After Ever After (29 page)

‘What did you do?’ I asked, my eyes widening at the look on his face as he remembered the image. He looked like a hawk about to pounce on a mouse.

‘I broke his nose for him. And his arm.’ He looked directly at me then and mimed out what happened next. ‘I got my hands round his neck and I bashed his head on the radiator, I kept on bashing it until my mum dragged me off. I gave him “severe head injuries”,’ he said, his tone just the other side of proud. He settled back on his stool and looked back into the rainy afternoon. ‘So anyway, I got eight months for assault and GBH because even though it was only a first offence, and I was trying to protect my mum, I really, really battered him,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘At least I know he won’t be beating anyone else now. He lives in a halfway house in Cardiff, can’t do very much for himself any more, something to do with severe trauma to the cerebral cortex or whatever, I dunno. They did tell me, but I always forget.’ His smile was one of pure satisfaction.

‘Fuck me,’ I said. ‘You were inside? For almost killing someone?’ My stomach lurched. Gareth caught the apprehension in my tone and his face had fallen.

‘Oh fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I try not to tell anyone. They find out you’ve done a bit of time and that’s it, no one wants to know you. I was only in for five months in the end, not long enough to get any qualifications or nothing, but long enough to help in the prison garden. I learnt a lot there, it helped relax me and chill me out. For the first time I realised that I’d been angry all my life, ever since I was big enough to know what he was doing to my mum. I’d been angry, been waiting for that day, even when I thought I’d never see him again, because I wanted to show him a taste of his own medicine. When he’d gone away I’d almost forgotten about it, then the moment I saw him, the moment I saw my mum, I knew what I had to do. I had to finish it right then and there, and I did. And now I hardly ever get angry any more. I’m just a chilled-out bloke who makes things grow.’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘Beautiful things.’

The sound of the rain thundered down on the patio and we smiled at each other. If anyone knew what it meant to overcome a violent past it was me, and for some reason he didn’t scare me. If I had a sixth sense or an intuition like the magazines were always telling me I did, then Gareth didn’t make it ring any bells, at least not in that way.

‘So, tell me about what happened to you?’ he said bluntly, and my stomach clenched.

‘Me? Nothing really. I’m one of those average people you were talking about. Moaning because my husband’s home a bit late from work.’ I smiled at him. ‘Well, you know that, I bend your ear about it often enough.’ I gave a half-laugh, hoping to end the conversation, and I did, but not the way I wanted to. Gareth looked suddenly sullen, his eyes shadowed and dark.

‘For God’s sake, don’t be so apologetic. If I were you I’d be moaning. I mean, I don’t know the bloke or anything, but from what I can see you’re on your own practically all the time dealing with that baby while he’s up in the City till all hours. For one thing, if I were you I’d be wondering what he was doing all that time …’ He’d got into full flow and suddenly I wished for the other Gareth back, the up-front, casually flirtatious Gareth. I was afraid I’d let him in too far.

‘He’s working hard for Ella and me!’ I jumped in anxiously, dismayed that he should pick up on my throwaway comment and begin to dissect it so brutally.

‘Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that, and for another thing, if I was married to someone like you, if you were my wife …’ he held my gaze, his amber eyes bright with intensity … ‘if you were
mine
, I’d treat you right, I’d make damn sure you were never out of my sight.’

The wind hurled hard clouds of rain against the window and I jumped in my seat, wondering if he had really said what I thought he had.

‘Well, that’s not practical. You can’t go around work with your husband all day long can you?’ I said awkwardly, choosing to ignore the moment. To smother the moment and beat it to a silent, bloody pulp. I stood up and headed into the hallway. Somewhere in the last ten minutes my imaginary flirtation had tipped over into something else, something that had scared and exhilarated me all at once and felt terrifyingly free. For this moment, in this hour, I was a different person, lost in a new world full of different possibilities, and it scared me. I remembered my promise to Fergus, to never forget that I loved him, and I knew then that it
was
true. All the problems that had been conspiring against us, they were bad, yes, and serious too, but they weren’t enough, never enough, to make me forget that Fergus and Ella were my life. The loves of my life. I needed to get the distance back between Gareth and me as quickly as I could. My dangerous game had strayed too far beyond the boundaries of fantasy.

