The Accidental Wife (29 page)

‘I have to go.’ Jimmy broke her grip and left.

As Jimmy’s train rolled into the station he hesitated. Maybe he shouldn’t get on the train after all, maybe he should go straight back round to the house and see how Cat was. Alison might be right and Marc might be heading round there now.
He
had no idea how his wife would react to seeing her first love again, no idea what would happen. But given that he’d only just worked out that he had never stopped loving her, not even for the fifteen minutes in the ladies’ loo in The Goat pub, he wasn’t quite ready for her to move on yet. He wasn’t quite ready to deal with her being in love with someone else. If he was there at home with her, then nothing could happen. He’d be able to preserve this precious non-relationship they had for a little longer. The train squealed to a halt alongside the platform and a handful of people got out, walking past Jimmy as he stared at the carriage.

He’d just told Alison that dwelling on ‘what ifs’ would drive you mental, but wasn’t that exactly what he was doing now? In the scheme of things, in the big picture, it didn’t matter if he loved Catherine or not. What mattered was that she did not love him, she never had. He’d thought he had a choice, but he hadn’t.

With a sense of finality Jimmy got on the train and swung himself into a seat by the window. As he watched Farmington slip out of view he clutched the neck of his guitar as if it were a life jacket. He knew there was nothing that he could do now.

Chapter Fifteen

ALISON LOOKED AT
herself in the wall of mirrors in the private exercise room as she waited for Kirsty. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were hot and glittering and she hadn’t done a stroke of exercise yet.

Not twenty minutes ago she had asked Jimmy Ashley to have sex with her! She’d just gone and blurted it out as if she’d planned it. One minute he’d been telling her how much he loved Catherine, how Catherine was everything that she wasn’t, and the next, for some reason, she thought it would be a good idea to ask Jimmy if he wanted to have a teenage fling with her. No, that wasn’t true, she hadn’t been thinking at all.

It was as if she were going a little bit more mad as each minute passed. As if after fifteen years of keeping herself on track, suddenly she’d derailed and was careering out of control downhill. Alison had no idea what was happening with her and Marc because since they’d talked on the lawn in the morning mist they hadn’t spoken at all. She had barely even seen him. He’d spent the rest of the weekend at the dealership and when he came home he went to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms.

Somehow it was hard to believe that this was the beginning of the end of them, the start of unravelling her life from his. Then she had to go and do something stupid like ask Jimmy
Ashley
if he wanted to have sex with her, and she realised that everything was changing, including her, except she wasn’t changing into something new, but something old. It was as if returning to Farmington had restored her default factory settings. She felt stupid, crazy, impulsive and confused.

She felt seventeen years old again.

The door swung open and Kirsty walked in. Alison smiled at her. Kirsty didn’t smile back.

‘You might as well know I’m Catherine’s best friend,’ she said, crossing her arms under her chest. ‘I had no idea who you were when I started teaching you. But if it’s a question of sides then I’m on hers and don’t try and make it any different. Got it?’

Alison looked at her. ‘God, it’s knackering always being the villain,’ she said, and she sat down on the floor and wept.

‘Well,’ Kirsty said, handing her a tissue she had retrieved from her handbag, ‘I didn’t expect you to cry. That’s kind of thrown me a bit.’

‘All this is happening to me too, you know,’ Alison sobbed into a tissue. ‘I don’t want you to take sides. I don’t want there to be sides. It’s just that I’m breaking up with my husband and I’ve just come face to face with my best friend again after fifteen years and it’s very confusing. I’m not evil, you know. I’m not some crazy scheming witch. I’m just trying to sort out this whole mess and put things right again.’

‘I didn’t know you and him were breaking up,’ Kirsty said. ‘Catherine doesn’t know that.’

‘No, well, I didn’t know it until I saw Cathy. Until I realised there was an alternative to being miserable married to him. I don’t love him any more and when I saw how he looked at her I don’t know if the way he loves me will ever be enough. And now my only friend is a fifteen-year-old boy who wears eyeliner and periodically despises me.’

