After Ever After (37 page)

Fergus stares at me and then claps his hand to his forehead.

‘Oh God, you mean Tiff, you told Tiff to tell me to call you – and she did, honey. I just had to go straight into this meeting and I …’ He raises his hand in a gesture of exasperation and then drops it to his side. ‘It just went out of my head, and then once I got there it became clear it was going to go on for hours and I … I just forgot. I’m sorry. Tiff didn’t tell me you were cooking!’ he added, as if he might be able to blame it on poor old Tiff after all.

‘I was rather hoping she’d had a near-fatal accident,’ I tell him, disappointed in his mundane excuse. I watch him for signs of anger as he picks up the opened bottle of port, but instead he only shrugs and pours himself a glass.

‘I love it that you cooked. Why don’t you do it again tomorrow?’ he asks me lightly, with a terrifying lack of intuition. ‘So what stuff should I know that would make me appreciate you more?’ he smiles. ‘Is it even possible for me to appreciate you more?’

I stare at him, muddled and angry and, not quite understanding why, remembering the touch of excitement I felt when I last saw Gareth. The flutter of feeling in what’s been an otherwise numb and half-dead body, mummified flesh.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I say out loud. ‘I’m going to sleep in the spare room.’ Fergus laughs and catches my hand, pulling me tight against his body. I struggle to break free but he winds his arms around me, pinning my arms to my side.

‘Let me go!’ I tell him angrily, but he only laughs again and squeezes all the tighter.

‘No, no, I won’t let you go. Not until you’ve told me why you’ve got this silly notion in your head. I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I? You should have told Tiff you were planning a surprise!’ He tells me as if I were Ella. I writhe furiously.

‘I swear if you don’t let me go …’ I threaten, but Fergus’s serene smile seems set in stone.

‘What? What will you do? Just tell me, Kitty. What’s up?’ His laugh is cut brutally short as I kick him hard in the shins and stumble back out of his grasp against the door.

‘I’ll tell you what’s up,’ I challenge him, feeling on the very edge of my life with my toes tightly curled. ‘You’re so
sure
aren’t you? So bloody smug and
sure
. Sure you can trust me, sure that I will always be here waiting for you, sure that I love you.’ I grip hard on to the edges of the door to support myself and feel the words tumbling out. ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I don’t know if I
love
you any more. Or even if I ever did.’ Fergus becomes perfectly still as my words sink in. ‘So you can fuck off and be
sure
about that then, all right?’ I say stupidly.

‘But Kitty, I …’ he begins.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I repeat, and I walk as quickly away from him as I’m able, ricocheting off the walls as I fall in to the spare bedroom. I sprawl on the bare mattress and blink at the light bulb, which still shines like a bright beacon even after I shut my eyes.

I open my eyes, certain that something has happened but not quite able to work out what. The morning light streams in through open curtains, almost obliterating the weak yellow light of the bulb but not extinguishing my final memories of before I closed my eyes.

I haul myself off the bed and rush to Ella’s room. Quietly pushing open the door I see her still sleeping, her small body pressed into one corner of her cot, her face half hidden in the mattress. Fergus can’t have gone without waking me up, I’m sure of it, so I pad down the hallway to our bedroom. The bed is empty and unmade, the house is quiet. He’s gone.

Faintly panicking I pick up the bedroom extension and dial his mobile number, hoping that he’s still on the train and that I can get hold of him. Empty seconds tick by as I wait for a connection to reach across the static, and when I finally do hear a distant ring I hold my breath. He’ll know that it’s me calling – his display will show ‘Home’ so he’ll know that it’s me and that I’m calling to apologise. That’s why, when the connection is cut dead mid-ring, I know that he doesn’t want to talk to me. I know that somehow, for the first time ever in our relationship, I’ve hurt him more than he can bear to talk about.

When we first met, we were like, God, I don’t know, Laurel and Hardy or Morecambe and Wise. We were hilarious – when we were together we pissed ourselves laughing on an hourly basis. Dora used to say that we looked like we’d been welded together because our bodies were always touching somewhere. Some part of each of us was always melded to some part of the other like two fatally attracted magnets. We couldn’t let each other go, not even for a second, because it felt like letting go of your own hand. I didn’t expect those feelings to last for ever, but I didn’t expect them to swing so visciously into a bleak negative. One thing is still the same, though. Maybe we don’t tell each other jokes about nothing every few seconds, or cling to each other remorselessly any more, but I
do
still love Fergus, of course I do, and always have. I think I loved him even before I met him. And I love him more than I ever did then. I love him so much that some small part of me wants to be free of it, free of the responsibility of being his. I think that small part was the only bit left sober last night and that’s why I said what I did. Somehow I have to get hold of Fergus and explain. As I sit on the edge of bed contemplating what to do next, a small sound finds it way down the hallway and under the bedroom door. I smile to myself. Ella is singing.

