After Ever After (35 page)

‘Is it too early?’ was the first thing he’d said to me.

‘No? Not at all – what do you mean early?’ I’d asked, nonplussed.

‘Well, I wanted to call you about five minutes after you left and I’ve been making myself wait so that I could look cool. I think it’s usually supposed to be three days, but six hours is all I could manage.’

I’d laughed and twirled the phone cord in celebration of meeting a normal man for the first time in my life, a man who seemed to experience emotion in the same way I did and who didn’t feel the need to play out the same old games.

At 10.25 I couldn’t justify vacuuming any longer and took Ella back to the kitchen. We sat down, looking at the clock. Well, I’m looking at it. Ella is chewing her toe.

10.32. I scoop Ella up off the floor and begin the first part of my plan to move my life and my family’s life on. On the second floor of the house, the part of the house we haven’t got around to renovating yet, is Fergus’s study. I don’t know why Fergus needs a study, he just has one, and in it is his old PC and a black leather office chair that I imagined he thought was quite sexy and possibly a bit James Bond-like. I sit Ella on my lap at the desk and contemplate the ancient and clunky PC. It’s dusty, and the cream keyboard looks grey and dirty. I haven’t used it since the day we moved into the house. I’m not even sure I remember what to do, especially not with this relic of the last century. Ella bashes the keyboard enthusiastically and babbles excitedly.

I switch it on and wait for something to happen. Nothing does. I plug it in and repeat the process and sit back in the old office chair as it whirs and beeps into life, enchanting Ella. I look at my watch.

Well if he’s not coming now I’m going to write a letter of application to that management college just in case there is the slightest chance that they still have that job open, or maybe even put my CV on file. I’m going to move my life forward, wrench it out of the suspended animation it’s been subsisting in these past few months and change things. If I really have sacked Gareth, then it must be for the best, it’s a sign. It’s like Doris saying it’s time now to put all your half-baked daydreams behind you and get back in the game. It’s time to throw yourself one hundred per cent into your marriage and your family. And your career as a musical artiste.

And that’s what I’m going to do.

Fifteen minutes later I’m struggling to fill in the gaps in my CV with something more compelling than ‘Had baby, got fat’ when I hear something downstairs. The doorbell has not peeled, there’s been no knock at the back door, and yet there was definitely a noise. I pick Ella up and settle her on my hip.

‘Shush a minute,’ I whisper into her ear, a command which she cheerfully ignores. Standing at the top of the stairs I tilt my head and listen. There is someone in the kitchen. In films, when the heroine goes into the basement armed only with a torch, you want to save the psychopath a job and kill her yourself, don’t you? No one knows better than I, though, how situations that are both horrific and terrible never seem so until viewed in the cold harsh light of retrospect. In this case, as I edge down the stairs and creep quietly along the hallway, I know it’s not Freddy Krueger who’s making himself a coffee in my kitchen, it’s Gareth. What I really want to know is how he got in.

‘How did you get in?’ I ask him, pleased to have simultaneously foiled his own plan to surprise me and made him jump. He spills a little boiling liquid on his hand, he swears and shakes it before sucking his finger, his eyes full of mirth.

‘Shit, you should join the SAS,’ he says, grinning. We smile at each other and I set Ella on the floor. I should be furious at his easy arrogance, but somehow, despite everything, I find it dangerously appealing. He shrugs and casts his eyes about the room before focusing them on me, and holding up a key.

‘Spare key. You gave it to me, remember?’

I remember meaning to give him one the way I did Mr Crawley, but I don’t remember actually giving it to him, although I suppose I must have done.

‘I also remember sacking you,’ I said, remembering to be cool. ‘If you’re going to ignore me the least you could do is ignore me punctually.’

Gareth rolls his eyes.

‘Well, this morning I was thinking about everything and I thought, okay, so she’s officially sacked me, but somehow after what she said I wasn’t too convinced that she really meant it, all right?’ He rolls his eyes theatrically before locking them on to my face. ‘Can’t think why, it must be something you said, and so I’m just back to check.’

He holds my gaze and I wonder at being referred to in the third person that way, as if he’s come to discuss me with myself as a separate entity. In some ways I wish that there were two of me: one Kitty Kelly and one just Kitty, free to fuck herself up anyway she chooses. Gareth takes a step closer.

