The Accidental Wife (8 page)

Later that night, while her parents had been watching the ten o’clock news, Alison had crept through Catherine’s bedroom window, as she had done every night she could get away with it since they were twelve years old.

‘Are you mad at me?’ she whispered, easing first one bare leg and then the other through the window.

Catherine, who had been lying on her bed reliving every single moment of her afternoon, had sat up on her elbows and shaken her head.

‘No, I’m not, you’ll never –’

Alison interrupted her. ‘When you hear what happened you’ll understand,’ she said.

Alison was so used to telling her stories, it would never cross her mind that Catherine might have one to tell in return.

‘Go on then, but be quick. Mum’ll be up as soon as the news is finished to tell me to turn my light off.’

‘I was just leaving to meet you when
Aran Archer
rang me up and asked me if I wanted to watch a video at his. Well, I had to go, didn’t I? Samantha Redditch has been after him since Easter. I thought she’ll die if she knows I’ve bagged him.’

‘But I thought you like –’

‘Yes, of course I like him, I
love
him, but he’s never noticed me yet so while I’m waiting, why not go out with Aran
Archer?
There’ll be parties and I’ll get to hang out with my true love more.’

‘If you say so,’ Catherine said. She’d learned never to question Alison’s plans, because Alison did what she wanted to do and worried about the consequences later.

‘So I go round to Aran’s, and his mum is out, of course. He draws all the curtains in the living room, tells me to sit on the sofa, and gives me a drink of orange
squash
!’ Alison shook her head. ‘What a saddo! Of course the film hadn’t been on five minutes before we were kissing. His tongue was down my throat straight away and his hand was up my top, squeezing them like they were lemons.’

Alison laughed, remembering to cover her mouth with her hand at the last second in case Catherine’s parents heard her.

‘It was so not sexy,’ she said. ‘So I pushed him off me and he says, “Oh, go on, Alison, let me see them, please!” And I said to him, “Are we going out or what?” And he says, yeah we are, all sort of desperate and pathetic. So I said, “OK then.”

‘I couldn’t get him off of me for the rest of the afternoon. He wanted to go further but I wasn’t having any of that. I’m not losing it to him. Still, he’s quite sweet really when he’s not with his mates. He said he’s fancied me for ages.’

‘So you’ve chucked Ryan, then?’

‘Well, I will do,’ Alison said, glancing at her watch. ‘What about you? What did you do? I would have phoned you here to tell you but I knew you’d rather get out than be stuck in here all afternoon.’

Catherine thought about her kiss with Marc and she thought of how it would sound if she tried to explain to Alison in the way Alison had just described her afternoon with Aran Archer. The moment was too precious for her to share with anyone, even Alison. Especially Alison, because once she knew she’d have questions like, whose hand went where and what
did
it feel like and when could she meet him? Catherine realised with a sudden lurch she didn’t want Alison to meet him. The afternoon she had spent with Marc, the talk they’d had and the kiss was hers. It was perhaps the very first thing that she had properly owned in her entire life, even if it was something as transient as memories and sensations, and Catherine wasn’t ready to share them.

‘We can do something tomorrow, if you like,’ Alison said. ‘Aran will be begging me to see him but I don’t think I should, do you? I’ll be fighting him off again all afternoon and it’s such a drag.’

‘Actually, I can’t tomorrow,’ Catherine said quickly.

‘Really?’ Alison looked surprised and Catherine was sure she’d be caught out in her lie. ‘Parents?’ Alison asked.

Catherine nodded.

Alison gave her a sympathetic hug. ‘Just think, one more year and you’ll have A levels and we’ll be off to university. Then you’ll never have to see them again. One more year and you’ll be free.’

‘Yes,’ Catherine said thoughtfully. ‘One more year.’

They heard a footfall on the bottom stairs.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ Alison hissed as she climbed out of the window. ‘Same time, same place, OK?’

Hastily Catherine pulled the window shut after her, and glimpsed the silhouette of her friend on the garage roof before scrambling back into bed.

‘Lights out now,’ her mother said, opening the door.

‘Yes, Mum,’ Catherine said.