‘This rain’s not going to let up. You should just go.’ I stood there waiting for him in the gloomy daylight until he joined me, feeling the passing moments draw out a space between us.

‘Kitty, I’m sorry, I …’ he began with a casual insouciance, the suggestion implicit in his face that nothing had happened. I brushed the doubt away and began again. ‘I might have got a bit carried away, but if you just knew how …’

‘Actually, maybe we should leave the garden for a bit. I really feel like having my house to myself. I’m sorry if that means you have to take the plants back, but I think it’s best. I’ll call you,’ I said brightly, not forgetting that I had no number to call him on. As I opened the door, Clare was wheeling Ted up the path, soaked through to her skin. Gareth and I exchanged glances. I’m not sure what his meant, but mine screamed, ‘Please just go!’

‘Oh God!’ she said as I helped her in with Ted, who was snugly warm and dry under his rain cover, kicking at the plastic in greeting. ‘Fucking spring, eh! Oh, hi!’ Her robust greeting morphed into girly sing-song as soon as she saw Gareth.

‘I must look like a bomb site, a wet one. Fuck.’ Gareth took the buggy off her and wheeled it into the kitchen, studiously ignoring me.

‘Come on, little mate,’ he said as he went. ‘Let’s get you out of there.’

Clare gave me a wide-eyed smile.

‘He’s a natural with kids, isn’t he?’ she whispered. ‘You don’t mind me just turning up on the off-chance do you? It’s just that they don’t need the set people at this week’s rehearsals, and I thought I won’t see him until Saturday otherwise, and I’d like to get to know him a bit better before we meet at a social gathering, if you know what I mean?’

I stared at her for a second trying to work out what she was talking about, and then I remembered. Ever since the casting, Clare had been hearts and flowers about Gareth. She had banged on about nothing else at the One O’Clock Club until even Calista’s nineteenth recital of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ had seemed more alluring. On the way home I had promised I would ask Gareth along to the party on Saturday.

‘Oh, um, he can’t come,’ I said, grateful for once that since giving birth my memory had deteriorated. Clare’s face had fallen. ‘Yeah, I know. Never mind though, hey. I’ll pop upstairs and get you a towel and you go and talk to him before he goes.’

Once upstairs I checked on Ella, who was still sound asleep on her tummy, her head pressed right up against the bars of her cot. Then I went back into my room and sat on the bed, practising my breathing. For a moment down there I’d thought, actually I was sure, that Gareth had been coming on to me, that really he’d meant what he said about all that ‘if you were mine’ business. My heart was beating hard and my mind was racing, rewinding and replaying the scene over and over again. He was out of order, bang out of order, and I should have known, I should have seen it coming, I’d practically invited it in. He didn’t have to tell me he was a womaniser, you just had to look at him to see he’d be the type to go after the unobtainable, to keep going after it until he’d caught it and used it and finished with it. I knew him exactly, he was like about four of my ex-boyfriends, all of my boyfriends up until Fergus. You see them as a challenge, you imagine you might be the one to tame them, but you never are. They take control of your life, fatherly at first, and then gradually they suffocate you until you see nothing else, until you are nothing else but part of them. That was Gareth, that was exactly Gareth, and sitting there on the end of my bed, trembling, I couldn’t help longing, almost, to feel that engulfed by something again, so lost in another person that it didn’t matter if I disappeared after all. I clutched on to the edge of the bed and waited for the floor to right itself. Fergus was my way out from all of that, it was with Fergus I became my own person again. I may have let that feeling of confidence slip a little, but I wouldn’t let it slip away.

As I walked back down the stairs, Clare’s boisterous laughter was filling the kitchen. I pushed open the door and saw Gareth with Ted balanced high on his shoulders, twirling him around and making him scream with delight.

‘Where’s my towel?’ Clare asked me brightly.

‘Oh Christ, I knew there was something I went upstairs for!’ I said with hysterically edged brightness. ‘Sorry, blame the baby brain.’ I handed Clare a wad of kitchen roll. ‘Will that do the trick?’

She took it happily and I could tell that at that moment it wouldn’t matter if it rained putrid maggots down her neck, she’d still be glowing like a fresh spring flower.

As Gareth swung Ted down, Clare said, ‘Gareth can come, by the way, that thing he told you he had on wasn’t this Saturday after all, it’s the one after. He got it wrong. Brilliant, isn’t it?’ I looked from Clare to Gareth. Yes, it was brilliant, considering that I hadn’t even told him about the party.

