After Ever After (40 page)

If that’s what I let him believe, what do I tell myself? Or Fergus? What do I call it? Gravity pulls me faster down the steep incline until I break free from his hold and run the last few steps to the van, slamming against its doors.

‘Blimey, someone’s feeling perky,’ Gareth smirks as he unlocks the passenger door. I scramble in and wind down the window, desperate to let some oxygen into the airless vacuum. The plastic seat covering is hot to the touch and sticks against the bare skin of my arms.

Before he turns on the ignition, Gareth looks at me and leans over to plant a kiss on my cheek.

‘Come on,’ I say carefully. ‘Clare’ll be bringing Ella back soon.’

Gareth shrugs and pulls the van out on to the road.

‘I thought you were going to pick her up?’ he says, and I realise that he’s right. This time it’s as if he senses my desperation, and he drives all the more slowly, almost leisurely, with his elbow resting on the open window as he hums along to the radio. The urgency of this morning’s bone-rattling trip is all but gone. Of course, that’s why he asked me about Mum; he couldn’t have known what my story was, but he must have guessed it would be something that would make me vulnerable, emotionally ripe for comforting and eventually more. Except he’d skipped the platitudes and gone straight for the physical. He must have planned his ‘seduction’ before meeting me at the canal. He must have been following me, just waiting for the right moment. I suppress the urge to scream at him to go faster or to jump out of the van door, knowing that I have no idea where I am or how to get home. And gradually, eventually, the empty roads turn into villages and then towns and then the first houses of Berkhamsted open up in cul-de-sacs and avenues until the buildings bristle and thicken into the high street.

‘I’ll drop you at the end of the road, all right? Don’t want anyone asking questions, after all.’ He pulls into the curb. ‘So, how about tomorrow for a rematch. It’s supposed to be fine again.’

I find myself laughing.

‘What?’ Gareth smiles awkwardly. ‘Not that bloody laughing again. I don’t know what’s so funny. You’re lucky I didn’t find it a turn-off.’

I shake my head, my hand firmly gripping the escape route of the door handle.

‘The funny thing is that at no point today have you listened to me.’ I tell him. ‘You want to start an
affair
with someone who DOES. NOT. WANT. YOU. I didn’t want you to kiss me Gareth. I
didn’t
want you to grope me and I DIDN’T, I DID NOT, want you to have sex with me. You raped me, Gareth. Do you understand what that word means? None of this is okay. You raped me.’ My breath runs out before I can finish and the last three words become a whisper.

Gareth just smiles.

‘I knew you’d be like this, all stuck up about it. Don’t worry, I understand. You feel guilty for having a bit of fun, and now you’re trying to twist it.’ He nods at the house. ‘You should relax and admit you’re just a married, middle-class whore. You’re like me.’

Fury then erupts, wiping out my fear and disgust in a single moment.

‘
Don’t you ever say that!
’ I scream in his face, loud enough to fill the empty street with my anger. ‘I am
nothing
like you, and I swear if you come near me again,
ever
again, I’ll report you to the police and you’ll be back inside before you know it. You’ve had what you wanted, now just leave me alone.’

Gareth lunges across me grabbing hold of my fingers, which are latched on to the door handle, and squeezing them tightly.

‘Well you’re right about one thing,’ he says, spitting into my face. ‘I did get what I wanted and it wasn’t that good – sex with some slack-cunted bitch never could be, so maybe I’ll just give my attentions to people who appreciate me. But I can’t promise to stay out of your way, Kitty. I mean, there’s the Players tonight and Berkhamsted’s a small town. You never know when I might bump into you. Or your husband.’

I elbow him in the ribs and push open the door, stumbling out on to the street, gasping for air that he hasn’t breathed.

As I scramble for my front door, I grip my own wrist to keep my fingers steady and jam the key into the lock, slamming its solid weight hard behind me and turning the deadlock. I run down the hallway and through the kitchen, fumbling through the cutlery draw until at last I find the seldom-used back door key. I lock it and, remembering Gareth’s copy, bolt it too and back away into the hallway, the only place I feel safe, and sit huddled on the stairs.

