The Accidental Wife (11 page)

‘She cried a lot,’ Alison admitted. ‘And when you didn’t come back she was really worried – you know how she is – so make sure you go in and say hi, OK?’

‘I don’t know why you made us come here,’ Dominic remarked, turning to face her and leaning against the door frame, but without anger now. ‘Muffin was pretty happy at home, Gemma was the queen of all her friends. And the stuff
I
was into wasn’t that bad, Mum, it really wasn’t. If you’d told Dad where to go and showed some self-respect you wouldn’t have had to worry about what the neighbours thought.’

‘The neighbours?’ Alison laughed harshly. ‘Is that why you think we came here? The month we left London, eight kids around your age were stabbed in less than two weeks. I didn’t want you to be one of those kids, Dom.’

Dom shook his head. ‘That was never going to happen to me. Don’t use me as an excuse for this. You’re running away from the wrong thing. It’s not houses or areas you need to run away from, Mum, it’s him. It’s Dad that causes all the trouble, not me.’

‘It wasn’t Dad sitting in the back of a stolen car, was it?’ Alison asked her son, shamelessly changing the subject. ‘No fourteen- or fifteen-year-old thinks he’s going to walk out of his house and die,’ Alison said. ‘None of those boys or girls did. But it happened all the same. I want to protect you because, whether you like it or not, I love you.’

‘Yeah, you reckon,’ Dominic observed sceptically, his implicit disbelief in her feelings for him hurting Alison more than any insult he could dream up, no matter how laced with four-letter words it might be.

‘Yes, I do reckon. And anyway, it’s better for Gemma and Amy, a better place to grow up in, and Amy will settle in eventually. You know how she hates change.’

‘Some things have to change whether you like them or not,’ Dominic replied steadily.

‘Yes they do,’ Alison said firmly. ‘Like us moving here. Look, you’ll do better out here, and you’re going to love Rock Club, and maybe you’ll be able to set up your own band like you’ve always wanted.’ Alison gave Dominic the list of all the reasons that Marc had given her when he told her he wanted to move here. All the reasons except for the ones that counted:
because
he wanted to. Because he’d made it almost impossible for them to stay in London and because there was still something here in this town that he had to prove to himself.

‘And maybe I’ll grow up to be a train driver,’ Dominic replied, gifting her with a sudden and unexpected smile.

‘I miss that smile,’ Alison told him.

‘Yeah, well, it’s hard to smile when you’re busy being misunderstood,’ he told her. ‘Look, all I want is for you to be happy, the way you were when I was Gemma’s age. Always laughing. Your smiles were real then.’

‘I am happy now,’ Alison reassured him. ‘Honestly.’

Dominic sighed. ‘I’m going to go up and get changed. I’ll read the girls a story tonight, if you like.’

Alison smiled at him and longed to give him a hug, even if he did smell like a wet dog.

‘Thank you, Dom, that would be a big help.’

‘Yeah, well, just as long as you don’t expect me to love this shit-hole or speak to him,’ he told her as he left the room.

And that was her son, who was just like his father in so many ways but in one way especially: just when you thought you couldn’t stand a minute longer of him he’d go and make you fall in love with him all over again.

At least that’s what Alison hoped.

Marc’s kiss on her cheek woke her, his face looming over hers as she opened her eyes. She must have fallen asleep in front of the late-night film.

‘Hello, beautiful,’ he said, kissing her lips this time. ‘How was your day?’

‘Long,’ Alison said, struggling to orientate herself. ‘And difficult. One child loves everything, the other two aren’t so sure, to say the least. How about you?’

Marc clicked on the table lamp next to where Alison had
been
sitting, dazzling her temporarily, and dropped a parcel of something heavy into her lap. Alison screwed up her eyes to look at it. It looked like a packet of greeting cards.

‘I’ve had a brilliant idea,’ Marc told her. ‘We need to make a splash in this town, right? To get ourselves accepted by the locals. There’s so much money to be made here, Al – and not just in the town. The whole area’s up to its neck in cash – it’s better than Notting Hill any day of the week. No Congestion Charge, no one picketing the 4x4s on the road. We want to be part of this community. And the best way to do that is to befriend the community, right?’

