After Ever After (12 page)

Gareth Jerome. My type. Out there in my garden. That kind of roguishness, a brash kind of confidence in his own occupation of space. And the way he looked at me back there when he smiled. All that in those few seconds made me feel, just for a moment, the way I did that first night with Fergus. Just for a moment he looked at me like I wasn’t married and a mum. He looked at me like I was just me. It’s frightening, it’s wrong and, what’s more, it’s damned inconvenient.

Or it could be hormones. This is the thing about hormones. Before you get pregnant you are pretty au fait with them. You know when they’re going to get you, when the rise in the level of your oestrogen or whatever is going to turn you into a snappy-happy drama queen. You sort of know that one week a month, when the diet goes out of the window, you will buy a pair of turquoise pumps that are a size too small and shout angrily at your boyfriend, best friend, boss, because it’s Tuesday and you just can’t take another Tuesday.

Then, when pregnancy happens, it takes you a while to realise that that one week of the month has extended to every week of every month for nine months and then seemingly for the rest of your life. Yes, Gareth Jerome is fairly good looking. Handsome even. Before the atypical, kind, caring, generous and sweet Fergus came into my life he
would
have been my type. But he isn’t any more, because I no longer have a type and certainly not that kind of type. No. He has not been sent here to Berkhamsted from hell to taunt me.

Now I’ve had time to think about it I’m certain it was just hormones, the same kind of hot flush I told Camille about on the phone. Nothing to worry about at all. After all, I am Mrs Fergus Kelly now, and I do not have a type.

Fergus will have to fire him, that’s all.

It has taken me the rest of the morning to get us ready to go out, and at last I’m changing Ella into what I hope is going to be her last outfit of the day on the kitchen floor, an idea which she is heartily against.

‘I know, darling, I know you don’t like to wear clothes, but I’m afraid it’s the law.’ She attempts to poke out her own eye in defiance of the law and kicks me in the chest.

‘Right little live wire you’ve got there, love.’ Gareth Jerome looms above the kitchen worktop. I jump and hastily scoop Ella up into my arms.

‘Oh, right, yes. Well, she knows what she likes, and it’s to be naked, mostly.’ I zip up her coat and do my best impression of a cool smile and glance out at the garden. Most of the grass has been cut back and the vague outline of what was once a bed-bordered lawn is slowly beginning to emerge.

‘Looks like you’re doing a good job,’ I say grudgingly.

Gareth stretches his arms wide, opening his shoulders and revealing his throat briefly to the sun.

‘Well, I am good at my job and it’s a nice day. Added incentive. After all, that dank dark winter seemed to go on for most of the year.’ He pauses for a moment and leans against the kitchen bench. He’s rolled his overalls down to his waist and tied the arms around his hips, revealing long and lightly muscled arms.

‘Look, I know you’ve got your plans and all, but while I’ve been out there I’ve been brimming over with ideas. How about I make you a plan up, free of charge, mind, and then we sit down and compare ideas together. If you don’t like it, I’ll scrap it, no worries.’

He returns his gaze to me and I studiously examine the rotten wooden fence that is barely separating our garden from the neighbours’. I expect that after a few days I’ll stop being impressed by hawk-like eyes and raven hair and get over it, much the same way that I eventually had to stop the heart hammering, stomach-churning paroxysm that overtook me every time I saw Fergus or else I would have died, literally.

I imagine sitting down with this Gareth Jerome, and I wonder what the harm in getting some expert advice outside of a book might be and decide it’s okay. I’ll just steal any of the ideas I like and do it myself. Sort of horticultural espionage.

‘Okay then. I suppose. When you come back tomorrow?’ I realise that between now and then I will have to finish colouring in my plan and read the chapter on ‘Planning and Planting’ in order to look professional. He flashes me that smile again and I manage to stiffen my knees in time.

‘Here we go!’ I say brightly to Ella as I wheel her out into the harsh daylight.

‘Have a good time!’ Mr Crawley’s head appears out of an upstairs window.

‘Yep! Yep, we will!’ I say, waving up at him, sounding as if I’m about to be put to death in a gladiator’s arena, but I have to look at it this way: either it’s the One O’Clock Club in the town hall or it’s a half-naked Gareth in my garden. The way I’m feeling today the One O’Clock Club is an altogether safer proposition.

