Another Mother's Life (31 page)

“Now
that’s
madness, of course that is madness—you don’t get all of this … you and me, your children and love and heartbreak and happiness and music and
orgasms
from a freak random occurrence. You just don’t. There’s something else out there.”

Catherine sipped her tea, tasting the sweetness of the sugar on the back of her tongue.

“There probably are aliens,” Catherine conceded. “Given the vastness of the universe it would be insane to think that we lived on the only planet capable of sustaining life in some form. Probably on some planet far away from here male aliens are messing up the lives of female aliens with a wanton disregard for manners or decency.”

“You say you didn’t actually kiss him,” Kirsty said thoughtfully. Catherine had filled her in on Marc’s unscheduled visit that afternoon about five minutes after she had climbed over the back fence for a cup of tea, and unusually Kirsty had not said a word about it until now. For the first time in their friendship, Catherine realized uneasily, she was waiting to find out what Kirsty was thinking.

“No, I didn’t actually kiss him,” she said. “But if Jimmy hadn’t
turned up when he did, I think I would have kissed him. And what then? What would have happened then?”

“Well, based on my experience, probably foreplay followed by sex, possibly on the living room floor,” Kirsty remarked flatly, before adding a touch wistfully, “Do you know one of the saddest things about being over thirty is that you never get to just kiss anymore. A kiss is always followed by sex these days. Kiss, sex, kiss, sex, kiss, sex. What ever happened to just making out?”

“But what if I had slept with him?” Catherine went on. “What would it have proved? Would it have changed anything except to make a really complicated situation worse? What was I trying to do—steal him back, get revenge? Why would I kiss him?”

“Because you wanted to get your rocks off?” Kirsty suggested, tipping her head to one side. “Not quite as emotionally delving as your reasons why, but the most likely one. It’s like you’re a bottle of milk of magnesia …”

“A
what
?” Catherine scowled at her friend.

“And you’ve been sitting on the shelf in the back of the bathroom cabinet since 1994, well past your sell-by date, just going a bit stagnant and moldy, and then
suddenly
along comes this great big fuck-off complicated situation and it shakes you right up. Kick-starts your natural womanly urges. You got turned on by seeing Marc again, he is quite hot in a sort of paunchy, suited way, so I don’t totally blame you. You experienced a physical reaction, not some deep psychological one. Seriously, Catherine—think about it, it’s not rocket science. This whole situation is actually extremely interesting, beats
Desperate Housewives
any day of the week …”

“Oh, I’m so glad that you find my messed-up life interesting,” Catherine said. “At last I’m the interesting one!”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Kirsty said with a little smile. She took a sip of her tea. “What is interesting, though, is that you, ‘Catherine the Nun,’ as I like to call you sometimes …”

“I’ve never heard you call me that,” Catherine said.

“Not to your face, obviously. Anyway,
you
, the world’s most cautious, uptight, and sexually stunted woman, nearly threw caution and your pants to the wind over this particular man. You weren’t thinking about consequences and implications. You weren’t thinking at all. Your lady parts were doing all the thinking, and that’s interesting because that is not you. Or maybe it is you, but a you you never knew you were until now.”

Catherine set down her tea and looked utterly appalled.

“Promise me something,” she said.

“Anything,” Kirsty offered.

“Never give up pilates to become a psychiatrist. The suicide rates would soar.”

“God, you’re ungrateful,” Kirsty said mildly, gazing up at the sky, her feet up on the bench seat, her knees tucked beneath her chin. “I believe in fate, I believe things happen for a reason. Like a sort of cosmic symphony, maybe it’s the stars or God or … aliens. The two people who were a big part of making you into who you are today are back here for a reason. You can’t just go along pretending that nothing’s changed and go around all day going ‘La-de-da-de-da I nearly snogged the face off my married ex after about five minutes but everything is still normal and fine’! You can’t. You have to face up to it all. Face up to fancying him and wanting to shag him, if that’s what it takes.”