‘Do you mean send them cards or something?’ Alison said, her head still muddled by dreams and memories.

‘No, I mean by throwing a party here.’ Marc opened the package, pulled out a card and handed it to Alison. ‘Half the invites are already sent. I used the guy from the local business forum and some other contacts I have in the area to get the guest list together. Or at least my guest list. I thought you could invite all the teachers, the head – maybe the PTA committee that I suggested you get involved with. Mothers you meet in the playground, anyone you like. Get yourself a social network so you don’t feel so isolated. Don’t you see? Instead of waiting for things to take off we can kick-start our new lives by throwing them the best party they’ve seen in years.’

Alison stared at the invitation.

‘This date is a week on Saturday,’ she said numbly. ‘That’s less than two weeks away.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Marc said, brushing the hair from her face. ‘No point in letting the grass grow under our feet, is there?’

‘Marc, there is no way we’ll be ready to throw a big party in time.’

‘Well, like I said, half the invites are sent now, so yes we
will.’
Marc grinned at her, that smile that said he’d made up his mind. ‘Come on, love, you’ve never let me down yet. And the kids will love it. They can invite all their friends. We’ll make it a real family event for the young ones too. It might help Amy settle in.’

‘Amy doesn’t like people, and I know how she feels,’ Alison mumbled wearily.

‘Well, people love you,’ Marc said, watching her face. ‘You look beautiful, by the way.’

Alison glanced up at him, the muscles in her shoulders tensing as she caught his look.

‘I don’t …’ she protested weakly. ‘I haven’t even had a shower …’

His hand ran down the side of her face, his forefinger tracing the curve of her neck and breast.

‘I remember the first time I saw you,’ Marc said, unbuttoning her shirt with practised ease to reveal the lace of her bra. ‘I wanted you right that minute.’ He ran his hands over her breasts and then, lowering his head, nipped at the lace of her bra. ‘The second I saw you all I could think about was what you would look like naked.’

‘I remember,’ Alison said. It was the version of events they had invented over the years, a version that was far more romantic and noble than the reality.

‘I was driving through the town today and I saw it – you know, the bedsit – still there. Looks exactly the same. The place where we first –’

‘Oh God, Marc,’ Alison covered her face. ‘Don’t remind me.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic place but thinking about it turned me on,’ Marc told her. ‘And I think it’s about time that you and I christened our new house, Mrs James.’ He pulled her to the floor, kissing her deeply as she folded onto his lap.

Alison made herself relax into his familiar embrace and waited, waited for that old hunger and need to return to her. As she felt his lips on her throat and breast she found herself thinking back to that day. The day they’d first had sex. It was an easy day to remember because it was also the day they first met.

It was the last week of the summer holidays. And up until that day everything was going in Alison’s life more or less just as she had planned and expected it to. She had one more year ahead of her at school. One more year to get the boy she really wanted to want her back, one more year to help Cathy keep sane and get free of her hateful parents from hell, and then she was off, free as a bird to study English at Bristol University. She’d meet a hundred new friends and a hundred new boys, none of whom she’d have a thing to do with because by then she’d have the boyfriend she really wanted and not the one she’d got. Not Aran Archer and his persistent wandering, groping, squeezing, bruising hands. She’d have the boy of her dreams, the boy she’d loved since she first clapped eyes on him.

She’d have Jimmy Ashley. She didn’t want him for ever, just for a few years while he was cool and everybody else wanted him, because anyone could see that Jimmy Ashley wasn’t the kind of man you married, but he was the perfect boyfriend for any seventeen-year-old girl. Especially now that he had left school and was in a band. It was almost impossible to be more cool than that. On that day fifteen years ago Alison had still been confidently waiting for him to realise that she was the perfect girlfriend for any eighteen-year-old to have. Her affection and desire for him had been unshakeable up until the very second she met Marc and the whole path of her life changed course.

It happened because she knew that Cathy had a secret, which in itself was unprecedented – Cathy never had anything interesting to hide unless it was some exploit that Alison had arranged for her. But even more surprising was that whatever Cathy’s secret was, she was also hiding it from Alison. And Alison absolutely had to know what it was, because, after all, the pair of them had been soul mates since they were eight years old on the day Alison started at her new school.

