Another Mother's Life (25 page)

“Maybe fifteen years ago you did. I mean of course you were sleeping with her,” Alison said. “I don’t know why I hadn’t worked that out years ago. I don’t even think that was why I slapped you. Or the fact that you’d gotten her pregnant too. It was seeing her there in front of me. I realized I’d missed her and I blamed you. So I slapped you. And I shouldn’t have. It must have been very embarrassing.”

“I carried it off, though,” Marc said. “And anyway I understand, because I felt the same way.”

“Embarrassed?” Alison said, tucking the hem of her nightgown under her toes.

“No, when I saw her, I missed her. Missed the way she used to make me feel back then … missed who I was when I was with her.”

They sat in silence and Alison tried to work out if the burning she felt in her chest was caused by hurt or relief. Because although Marc’s comments were painful, at least he was being honest with her.

“What would you have done?” Alison asked him. “If you’d known she was pregnant too? Would you have stood by her as well? That would have given the town something to talk about. ‘Man Fathers Two Children Born Within a Week of Each Other.’ ”

Marc’s laugh surprised Alison. “I knew she was pregnant,” he explained. “I think I knew long before she did. I was waiting for her to tell me that we couldn’t go to bed because her period had come. I waited for three weeks, four weeks, five weeks and the subject never came up. I knew we couldn’t carry on forever then. I knew there would be a moment when she had to tell me and I wanted to leave before it arrived.”

“You knew she was pregnant and you still chose me?” Alison said. Once she would have left it at that, let herself believe that that one action fifteen years ago stood as a testament to how much she had meant to Marc, but not today. Because for once in his life he was being honest and she needed to know the truth. “Why?”

Marc didn’t answer for a moment as he looked out toward the horizon. Then taking a breath, he began to talk.

“You told Catherine about us, I knew you would sooner or later,” he said. “I’d been expecting it since that first afternoon. It must have been a school day because Catherine turned up at the rooming house in her uniform. I’ll never forget it, seeing her there in her blue-checked kilt and school sweater.

“She was crying. She asked me if it was true that I’d been sleeping with you and I said that it was. And she asked me if that meant me and her were over. I was shocked, upset for her even if I didn’t show it. She should have told me it was over, not asked me. She should have been stronger than she was. But she wasn’t strong, I knew that when I got involved with her. I warned her. So I told her that it was; it was over.

“I braced myself, waiting for her to tell me she was pregnant, but she didn’t. She must have known by then that she was but she didn’t mention it. She just turned on her heel and walked away.” Marc looked up at the clear sky. “It was pouring rain.”

“She was coming to see me,” Alison said, more to herself than
to Marc. “She tried to tell me about the baby. But I wouldn’t let her.”

“I went to the pub that night, my first night off in ages. I wanted to get drunk, really out of it, I didn’t want to think about anything. The work in Farmington was coming to an end, I heard there was some work coming up near Croyden. Not that far away, but that night it seemed like a welcome refuge. And then suddenly you appeared. I don’t know how you found me …”

“I looked in every single pub.”

“You walked in and all the blokes looked at you, your hair all wet, your top soaked through. All that eyeliner you used to wear running down your cheeks. I saw you and my heart sank. I thought, here we go again. Ding, ding, round two. But I was ready to take whatever you wanted to dish out, I thought I deserved it.”

“I asked you to go outside with me,” Alison remembered. “Told you I needed to talk to you. I had no idea what I was going to do if you didn’t come, but you did come.”

“We stood outside in the rain,” Marc went on. “I had both my hands in my pockets and I was staring at my work boots, I couldn’t look at you. Because you were the one thing I hadn’t been able to resist, like a bloody greedy kid in a sweet shop. You were the one thing that made me mess up again.”

“I said, I’m running away from home. I’ve done it already. I’m going anyway, whatever. But I want you to come with me. Will you come with me? And I felt like screaming because I was so frightened,” Alison recalled.

