After Ever After (36 page)

I smile at him wanly and lean over to kiss the top of his head.

He’s right, of course – only a madwoman would want to bring jealousy and disharmony into her perfect, happy little family. It’s only that for just one moment I wanted him to be fierce and passionate about me, the way he used to be before, before everything became so wonderfully normal.

One day I’d come home from school with one sock missing and a rip in my gingham summer uniform. When Mum had seen me she’d sat me on her knee and wrapped her arms tightly around me.

‘What happened, pickle pie?’ she’d said softly into my ear. I’d leant my head back against her shoulder and sighed. Maybe then had she noticed that one of my hair bobbles had been ripped out and that I had a long scratch across the bridge of my nose.

‘Mummy, I can’t go to school any more,’ I’d told her sadly. ‘Abby Morgan doesn’t like me. She beat me up for showing off, she said.’ I remember quite clearly the feeling of horror and shock I had felt to find that not everyone loved me, that not everyone wanted to hear everything I had to say, not everyone thought that I was the lovely girl my mummy always said I was. Even more shocking was that Abby Morgan’s dislike of me spilt over into a physical attack of pure anger. She was furious with me for being myself. No one had ever felt that way about me before, and faced with that strength of feeling I’d decided that the best thing to do about it would be to stay at home from now on and just have Mum as my best friend, which I told my mum in no uncertain terms, very proud of myself for not wailing like a baby.

Mum had listened to me tell her about my first-ever fight with a quiet calm and, although I didn’t know it, I imagine she was half smiling to herself as I spoke.

‘Darling,’ she’d told me, kissing my ear. ‘When I was a little girl I used to think of every day as if I were sailing my own little ship at sea. Sometimes the sea is clear blue and calm and everything is easy and happy. Sometimes, though, there’s a storm and the sky grows dark and the water’s rough and choppy, throwing your little boat all around so that you have to hold on very tight, and remember that sooner or later the storm will pass and it will be calm again, easy and happy once more.’ She’d squeezed me tightly before setting me back down and going to the cupboard to find the Robinson’s juice. ‘You’ve had a rough time of it today, but I don’t think too much damage has been done. Just hold on and soon things will be calm again. As for this Abby Morgan, I think that tomorrow you should go and find her and ask what it is that makes her so angry. She sounds like she needs a friend, to me. Oh, and if she touches you again, you tell me and I’ll go and have words with her mother.’

Of course it didn’t end there; I’d burst into angry tears and argued about my enforced return to school for the rest of that night and all of the next morning. I’d clutched my Muppets sandwich box close to my chest as I’d entered the school the next day, feeling seasick through and through. I needn’t have worried though because the moment Abby Morgan had seen me she’d run up to me and asked if we could make up, make up, never ever break up, and we became skipping buddies for the rest of the week. In those days the calm and the rough ebbed and flowed from hour to hour and day to day until it just became the routine rhythm of my life.

After Mum’s funeral I’d remembered her telling me that story, and I hung on, hung on as tightly as I was able, waiting for the calm weather again. When I met Fergus, for the first time in
all
of the time that had passed since, I thought I’d found my safe harbour, I thought I’d never have to brave those angry dreams again. But here I am in the middle of the deep blue sea on a home-made leaky raft in a force ten gale, and what’s more, I think I’m sinking.

I knew that married life would have its moments of stormy weather, but I’d never imagined they would be like this.

I never imagined that I’d be sitting alone over a bottle of red wine waiting, still waiting, for Fergus to come home at 9.30 p.m., while the smell of his ever-so-slowly-burning dinner thickens the air.

I never dreamt, after months and months of trying to get my baby off to sleep, that once she’d been in bed for two whole hours I’d want to wake her up again just so I wouldn’t be alone.

After I met Fergus, I never expected to think about or feel about another man in a sexual or romantic way again, but somehow or other I have been, sexually at least, for the last half a bottle since it’s become clear that Fergus isn’t going to be in in time for his first marital home-cooked meal after all. I’ve let myself think about Gareth’s hands all over me. It’s just a harmless kind of revenge, that’s all. As Fergus put it, its ‘something and nothing’.

