Another Mother's Life (5 page)

“Do you want me to come in with you?” she offered impulsively. He looked at her as if she were mentally ill.

“No,” he said, getting out of the car and slamming the door shut behind him. “I’m not a kid.”

Alison watched him for a few minutes as he walked away.

Once, they had been so close. They had always been side by side and hand in hand—in step with each other. It hadn’t been the birth of his sister Gemma that had changed that, nor even his bumpy and painful ascent into manhood. It was the day he realized that Alison was weak and flawed and incapable of doing anything to change herself. Since then all he had ever seemed to be was angry with her.

“He looks like a right old grump,” Gemma said, leaning forward in her seat to watch Dominic slouch away.

“Will he be all right, Mama?” Amy asked anxiously. “It looks like a big place to be in on your own. Is our school this big?”

“No, darling, it’s little. Remember when you looked round, you said it looked like a doll’s house? And anyway Dom won’t be alone; he’ll be making lots of new friends just like you will.” Alison waited for him to go through the gate and head toward the main entrance; then she took her mobile out of her bag and phoned the school reception.

“Hello, it’s Mrs. James here. I just want to check that my son is signing in with you like he’s supposed to. It’s his first day and you know how boys are. He won’t let me come in with him to make sure he’s okay.”

“Yes, thank you, madam,” the receptionist said in an even tone. “The delivery has arrived safely. We are dealing with it now.”

“Thank you so much,” Alison said warmly, grateful for the discretion.

“Not at all,” the receptionist said.

It was about two minutes later that she got a text from Dominic saying “Stop checking up on me.”

She was a little late getting the girls to St. Margaret’s First School, but she didn’t think it mattered on their first day because she had to go see the headmistress first anyway before they would be taken off to their classrooms.

Whereas Dominic’s school was attended by all the children in the town who weren’t privately educated, St. Margaret’s was not; Alison had not gone there when she’d been her daughters’ ages, and it was something of a relief to be in an unfamiliar and neutral environment. She only wished that both of her daughters felt the same way.

It was a sweet little school, built around an original Victorian schoolhouse, and what it lacked in playing fields because of its town center location it made up for in atmosphere. The thing that Alison had liked about it most was the sense of community in the school. The children all seemed to care about each other, the bigger ones looking out for the little ones. Alison thought that this was especially important for Amy.

Dear, precious, uncomplicated Gemma, who could have little idea how her self-confidence and adaptability kept her mother going, had been chatting happily to her teacher when she was taken off to her classroom to be introduced to her new classmates. Amy had not gone happily at all. She had cried and cried, clinging to Alison’s skirts, begging her mummy to take her home with her. Eventually Alison had had to peel her daughter’s fingers from the fabric, desperately trying not to cry herself, and physically hand her to the teacher.

“Come on, darling,” Alison had said, holding her daughter’s hand out to the teacher. “You go with Miss Pritchard now. You’re going to have a lovely time and I bet you’ll make a lot of friends, you’ll see.”

“Please, can Rosie come too?” Amy begged. “I’d feel better if Rosie could come in with me.”

“Doggies aren’t allowed in school,” Alison explained.

“But I want to stay with Rosie!” Amy’s sob had echoed all the way down the corridor.

When Alison had come out of school the playground was empty of parents and pupils and she had been relieved. She wasn’t ready to meet anybody just yet, particularly after that dramatic farewell with Amy had left her on the verge of tears.

She had made the short drive back to her new house with a heavy heart, and once she had pulled into the drive she sat in the 4x4 and looked at the house for quite a long time. It was a huge house. Six bedrooms, third-floor guest suite, an open-plan hallway with a living room, dining room, and gigantic kitchen radiating off of it. It was twice as big as their London house and ten times as grand. Marc loved it. He loved buying this overstated and opulent palace. He loved the fact that it was brand spanking new and slightly tacky, with none of the grace and dignity of some of the other houses they had looked at, the Victorian villas that populated over half the town. He loved the remote-controlled electric gates, the faux regency pillars that stood proudly on either side of the double front doors, and he loved the fact that he was able to buy up the paddock at the back of the house that one day soon he’d promised would be occupied by a pony for the girls.