“I just kept on staring at my boots, I heard you talking but words weren’t going in. And then you said, ‘I want to be with you more than anything, I have to be with you and you have to be with me because I know that we are meant to be together. Come
with me and I’ll be your family. I’ll stand by you, I’ll help you. I’ll look after you.’ That’s what you said. ‘I’ll look after you.’

“You said you’d look after me,” Marc repeated. “I knew that there was no way a seventeen-year-old girl would be able to look after
me
, but nobody had ever said that to me before. Not anyone. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to hear it.”

“And is that why?” Alison prompted him. “Is that why you came with me?”

Marc shook his head, taking a deep breath.

“It was one reason, but there was another one. A stronger one.” He looked Alison in the eye. “I was obsessed with Cathy, Alison. Back then at that very moment, standing outside of the pub in the rain, when you asked me to run away with you like I was some kid in a play and not a twenty-year-old railway worker. Catherine had got to me, got inside of me. I was consumed by her, but I couldn’t be a better person for her. I couldn’t make myself be good enough to deserve her. Even feeling as deeply and as passionately as I did about her I still went to bed with you, and I kept on going to bed with you because I couldn’t stop.

“For most of my life I’d had nothing, so when I got the chance to have everything I took it.” Marc paused. “I tried to imagine what it would be like to do the right thing, to stay with Cathy and try to look after her baby. But I couldn’t. All I knew was that Catherine was having my baby and that I couldn’t,
wouldn’t
be there for her or her kid. I was frightened, I wanted to get away. Then suddenly there you were standing in the rain, shivering, asking me to run away with you, telling me you’d take care of me. And that meant a lot to me. I didn’t love you, but I knew you loved me, I needed to be loved by someone I wasn’t frightened of loving back. So I took my hands out of my pockets and put my arms around you and held you until you stopped shivering and I said, ‘Okay, then.’ I said ‘Okay, come on, let’s go.’ ”

He let out a deep sigh.

“The thing is I didn’t run away with you, Al. I ran away from her.”

Alison put her chin on her knees and rubbed her toes.

“So when I told you about my baby, why didn’t you leave me then?” she asked. “Why weren’t you scared then?”

Marc stood up and shrugged his coat off; underneath it he was still wearing the shirt and trousers he’d worn to the party. He draped the coat around Alison’s shoulders and she gathered the edges close around her.

“You had the most balls of anyone I’d ever seen,” Marc told her. “Putting up with that shitty flea-ridden room when I knew you wanted to go home about a million times a day. You stuck it out, you didn’t cave. The longer you did that the more I respected you. The more I believed you meant what you said. And then you told me. You said, ‘Well, I’m having a baby, so there. You know about it now. I’m keeping it, it’s up to you what you do—stay or go, I don’t care.’”

“I was scared shitless,” Alison said. “I wanted my mum, I wanted Cathy.”

“I know,” Marc told her. “I looked at you—seventeen, runaway from home with some bloke you hardly knew and not a clue about how to look after yourself, let alone my baby in your belly, and I knew I couldn’t leave you. You needed me, and I liked you needing me. I started to need you, looking after you made me get things done. Made me look for regular work and a decent place to live. I don’t know, but I could do it for you. You made it easy.”

“But you say you love me now,” Alison said. “You are always saying that you love me. Is that a lie too?”

“Dominic was born and we got the flat, I got the job in the garage. Your dad came round a few times and threatened to kill
me; those first couple of years seemed like a blur and I didn’t have time to think about Catherine, I didn’t have time to think about what had happened to her and the baby. Before I knew it Dominic was four and I’d got the promotion at the garage, remember?”

Alison smiled. “Yes, they said they’d put you on sales because all the ladies loved you.”

“And we’d taken that flat. The two-bedroom on Seven Sisters Road. I came home from work and you were sitting on the living room floor with Dominic, playing with Legos or something. You had the window open, and it was a sunny evening, it sort of lit up the back of your hair like a halo. I looked at you and my son sitting on the floor and I felt as if I’d been kicked in the chest by a mule. I realized I loved you both more than anything. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but it was then that I realized. I loved you. I love you. I still do.”

