The Accidental Wife (34 page)

At just gone eleven Alison was trying to work out exactly who it was she was waiting up for.

She’d called Dominic several times, but of course his phone wasn’t switched on.

At one point she almost phoned Marc, to tell him that Dom was wrong and he was right, that the family was worth staying together for, no matter how difficult it would be. But her thumb hovered over the call button and eventually she set the phone down undialled. She had to see his face when she told him that; she had to see the way he looked so she could be sure she was doing the right thing.

Leaning her head back against the sofa, Alison closed her hot dry eyes for a moment and tried to imagine Marc’s face. She’d wait up until he got in and then she’d tell him everything was going to be all right, and when she woke up in the morning the sun would be out and order would be restored. Marc and the girls would be happy and Dom would come round eventually, once she explained everything to him.

Because in the end, Alison decided hazily, as her thoughts and feelings swirled like the coloured patterns behind her lids, there wasn’t any other choice for her to make. She’d made her choice long ago and all that remained was for her to see it out.

*

She sprang awake when she heard the front door latch close. Sitting up, she saw Dominic appear from the hallway.

‘Is he here?’ he asked.

‘He stormed out too,’ Alison said. ‘The two of you are so alike.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Dom said, but his voice was low, drained of all aggression.

Alison held out a hand to him and reluctantly he came and sat down next to her.

‘Why did you do that?’ Alison asked him. ‘Why do that to your sisters? They were so upset.’

‘They are going to be upset sooner or later,’ Dom said. ‘Divorce is hard on the kids, but if you’re upfront with them they’ll take it better.’

‘No,’ Alison said. ‘No, they won’t …’

‘Honestly, Mum, I’m so sorry,’ Dom told her as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘I just lost it this afternoon. I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t even plan it. I just couldn’t stand him being at the table with us. Acting as if he cared, acting as if this family meant anything to him. And you’re wrong, Gemma and Amy will be able to handle you and Dad breaking up. In fact, probably once it’s out in the open they’ll be fine, because they’ll know where they stand and they won’t be worrying so much.’

‘They already know where they stand,’ Alison said, bracing herself.

‘You talked to them?’

‘Yes.’ Alison picked up her son’s hand. ‘Dom, I told them that everything was going to be all right between me and your dad. I told them we weren’t going to split up. They won’t have to deal with anything … I’m going to fix things.’

‘Mum …’ Dominic shook his head. ‘Mum, wait, listen –’

‘No, Dom, I’ve decided. I’m not leaving your dad. I know
things
aren’t perfect, but, well, your dad and I talked. I’ve made my feelings really clear, and it’s shocked him. It’s hurt him and I don’t think he really understood before what was at stake, what he risked losing. I think that if I … if
we
make an effort now, then we can really come through. We can stick together. I think this time your dad really listened to me and understood how I felt. I think he’ll change, Dom. I think he’ll do his best to keep us all together. It’s what he wants and it’s what the girls want, and so then it’s what I want too. And I need you to understand that and to support me. Who knows, perhaps once things have calmed down you’ll start to get on better with Dad.’

‘You’ve talked and he’s changed,’ Dominic said, shaking his head as if he hadn’t heard half of what Alison said. ‘When did you talk? Tonight, after I’d gone? Tell me, Mum, when did you talk?’

‘Last Sunday after the party,’ Alison said. ‘He’s been really good since. I think he’s tried to be considerate. He’s given me space, he hasn’t tried to change my mind, even though that’s what he really wants, even though that is why he got so angry with you tonight. I thought he would do this one thing that I expected him to do right away. But he hasn’t done it, Dom. I’d know this time if he had been with … someone else. He gets sort of calm and still for a while. Peaceful. Not at all like he was tonight. He was that way because he is fighting to keep us. He’s going about it all wrong but still he’s trying, and after fifteen years I have to let that mean something. Dom, I’m not saying we’re all just going to be a happy family again. But when I saw how upset the girls were tonight I just knew I had to try, and if your father is prepared to try too then, who knows, we might just make it.’

Alison felt a surge of hope bubble in her chest as she finished her speech, realising that she had been attempting to convince herself as much as her son.

‘Last Sunday,’ Dom said. ‘That’s funny, because on Monday I saw with him with another woman.’