‘Just breathe, Kitty, just breathe,’ I say out loud. ‘After all it wasn’t so bad, not really. I mean it was nothing, hardly anything at all, it was …’ I run out of words and stare blankly ahead. Did that count as infidelity? I think of Fergus and the train I should have been on to see him and I wish with all my heart that I’d just taken the train, that I’d just said no right then and there. We’d have made up by now, Fergus and I, and maybe we’d have come home together and picked up Ella and maybe spent the evening with her and her Sticklebricks when she should have been in bed. All of those predictable, mundane, wonderful things could have happened if only I’d done what I should have in the first place.

‘God, he’ll know, he’ll know the moment he sees me,’ I say out loud. I look at the answerphone blinking cheerfully, showing three messages, and before I press play I know exactly what they will say.

‘Hey, darling, look, I’m sorry about before. I should never have told Tiff to hold your calls, I was just angry and … well, listen, it’s just gone two and I’m on my way home so I’ll see you in a bit, yeah?’

I look at my watch. Ten to three. Before the message has even finished I am up the top of stairs and in the bathroom, filling the bath with the hot tap. The rush of the water and the clanking of the ancient pipes almost disguises the sweetly hopeful sound of Fergus’s voice in the following two messages. What have I done?

I’ve ruined us.

I’m still sitting on the toilet looking at the steaming calm surface of the untouched bath when I hear Fergus close the front door behind him, sending the faintest ripple shivering across the surface of the water. It had seemed to me a defeat to get into the bath, an admission of failure. After all, what happened with … him … it was nothing, so why should I feel the need to wash it away, as if a bath could do that anyway?

‘Kits?’ Fergus calls up the stairs. ‘Where’s my two best girls?’

I test my dry lips with my tongue and splash a little of the water over my tear-stained, rash-reddened face.

‘Ella’s at Clare’s and I’m up here,’ I call out at last, listening to each note of my voice for any nuances that would give away anything that had happened in the vacuum of this morning.

Fergus takes the stairs two at a time, pausing to knock before pushing open the bathroom door.

‘Oops, sorry,’ he says. ‘Were you just getting in?’ He catches my swollen eyes and reddened nose then sinks to his knees beside me – he thinks that he’s done this to me.

‘Oh God, darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for behaving like such a shit, you’ve been beating yourself up over nothing and I didn’t even have the good grace to talk to you when you tried to make up. I’m so sorry.’ He closes his arms around my neck and I rest my head on his shoulder, inhaling his presence as if it’s a drug, a tranquilliser.

‘Don’t apologise,’ I say, finding my voice cracked and strained. ‘Everything,
everything
that happened was my fault.’

Fergus moves away from me, his hand still resting on my shoulder, and examines my face.

‘No, you’re wrong. It’s not your fault, not all of it. It’s not mine either, really. If it’s anything, you can blame it on how much we love each other.’ He drops his hands and settles back against the closed bathroom door, and for the first time I notice he looks exhausted.

‘There have been redundancies at work, Kits. Not today, I mean – about two months ago the first wave went and last week another twenty. Voluntary, most of them, and a few new people, but the time is coming when it might be me. It’s stupid really. I mean, if anyone should know what a precarious business I’m in it’s me. If the markets are suffering, so are my clients. If my clients are suffering, they don’t want to spend thousands on new IT systems that might not pay off for months or even years. I’ve been working all these hours trying to pick up the business that’s going to keep my name on the pay roll, and my salary packet up to what we’re used to.’

Fergus’s shoulders slump and in front of my eyes he seems to deflate, as if months of private worry and stress-fuelled adrenalin have been the only thing maintaining his three dimensions.

‘But it hasn’t worked,’ he continues, almost languorously. ‘I’ve been running to stand still, to go backwards even. If I keep earning at the rate I am today, we’ll be twenty thousand worse off at the end of this year than last. And I’m not even sure I can keep that up.’ He lifts his head, holding his hair off of his forehead, and I can see the wash of tears brightening the blue of his eyes. ‘When I met you I wanted everything that was you, all of you, all to myself, all at once. I thought that was how it was supposed to be. I thought that was all that we needed, to be together. I don’t know, Kitty, maybe we
did
get married too soon, maybe it would have been better if Ella had come along two or three years later. But one thing I do know, Kitty, is that I still love you. It doesn’t matter what may come, you and Ella are still everything to me. It’s just that by trying to rescue you I’ve pushed you to the brink. I realise that now, and I’m sorry, and, oh God, Kitty … please don’t leave me.’