‘Catherine doesn’t hate you, you know,’ Kirsty said after a while. ‘She’s extremely freaked out that you are back. But when we talked about it, about how she felt when she saw you, hate was not a word that cropped up.’

‘I miss her,’ Alison said, drying her tears. ‘Especially now. I feel like I’ve been in suspended animation for fifteen years, playing at being a grown-up but really I haven’t matured by one second. I even just asked Jimmy Ashley to have sex with me.’

‘You did
what
?’ Kirsty exclaimed. ‘You asked Catherine’s husband to have sex with you? I’m not judging you or anything, but are you
mental
? I just don’t think that is necessarily the best way to get back into her good books, given that the last time she saw you you were running off with the love of her life.’

‘They’ve split up, haven’t they?’ Alison challenged her weakly.

‘Technically, yes, but in my book splitting up means burning photos and never speaking to one another again, it doesn’t include sharing meals, taking long country walks and always living in each other’s pocket, which is pretty much what they do. There’s something unfinished going on there and if you want a hope of being Catherine’s friend I suggest you stay well out of it, at least until they’ve worked out how to finish it.’

‘Well, don’t worry,’ Alison sniffed. ‘He politely declined. But that’s what I’m talking about. I’m a mess. I’m a big fat useless pointless mess. I’ve got two little girls who don’t know their lives are about to fall apart, a son who holds me in contempt for about ninety-five per cent of the time, and a husband who … who I don’t love any more.’

‘Right, well, I didn’t know any of that either,’ Kirsty said. ‘You are in a pickle, aren’t you?’

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ Alison said, stifling a sob.

‘I tell you what,’ Kirsty said. ‘How about we sack the Pilates and go for a cup of coffee instead? Maybe between you and me we can work something out.’

‘I don’t know,’ Alison said with a watery smile. ‘The last time I went for a coffee I starting making random offers of sex to men who patently aren’t interested in me.’

‘Oh, honey,’ Kirsty told Alison as she pulled her up onto her feet, ‘welcome to my world.’

Catherine lay on the sofa and stretched her toes. It was almost lunchtime and she had lain on the sofa all morning. Almost since the moment Kirsty had left to go and ignore Sam she had stayed there, a now cool cup of tea resting on her chest as the hours slipped past.

For the first time ever in three years of employment at the Stratham and Shah agency Catherine had phoned in sick. Her boss had been sympathetic but had not sounded surprised, a fact which in itself was surprising, given Catherine’s previously spotless attendance record.

For the first time it occurred to Catherine that other people must have seen what had happened between her and Marc and Alison on Saturday night. Certainly everybody had seen Alison slapping her husband, just as many must have witnessed Catherine and Alison’s brief but taut conversation. Every single person in that room knew who Catherine was. It probably wouldn’t have taken long for those in the know to work out that Mrs Alison James was
the
Alison, and that her husband must be that young railway labourer she ran off with in her teens, devastating her mother and scandalising Farmington.

People were talking about her, Catherine realised, feeling discomfort and anxiety grip her belly like a vice. She hated to
be
noticed and known, and the thought that other people were discussing her private life appalled her. But as disturbing as that was, it wasn’t the reason that she had lain down on the sofa in her pyjamas and had not moved.

Seeing Marc and Alison again had taken her by surprise, but somehow the way she felt about seeing them again surprised her more than the actual event. It was almost as if on some level she had always been expecting this moment, knowing that one day it would come. Now they were back she felt curiously complete, as if a missing part of her life had been returned to her. Knowing where they were and what they were doing released the pressure of the past that had been building inside her, like a dam that had burst, and she could feel it flowing free out of her fingers and toes.

As she looked into the face of her old friend she’d felt happy and sad simultaneously, but the bitterness and anger she had expected were not there at all. Alison looked almost exactly the same, only in the brief moment Catherine had talked to her she hadn’t seen Alison’s fearlessness, that passion for life that had propelled Catherine through most of her teens, connecting her to the world outside of her parents’ house. Seeing Alison as she was now, the real woman and not some imagined paragon leading a perfect stolen life, Catherine found herself wondering what had changed her friend so much over the years. She found herself wondering how Alison was.