“But if anything happened between me and Marc it would be a terrible, terrible mistake,” Catherine moaned, leaning forward and dropping her forehead to her knees, so that the tips of her hair grazed the patio stones.

“Yes, I
know
,” Kirsty said with some emphasis. “You are talking to the queen of terrible, terrible mistakes here. But you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette, right? Whole and grown-up people are made up of all the terrible, terrible
mistakes they’ve made and learned from. If you are too afraid to take chances, if you’re too cautious, then you’re bound to get stuck in one great big fat boring-as-a-motherfucking-bastard rut.”

Catherine turned her head sideways and one eye glinted in the reflected light from the kitchen window as she peered at Kirsty.

“I must be going mad because you are starting to sound quite sane,” she said, straightening her back and even sitting up. “Even slightly wise.”

“I have hidden depths,” Kirsty told her. “That’s why I’m so popular with men. Look, I’ve got an idea,” Kirsty said. “The girls are off with Jimmy this weekend, right?”

“Yes,” Catherine said. “He’s taking them to his mother’s on the boat.”

“Come over to my house, we’ll have girly night in. I’ll cook, we’ll drink a load of wine, we’ll have a proper girls’ night in and it will be lovely, you can stay over.”

“Are you sure?” Catherine asked her. “I mean I know you hate cooking and cleaning your house so that it’s fit for visitors.”

“For you, my love, I’ll get in takeaway and push things under the sofa.”

“It’s a lovely idea, but we could always do it here if you like,” Catherine offered.

“No.” Kirsty was quite firm. “You’d only be looking at your table and thinking about Marc bending you backward over it all the time, no, my place it is. I’ve decided.”

“That’s the trouble, the thought of Marc and me in the living room. That’s what I can’t get out of my head.” Catherine looked at Kirsty. “Maybe I should just have sex with him, behind Alison’s back, behind Jimmy’s back, no matter what the consequences are.”

Kirsty sighed and crossed her arms.

“Ordinarily I’d agree, but I think that if you do it you might spontaneously combust from the shock. You need to be careful, just follow your instincts for a bit. Find out why you felt the way you did around Marc, explore the way you’re reacting to him and his wife being back in your life. Perhaps,” she added carefully, “you should see Alison too, see how that goes.”

“I can’t,” Catherine said. “I think I would have, but then I almost got off with her husband. Funny, I can stand her stealing him away from me much better than I can stand the reverse, it seems. And anyway, while I’m off following my instincts and exploring my feelings, what about Jimmy?” Catherine paused, feeling some nameless form of anxiety well in her chest when she thought of the expression on Jimmy’s face when he’d seen her and Marc together. Since that moment, whenever she thought about her husband, she felt jangled and disconnected and she couldn’t quite work out why, except that it was something more than the embarrassment and discomfort she had felt at being found in such an unorthodox situation.

“You should have seen him. He was so angry when he came back.”

“Why do you care?” Kirsty asked her flatly. “He has all the half-wit women in the county after him and you still make him Sunday dinner. You nearly snog the only other man you’ve slept with in your entire life and he goes nuclear. What a hypocrite. Ignore it, Catherine, he’s just getting all male and territorial when he had no business to be and he should know better. Don’t feel bad about him, you’re not together anymore, remember?”

Catherine nodded. “I know, but he’s such a big part of my life and the girls and I don’t want to fall out with him.”

“You don’t fall out with him over his girlfriends, do you?” Kirsty reminded her. “Why should you fall out with him over what you do?”

Catherine didn’t give an answer because she couldn’t think of one.

“If I ask you a full and frank question, will you give me a full and frank answer?” Kirsty said, leaning a little closer and peering at Catherine in the darkness.

“I suppose,” Catherine replied cautiously.