“This says we’ve arrived,” he’d told Alison on the night they moved in, kissing her on the forehead. “Who’d have thought that you and I would have made it all the way here, hey? House, kids,
dog—the works. We’ve beaten the odds, Al, we’ve proved them all wrong.”

Which had made Alison wonder—who did they have to prove anything to now? Except themselves.

Still sitting immobilized on the bed, Alison looked around at her new bedroom, the cellophane of the mattress squeaking beneath her bottom as she twisted to survey the mountain of boxes that required unpacking.

And she decided she would cry after all. Just then, crying seemed about the only thing she was confident she could do.

C
atherine was out of breath when she hit the school gate at three fifteen because she had run the length of High Street from work in order to be there in time. Her job, working as an administrative manager at a local PR agency, Stratham and Shah, couldn’t exactly be called a career, but the hours fit perfectly into the school day as long as she was prepared to sprint there and back every morning and afternoon. Aside from the vital if meager income it provided, it also gave her something to do outside of the house and apart from the girls. There wasn’t much glamour in binding presentations or managing the online calendar for the practice, but Catherine was very good at it. She enjoyed bringing order to the often chaotic and capricious office and garnered quiet satisfaction from the frequency with which the word “indispensable” was used in connection with her name.

Eloise was already on the playground, hopping randomly, her head bowed in concentration as if each hop was being placed with
precise care. Catherine stopped just inside the gate to catch her breath and watched her daughter in her one-legged endeavors, her red hair flying in all directions, her green eyes glittering with laughter.

“Mum!” Eloise spotted her and raced up to her at full pelt, using her mother’s body to break her speed.

“Guess what, it’s so exciting!” Eloise hopped on Catherine’s toes. “I’ve got a new best friend! She started today and her name is Gemma and she’s got a sister in Leila’s class. She has just moved to Farmington from London and she has got a bedroom to herself and Mummy—guess what? She’s got a brand-new puppy called Rosie! A real dog! Where is she? I wish she were here, Mummy, and you could meet her!”

Catherine looked at Eloise’s face, her cheeks glowing hotly on her otherwise pale face and she felt her heart sink.

“A
puppy
?” she repeated. This was bad news. Her daughters begged her for a pet, any kind of pet, on a daily basis, frequently stating that even a gerbil would do. But Eloise’s heart’s desire, the one thing she longed for more than anything in the world, was a dog. And now here was a girl who was going to have her very own dog. Catherine would never hear the end of it.

“And,” Eloise went on, tugging at Catherine’s hand, “she says I can come round and see it whenever I like and walk it and play with it and groom it and everything,” Eloise was almost shouting in her excitement. “So can I go over tonight, Mummy, can I? Can I? Can I, please?”

“I expect tonight is a little bit too soon,” Catherine said. “They’ll still be unpacking.”

“But please can Gemma still come to tea one day soon?” Eloise begged. “Please!”

“Of course she can, one day,” Catherine said, deliberately noncommittal. “Let’s go round and pick up Leila and then when
we get back we’ll see Gemma and her mummy and we’ll ask her, okay?”

“Yippee!” Eloise called out happily as she skipped along beside Catherine on their way round to Leila’s class, catching Catherine’s hand and swinging it back and forth.

“I knew eight was going to be my best age,” she said happily.

“How did you know that?” Catherine smiled in anticipation. While her younger daughter, Leila, had the light hazel eyes and wavy dark brown hair of her father, she also had the staunch practicality of her mother, as well as, since starting at St. Margaret’s First School, what appeared to be a quite sincere and devout belief in God.

Eloise, on the other hand, although a carbon copy of Catherine from the ends of her wild red hair to the tips of her long, skinny legs, was the dreamer and the rebel, like her father. Catherine couldn’t wait to hear Eloise’s theory on why eight was such a great age.