Her mother paused for a moment, looking at the window, the curtain a little askew.

‘Have you had the window open?’ she asked Catherine.

‘Sorry,’ Catherine said.

‘No windows open at night. Any mad man could get in.’

Her mother had shut the door behind her, snapping the light switch off as she went. Catherine lay back in her bed, stretching from the ends of her fingers to the tips of her toes, knowing. At last she had something to dream about.

Things would have been so different, Catherine thought as she finished her glass of wine, if Marc just hadn’t turned up the next day.

She had told her mother she was going to study at the library, taking a big net bag of books and several pens to prove it. Her mother, who didn’t like her being around the house anyway, didn’t question her. She was glad to see the back of her.

Catherine deliberately walked along the canal towards the park in a bid to avoid meeting anyone she might know, including Alison, on the high street. The spot in the park where Marc had found her was out of the way, beyond the swings and roundabout, under the canal bridge towards the back of the field where the park met the railway embankment. The grass was long, untouched by the council mower. Catherine felt confident that once she was there she would not be spotted by anyone.

Which was reassuring because she didn’t expect him to be there at all. She prepared herself for disappointment, relieved that she hadn’t told Alison about him because then, when he didn’t show, when she didn’t see him again, it wouldn’t matter as nobody would know about him, and after a few days or weeks, Catherine would stop thinking about him and her life would get back to exactly the way it had been before.

But as she made her way under the bridge she could see that Marc was already there waiting for her, leaning against the trunk of the tree they had met under, the August sun painting his bare chest with patches of gold as it danced through the tree’s canopy.

Catherine stopped in her tracks and looked at him. She was seventeen, the most inexperienced girl in her year, if not the whole school. She was thin and flat-chested, with long bony fingers and feet. What did Marc want with her truly? Because he could not want her like
that
. He couldn’t look at her the way boys looked at Alison and actually want her. Besides, he wasn’t a mere boy. He was a man, more than three years her senior. Seeing him waiting there under the tree for her didn’t make any kind of sense.

Instinctively Catherine knew that now was the time she should turn back. It was her chance to heed the warning he had given her yesterday and leave. But even as in her mind’s eye she was rotating on her heel and scurrying away to the shelter of the library, her treacherous body was carrying her right to his side.

‘I saw you watching me,’ he said, smiling up at her, blinking against the bright sunlight. ‘Having second thoughts?’

‘No,’ Catherine said. He reached out, catching her hand and pulled her down onto the grass. ‘It’s just, I look at you and I … I don’t know what you want with me.’

Marc laughed. ‘Me neither, but it must be something pretty strong because after we said goodbye yesterday I swore blind to myself I wasn’t coming here today. But here I am. And now you’re here I feel happy. I hardly ever feel happy.’

The two of them watched each other and the anticipation that he might kiss her again made Catherine’s insides burn.

‘So what do you want to do today?’ Catherine asked him.

Applying a very gentle pressure on her shoulders Marc pushed her back into the long grass and lay alongside her, his head propped up on one elbow. ‘I want to lie here in the grass, talking and kissing you,’ he told her. And that was exactly what they did.

They met every chance that they could, every free hour that Catherine could steal from her mother and explain away to Alison. She would have been content to lie in the long grass with Marc day after day, but on the third day Marc pulled her to her feet and said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

‘Where else?’ Catherine was reluctant, afraid of who might see her and afraid to tell Marc that she felt that way, in case she hurt him.

‘The pictures,’ Marc told her, raising his eyebrows. ‘They’ve got a showing of that film
Ghost
on at the cinema. I’ve heard it’s rubbish, but girls like it, right?’

‘You’re taking me to
Ghost?
’ she said, repressing a laugh because it seemed like such a normal thing for a boy and girl to do and exactly the sort of thing she thought she would never do, especially not with Marc.

‘I’m doing better than that.’ He grinned, tugging at her hand. ‘Come on.’