Being confronted with Marc was altogether different. Jimmy asked her how seeing Marc again had made her feel, and she hadn’t exactly lied, but had edited the truth because she couldn’t tell anyone, especially not Jimmy, how it made her feel to look into his eyes again. There was no evolution of emotion, no surprise reaction as there had been with Alison. When she looked at Marc it was as if the last fifteen years had been contracted into a single second and she was sitting in the
sunshine
in the park once again, her eyes closed, her lips parted, waiting for him to kiss her.

The whole town might be gossiping about her, her oldest ally and enemy might be back in town, but it was that feeling, that troubling heavy feeling of unresolved longing that kept Catherine pinned to the sofa for all of the morning, staring at the ceiling wondering what on earth Alison and Marc’s return meant and what in God’s name she was supposed to do about it.

Early that morning, still restless and unable to sleep because every time she closed her eyes her mind was flooded with sunshine and memories, Catherine had got up early and come downstairs to find Jimmy stretched out on this very sofa, his forearm across his forehead, his mouth open slightly as if he were on the verge of smiling.

Jimmy had stayed all weekend because she asked him to, because she knew that having him around was like having a buffer zone, an insulation between herself and the chaotic feelings that Marc had stirred up in her.

Jimmy was the only person who Catherine had ever allowed herself to be truly angry with. The only man she’d ever screamed and shouted at, hit and even hated, and now all of that rage had receded she found that he was the only person who could calm her. As angry with him as she had been for telling Alison about the baby, at exactly the same moment she had known she needed him around to keep her anchored.

Just having Jimmy listen to her, trying not to fall asleep as she talked the night away, had made her feel safe and sort of complete. With him around she was Catherine the woman, steady, reliable and strong. Without him she could have been that frenzied teenager again. That foolish girl who would have done anything to have a few more minutes with the boy she loved. Catherine didn’t want to be that girl again. That girl,
with
all her raw emotion and her heart pulsating on her sleeve, frightened her. That girl was all too easily crushed.

Sunday with Jimmy at home had been a perfect, happy, simple day, the four of them enclosed within the walls of their house from morning until night as if together they had the power to take themselves outside of time just for a little while.

But Catherine knew she couldn’t keep asking Jimmy to stay, even if she was sure that he would in his own affable whyever-not, go-with-the-flow way. It would confuse the girls; it would confuse
her
. As frightening as the thought of him not being around to come between her and her fears was, she had to face whatever came next on her own. After all, her problems were not Jimmy’s problems any more.

Just before Jimmy had taken the girls to school he’d found her in the kitchen, her bare feet cooling on the tiles, looking at a packet of cereal.

‘I don’t have to go to London,’ he’d offered.

‘Yes you do,’ Catherine had said, setting the cereal packet down. ‘You need that job. Deposit on a flat, remember?’

‘Yeah, but if I get it I’ll be away for a few weeks … Will you be OK?’ Jimmy asked her. ‘Without me, like.’

Catherine had turned round and made herself smile at him. ‘Of course I’ll be OK. I’ve been OK on my own for the last two years, I don’t need you to stick around now, honestly.’

It had been a total lie. Of course, more than anything she wanted him to stick around and be the magic ingredient that brought back a sense of rhythm to her life. But she needed to let him have his own life now, find his own way and be free of her.

The thought of him going to London hadn’t helped her move her body from the sofa, though.

Stretching her arms out over her head, Catherine sat up and looked at the clock. It was almost two. She had to get up,
shower
, get dressed and go to get the girls in just over an hour.

The knock at the front door made Catherine jump, and she put her feet on the floor, sitting forward on the sofa. She looked at the door for a few long seconds and considered the possibility of not opening it because she knew who was standing on the other side.

She was still in her pyjamas, at two in the afternoon, with her hair unbrushed and her face unwashed, and the very last person in the whole world she wanted to see was on the other side of that door. But Catherine didn’t seem to have any control over her own limbs. Just as she was thinking about sneaking out of the back door and taking refuge in Kirsty’s shed, her body had got up and opened the door.