Alison looked out at the hills. A horse in a field on the hillside opposite was galloping through the wet grass, mane and tail flying, tossing its head in sheer abandon. Alison shut her eyes and tried with all her might to will herself onto that hillside with that horse. But when she opened them again Marc was still sitting on the white painted wrought iron garden furniture, watching her.

“Everything’s changed now that we’ve moved back here,” she said. “Now that we’ve found Cathy again. Things can’t go on as they are.”

“Yes they can,” Marc insisted. “Yes they can. I know it’s weird seeing Cathy again, I know we put her through a lot. But we can come through it, Al, like we always do. We’ve had our problems, and coming back here has stirred up old memories and opened up old wounds, but maybe that is a good thing. Because maybe now we can clean them and let them heal for good. And I love you, I love you so much, Alison.”

Alison looked at him, shielding her eyes against the advancing sun so that she could see his face clearly. He was watching her intently, waiting for her to smile and acquiesce like she always did.

“The trouble is, Marc,” she said after a long pause, “I’m not sure that I love you anymore.”

A
re you sure you don’t mind?” Catherine asked Jimmy again as he stood at the door with the girls.

“Of course I don’t mind,” Jimmy said. “Why would I mind taking my own daughters to school? I’ve done it loads of times before.”

“I just feel so …” Catherine looked at her two girls kicking at pebbles in the front garden, Leila with her coat hanging off her shoulders as always and Eloise pointing her toes like a dancer. “I can’t see her today. Or anyone. I’m not ready. I’ll probably never be ready, actually, so while you’re out I’ll be checking property prices in the Outer Hebrides.”

“That seems like a long way to go to visit,” Jimmy said.

“Well, obviously you’d have to come too,” Catherine said, lifting Jimmy’s heart for a fraction of a second. “You could buy the house next door.”

“Right, well,” he said. “I’ve got this thing up in London later.”

“What thing?” Catherine asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been discovered at last?”

“No, well, not exactly. Maybe some session work coming up, I’m going to a sort of informal audition. Pays well, so if I can land it I could maybe get a deposit together on a flat, couple of months’ rent to get me sorted.”

“That would be fantastic, Jimmy.” Catherine’s face lit up.

“Yeah, I’d probably have to stay up in London for a few weeks … you know how these musicians are. Sometimes it’s a twenty-four-hour job …”

“Well, if that’s what it takes to get you off that boat,” Catherine said without hesitation. “And it’s not as if we’re that far away. There’ll be weekends.”

“Maybe,” Jimmy said slowly. “It’s not really a nine-to-five sort of gig. But anyway, I haven’t got it yet, let’s wait and see. Might not have to worry about it after all.”

“Good luck,” she said, kissing him briefly on the lips. “Oh, and …”

Jimmy waited.

“If she’s there, if you see her, just … don’t tell her anything we talked about, okay? I don’t know what’s going to happen between us, I’m just not ready to face up to it yet.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said. “Probably won’t see her, probably wouldn’t say anything to her even if I did see her.”

“She used to have the major hots for you, you know,” Catherine said. “In all the years we’ve been married I’ve never told you that. Didn’t want to. But she was mental about you, to basic stalker levels.”

“Well,” Jimmy said lightly. “She’s only human, right?”

Catherine looked at the girls who were peering rather nosily into Kirsty’s front-room window.

“She probably
still
fancies you,” she added, lowering her voice.

“Cat.” Jimmy looked offended, as he thought about Alison’s arms around his neck at the party. “She’s a married woman.”

“Yes,” Catherine said. “And you’re a married man, but that’s never stopped you before.” Catherine’s smile faltered when she saw the stricken look on Jimmy’s face. “I’m sorry, I was only joking,” she said. “What you get up to is your business, I was trying to lighten the mood, you know, after the whole depressing, soul-searching, mortifying weekend of doom. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”