Afraid of disturbing her, I creep back along the hallway to her room. Through the crack in the door I can see her standing up in her cot, her pointed chin tipped up, singing to her cow-jumping-over-the-moon clock. There’s no tune, exactly, but she’s tuneful, content to be listening to the sound of her own voice. She must get that from me.

‘Hello,’ I say to her, and the singing is abandoned for peels of embarrassed laughter.

After Ella has had her breakfast, I sit on the bottom stair with the phone in my lap as she tugs hard on the cord and then my trouser leg in turn.

‘Hang on, pickle,’ I say to her. ‘Mummy’s just got to apologise abjectly to Daddy, hope that her self-destruct button has misfired for once, and then we can go out and see your friends.’

Today should be the One O’Clock Club but frankly I don’t really know if I can face it. Maybe Clare and I could have our own One O’Clock Club round her house. Or even down the pub. I run through my rehearsed apology again and dial Fergus’s office number.

‘Fergus Kelly’s office, can I help you?’ Tiffany picks up.

‘Hello, Tiffany, it’s Mrs Kelly here. Can I have a quick word with my husband, please?’ I say, careful to sound happily married.

‘No,’ Tiffany tells me bluntly. ‘I mean, Fergus told me to tell
you
that he’d be in meetings all day long and that he would not be able to return your calls all day.’ I listen to her prim efficiency. Has Fergus told her about our argument or has she just guessed? I refuse to be kept out of his life by this firewall – it’s ridiculous. I need to speak to him in person to know, to be sure, that everything’s all right.

‘Well, you’ll have to get him out of a meeting, it’s urgent,’ I say firmly, wondering if being the boss’s wife holds any sway whatsoever.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Kelly, I can’t do that,’ Tiffany says through tight-sounding lips. ‘Fergus said that the only reason he was to be brought out of this meeting was if there was an emergency concerning his daughter.’ Tiffany paused like a well-practised barrister. ‘
Is
there an emergency concerning his daughter, Mrs Kelly?’

Exasperated and deflated I conceded defeat. Fergus knows that I would never use Ella in that way to get his attention.

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘Listen, Tiffany, will you ask him to call me and tell me when he’s coming home, and will you make sure that he does?’

I hang up the phone and take the cord away from between Ella’s teeth, who seems to be intent on cutting the telephone off for good. What else can I do? The PC is sitting upstairs but we’ve never got around to getting it connected to the Internet, so I can’t email him, and I can’t just bundle Ella on to a train and take a day-trip to London; that would be ridiculous. Finally I hunt through my bag until I find my all-but-redundant mobile, and sigh with relief as I see that it still has some battery power left. I’m rubbish at texting. I never get it right, but it’s the only thing I can think of doing, so I fiddle about until finally I have something approaching a coherent message.

‘I do love U. Please, so sorry. Wrong.’ I press ‘send’, and imagine Fergus in his meeting, if that’s really where he is. I imagine him jumping a little as he hears his phone beep at him. I see him picking it up, his face grave and serious, and reading the display. And then I see his face break into a sweet smile and relief flood over his face. In my imagination he quickly excuses himself from this meeting,
if
that’s where he is, and he goes straight away to the nearest quiet corner and calls me.

And he calls me.

Now. He calls me
now
.

Now.

Well – maybe he really is in a meeting and he just can’t get out of it. For a few minutes longer Ella and I sit looking at the house phone and my mobile phone, willing either of them to ring, or in Ella’s case willing just one of them to land in her lap so that she can chew it. Neither does.

I look at Ella eyeing my mobile hopefully and consider the alternatives. Well, obviously I hurt him pretty badly. I mean, you come in after a hard day at the office and your wife tells you she’s never loved you and moves into the spare room. That would hurt anyone, let alone someone who works a twenty-hour day. He’s confused, probably, and angry with me. It’s just that Fergus isn’t the kind of person who stays angry very long, unless this time I’ve driven him so far into his cave that he might never come out.

When the phone does ring a few seconds later it isn’t Fergus.

‘Hello!’ Clare sounds excited.

‘Oh, hi.’ I sound disappointed.

