After Ever After (26 page)

‘Why don’t I what?’ I shout, following him on to the landing as he walks down the stairs. Ella waves right at me as if to distract me. I’m not sure if it’s accidental or purposeful, but right now I ignore it. As he reaches the bottom, Fergus stops and thinks for a moment before looking back up at me.

‘Why don’t you ever want to make love to me any more?’ he says softly. ‘And before you say we do, yes, I know we do, at least once every two weeks when you’ve gritted your teeth and thought of England or whatever. And then you make it pretty clear that you just want it to be over.’ He looks away from me and kisses Ella’s curls before facing me again. ‘I haven’t felt close to you since that time in my office, and then, I don’t know, I think it was the situation that turned you on and not me.’

We look at each other for a beat, separated by a flight of stairs.

‘Are you saying that if I don’t sleep with you any more you’re going elsewhere?’ I say, able only to go on the defensive. ‘Have you forgotten that I gave birth to your daughter a few months ago? That it hurt me badly, that I got ripped pretty much from top to bottom. You don’t just get over something like that.’ My voice trembles but the more upset I become the harder Fergus’s face sets.

‘No, I haven’t forgotten that, and no, I’m not saying I want an affair, don’t make this about me … I’m trying to say that I miss you, Kitty. I’ve been trying to say it for weeks, but you’re always tired or you change the subject or something. I know marriage is about more than sex, but I’m working so hard at the moment and there’s so much I’ve got to deal with and even more than sex, it’s the intimacy I miss. When I come home I need you to be there for me, to be the person that loves me. But if I try to get close to you you shut off. You don’t let me in any more. For God’s sake, Kitty. I’m lonely.’

For a moment I see how ridiculous we must look, talking this way two floors apart, Ella bouncing patiently in her dad’s arms, utterly unaware of the maelstrom she has created in our lives.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, feeling injured and guilty. ‘I thought I’d explained. I thought you understood.’ I feel my stomach twist and contract, it seems as if no matter how often I try to tell him how I’m feeling, his blind refusal to acknowledge any kind of problem rebuffs all of my attempts. Fergus looks at me and I can see tears intensifying the colour of his eyes.

‘Don’t forget to call your dad,’ he says softly, and he walks out of the front door.

I stand for a long time on the landing until, despite the sun, the chill of the morning raises goosebumps on my flesh and I make my way along the corridor to the bathroom, somehow too numb to cry. Fergus and I have been half discussing our individual problems for a long time now, but have never once revealed our true feelings. Instead we’ve just skirted around each other with hints and half-truths, or in my case avoided it altogether. Steam begins to rise as I run the bath, filling it with water as hot as I will be able to bear, and then, dropping my dressing gown around my ankles, I force myself to look at my reflection in the full-length mirror. I conjure up mental images of the person I was when I first met Fergus until she is standing behind me.

Well, to begin with, the hair that I used to pay to have cut, coloured and styled every three months, even though I couldn’t afford the phone bill more often than not, has grown far too long. It straggles in tangled curls to where my waist once was, heavy and dull, feathered with broken and dry discoloured ends. The oval face and pointed chin that Fergus used to love to kiss is now supplemented by a small pouch of fat that has appeared just underneath my jaw. The first time I caught sight of my profile in a mirror after this new arrival, I felt that I was looking at a stranger, or worse still, a version of myself who I had assumed was at least another ten years away, a version whose face was heavy and thick. Maybe if I’d seen my mum grow old it would be less of shock, but as Dad has always told me, I look just like her, except that now I’m older than she ever was, sailing into dark waters uncharted by memory or experience.

Before Ella I’d always wished that my breasts were a bit bigger and firmer. Now they are at least three cup sizes bigger than they used to be, with stretch marks that have gradually faded into silver lines along the top of them. They are softer now than they used to be, and less rounded. They used to be a symbol of my sexual power; now they are the ultimate symbol of maternity. Once they used be alluring and mysterious, now I have them out every five minutes and everyone in Berkhamsted from the milkman to the checkout girl at Smiths has seen them. The old me turns sideways so that I can better dwell on my body’s lost profile. Once I used to loathe the slight curve of my belly, which was never concave or even flat despite my sporadic bursts of various fitness regimes. Now it too is covered in a road map of stretch marks and it seems to hang from my hips in a white fatty wedge. I can hold it between my finger and thumb and it feels like I’ve had a cushion surgically implanted to keep me at bay from Fergus’s embrace.

