Another Mother's Life (44 page)

“See you,” Catherine said, standing perfectly still in the middle of the room.

Jimmy closed the front door softly behind him so as not to wake the girls, and he headed for the boat. He would have just about enough time to pick up his guitar and catch the late train into town.

After that he had no idea what he was going to do.

A
lison sat down opposite Marc at the table and waited for him to say something.

The hospital had discharged Dominic earlier that afternoon. Alison was frightened, afraid it was too soon. How could they be sending him home hardly more than twenty-four hours after he’d been found not breathing in a ditch? But Dr. Malik insisted that Dominic was well enough. She had told them the results of Dominic’s test, explaining gravely that her son was exceptionally lucky to be alive, not to mention surviving without any kind of brain damage and escaping with relatively little damage to his liver. They had made an outpatient appointment for him, and while he was still in the hospital he had seen a counselor.

Alison didn’t know what had been said between her son and the sensible-looking middle-aged man who referred to himself as Mike. She and Marc had been asked to wait outside while the two of them talked. Since coming round Dominic had barely said
three words to either of them, let alone looked either her or Marc in the eye.

It had been down to Alison to do the talking for all three of them, filling the room with senseless, pointless chatter, as if her words could cement the three of them together against their will.

She couldn’t imagine what Dominic would say to Mike, but after forty-five minutes the sensible-looking man emerged and told Alison and Marc that he was confident that Dominic had not been trying to kill himself, that he was a normal adolescent boy who had let things get out of hand. In need of some care and attention, but he wasn’t at risk of suicide.

“Does he know?” Alison asked the man urgently. “Does he understand that he could have died?”

“He does,” Mike told her. “It’s frightened him, so go easy on him. Take things slowly. He says he doesn’t want to talk to me again, but if I were you I’d encourage him to talk to a professional counselor. Give it a few days until things have settled down a bit.”

When they got back from the hospital Alison followed Dominic up to his room, running a bath for him while he sat on the bed, enduring a comprehensive wash from Rosie with a kind of boyish pleasure that made Alison’s heart contract.

“It will be time to go and fetch the girls soon,” she said. “I bet they’ll be glad to see you. They were so worried.”

“I know,” Dominic said. Alison sat next to him. As she put her arm around him she felt as if her robust and vivid son had become fragile and thin overnight.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you, Dom,” she said.

“I know,” he replied.

“Look, Dom, what Dad did was wrong, but …”

“Mum, I just want to get in the bath and then get some sleep,” Dom told her. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Okay.” Alison looked at the tub of steaming water through the bathroom door anxiously.

“I could sit in here and chat to you while you’re in the bath if you like,” she offered.

Dominic raised one sardonic eyebrow, a familiar gesture of affectionate disdain that lifted Alison’s heart more than she thought possible.

“Yeah, because it’s every teenage boy’s dream to have his mummy chat to him at bath time,” he teased her gently. He put his hand over hers. “Look, I’m not going to drown myself, I promise. I never wanted to die. I was angry and I wanted to get drunk. I went to find Mr. Ashley because I figured that he really gets me, you know? And thought he probably hated Dad as much as I did. But he wasn’t there. So I sat down under a bush and I drank and I waited. I fucked up. But I don’t want to die, Mum, even if it does seem tempting with this hangover.”

He rallied a smile for her and Alison had done her best to return it.

“You are so precious to me,” she told him.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Dom said with an embarrassed smile. “Now go, before my bath gets cold.”

At the door Alison paused and then asked her son the question she had been dreading. “Dom, what about your father?”

“What about him?” Dom asked. He closed the bathroom door behind him.

As she watched Marc, he remained immobile, his eyes fixed on the tabletop, his hand gripping a bottle of beer he had opened soon after they had arrived back from the hospital.

“Do you want another beer?” Alison asked him, hoping to break his silence.

Marc looked up at her. “No,” he said. “I’m fine, really.”

“I’ll go and pick the girls up from school soon, they’ll be so relieved to see Dom home. He gave us all quite a scare.”

Marc did not reply and Alison closed her eyes momentarily, tried to calm herself and failed.

“You can’t do this,” she said finally, the tone of her voice causing Marc to look up and meet her eyes.

“What do you mean?” he asked her.

“You can’t make this all about you,” she said.

“It is all about me,” Marc told her, suddenly animated. “I hit my own son, Alison. I drove him out into the night where he was so angry and hurt that he almost drank himself to death. It
is
about me. I did this to him. I did this to us.” He paused, a frown slotted between his brows. “Perhaps I’m like my father. Do you think my father was a violent man? The type of man to hit women and children and sleep around? If I’d known him, if he’d raised me, I’d be able to understand why I am like I am. But I don’t have a single memory of him. I don’t even think I ever set eyes on him. So I can’t blame him, can I? But I want to blame someone.”

“Blame yourself,” Alison said bleakly.

Marc looked into her eyes. “I do.”

Alison paused, struggling to frame the words she knew she had to say into a sentence.

“Listen, Marc, if there was ever a chance for us, even the smallest chance that somehow we’d make it through and stay together, then that was lost when you hit Dominic.” Marc flinched at Alison’s graphic explanation of what he had done. “You’re not a violent man, God knows you’re not even an angry man. You’re not even really a bad man. But you are weak and careless. You are a careless man, careless with the people you are supposed to love and more careless still with those who love you. You’ve destroyed my love for you and—for now, at least—you’ve done the same to Dom too. I don’t want to see that happen to Gemma and Amy. I
thought that if we stayed together that would be the best for them, but I was wrong. I can’t be married to you anymore. For your sake, for my sake, and for our children.”