“Because one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven are baby years,” Eloise said, gesturing as if she were presenting a news report on TV. “But eight is halfway to sixteen. Halfway to being grown up. When you’re eight you start to count in the world, you’re not a baby anymore.”

“You’ll always be my baby,” Catherine said, putting her arms around Eloise and squeezing her tight on impulse.

“I won’t, Mummy.” Eloise wriggled free. “I’m growing up, you know!”

“I know you are,” Catherine said, picking up a strand of her daughter’s hair. She remembered the morning when Jimmy had put their firstborn in her arms. Her touch, her weight, her smell, and the joy of her tiny fingers enclosing around Catherine’s fingers made the world seem so much brighter and so sharp, as if she was looking at her life through a new pair of eyes. “But I’ll always love you
and your sister just as much as I did from the moment you were born.”

“And now I’ve met Gemma, and she’s got a puppy and Leila’s stopped snoring at night and well, things are getting better. They are starting to go the right way, aren’t they, Mummy?”

Catherine paused and looked down at her daughter.

“Are they?” she asked her tentatively. Although it was Eloise who had suffered the most visibly during the pain and mess of the breakup, the first year after Jimmy had moved out had been raw, confusing, and difficult for them all. If Eloise was now beginning to see the separation in a better light, if the work that she and Jimmy had done to restore some stability to their daughters’ lives was finally paying off, then Catherine could not have been happier. “How’s that?”

“Well, now that you aren’t so angry with Daddy anymore and he’s stopped making you angry. Now you let him come round when he likes and have dinner and put us to bed. Things are nearly back to the way they were, aren’t they, Mummy? It won’t be long now.”

“What won’t?” Catherine asked, battling the sensation that she knew exactly what Eloise was going to say next.

“Well, soon Daddy will come home for good, won’t he?”

Just at that second Leila came tearing out of her classroom, her coat attached to her only by its hood, which was hooked over her head, and her arms filled with several sheets of artwork and some junk models, leaving bits of toilet paper and empty yogurt cartons flying in her wake.

“Leila, put your coat on properly,” Catherine said automatically, picking the coat off her daughter’s head and holding it out for her to put on.

“Look!” Leila said, thrusting out a jumble of what had formerly been food containers of various descriptions. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

Catherine hazarded a guess. “It’s an amazing … car.”

“Is it a car?” Leila scrutinized the object. “I thought it was an octopus, but anyway it’s good, isn’t it?”

“Well?” Eloise asked Leila as she unburdened her sister of her treasure and Catherine helped her on with the coat.

“Well …” Leila looked thoughtful. “I learned about China today, Mummy. Did you know its flag is bright red and there are dragons there, but not real dragons because there aren’t really dragons in this world. There are real dragons in Australia, though, and kangaroos, which are true animals because we saw them at the zoo, do you remember, and they went bounce … bounce …
bounce
… do you think there were kangaroos on the Ark, can we look it up when we get home?”

Leila bounced into her sister, dashing her model octopus/car to the ground, where it promptly exploded. Catherine bent down and began picking it up, stuffing its various components into her capacious bag.

“Not that, silly,” Eloise said impatiently as Catherine, still on her knees, buttoned up Leila’s coat. “I mean what about the new girl in your class? Have you made best friends with her? Has she told you she’s got a puppy called Rosie?”

Leila’s face looked blank.

“Did you meet the new little girl that started today?” Catherine interpreted. “Did you play with her?”

“Oh
well
,” Leila said, instantly transforming herself into a world expert on the subject. “The new girl’s name is Amy and she cried the
whole
time and Miss Pritchard didn’t even shout at her or put on her sad face or anything and we were all nice to her, Ryan didn’t even try to chase her, but she cried all day and didn’t do any reading because she cried and said she wanted her mummy, which made Isabelle cry for her mummy and then Alfie did and then everyone was crying for a bit. I joined in too, but I only pretended because I quite like reading.”