Cathy had been cowering in the centre of the playground, surrounded by a ring of girls, skipping, pointing and chanting, ‘Witch, witch, witch!’

‘What you doing?’ Alison had demanded of them, marching into the centre of the circle. The first thing she noticed about the girl standing next to her was that she was very tall, with the skinniest legs Alison had ever seen. Alison took a step in front of her.

‘Her mum’s a witch, which makes her a witch too,’ one of the other girls had crowed, her soft young face full of hate.

Alison had looked at the tall girl again, a tangle of arms and embarrassment.

‘Is your mum a witch?’ she asked her conversationally. The girl shook her head.

‘Right then, she’s not a witch, but I am.’ Alison marched up to the ringleader until they were nose to nose. ‘And if you say another word to my friend over there I’ll put a curse on you that will make you die the most slowest and horrible and disgusting and painful death you can think of. And if you tell anyone I said that then I’ll curse you anyway. One more word and you’re a corpse.’

The girls had glared at Alison but she had remained silent, turning on her heel with a flash of a ponytail and marching off, chin in the air. Gradually the others drifted off too, whispering amongst themselves about the odd new girl.

‘Looks like we’re best friends now,’ Alison had said, holding out her hand, which Catherine took. ‘I’m Alison.’

‘Catherine.’

‘Right then, Cathy – want to play hopscotch?’

They had been twelve when Alison had got Catherine so drunk on cider that she had thrown up on her mother’s feet as soon as she opened the front door to her, and then lay on the floor laughing. Catherine’s parents hadn’t taken that incident too well and banned Alison from seeing Catherine outside of school for good. Alison remembered her mum going round to Catherine’s, certain she’d be able to reason with her, blame it on youthful experimentation, high spirits. But she hadn’t bargained for Catherine’s mum, the coldest and most unbendable human that had ever existed. But soul mates were soul mates, and a parental ban wasn’t about to keep them apart. Alison invented a web of complicated lies that allowed them both to go out sometimes to a school disco or a party for a couple of hours, and best of all she worked out that she could climb out of her own bedroom window and into her friend’s in less than ten minutes, if she sprinted in her slippers down the alley behind the houses that separated Catherine’s posh estate from her council housing, without either set of parents knowing.

As they got older, their open secret of a friendship fell into an easy pattern. There was Alison and Cathy and Alison and the rest of the world. Alison did her best to be the bridge that Catherine crossed over to the normal lives of their peers. She threatened anyone who wasn’t kind to Cathy and let those who were bask in her approval. But their friendship was always a two-way street. She was just Cathy’s crusader and protector, her lifeline to normality; Cathy was her heart and soul, keeping her tethered to the ground when otherwise her wilder thoughts and impulses would have had her spinning off
into
the wild blue yonder, to be lost for ever. Cathy grounded her and kept her safe, and she knew she could tell Cathy what she could never tell her mother. She always thought that Cathy had felt the same, which is why her friend’s secret puzzled her. After all, what sort of secret could Cathy have that would require so much guarding?

Alison couldn’t imagine it.

Cathy had told her that she wouldn’t be around that afternoon. Her mum was making her stay in and study again. But Alison knew it was an excuse, she knew that Catherine’s mum worked in the Christian bookshop on Thursdays and wouldn’t know if Cathy was studying at home or not. She couldn’t go round and knock for Cathy so she waited on the iron railing behind the buddleia just next to the old people’s bungalows. It was hot, and Alison was bored after ten minutes so it was lucky really that it didn’t take much longer for Catherine to emerge, otherwise she might have gone to find Aran Archer after all.

Alison watched in fascination as her friend walked down the road. Something about Cathy had changed – no, that was wrong – everything had.

She was wearing a long white skirt that flowed around her ankles, a skinny-ribbed green vest top that set off the sway of her long red hair. She had bangles on her wrists and a long beaded necklace that fell between her breasts. Cathy looked beautiful and stylish, sexy even, with a new kind of confidence in the sway of her hips and the way she tossed her waist-length hair over her shoulder.

The way Cathy looked told Alison two things. First of all that Catherine’s mother was definitely out, otherwise Catherine would never have dared to leave the house in anything other than the clothes her mother allocated, and secondly, that she was going to meet a male of the species.