‘And I meant what I said about those auditions. You’ll really enjoy it!’ Mr Crawley calls before closing the crumbling sash window.

‘Yep!’ I say again, to myself this time, my voice a strangulated squeak.

If it wasn’t happening to me it would be funny. There I was yesterday, trying to recapture just a little bit of my old life, looking for just a moment of familiarity, and here I am today with a crush on my gardener, a trip to a toddler group and the promise of a part in the local amateur dramatics society’s latest production. I couldn’t make things much more different if I tried.

It was Mr Crawley’s idea, of course, this whole auditions thing, and, I suspect, part of his secret plan to rehabilitate me into real life, just at it was he who had brought the One O’Clock Club leaflet and left it out for me to read. I was hiding in our living room from Gareth when Ella had started to scream at the top of her lungs. By the time I reached her nursery, Mr Crawley and Timothy were singing ‘Ohhhhk-la-hom-a!’ to her with what seemed to be practised gusto, and she was giggling with abandon as Mr Crawley polkaed her around the room.

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, smiling at them, and upon seeing me Ella instantly burst into tears as if she’d just remembered what a terrible mother I am.

‘Oh, darling, darling.’ I failed to pacify her and lifted her on to her changing table, knowing that this particular performance wouldn’t be over until she’d been changed and fed. At least it wouldn’t have been if it wasn’t for Mr Crawley and Timothy’s impromptu launch into ‘I’m just a girl who can’t say no’. I giggled too, then, more with relief than anything else, although Mr Crawley’s mid-west falsetto was pretty funny.

‘You two show a remarkably extensive knowledge of musical lyrics?’ I questioned, briefly wondering if a gay May-to-September romance might explain all of Mr Crawley’s more unusual traits.

‘Ah, well, the Berkhamsted Players, you see, Mrs Kelly. I am a stalwart member, and Tim here has picked up a bit along the way. Mostly chorus, I’m afraid, although I did play Fagin in the 1999 production of
Oliver!
, which was rather favourably reviewed in the
Gazette
, I might add.’

I saw the genuine pleasure in his smile and hefted Ella back into my arms, whereupon she reached for my hair and yanked it joyously.

‘So, this year it’s all “surreys with fringes on top”, is it?’ I asked, my head at a forty-five degree angle.

‘No, no, that was last year. This year it’s
Calamity Jane
. We did wonder about doing two musical westerns back to back but, well, frankly our coffers are low and it saves on costumes.’

I bit my lip as I took Ella down the hall to my bedroom and deposited her like a frog in a lily pond on the floral cover. She contemplated the whole sitting unsupported business for a few seconds before lunging forward on to her chin and proceeding to crawl backwards, which is the only direction she’s been able to master so far – to her certain doom, given half the chance.

I was surprised that Mr Crawley had followed me into the bedroom instead of returning to his work in the bathroom.

‘You should try out for it,’ he told me with an encouraging smile.

‘Try out for what?’ I asked

‘The Players, the Players’
Calamity Jane
. I reckon you’d stand a good chance, you can carry a tune. I’ve heard you sing to the little one and I know the director would love to be able to cast a Calamity under the age of forty-five and not menopausal, although I’m fairly sure Mrs Ponsenby wouldn’t agree, smug old cow.’

I let my jaw drop at his first ever display of anything other than charming good nature and laughed swiftly, lifting Ella from the precipice of the left-hand side of the bed and returning her to the relative security of the right.

‘It’s just that it’s not really my cup of tea,
am dram
.’ I had referenced my mental picture of Myself, dressed cute and out clubbing, before remembering that, according to recent events, what I automatically considered to be my favourite way of passing the time actually had nothing to do with me any more. I sat down, dizzy with the vertigo of days falling away from me, and picked Ella off the edge of the bed just in time once again. She squealed in frustration.

‘Okay, I’ll think about it,’ I said, wanting him to leave, catching sight of a stranger’s profile reflected plumply in the bedroom mirror.

He watched me closely for a moment and then, talking softly, he said, ‘It’s only that you’ve been here, in Berkhamsted, nearly a year now, haven’t you? And I think I’m right in saying that the only people you know are Mr Kelly, his family and us. Oh, and the little one, of course. I just think it would do you good to get out a bit. That’s all it is.’ He smiled at me gently as he closed the door behind him.