The meal burning in the oven is all my fault. I should have known not to break my rule of fifteen years never to be domestic again, but after Gareth had left this morning, and after the world had returned itself to an even keel, I thought of everything that Georgina had said to me and Doris’s advice on matrimony, and the only way I could think of overcoming the restlessness I felt was to embrace my status as a housewife. To make the word manifest and to cook. Perhaps to the average person on the street it might not seem like a terribly grand gesture, but to a certified expert on me like Fergus it would look exactly like what I meant it to. A towering gift of love, an affirmation of my commitment to him. Christ, I was practically renewing my marriage vows.

Fergus had been out of the house maybe only twenty minutes this morning when I bundled Ella into her buggy, stuffed my hastily completed CV into an envelope and headed for the door. I was going to make shepherd’s pie; I was going to show Fergus that my cooking, even though I had chosen not to display my prowess so far, was better than Georgina’s any day of the week.

As I wheeled Ella around Tesco’s selecting the best ingredients, I pictured Fergus’s face as he walked in through the door and sat down to a steaming home-cooked meal. Okay it’s June and the promise of a sweltering summer is already lingering stickily in the air, but in my imagination it was a cold dark evening and he was thrilled to be presented with my nurturing sustenance. On the way home I posted my now rather dogeared CV to the management college, and when I got home I spent almost an hour preparing my pie whilst Ella slept face-down in her playpen. That afternoon I picked up all her toys from the living room floor and even dusted, pausing only to wonder if the spirit of Doris had seeped out of my dreams and off the stage into my head: ‘A Woman’s Touch’. Once I was done, I sat Ella on the rug and we played with all of her toys until the room was covered once again. At five I called Fergus, but it was Tiffany who picked up the phone.

‘Hi, Tiff,’ I said breezily. I pictured Tiff raising her eyebrows as I had never addressed her by her nickname before, but so confident was I in my home-cooked bliss that I felt expansive and generous. ‘Listen, can you ask Fergus to call me if he’s going to be in any later than seven?’

Tiff told me she would and so when, after feeding Ella and bathing her and putting her to bed just like Scary Poppins said, Fergus hadn’t phoned, I’d put my pie in the oven and changed into a low-cut top. I’d brushed my hair and even put on a bit of mascara, enjoying my 1950s fantasy act. I’d found his favourite wine and opened it to breathe and laid the kitchen table. Then I’d sat down and I’d waited for him to walk through the door.

Only it’s almost ten and he’s still not home. Of course he isn’t, why would he be? Have you
ever
read a book or seen a film or a soap when one character tries to improve relations with another and everything goes according to plan? Don’t you wish that just
once
there wouldn’t be that mishap or misunderstanding, or that
one
person would tell the truth whilst the other kept the deep dark destructive secret to themselves? I know that personally, after two-thirds of a bottle of Fergus’s favourite wine, I do. I would have thought that he could have called, but I suppose if my life is to be ruled by the gods of pointless drama, what probably happened is that the usually efficient Tiffany fell down two flights of stairs, which caused her to suffer from temporary amnesia, meaning she was unable to pass on the message and now needed an urgent brain transplant. Either that or he just forgot. Either that or she’s hoping that I’ll think he’s forgotten and we’ll fight and then she’ll nab him on the rebound, bitch. Or he just forgot.

In any case, I pour the last two inches of wine into my glass, giving the bottle a good shake, and peer into the wine rack looking for something else Fergus has been saving for a so-called special occasion. I find a bottle of port that his father gave us on our wedding day and crack the seal, drawing a smiley face in the dust that films its dark surface. Doris watches me, leaning against the fridge in a crisp gingham dress, replete with sparkling apron over her full skirt.

‘The important thing is to give him a chance to explain, honey,’ she tells me. ‘Don’t just go leaping down his throat the moment he walks in the door. If you let him explain, then he’ll appreciate everything you’ve done here today and you’ll have the moral high ground.’ She watches me top up my wine with port and wrinkles her nose in disgust. ‘A lady is never seen to be inebriated,’ she sniffs before vanishing just as the phone begins to ring.

‘Fergus,’ I mumble to myself, and I lurch towards the phone. I try to remember Doris’s words and keep my voice sweetly calm as I answer. ‘Where the fuck are you?’ I demand by way of greeting.

‘Kitty?’ Mr Crawley enquires sounding rather alarmed. I sink on to the hallway chair and rub my fingers over my eyes, catching the wreck of my appearance in the mirror opposite.