‘What?’ Alison was stunned into silence for a few minutes. ‘What do you mean? How – you were supposed to be in school?’

‘We had a free period and it was almost the end of school so I went down the canal with some of the other kids,’ Dominic said.

‘You saw your Dad in the park with another woman?’ Alison laughed. The image was so absurd, it was as if Dominic had somehow glimpsed into the past.

‘No, I was walking on the road down the bridge and I saw him at the door of a house. I was going to sneak by because I didn’t want him to see me but then the door opened, and it was that woman. The woman that was at the party, Mum. Tall, with red hair. She only had PJs on and it was gone two. She let him in and closed the door.’

‘He was at Cathy’s,’ Alison whispered, almost to herself. ‘I knew he’d go there. I knew he would …’

‘That’s not all,’ Dom said. Alison looked up at him. ‘He was in there for a while, so I thought I’d hang about, you know, see if he came out, ask him what he was doing. But he was ages so I crept up and looked through the window. She’d got dressed by then. They were holding each other; it was pretty obvious what was going to happen next. What had probably already happened. I didn’t want to see that so I legged it. I didn’t know how to tell you, Mum. I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you but then you said all of that stuff about trying and hope, and I had to.’

‘I really thought I’d know if he’d been with Cathy,’ Alison said bleakly. ‘I really thought I would.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dom said. ‘But I’m not lying.’

‘I know,’ Alison told him. ‘I know.’

She felt something flare in her chest, a reignited spark of those old passions, fury and jealousy, which had driven her to take Marc from Cathy fifteen years ago. That’s what had been between her and Marc at the beginning. And after any love they might have managed to conjure up between them had finally vanished for good, that was all that remained: fury and jealousy.

‘So when you thought he was hurt and worried and upset he was already trying to get off with someone else,’ Dominic said triumphantly. ‘Don’t you see that’s why we can’t go on like this? You have to end it.’

Alison was silent.

‘I’m going to bed, before he gets in,’ Dom said, kissing her on the head as he got up. ‘I’m sorry I had to tell you, Mum, but can you see now why I got so angry?’

Alison nodded. ‘I see,’ she said.

Once her son had gone up she found that she was crying. But not because Marc had betrayed her. Because her friend had. And for the first time in sixteen years Alison knew what that felt like.

Chapter Eighteen

CATHERINE LAY IN
bed and listened to her empty house. When it was her weekend to have the girls they would be downstairs by now, bashing about in the kitchen making themselves cereals, slopping milk onto the floor and sloshing juice into cups. And then they’d eat, sitting on the carpet in front of the TV because it was the only day of the week their mother would let them get away with it.

But this weekend they were away with Jimmy and the house was quiet. No, it was more than quiet, it was hollow. It echoed with their absence.

Catherine stretched her fingers above her head and her toes towards the bottom of the bed, sat up and paused, not for the first time, to reflect on how her absent family had been thrown off balance by everything that had happened. The return of Marc and Alison hadn’t just pitched her into turmoil, but the feelings and thoughts of those around her too, including her children, and she couldn’t stand that.

It frightened Catherine to death when she thought about the sane and steady life that she had worked so hard to shore up over the last couple of years being threatened, and she knew she would do whatever she could to try to protect the makeshift harmony that she had created for her daughters. But, just as she was resolved to do that at any cost, a stealthy
image
of Marc and the remembrance of the heat of his touch intervened, so that her heart beat a little faster and she felt the blood pumping in her veins, and for a few terrifying seconds she had the impulse to throw everything away just to feel like that again, and hang the consequences. She had felt like that once before and it hadn’t ended well.

Catherine got out of bed and pulled the curtain back. It was cold outside, a sharp blue sky promising chilly sunshine. She pressed the heat of her cheeks against the cool glass for a moment until the thought of what might have happened next if Marc had kissed her faded to a bearable level.

It was all very well for Kirsty to tell her to rejoice in being fully alive, but when you weren’t used to it, it wasn’t that easy. It was like waking up one hundred years in the future; everything seemed louder, faster and a whole lot more frightening, a world full of terrifying possibilities.