The tops of my legs, the legs that Fergus used to love kissing, have grown thick and round and my feet, which swelled in size during the last stages of pregnancy, have never returned to their normal size. I tip my head back and squint, looking at the blurred image of the woman opposite me as objectively as possible. I’m not obese, I’m not revolting to look at. I just have the body of a woman who’s gone through something remarkable – but somehow none of that comforts me. Whenever Fergus tries to touch me, all I can think about is the way I must look to him now compared with the way I first looked that night I undressed for him in his Docklands flat. It’s a tragedy that never once in my adult life have I believed that I looked any good, never once. I really wish that I’d appreciated the old me back then instead of always trying to be something I’m not. Now I just want to be something I was.

Knowing me then and wanting me then, how can Fergus possibly still want and desire me now? How can he? Someone who didn’t know me before, someone like Gareth, might see me as soft and curvy, sexy in a different way. But Fergus married a different woman, and that woman seems to have gone for ever. He says he stills loves me and I don’t doubt it, but when he says he still wants me I just can’t believe it.

I look at myself in the mirror and I can’t believe it.

The Sunday that Fergus had to go into the office was sunny but blustery with swooping gusts of wind whipping the trees back and forth. When he’d gone I took Ella to the local park, more a square of grass, really, with some swings and a slide boxed into one corner, and as we swung back and forth together I thought of my old local park with its ponds and fountains and its birds and baby deer and I thought that not everything in this town is better than home, not everything by a long shot. I whiled away an hour window shopping and staring in estate agents’ windows, trying to guess how much our house might be worth now, and then with Ella fast asleep I went back to Fergus’s dark house, echoing with emptiness, where I watched TV until I fell asleep. Anything to avoid making those party phone calls. The very last thing I felt like doing was partying.

Fergus was in before six, but I couldn’t bring myself to be pleased to see him. I’d watched the clock tick the precious hours away until he’d be back on that train again, hours I knew we should be spending talking, laughing, maybe even making love, and I stayed as far away from him as I could, leaving him alone, tired of trying to make it up to me and angry at my refusal to relent. Now it’s Monday, and neither Mr Crawley nor Gareth is here to avoid, so I relent finally to the inevitable and pick up the phone. I try Camille first but find she’s got a week’s leave, so I phone her place.

‘Hullo?’ A deep American accent greets me after I dial Camille’s number.

‘Alex! Hi! How are you? Back in London, obviously?’ I laugh nervously.

‘Hi, Kitty, really good to speak to you!’ Somehow Alex manages to sound sincere. ‘Yep, I’m here for a whole week, so Camille’s taken some time off work and we plan to just hang out and enjoy our time together. How’s your little one?’

‘Fine,’ I say breezily. ‘Listen, is Camille around? I just want a quick word. I won’t keep her too long, I promise.’ I picture Alex, an improbably handsome airline pilot who looks rather like Denzel Washington and Will Smith rolled into one, and I feel guilty for intruding on their precious time together. From experience I know that a week for them to spend together is a rarity, and here I am about to unload at least two hours of my worries on to Camille. I can’t do it to her, it’s just not fair.

‘Hi honey, what’s up?’ Camille says cheerily.

‘Oh, nothing at all really,’ I lie. ‘Actually, bloody Fergus’s bloody mother has talked me into having a sort of party next weekend. I can’t think why I agreed except it was a serious case of emotional blackmail over my failure to plan a christening, and I was sort of hoping you could come down. It’d really make things easier for me if you were going to be there?’ I ask, trying and failing not to sound too needy.

‘Oh yeah, love to. Is that all?’ Camille says brightly, obviously keen to be off the phone. ‘Of course I’ll be there. Alex goes back to the States on Friday so sure I’ll be there, only I can’t really talk now, Kits. You understand, don’t you?’

I know that if I pushed the point, Camille would shut the bedroom door and sit on the end of the phone talking things over with me for as long as I needed her to, but I don’t even bother to tell her about my part in the musical because I know how much she wants to be off the phone.