‘Oh, hi, Mr Crawley, sorry about that. I’ve, um, got flu and Fergus said he’d be home hours ago with the Lemsip, but he seems to have been delayed. Soz—’ I hiccup audibly and slouch low enough in the chair so that I don’t have to look at my dishevelled reflection. ‘So, um, whatcanIdoforyou?’ I rush the sentence out hoping that the absence of pauses will cover up any slurs.

‘Nothing really, I just called for a chat. Is everything quite all right? Would you like me to come over?’

I pause for a moment, confronted with the fact that my evasive slouch has resulted in me jamming one of my legs behind the telephone table and extending the other at an obtuse angle, which probably means that I won’t get off this chair without actually falling off it.

‘Kitty?’ Mr Crawley speaks into my ear.

‘Um, no, I’m fine, really, just this flu, and to be honest probably a bit too much medicinal whisky. Fergus’ll be home soon and then everything’ll be fine,’ I tell him with as much assurance as I am able to muster.

‘Well … all right.’ He sounds dubious. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, at the rehearsals?’

I nod, and then remember he can’t see me.

‘Yep-a-doodee,’ I tell him confidently. ‘Oh, and Mr Crawley?’ I’ve just remembered something I want to tell him. ‘I love you.’

It takes me some time to replace the receiver on the phone, which turns out to be the fruit bowl after all, and then some considerable time more to ease myself out of the chair. It’s not that I’m afraid of falling off – in fact the notion somehow appeals to me – but that if I do fall off the clatter might wake up Ella, and the thought of trying to handle her whilst being unable to even walk makes me want to phone ChildLine, not to mention the fact that if I fed her right now, both of us would fail a breathalyser test. Once off the chair I look at the hall floor and find it rather appealing, so in the absence of anyone to tell me to do otherwise, I lie down on it, my head pointing towards the front door.

As I gaze up at the ceiling rose, following the pattern of plaster roses and ribbons that have been dulled by dust and time, I imagine that Gareth has appeared just like magic, in that way that he sometimes did, and he’s standing over me in the hallway, looking down at me and smiling. It’s a sweet smile, an innocent one, a smile that shows that deep down he’s a gentle man, a kind man who just needs rescuing from his wanton ways. He doesn’t speak, he just crouches next to me, brushes the hair from my face and strokes my cheek with his forefinger before lying along side of me, tilting my face to meet his. He kisses my forehead and each one of my closed eyes before pressing his lips gently against mine, softly at first and then a little firmer, each kiss a declaration of love. His hands gently disrobe me, laying me bare beneath his gaze and his tender touch, so sweet and gentle and loving and … then I hear a key in the lock. I blink at the ceiling rose and banish the imaginary Gareth back to the shadows with more than a little regret.

‘Hi, I’m … fuck, Kitty, Kitty!’ Fergus rushes to my side, picking up my hand and peering into my face. I think of Doris.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ I ask him, and then as an afterthought, ‘Dear?’

Fergus studies my face, his own a picture of confusion before he catches the scent of my breath and it all becomes clear.

‘Christ, you’re drunk! Where’s Ella?’

I snort and roll on to my stomach. ‘I dropped her down the bog. Where do you think she is? She’s in bed, has been for hours.’ I scramble on to my knees and then Fergus pulls me to my feet.

‘Come on, I’ll make you a coffee,’ he says, and even distanced from the world as I am behind this red wine warmth I can hear the weary tone in his voice. Like he’s got a sodding leg to stand on.

‘It stinks in here, what have you done?’ he asks me, sniffing the charred air. I flip open the oven with theatrical finesse to release a billow of black smoke.

Fergus quickly shuts the hallway door to cut off the clouds escaping towards the smoke alarm. Without pausing to find the oven glove I reach inside and pull out a baking tray, resplendent with the burnt remains of his dinner, feeling my fingertips burning from miles away.

‘I cooked. For you, a proper actual meal,’ I try to explain. ‘It was all special, I did all this stuff and I cleaned and everything and told that fucking bitch to tell you, but she only wants you to shag her and actually, if you knew everything that had been going on in
my
life, you might make a bit more of an effort instead of just turning up when you please. I mean you might appreciate me a bit more. But anyway I wanted to do something to help and then you didn’t come home …’ I trail off and tip the remains of the shepherd’s pie into the bin.