‘You’ll never guess what.’ Clare’s voice drops to a not very convincing stage whisper. Ted must be asleep because I can’t think of any other reason why she’s whispering in her own house.

‘Um, you’ve been picked to star in
Chicago
?’ I say lamely.

‘No! Dope. I’m officially a registered childminder as of today. I’m on the list and everything. Brilliant, isn’t it?’

I smile wanly, trying hard to muster the enthusiasm Clare needs to hear.

‘That’s fantastic, Clare, you’ll be able to wow the One O’Clock Club gang,’ I say as brightly as I am able to.

‘Oh bollocks, can’t be arsed with that lot of stuck-up cows today, and anyway they’ve all got nannies called Candida or something. A childminder would be much too low-rent for them. No, listen, I was thinking why don’t you drop Ella round here and leave her with me for the afternoon, and I can practise. I mean, what if it turns out I can’t cope with more than one kid, then I’d be up shit creek, and also it’ll give you a break.’

My mind races and I wonder if it would be stupid of me, really stupid, to do exactly that and then jump on a train to London?

‘Well, I could,’ I say, trying not to sound too eager to be rid of my daughter. But before Clare can agree I add, ‘I must admit I could use the afternoon to myself. I’ve had the mother of all fights with Fergus and I really need to see him.’

There is silence on the end of the phone.

‘Clare?’ I say into the receiver.

‘Oh God, sorry, I was just talking to Ted.’ Clare can hardly repress a giggle, and it dawns on me that she is not alone.

‘Clare, have you got someone there? A man?’

Another short silence follows.

‘No!’ Clare says, clearly meaning yes, and then in a real whisper, ‘I can’t talk now, it’s supposed to be a secret. I’ll tell you later, all right?’ She resumes her normal voice. ‘No, no, there’s no one here. No one at all. So what have you and Fergus rowed about, tap fittings in the en suite?’

I wince at the brief insight Clare gives me into her view of my married life and wonder who, how and where she suddenly found a boyfriend without me knowing, and what happened to my half-baked plans to fix her up with Gareth. Oh yes, his insistence that he wanted an extramarital affair with me, that’s it. Well, it’s a relief that he’s out of both of our lives at last.

‘Not exactly. I cooked him dinner and then I told him I didn’t love him any more. Of course I didn’t mean it, but, well, it’s really pissed him off, surprisingly,’ I say, managing to trivialise my relationship problem with reliable flippancy.

Clare whistles though her teeth.

‘You told Fergus you didn’t love him any more!’ she repeats, scandalised. ‘Well, I suppose you do need the afternoon off to fix things up. You stupid mare, honestly, you stupid fucking mare. That man worships you.’

I sigh audibly. ‘I know. So listen, will the man who isn’t there be there when I come round?’ I ask.

‘There’s no one here,’ Clare repeats with staged assurance, and I giggle.

‘You are a dark horse,’ I tell her gravely. ‘I’ll see you in about an hour. And Clare, thanks, you’re saving my life here – and my marriage, I hope,’ I tell her grimly.

‘Oh, go on with you,’ Clare laughs. ‘It’s not that bad.’

Ella didn’t even notice me leave, she was too busy playing with Ted’s toy phone, playing with it so sweetly that I can guarantee she will have her own model the next time I walk past a toy shop. Which she will look at for five minutes before disregarding in favour of a piece of string. I should have learnt by now that she only plays with other people’s toys, but then again I should have learnt by now not to tell my husband that I don’t love him when I do. Really I do. As I shut the communal door of Clare’s flat behind me, I realise I was so wrapped up in my own worries that I didn’t even ask her about the secret boyfriend, even though she was moon-eyed and obviously dying to talk about it. I mentally promise to make it up to her as soon as I have spoken to Fergus.

As I turn out of Clare’s road, a train rattles by, heading for Milton Keynes. From this side of the valley it’s about a ten-minute walk down to the station, and I take a short cut down through the playing fields to walk along the side of the canal that will actually take me about ten minutes longer. Maybe the fresh air will give me a chance to think things over, or maybe decide not to go. Dora would say that by rushing to his side to subjugate myself I would be appearing too needy and needy is a turn-off. But when you’re married, do those rules still apply? Do you really have to go through life pretending that you’re not all that bothered? Surely it should be the opposite. But then if that’s the case, Fergus shouldn’t have barred all of my incoming calls, he should see that I’m trying to make amends and he should talk to me. For the first time ever in our relationship, Fergus is behaving like a normal man, and I don’t like it.