I think, somehow, that during that conversation he had assumed my assent and was certain I would go. And I suppose that I will go. It’ll be different, it will be me, the new, married, country-town me.

I wheel Ella across the high street and decide to take a detour past Boots. I don’t need to cross the road as the town hall is on this side, but I decide I can’t be early and I can’t be on time. What if I get there and no one’s there? And what do I say when I get there? What if they’re all huddled around in a group looking at us as we stand in the corner waiting for someone to talk to us? For God’s sake, it feels like the first day of school! I’ll have nothing to say to these women – I’m just not one of them.

I am about to turn the buggy through a three-point turn when I catch my reflection in Boots’ plate-glass window and it halts me abruptly. A brown-haired, slightly rounded face looks back at me. Not a stranger’s face, but mine now. It’s not a hideous face, in fact it’s quite pleasant in its way, and whichever way you look at it it’s definitely me. In a way it’s sort of comforting to know that I’m not that wild, red-haired, lipsticked, mini-skirted girl any more. It doesn’t matter really that Gareth Jerome jangled me just a little bit back then in the garden because it’s not Kitty Simpson any more, it’s Kitty Kelly, mother and wife. I curl the end of my hair around my finger and look at it closely, the last tiny bit of red hair dye which I had been growing out since the moment I met Fergus, because he told me he thought that my naturally brown hair would suit me better, still stains the very ends of my hair.

‘The last tiny bit of the old me,’ I say out loud to Ella, who twists her head in her hood impatiently to look at me. ‘The very last little ickle bit of me,’ I say, bending over her to tickle her under her chin as I redirect us back to the One O’Clock Club. She bats my hand away with a chuckle and smiles at me.

I stroke her cheek and remember the first time I saw that smile.

It was after we left Simon Shaw’s party. Fergus had promised me coffee and toast in the last working man’s café left in the Docklands. He’d led me by the hand past a blur of what might have been celebrities – I didn’t know and I didn’t care – and up to the river’s edge. I’d felt as if I were floating. The lights along the river blossomed like fluorescent flowers and I’d resisted the temptation to sing out loud.

We’d leant against a railing and his hand held mine simply, almost demurely, as we watched the water. Eventually I’d stopped worrying about how I looked in profile and became lost in the formless movement and reflected colour of the water. So I’d jumped when Fergus’s voice had cut with knife-sharp clarity into my new soft-focus world.

‘Will you come back to my flat, Kitty?’ he’d said with a lightning-swift change of plan, taking a step closer to me. I could see that his pupils had dilated almost enough to entirely obliterate the violet ring of his iris. He’d pointed along the walkway. ‘I live just down there. I’ve a river view balcony.’

‘What about the great night café that you know?’ I’d asked, afraid, not of being found dead in a ditch the next day, but of the speed and strength of force with which my body had decided that it wanted to go back to his before my mind had had a say in it.

He’d sighed and looked out across the river.

‘Well, we could go there, it’s true. But …’ He’d paused and looked away from me.

‘But? But what?’ I’d asked, tucking my hand through the loop of his arm.

‘Well, it’s less likely that you’re going to let me kiss you all over in the middle of a café,’ he’d said with a grin that was stopped dead by the intensity in his gaze.

‘Blimey, why don’t you just say what you mean?’ I’d said, my voice trembling with laughter and my stomach turning over.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Fergus had laughed, turning to face me, placing each one of his hands on my hips with careful precision. ‘Let’s go to the café. I’ll stand you a sausage sandwich.’

I’d watched him for a moment, noticed the space between his brows and the small tear-drop shadow under his bottom lip.

‘No, let’s go back to yours,’ I’d said almost absent-mindedly. ‘I think I’d rather you kissed my naked body all over.’ I’d turned and walked away from him, swinging my hips as sassily as I was able to considering I’d just gone pillar-box red and could hardly believe myself.

‘Um, Kitty?’ Fergus had called after me. I’d gathered my wits and glanced over my shoulder seductively.

‘Uh-huh?’ I’d said, attempting the temptress look.

‘That’s great … it’s just that my flat’s the other way?’ His grin was like a beacon. He was delighted with me and I was delighted with myself.