‘Oh good,’ I said flatly, avoiding Gareth’s eye, feeling the beginning of something inevitable. ‘Gareth, I can’t pay you to sit around all day, you might as well have the day off,’ I said carefully, pleading with him to leave with every syllable I spoke.

Gareth smiled at Clare.

‘No charge for the pleasure of my company,’ he said to her, his voice warm and low. She almost disintegrated with joy.

‘You don’t want to hang around listening to baby talk, though, do you? Go home.’ I said again, more pointedly this time. Gareth redirected his gaze to me.

‘I’m all right,’ he said, with a touch of determination that only he and I could hear.

‘Gareth, I want you to go. Do you know what, I’ve just heard the forecast and it’s going to be like this all week. Have the week off, go on.’ He held my gaze for a beat longer, and his eyes told me that it wasn’t over yet.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you Saturday.’ He bent down and kissed Clare on the cheek. ‘Sorry I couldn’t see you for longer, Clare,’ he said before picking up his jacket and going. I waited for the slam of the front door but there was none.

‘What did you do that for?’ Clare said with dismay. ‘I really think he likes me!’

I’d sat down opposite her. ‘I know, but there’s something I wanted you to know, that’s all,’ I said, desperately trying to think of a way to extricate her from her daydreams without hurting her.

Clare’s face fell back into its habitual expression, which was one void of any expectation.

‘He’s got a girlfriend,’ she sighed.

‘Um, no.’

I stared at her blankly, trying to find a way to explain the shift in my perception of Gareth, wondering if I wanted to warn her off for her sake or for mine.

‘He’s gay, is he gay?’ she asked, a touch more brightly. ‘I’ve always said you can’t argue with someone fancying Ricky Martin.’

‘No, Clare, he’s not gay. Look, we were talking before and …’

Clare had raced ahead of me.

‘Oh my God, don’t tell me he fancies you! Please don’t tell me that he fancies you! I couldn’t stand it! The first decent bloke I’ve had a sniff of in months and he fancies my happily married best friend!’

Whatever I had been about to say to her, I was halted in my tracks; after only a few weeks Clare thought of me as her best friend.

‘No!’ I said. ‘He’s been inside. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but I thought you should know. He’s been inside for GBH. There, I’ve said it now. Don’t tell him I told you, will you?’ I decided not to tell her the circumstances; after all, I was hoping she’d lose interest in him.

‘GBH?’ she said.

‘Yeah, that’s why I wanted him to go. He freaked me out,’ I half lied. It was only half a lie.

‘Well, well thanks for telling me, but I mean, look at him! He grows flowers for a living! He must have had a good reason. Someone like Gareth just wouldn’t lash out for the sake of it.’ She filed the information in the dark recesses of her mind and dismissed it as circumstantial. ‘So what should I wear on Saturday?’

At the rehearsal that evening I’d been really glad that Gareth wasn’t there, and it
had
been fun. The leads all read through the script and we did a few warm-up songs together. It turned out that Colin was really funny and that Bill was a great musician who probably should never have been a teacher. Clare measured people’s inner leg, Mr Crawley and I laughed hysterically as we tried to follow the choreographer’s simple enough dance moves, and I got to know Jim, a forty-something mechanic who played Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity’s love interest. Apparently there’s a kiss, but he’d promised to brush his teeth and no tongues. Afterwards, as I was sipping a sherry, waiting for Clare to get back from the loo, I found Caroline suddenly at my side, peering at me intently as if she was about to peck me with her finely pointed roman nose.

‘Now, Kitty, how are you finding it?’ she said without preamble. I blinked and raised my brows.

‘Fine, it’s fun. Really fun,’ I said with my best interview smile, all ready to list my three worst points as if they were positives. Caroline tucked her chin back into her neck and pursed her lips, her jet earrings trembling slightly as her jowls settled.

‘Ah, yes,
fun
,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘You don’t really know about the Berkhamsted Summer Festival, do you? I mean, of course, yes, it
is
meant to be fun, it
is
meant to be an occasion of laughter and splendour, but is not meant to be fun for
you
, Kitty, do you see?’ I opened my mouth and closed it again. I did not see.