‘Did you really mean what you said?’ he asks me, and I wonder desperately which part of what I said in those few minutes he’s talking about. The ‘yes I want you’ or the ‘no you’re fired’ bit.

‘I don’t know,’ I hear myself say out loud, as if the mythical other me has taken over this conversation without my permission. I stutter, struggling to wrest the conversation back from this rebellious doppelgänger. ‘I mean, I don’t know if I wanted you … to finish work on the garden or not.’ My voice levels out as it returns to me. ‘I think we both got a bit silly, didn’t we? Said things we didn’t mean to and it got out of hand. You know that I’m in a relationship, a happy one, and you embarrassed me.’

I pause for a moment and picture a string of empty days, me with Ella at my feet as I work on the garden waiting for Fergus to come in. Me alone and peaceful without having to worry about whether Gareth might show up or not, about what he’s going to say or do or what might happen. Just me and Ella and sometimes Fergus, normal and settled and sometimes happy.

My stomach makes a lurch for the centre of the earth and I say the very thing I know that I shouldn’t. ‘If you can promise not to try anything like that again, then yes, I’d like you to finish the garden,’ I say, sounding weak and uncertain, deliberately oblique and as obscure as I can about the one issue that burns fiercely between us. God knows I shouldn’t have said it, and certainly not like that. Even then I couldn’t bear the thought of all those days alone with nothing to think about except when Fergus might be home. Like a stupid, terrified little girl I wait anxiously to see what the consequences of my folly might be.

Gareth thinks for a moment, his mouth twisted into an approximation of a smile as he turns his head away, his eyes lingering on the embryonic garden, surveying his handiwork and, I guess, imagining its completed splendour, planning his next move.

I’m not prepared for what he says next.

‘I can’t do that, Kitty,’ he tells me, his eyes fixed on the bright horizon. ‘That’s not how I feel about you and you know it. I’ve tried not to feel the way I do, but I do. I can’t be here and not want you, or not tell you how much I want you. You know that, and that’s why you asked me to stay on. You don’t give a fuck about the garden, you just like the idea of stringing me along, leading me on. Turns you on in a way your little husband can’t, doesn’t it?’

He turns to face me, pinning me with his angry eyes.

‘Doesn’t it?’

I shake my head dumbly and hold Ella close against my body, shielding her from his quiet anger.

‘You think that I’m playing a game. I can’t stop thinking about it, about what it’d be like to …’ He shakes his head. ‘You can finish the garden yourself, I’ve got better things to do.’

He picks up his jacket from the counter and brushes past me as he heads for the front door. I stand rooted to the spot, waiting for the sound of the door closing firmly shut. It never comes. After few moments my heartbeat slows again. I breathe, loosening my grip on an entirely oblivious Ella.

‘Well,’ I say out loud, testing that I’m in full possession of myself again. ‘That’s that sorted.’

I wait all day for the feeling of loss and disappointment to fade away into relief. For the sense of empty peace I had anticipated to settle over me, leaving me free and easy to concentrate on what really matters, not some half-baked fantasy about someone I barely even like, let alone love. But instead I let myself imagine Gareth driving his van a little too fast down the country lanes, frustrated and angry because he can’t have the one woman, the only woman, that he might have loved. The only woman who might have changed him.

It’s rubbish, of course. If he’s angry it’s because he won’t be able to notch me up on his bedpost, won’t be able to boast about shagging a married woman down the pub. I know that on a conscious level, but now that the real danger has abated and I’m left with this quiet peace deal, I let the whole mundane and sordid business drift into yet another complicated romantic fantasy culminating in Fergus and Gareth fighting it out for my hand. I wonder how Fergus would feel if he knew that another man wanted me.

‘Ella asleep?’ is the first thing Fergus asks as he comes in, and I wonder why he doesn’t sense the vibration of what might have happened in the air.

‘Yeah, we spent the afternoon digging again. She’s exhausted. You should have seen her covered from head to toe in mud.’

Fergus smiles as if he can see her, and I feel a spilt second of jealously.

‘Why were you digging? Why wasn’t that over-priced shyster out there digging? God knows he should be earning his money.’

I hand him a takeaway menu and he laughs. ‘What’s up, can’t be bothered to programme the microwave?’

I smile, but his comments smart.

