“You know I love you, don’t you?” Marc asked her finally.
Alison made herself look at him. “I do,” she conceded, because he did love her, albeit imperfectly.
“Then that’s all that matters, right?” he asked her.
Not all that matters, Alison thought. He never asked her if she loved him back.
“Good, well, I’ll be back by ten. Make sure you wait up for me, we’ve still got a lot of rooms to christen.”
“You’re going now? It’s not even six o’clock.”
“There’s some curry house they want to take me to first, I’d much rather be eating with you, but …” Marc shrugged.
“What can he do?” Gemma finished for him with a copycat shrug.
Alison wasn’t surprised. It was Marc’s favorite phrase, after all.
“Has he looked at me yet?” Kirsty asked Catherine in a whisper as they stood next to the bar in the Three Bells.
It was remarkable really, Catherine thought. Kirsty had stood right next to Steve or Sam at the bar while ordering the drinks, had brushed past him—breasts first—on the way to the ladies’ room, and had been laughing and tossing her hair at full capacity ever since in a bid to get his attention, but he hadn’t actually looked her way once.
“He might be gay,” Catherine ventured. “Or maybe have tunnel vision syndrome and slight deafness in both ears, because that is the only way he would not be able to notice you. You are many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.”
“He’s not gay,” Kirsty said firmly. “He used to go out with a pole dancer and anyway, Catherine, I’m ashamed of you conforming to such an obvious stereotype. Just because he’s well turned out and takes care of himself doesn’t make him gay.”
“Okay, then,” Catherine said. “Maybe he’s just really, really interested in what his friend has to say.” Steve or Sam was certainly deep in conversation with his friend, a tallish, fair-haired, and pleasant-looking man of about her age, Catherine guessed. This was the friend that Kirsty had deemed it her destiny to distract when she went in for the kill. She studied him covertly. She had no idea how to distract anybody, let alone a man, other than to point at some nameless object over his shoulder and shout, “It’s behind you!”
If Kirsty ever did get to talk to her trainer, Catherine was fairly sure that she would mess up the friend-distraction bit. But there was an “if” because what Kirsty hadn’t thought of and what Catherine didn’t want to point out was that if her personal trainer wasn’t gay and didn’t have a hearing or vision problem, then the alternative was that he was ignoring her, because he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. It didn’t seem to be a conclusion that Kirsty was likely to come to on her own, and Catherine didn’t want to be the one to bring it up.
“God, you should see that lot over there, a classic midlife crisis in full flow.” Kirsty nodded over to the far side of the pub, a corner that Catherine could not see from where she was standing. “That’s Joel who used to work in the gym, now he’s got a job at the new car dealership in town, so it must be his new boss he’s with. Joel told me he’s a real entrepreneur, made a lot of money in London and moved out here to make a lot more. Look at him.” Kirsty nudged Catherine. “Flirting with girls half his age. I bet his wife wouldn’t like that.”
“It’s none of my business what the man gets up to,” Catherine said rather primly.
“Fine,” Kirsty sighed. “Anyway, we are supposed to be finding you a man …”
“No, we are not!” Catherine was alarmed. “That wasn’t on the agenda, I distinctly remember you taking it off the agenda.”
“I don’t mean to find you one to take home,” Kirsty assured her. “I mean find one that’s checking you out, so you can see how irresistible you are to men.” She scanned the room. “What about him?”
Kirsty nudged her quite hard this time, throwing her a little off balance even in her flat boots.
“What about who?” Catherine said.
“Him over there.” Kirsty nodded to Catherine’s left and when she looked she caught the eye of a fair-haired man, perhaps a little younger than she, who smiled at her fleetingly before dropping his gaze back to his drink.
“He was totally checking you out like a motherfucker,” Kirsty exclaimed quite loudly, so that one or two people (but not her trainer) looked over at them.
“Was he?” Catherine said dryly. “I had no idea that one could be checked out in such a way.”
“Well, one can, smart arse, and he was. He’s been looking at you all night.”
“Can we get back to you? What’s your plan?”
“To be gorgeous, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working out too well. Have you got any ideas?”