I sink on to the floor and hold him close, pinching my eyes tight shut. I should tell him now, if I’m going to. I should tell him while we’re alone in this moment, when for the first time in our relationship it is okay to be wrong or have doubts, where everything doesn’t have to be a textbook fairy tale to be acceptable. I should tell him that I think I’ve been raped and why I let it happen. But I can’t, because if I do it will sweep away all the bridges he’s just begun to build for ever. I don’t want to lie to him, but I can’t tell him, I can’t. Not now. It would kill him.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I say, sniffing loudly. ‘I mean, what would be the point of going anywhere without you?’

Fergus half smiles and tips his head back to look at me. ‘We can sort out money,’ I say. ‘We’ve still got a lot more than most people, and if we cut back on loads of things it’ll be fine. I can begin to work, and I should make up the shortfall even if I work locally and, well,’ I take his hands in mine, ‘maybe we could sell the house? It’s not as if the three of us need all this … emptiness?’ I say hopefully.

Fergus cups my face in his hands.

‘Darling, whatever happens we won’t have to sell your house, not your home.’

I hold his eye for a moment and make the decision to be honest with him about one thing at least.

‘I hate this house,’ I say, avoiding his eye.

Fergus’s hand drops away from me like a dead weight.

‘But I thought …?’ he begins, and I press the tips of my fingers to his lips.

‘I know you did. That day you brought me down here and
told
me we were buying it I tried to believe it when you said it was perfect for us, a dream house – the perfect setting for our family. But it’s your dream, Fergus, and everything in it is yours, your choice, your taste. To be perfectly honest, I’ve always felt as if I’ve been intruding here. And anyway, it’s far too big and it’s too grand. Even with all the work Mr Crawley’s done to it and, and the garden, I still don’t love it – I actually hate it.’ I glance over at the bath, now full of tepid water. ‘When I was sitting waiting for you to come home, I realised that during the year I’ve been here I’ve lived practically my whole life in this house – it’s become like a mausoleum. I know that sounds dramatic, but I’d like somewhere smaller, just three bedrooms and a small garden that I can make nice for Ella on my own and, well, all the renovation work should have put thousands on the price. We could decrease the mortgage, ease things a little bit.’

Fergus just shakes his head, his face confused and hurt.

‘I know you wanted this to be perfect. We both wanted that,’ I say, mirroring his earlier gesture by taking his face in my hands. ‘Not just the house, but our marriage, our lives together, our baby, us. But life isn’t perfect, Fergus, not even when you’re lucky enough to love the person you’re married too. And I
do
love you, more now than ever.’

Our arms close around each other and our bodies interlock on the blue and white tiled floor of the Victorian bathroom and both of us weep – for different reasons, perhaps, but together. Together, as a partnership, at last.

My nan always used to say that every cloud has a silver lining. I used to lie on the windowsill of her living room staring up at the passing clouds and wonder where it was, this silver lining, and what it was made of. Was it like the purple lining in my duffle coat, for example? One rainy day I asked Nan to show me the lining and she laughed and led me to the window. The sky was heavy and grey, brushing the tops of the surrounding high-rises with their cumbersome girths, but no silver lining was to be seen. Nan sat me on her knee and told me about when she and Granddad used to run a pub in Tottenham and the cat they used to have that was as big as a dog and twice as fierce. Then we played I Spy, and then, just as Nan told me I had to get down to save her legs, it happened. The sun blossomed through the rain and for a second gilded the sky with its silver light.

‘There you go,’ Nan said. ‘Silver lining. What did I tell you – look, you can almost see enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers!’

She’d bustled off to the kitchen then, leaving me to puzzle over how you could possibly make trousers out of the sky?

After a while, Fergus and I settle in each other’s arms on the bathroom floor.

‘They never tell you about this bit, do they?’ Fergus says. I feel his smile against my forehead.

‘They? Who do you mean?’ I ask him.

‘You know – they, the people who have constructed this whole myth about fairy-tale endings and say that the getting to the wedding bit is the bit that’s hard and that everything else is plain sailing. There’s no version of
Cinderella
where a few weeks later Prince Charming gets deposed and they have to go and live in a council house in never-never land is there?’