‘No, I just fancied a change, that’s all,’ I say, sounding hurt. The small thought that surfaced in the garden this afternoon keeps nagging away at the back of my mind. ‘I sacked him.’

Fergus scans the menu without even a twitch.

‘Good,’ is all he says. ‘I didn’t want to say anything to you, I know how much you wanted it. But to be honest, Kitty, spending all that money on turning our backyard into Kew Gardens was a bit rich.’ Without looking up he reaches for my hand. ‘I’m glad you saw sense in the end. I might have crispy duck, do you want to share?’

I withdraw my hand from his.

‘That not why I sacked him, although I would have done if you’d ever been straight with me about money.’

At last he looks up, puzzled at my irritation. ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

‘I mean that one minute you’re all largesse and “buy yourself something nice, darling”, and the next you’re like an out-of-season Scrooge. Am I supposed to be able to spend our money, or should I be waiting for a weekly hand-out?’

I am surprised to see Fergus’s face crumple and age so abruptly.

‘I’m sorry, I know it’s hard for you. It’s hard for me too. It’s this sodding job. One minute you think you might have cracked it, and the next the flying carpet’s been pulled out from under your feet and it’s a long way down.’ He pushes the menu to me across the table. ‘Maybe we should sit down and work out a budget. That’s a good idea.’

I suppress a silent scream. This isn’t turning out the way I’d pictured it – it’s gone from jealous and passionate rage to domestic accountancy in three easy steps.

‘So aren’t you going to ask me why I sacked him?’ I crowbar my way back in.

Fergus looks mildly intrigued. ‘Why?’ he says amiably.

‘Because he came on to me,’ I say. ‘Tried it on. He wanted an affair. He wouldn’t stop going on about it and I had to sack him.’

I watch Fergus’s face carefully, waiting for that split-second reaction that will tell me how he really feels.

He laughs. Uproariously, hugely, loud enough to wake up Ella if she wasn’t so tired. He slams his hand down hard on the table and wipes tears from his eyes.

‘He never!’ he asks me, grinning from ear to ear.

I nod my head. ‘Yes, he did. And I don’t know why you find it so hard to believe.’ I can’t help sounding hurt. I’d expected to have to drag him back into the house after he’d stormed off looking for satisfaction.

‘Cheeky bastard!’ he exclaims instead. ‘So what does it feel like, Mrs Kelly, having to fight off your first tradesman?’

I stare at him angrily.

‘You don’t care, do you?’ I say incredulously. ‘Another man tries to fuck your wife and you don’t care?’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t get it. Maybe it’s because you don’t really believe me, or maybe it’s because you think he can’t have meant it seriously. After all, who would seriously want to fuck poor fat old Kitty?’

Fergus’s smile shuts off and it dawns on him all too late that he’s failed his stealth exam.

‘Kitty, of course I care, I do, it’s just that …’

I cut across him in a swathe of fury.

‘It’s just that there you are up there living life on the edge, being yourself, being alive, and here I am installed in my very own little birdcage waiting for you to come home and feed me little bits of your time, and it’s just that I’m too boring or too staid for anything like that to happen to me. Isn’t it?’

In the second’s silence before he responds, we hear Ella’s cry echo down the hallway. Fergus gets up.

‘It’s not that, Kitty,’ he says softly, looking hurt and confused. ‘It’s because I trust you. Surely you see that? I don’t care if, I don’t know, Russell bloody Crowe came down here and tried it on with you. I’d laugh, all right? I’d laugh because I’d know he’d made a fool of himself. Because I trust you. In the same way that you should trust me. Okay?’

I nod bitterly.

‘Let me get her back to sleep and we can talk a bit more, but don’t be angry, Kitty. I trust you because I love you, and because I know you love me.’

When I look down I find I have screwed the takeaway menu into a tight little ball.

‘He trusts me,’ I say out loud. ‘And why wouldn’t he? He loves me.’

After half an hour of waiting it becomes clear that Ella isn’t about to just go back off to sleep, and I pad up the stairs to find Fergus playing with her and her bricks on the nursery floor.

‘I thought we were going to talk?’ I say, hating myself for sounding petulant.

Fergus grins at me. ‘I know, love, but, well, it’s just that it’s something and nothing, isn’t it? It’s not
really
a big deal, is it? Why don’t you have a nice bath and relax. I’ll make us some cheese on toast.’