Never in her life as the tallest thinnest most ginger haired girl in the school had Catherine ever felt as self-conscious as she did that afternoon, walking hand in hand with the shorter, compact, shirtless Marc through the town towards the Rex cinema. She was sure that this would be it, this would be the moment when one of her mother’s friends or worse still her mother, caught her in a lie and the daydream she had been living would be over. Amazingly her luck held and as they approached the grand but shabby art deco building, Catherine saw a small queue forming outside its doors.

‘This way,’ Marc said, leading her not to the entrance but pulling her down a narrow alley that ran along side the building.

‘What are we doing?’ Catherine asked him, giggling.

‘I met this guy in the pub last night, works in the projection room.’ He drew her into a doorway with a locked fire door
that
was marked ‘Fire Escape, Keep Clear!’.

‘Years ago this old heap was the go-to place for miles around, he reckons. Gold paint on the ceiling, velvet chairs, cocktails brought to your table.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that,’ Catherine said with an uncertain smile. ‘I’ve seen some of the old photos in the local history books. So?’

‘
So
, there were boxes, just like you get in a theatre for the really posh people to sit in. They don’t use them now, except for storage but they are still there …’ He smiled at her and kissed her gently on the lips. ‘And the bloke said if I bought him a pint, he’d let us in the side entrance and we could watch the film in a box for free.’

‘Really?’ Catherine gasped, more delighted that Marc had been thinking of her when he came up with the plan, than the plan itself.
Ghost
was one of Alison’s favourite films and they had seen it so many times she was fairly sure she knew the script better than Demi Moore did.

Marc nodded, looking pleased with himself as he banged several times on the door. After a while the door swung open and Marc and the projectionist exchanged a few words.

‘Don’t get up to anything too energetic in there,’ the projectionist told Marc as he pointed them towards the box, chuckling to himself.

‘Do you mind,’ Marc said, smiling at Catherine as he held the door open for her. ‘I’m with a real lady here.’

They sat side by side on upturned boxes, Marc’s warm arm around her shoulders.

‘This film is crap,’ Marc said after about twenty minutes, making Catherine laugh.

‘Do you want to leave?’ she asked him.

‘No,’ he said looking into her eyes. ‘I want to kiss you.’

*

Almost every night Catherine would hear Alison’s latest exploits with Aran, the things he tried to do to her or made her do to him, the things she sometimes let him do and the things she sometimes did.

But it was never like that with Marc; he never tried anything on with her. They sat or lay in the long grass, out of sight of the passers-by, while he stroked her hair and told her about his life, how he’d grown up alone, pushed from one foster home to another. How he’d been kicked out of care at sixteen and had to look after himself, make that choice between finding himself a job or doing one on the local post office with some of the other boys from the home and a sawn-off shotgun one of them said they could get hold of. He’d chosen labouring work because he knew what he was like; he knew he’d mess up and get caught and then that would be his life over. Then suddenly he’d stop talking and Catherine knew he was going to kiss her. She would feel his hand in her hair, or on her waist but never anything more.

She felt safe and when she was talking to him, telling him about her parents, who did not love each other, let alone her, it didn’t seem so sad or so desperate any more that she’d grown up in a house without affection or compassion, and that the nearest thing she had to a real family was the girl who lived down the road and climbed in through her bedroom window nearly every night.

Then, on the ninth day, something changed. Marc was kissing her, and it felt just as it always did when suddenly, without warning, something shifted inside her. She found her arms snaking their way around his neck, and she pulled his body hard into hers as she kissed him back, arching the small of her back so that their hips met. Marc stopped kissing her.

‘Whoa,’ he said, breathless.

‘What?’ Catherine asked him. ‘Did I do something wrong?

‘Yes, I mean, no, not wrong but …’ Marc looked at her. ‘I don’t think you’re ready to …’

In the long pause that followed, their bodies relaxed. Catherine felt as if she was backing down from a fight.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she asked Marc.

‘Course you can.’ Marc shifted his body weight to create an almost imperceptible but significant space between them.

‘Do you want me, Marc? I mean in
that
way. Because we’ve been seeing each other for a while now and I love talking to you and kissing, and I don’t even know what I’m asking you really except that do you
really
like me, or do you just kiss me when you haven’t got anything to say any more? Because you feel sorry for me?’