Kirsty smirked. “That’s not exactly the affirmative I was hoping for, but nevertheless it will have to do.” She sat up straight. “Are you, Catherine Elizabeth Ashley, still in love with your sham of an ex-husband, Jimmy Ashley?”

“No!” Catherine said immediately. “No, don’t be stupid! Of course I am not still in love with him. If I was still in love with him, would I have been tempted to kiss Marc? No, I wouldn’t. It was hard for me to get everything under control after he did what he did, but I have done that. And we’ve got a relationship now that I care about. But I don’t love him. Of course I don’t love him.”

“Well, then,” Kirsty said. “All I’m saying is that at some point you will have to make a choice, between what you want for you and being Jimmy’s friend. And if when it comes to it you put Jimmy’s friendship first, then maybe you’ll want to rethink your answer.”

“What does this mean?” Catherine asked the sky, standing up suddenly. “If I still have one type of feelings for Jimmy and another altogether for Marc—what does that mean?”

The two women were silent for a moment, as if both of them hoped for a reply, but the night was silent, except for the distant sound of traffic.

“I don’t know what to do,” Catherine groaned. “I don’t know how to be, or how to feel about anything!”

Kirsty stood up and put an arm around her friend.

“This is actually all good,” she said.

“How is this good?” Catherine said, her voice small.

“Because you are awake and
feeling
, Catherine,” Kirsty told her. “Your heart is racing, your blood is pumping, you’re scared and confused, and you have no idea what is going to happen to you. You’re alive, my friend, you’re alive!”

Catherine paused and looked up at the star-spangled sky.

“I’m not sure I like it,” she said.

F
our o’clock on Friday afternoon: this was family time, the afternoon when Marc was supposed to come home early and they were all supposed to eat dinner together.

Gemma and Amy were sitting at the table already in anticipation of the roast chicken Mummy was cooking, even though it was a good half hour away from being ready. Rosie was sitting at Amy’s feet, staring fixedly at the chocolate cheesecake that Alison was defrosting, proof positive in Alison’s opinion that telekinesis could not be possible, because if it were, that dog would have moved the cheesecake from the counter and into her mouth by the power of her mind alone.

The men of the household were nowhere to be seen and Alison wasn’t surprised. Dominic made it his business to be late for everything, and if Marc arrived at all before the entire family had gone to bed, Alison would be stunned. In a way she was relieved that he wouldn’t turn up, just as she had been relieved that he’d been avoiding
her all week, because she’d had no idea that he’d react to her revelation in the way that he had. And so far she had no idea how to deal with it. She had barely seen her husband since they talked after the party. For some reason she had expected for things to go on as usual after she told him that she didn’t love him. That he’d simply accept the information and their lives would go on without anything else really changing. But then, of course, that would be how
she
would have reacted if he’d told her the same thing, or at least that was how she always reacted when he told her about an affair.

Alison would scream and cry, she’d throw things and swear, but by the next morning she’d be up in the kitchen making coffee, getting the kids breakfast, carrying on as before. Over the years she had become an expert at absorbing the pain and carrying it within her, accepting it as her lot, unable to find the courage or direction to fight against it.

Marc hadn’t screamed or shouted or gotten angry with her; instead he’d vanished. Perhaps the reality of seeing her, knowing how she felt about him, was too hard for him to bear. There was a part of Alison that was glad about that. Finally she had found a way to hurt him back. But another, greater part of her was afraid. She simply didn’t know what to do next.

This has to be it, she thought to herself as she watched her daughters sitting at the table, laughing together. This has to be the rock bottom that people are so fond of talking about. Surely things had to take an upward turn from here. Alison hoped Saturday night would change everything in one way or another. After Saturday she’d know what to do. Because tomorrow night she and Cathy were meeting at Kirsty’s for dinner. The very fact that Cathy had agreed to go gave Alison hope that something good would come out of their move to Farmington, because now more than ever she longed to see her friend again. To hug her and laugh with her and ask her, “What should I do?”