Despite what had happened on Monday Jimmy had still been around for most of the week. He had picked up the girls and taken them to school every other day, and on Tuesday he’d walked with Catherine to work because he knew she was dreading it, even if she didn’t say so. He’d had dinner with them on Wednesday night and on Thursday had come round to replace the rotting floorboard in the bathroom, a job he’d been promising to do for at least three months. He’d been there, but at the same time he’d been absent too.

On Friday afternoon, he’d come round to pick up the girls’ luggage before he collected them from school to take them straight off to his mother’s. He’d stood there in silence, holding up the rucksack while Catherine folded in changes of clothes for each of them and then carefully stowed favourite toys and books.

They hadn’t talked about what Jimmy had seen on Monday since then, but Catherine felt that she should be talking about
something
, because it just wasn’t like the two of them to be silent and polite, so she’d asked him a question.

‘Are you sorry you missed the audition for session work? I feel so bad that you missed it because of me. Maybe if you called them now it wouldn’t be too late.’

Jimmy shook his head, bending to scoop one of Leila’s soft toys from the floor where Catherine had dropped it. He picked it up and squeezed it tenderly before dropping it into the bag.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was in two minds about it anyway, and besides, I’m needed here right now.’

By his usual standards he was being singularly uncommunicative and although Catherine could understand that walking in on her and Marc had made him angry, territorial even, and unusually macho, she couldn’t work out why he’d seemed so sad. Catherine hated to see him sad.

‘I just don’t like to think about you missing out, because of me,’ she said. ‘Because of my stupid mess. I can manage without you, if you want to go.’

‘I know,’ Jimmy said with a shrug, staring at the toes of his cowboy boots. ‘Session work is for losers anyway. I’ve got the band to think about. Right now the band need me. We’re at a crucial writing stage. Plus we’ve got that wedding at the Holiday Inn, week after next.’

‘Jimmy?’ Catherine had asked him uncertainly, afraid that his sadness was a symptom of regret. ‘Do you ever wish you’d never met me, that we’d never got together and you’d never become a dad so young? Because then you wouldn’t feel obliged to hang around me now and make sure I don’t make a total idiot of myself.’

Jimmy had looked at her for a long time.

‘I felt like that once, on one night for about half an hour, and that was enough to end our marriage.’ He’d shrugged and,
as
Catherine put the last toy in the rucksack, bent to strap it up. ‘But I’ve never felt that way for one moment before or since. Why do you ask? Is it because you think if you didn’t have me or the children in your life
you’d
be free now? Free to run off with arse-face.’

Catherine had known her laugh at the insult was probably ill advised, but it escaped before she could repress it. Jimmy glowered at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, composing her features. ‘It’s just – look, I know you think I’m an idiot and possibly some kind of slut for getting as close to him as I did after seeing him again for about five seconds, but you know me, Jim. You know that in the last twelve years you’re the only person I’ve … I’m not the kind of woman that jumps into bed with people for the sake of it. I got swept away in the moment, in the past. I know what’s at stake and besides, I’ve never stolen another woman’s husband yet and I’m not going to start now. Please don’t be angry with me, please don’t be so … disappointed in me. For one thing, I can’t take it. I need you to like me because what you think of me matters to me more than what anyone else thinks, and for another, Kirsty says you are being a right royal hypocrite and that I should punch you for being so up your own arse.’

This time Jimmy’s mouth twitched a little, but only a little.

‘Maybe it’s just hitting me now,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why I’m so … down.’

‘What is hitting you? Marc and Alison turning up?’

‘No, us, breaking up. The end of our marriage.’ Jimmy sighed and looked at the ceiling. ‘Look, I’ve got a reputation, girls hang around me a lot of the time. I don’t really blame them: I am Jimmy Ashley, after all. But for what it’s worth I want you to know that I haven’t been with anyone else in twelve years either. Apart from Donna Clarke in the ladies’
loos
of The Goat. At first I let you think I did go with other women because I was angry at you for not forgiving me, and I wanted to hurt you even more. And then I did it because I thought I actually might meet someone new and sometimes, recently, just because it seems easier to pretend that I’m something I’m not. That version of me is a lot easier to live with, the version that doesn’t give a bollock about what he’s messed up.’ Jimmy shrugged. ‘I know you have every right to see other men and move on, even arse-face, if you really want to – I know that – but when I saw you with him then it hit me. We’re over. We’re really over, and sooner or later everything will change for ever because we can’t go on like this and live our lives.’