‘Okay, well, have a lovely week! I’ll call you Friday,’ I say, and we say our goodbyes. Putting off the inevitable, I dial Dora’s work number. A slightly tetchy sounding colleague picks up and informs me that if she knew where Dora was, she’d be having words with her herself, and that if I did speak to her could I remind her about her verbal warning? I choke her off in full throw and quickly dial Dora’s flat, glancing at the clock as I wait for it to ring. It’s almost eleven; she must surely be up by now. If she’s not, what does it mean, where could she be? I blink away an unwelcome image of her cold and sprawled across her kitchen floor. I’m just about to hang up when she picks up.

‘Mmm?’ she says, sounding groggy.

‘Dora, it’s me. Did I wake you? Did you forget the weekend’s over? I just spoke to your work, they’re not best pleased.’

There’s a long pause and I can hear extensive rustling going on.

‘All right, Kits, yeah, you did wake me, but never mind. I feel like shit. I’ve got a … a hangover like you wouldn’t believe! Can’t make work today, no chance,’ she says as if the last few months have never happened.

‘Hangover?’ I say, trying to sound casually breezy. ‘Are you drinking again? On a school night?’

Dora belches in my ear.

‘Oh, well, yeah, but only lager. It doesn’t really count, honest, and, well, I don’t know, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be to stay clean, so I figure a little drink and a spliff now and then can’t hurt, can it? It can only help me relax, actually.’

I listen intently to the tone of her voice, trying to pick up on anything that might give me a clue as to what she’s really thinking. When it comes right down to it, I don’t know enough to know if what she’s doing is okay or not. I don’t know if she’s just getting back to the normal life that most of are allowed to enjoy, or if she’s beginning to find her way back into smack again.

‘So, what do NA say about it? It’s normal, is it, to do this?’ I get the feeling that Dora isn’t listening to me and for a moment I wonder if she’s passed out. ‘Dora,’ I say loudly, my voice tinged with panic. ‘Listen to me, are you okay, are you really okay?’

‘Yes! I’m fine!’ Dora laughs. ‘Look, I’m not going back there again. Not ever. I’m fine, I promise. In fact, you know that bloke I was shagging? The really dumb one? Well, he’s next door right now with a stonking morning hard-on just waiting for me to sit on it!’

I laugh with her, but frankly the last thing I need right now is such a vivid picture of her sex life.

‘Well, I’m glad he’s got something going on that will keep you amused. I won’t keep you, I just wanted to tell you that we’re having a sort of party next weekend. Camille’s coming down; will you? I mean, it’s only for the baby, it’s not a real party or anything. Frankly I’d rather wait until she’s one, or at least christened, but it sort of got taken out of my hands. Fergus’s mum will be there and I’m inviting Dad. You can bring thingy, stonking hard-on, if you like.’

There’s a pause during which I’m not exactly sure if Dora is still on the line.

‘Dora?’ I say impatiently.

‘Sorry. Bruce is tempting me. Yep, next weekend. I’ll be there.’ Suddenly the old Dora phases back in. ‘So you’re asking your dad? How do you feel about that?’ she asks bluntly.

I briefly consider if she really wants me to tell her right now, or if she really just wants me to get off the phone but is trying her muddled best to be a best friend. I decide on the latter.

‘Oh, God knows,’ I say. ‘Look, call me in the week for a proper chat, okay? I really need to talk to you.’ I feel my estrangement, both physical and emotional, from my oldest friend keenly.

‘Okay, love, I’ll call you, I will,’ Dora says. ‘We’ll talk, I promise.’

I hang up the receiver and stare at the phone. I’m not really sure that I should be organising a family party when Fergus and I are in the middle of, well, whatever it is, but I can’t really think of anything else to do and now there’s just one person left to call. My dad.

I count the number of rings as I wait because I know from experience that my dad won’t pick up the phone unless it’s rung at least sixteen times, on the grounds that if someone really wants to talk to him they will wait. On the fourteenth ring I fight hard against the impulse to hang up, and again on the seventeenth and eighteenth ring. On the nineteenth he picks up.

‘Eight-eight-oh-nine-nine-four-seven-oh?’ he says as if he’s asking a question he doesn’t know the answer to.

‘Daddy, it’s me,’ I tell him as brightly as I’m able.