“I’ll change,” Marc began.

“You won’t,” Alison told him. “Not while you’re married to me. You’ll always be the same. We make each other the same.”

“No, you’re wrong. This has been a wake-up call,” Marc protested. “I know you hate me now, I can see it in your eyes. And I know Dom feels the same, but if you let me I can change that. I can make things better. Don’t I always fix things, Al? I always make them better.”

“Not this time.” Alison’s voice was tight. “Not that way.”

“But Al …”

“No,
stop
it,” Alison shouted. “Stop it!
Stop
it! Accept that you’ve done this. That you can’t change it. The only way you are going to be able to have any kind of relationship with your children now is outside of this home and outside of this marriage. There are no more second, third, fourth chances, Marc. It’s over.”

Marc stared at her for a second and she braced herself for a barrage of reasons and explanations as to why she was wrong. But he shook his head, his shoulder slumped, and she watched the fight drain out of him, leaving only a shell of a defeated man behind.

“I know,” Marc said simply on a sigh, all resistance gone. “I know. I’ll move out. I’ll find a place to stay tomorrow. Somewhere local. I’ll talk to my lawyer. You should find one too. We’ll make it as easy as possible for everyone. I’ll give you whatever you want, the house, the car, maintenance—I don’t want you to suffer because of me.”

As Marc spoke, Alison felt ice-cold panic grip her heart and squeeze it, and a sense of dizzying unreality, as if she were watching this next turn her life was taking on a movie screen.

“No … I mean yes, I need your help. I don’t think we should
move the children again, not just yet. And you should support the children. But both of us have something to prove here, Marc. Me too, I need to be able to do something for myself. I need to
be
myself. I don’t want you to support me. I’ll find my own way.” Alison felt a surge of confidence as she said the words and she knew Marc had seen it too. “This time I’ll look after myself.”

And that was it. This was the moment she had seen coming for months, possibly years, and yet had never quite believed would arrive. Marc was really going. After all this time he was going to leave her to stand alone in the world, and even if this had been the very thing she knew had to happen, hearing him say it shocked and terrified her and all at once she felt so terribly, terribly sad. A dream that had been born on a summer’s afternoon fifteen years ago had finally ended and yet outside the kitchen window the world still seemed to go on as if nothing had happened.

“I’d better go and collect the girls,” she said, picking up her bag and car keys.

She hesitated by the back door.

“You’ll be here when I get back?” she asked him.

Marc nodded. “We need to talk to Gemma and Amy.”

Alison nodded but just as she opened the door Marc spoke again.

“Al?” he called.

“Yes?” She did not look at him.

“I always loved you. I never lied about that.”

“I know,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

D
o you think you can sprain your vagina?” Kirsty asked Catherine and Alison when they met for lunch on Monday. “Do you think it’s possible that too much sex in too many positions can actually make you pull an internal muscle, let’s call it the love muscle, because I’m telling you I’ve had so much incredible sex this weekend I think I might actually have sprained my vagina. I might have made medical history, because you know what, it is actually true. Sex is better when you’re in love with someone, isn’t it?”

Catherine ignored her tuna salad sandwich and Alison sipped her coffee.

“God, I thought the whole point of you two making up was that the world would be a happier, lighter place, cease-fire would be called across international war zones, mammals on the verge of extinction would start mating again, the ozone layer would repair itself overnight. If I’d known you were both going to be so miserable,
I wouldn’t have bothered getting you back together again, let alone asking you to meet for lunch. What is the point of me being blissfully happy and in love if I can’t share it?”

Catherine looked at her. “I think that being blissfully happy and in love
is
sort of the point.”

Kirsty raised a brow.

“If you say so,” she said. She looked from Alison to Catherine.

“Okay, I give in, go on, tell me what the problems are and make it snappy because I want to talk about me and Sam and the sex we’re having again before I have to go back to work, although if I’m lucky I probably could have sex in the storage closet with Sam if I got back before my two o’clock, so …”

“Jimmy told me he loved me, that he wanted to get back with me, and then he went to London,” Catherine blurted out.

“That’s incredible,” Alison said.

“According to Jimmy, he’s always been in love with me,” Catherine said bleakly. “Never stopped for a second. And then he was all passionate and sexy and I’m really, really pissed off with him.”

“Interesting,” Kirsty said on a yawn, wincing as both women looked daggers at her. “Well, the fact that he’s in love with you and wants to get back together with you is old news. I could have told you
that
months ago. The part where he gets on a train and goes to London is a bit confusing. How does he think that’s going to help?”

“He doesn’t,” Catherine said. When Kirsty looked perplexed she went on. “Of course I’m not going to get back with him, am I?”

“Aren’t you?” Kirsty asked her.

“Of course I’m not!” Catherine exclaimed. “I told him that I didn’t love him. I told him that we weren’t going to get back
together. And he looked really sad and said he was going to London to find work.”

“And let me guess, now you’re feeling really sad?” Kirsty asked her.

“What if I am? I don’t want things to be bad between us, do I?” Catherine snapped at her. “He’s the father of my children …”

“The love of your life …” Kirsty mumbled.

“He’s not,” Catherine protested. “I told him. It took me long enough to get over him. But I did. Our relationship is finished and that’s that.”

“Okay,” Kirsty said, more than a little skeptically. “If you say so. What about you, Alison? Why are you in such a mope? I mean I know your son had a near-death experience that was really bad, but he’s over the worst now, right? Yet you still look like you’re going to a funeral.”