Catherine thought for a moment. “Well, why don’t you go up to him, tap him on the shoulder, and say hi?”
Kirsty shook her head. “Oh, you are so naive, where were you during your teens? Didn’t you learn anything from Beverly Hills 90210?”
“Why not just talk to him?” Catherine asked with a bemused shrug.
“Because then he’ll think I fancy him,” Kirsty replied, as if stating the obvious. “I don’t want him to know that. I want him to think that I, his beautiful client, am merely flitting by him like a beautiful but unobtainable butterfly that he longs to capture … a woman who can only be … oh hi, Steve.”
Kirsty went bright red as her trainer appeared at her shoulder.
“Kirsty, I thought that was you.” He smiled at Kirsty. “And it’s Sam, by the way.”
“I knew it was an S name.” Kirsty beamed at him. “Can I buy you a drink? I mean water for me because obviously I don’t really drink apart from this gin and tonic and honestly it’s a lot more tonic than gin, gin-flavored tonic really …”
Catherine unconsciously took a step back as Kirsty focused all her attention on Sam. He was nice-looking, Catherine had to concede. He was tallish, with friendly eyes and very nice arms. She could see why Kirsty would be smitten with him even if he was completely bald. Just then Catherine wished very much that Jimmy was there with her in the pub. At least she could always talk to Jimmy; now her prediction had come true and she had become chief gooseberry. Tentatively she glanced in the direction of the fair-haired man across the bar. He smiled at her; she didn’t look that way again.
“So that’s your friend chatting up my friend, then?” Catherine started as Sam’s friend appeared at her side, a little of her drink splashing onto the back of her hand. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make you jump. Just thought you might like some company. Looks like your friend’s got mine monopolized for the evening. I’m Dave, by the way.”
He held out his hand and hesitantly Catherine took it. She hadn’t talked to a man she didn’t know who wasn’t somebody’s husband in … well, it was certainly months, maybe even years.
“Hello,” Catherine said. “I’m Catherine and I’m sure Kirsty won’t keep him all evening.” She looked over at her friend, who was in full flirt mode. “Actually she might.”
“Oh that’s Kirsty,” Dave said with a grin. “No wonder he was trying so hard not to notice her all evening. He digs her big-time.”
“Does he dig her big-time?” Catherine said, noticing Dave smile as she repeated his phrase. “T
hat’s nice, because she digs him big-time too. Like seriously a lot. I’m probably not meant to tell you that, but she never shuts up about him.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Dave said, taking a step closer to her. “So anyway, enough about them, tell me about you.”
“Me?” Catherine tried to think of something, anything, but the truth always sounded much worse when spoken out loud than in her head. This time was no exception. “I’ve got two kids and sort of a husband, who I’m married to but don’t live with anymore since he slept with another woman more or less right in front of my eyes, and I work in a local PR company. Oh, and I like growing my own vegetables. That’s about it.”
“Okay.” Dave laughed. “Right, well—just an everyday kind of girl, then.”
“That’s me,” Catherine said with a smile. She quite liked talking to Dave, as it happened.
“So it looks like we’ve been abandoned, then,” Dave said, nodding at Kirsty and Sam, who in the blink of an eye had gone from chatting to deep, deep kissing.
“I expected it,” Catherine told him.
“Well, why don’t we head off somewhere else, then, somewhere a bit quieter where we can get a drink and talk, what do you think?”
Catherine looked at him. She was fairly sure he was chatting her up. Either that or he just wanted to hang out with a still married yet single mother of two who was two inches taller than him.
“I … look, I have to go,” she lied. “I’ve got kids, two under eight—the babysitter goes mad if I’m late.”
“But it’s only just past ten,” Dave said, seemingly unfazed by her children. “Have one more drink with me.”
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “I can’t.”
And she raced out of the pub and back home as fast as she could until she was safe, back behind her own front door, where she could grow the hair on her legs and cook dinner for her ex, and where she could be safe and shut off and never have to worry about what to say to mildly attractive men in pubs or, worse still, what they might say to her.
Another Mother's Life Page 11
