After Ever After (42 page)

‘Know what?’ Dora looks at Clare. ‘I just thought I’d pop down for a few days …’

I eye Dora’s large suitcase on wheels and laugh hysterically, feeling my façade slip dangerously low.

‘What were you planning we should do, our very own fashion parade? Open a shop called Dora’s Entire Wardrobe?’

‘Oh, it looks like more than it is, you know. Tampons.’

I shake my head and pick up her overnight bag. ‘Come on, you can tell me at home,’ I say, whispering to Clare, ‘you can tell me all about “him” tomorrow at the dress fitting.’

Clare raises a hopeful eyebrow and the three of us head for the door.

‘Ah, Kitty.’ Mr Crawley grabs my arm. ‘You never did get your wine. I apologise.’

I shrug; I had forgotten it. ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, but he holds on to my arm, still searching my face for something. ‘About anything, really. I’m all right.’

In that moment that I say it I believe it, and Mr Crawley seems to also as he lets go of me. In that moment everything is fine, back to normal. Fergus and I have finally let go of our fantasy marriage in favour of a real one, Dora is here like the proverbial good fairy/bad penny, and whatever predicament she’s arrived with is bound to keep my mind off things. Even Clare seems to have replaced her permanently forlorn air with a smile.

And what happened with Gareth was nothing. Nothing happened, it was nothing. He is nothing.

The moment Fergus sees Dora standing behind me in the door frame his face goes from shock to irritation to relief in about five seconds flat. Maybe, like me, he’s secretly pleased that there’s a third adult in the house to diffuse what’s left of weeks of accumulated tension.

‘Dora! What a nice surprise,’ he says, kissing her, and I almost believe him.

‘Where’s Ella?’ I ask. Usually she has either crashed out mid-play or is still up pulling Fergus’s hair or enthusiastically engaging in some repetitive game that Fergus lost interest in about a minute after he initiated it.

‘In bed, has been since eight-thirty.’ He looks at my incredulous face. ‘I know, it’s a miracle! I read her a story, sang her a song and she went to sleep instantly, possibly to escape the dreadfulness of my voice. Tea?’

As Fergus heads off to the kitchen, Dora falls headlong on to the sofa, picks up a cushion and stuffs it over her head.

‘Ooooh, this is a nice sofa,’ she moans. ‘This isn’t any of your DFS rubbish, you can tell. Gorgeous. I’ll sleep here.’

I perch on the few square inches of sofa remaining and look at her. In the warmth of the lamplight she looks almost translucent, as if the light in the room is coming from within her paper-thin façade.

‘What’s happened, Dora?’ I ask her quietly.

‘Oh, fucking Thingy, I split up with him, only the fucker is still in my flat, can’t get him out, the wanker. I don’t know why I ever let him in in the first place. It’s never my policy to let men into my house. Must have had an embolism or something.’ She delivers this speech with her customary hard-bastard indifference, but etched across the planes of her face is another story.

‘Sorry, Dora, do you have sugar?’ Fergus sticks his head round the door, nods at the recumbent Dora and makes a quizzical expression, which I return with a ‘blowed if I know’ shrug.

‘Shit loads,’ she replies into the pillow, and Fergus and I smile at each other for a moment longer before he softly closes the door behind him.

‘So, what about you?’ Dora examines my face. ‘What’s happened to you?’

I sit on the floor by her head and try to gauge if now is the right time to talk to her. I decide that it isn’t.

‘Listen, I know you. You wouldn’t leave a man you didn’t want any more in your flat. You’d throw him out and kick him in the nuts, and then you’d stamp on his head a bit. This is out of character. There’s more to this than an ex that won’t go away, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, you’d be at Camille’s. I know I’m the last resort friend, and there’s no point in denying it.’

Dora smiles and hauls herself up into a seated position. ‘You’re not a last resort friend, you’re just the best one. No offence to Camille, but you have a more special bond with the person you broke into the boys’ changing rooms with. It’s history.’

I smile at the memory of eleven-year-old Dora and I huddled behind the less than fragrant coats and duffle bags on sports day determined to find out once and for all what a willy looked liked. When the boys filed in after a cross-country marathon and duly stripped off for a communal shower, we couldn’t believe our eyes.

‘That surely can’t be what all the fuss is about,’ Dora squealed. ‘Its revolting!’

We were caught, of course. Suspended for two days and reviled for the rest of that term as pervy sluts.

‘Don’t give me all that pally reminiscence crap.’ I force myself to snap out of my reverie. ‘You always do that, always. What happened?’

Dora blows the air out of her cheeks and tips her head back to examine the ceiling.

‘Well, you and Camille were right, I guess. About the booze leading me on the rocky road to ruin and all that jazz. As soon as Bruce and I started boozing we started smoking and then doing the odd line until it got to be a regular thing, and then … the thing I can’t believe is how little time it took, Kits. After years of building up to smack and months of getting off of it, in less than two months I was right back where I started.’

I don’t let the faintest hint of what’s raging in my heart show on my face as I ask her the inevitable question.

‘Have you taken heroin again?’

Dora closes her eyes for a moment before opening them to look me in the face.

‘Yes.’ Her eyes are perfectly unreflective black pools. ‘I got in from work yesterday and he had a fix all ready and waiting for me. Said it was to celebrate our anniversary. I didn’t even hesitate, Kits, I just went to it, and, and I wanted it. And for a while there it felt fucking fantastic, just like coming home. I woke this morning, realised it was ten a.m., and every part of me was hurting, begging for more of it. I knew he’d have some more gear on him, I knew I could have it if I wanted it …’ Her thin white fingers reach for my hand and grip it tightly. ‘But I don’t want to die, Kits, not yet. So I left him to it and I packed my bag and I came here to you because you know me the best and you’ll sit on my head to stop me going back out there, I know you will. I can’t go back there, Kitty, it’ll kill me.’

In a second the anger and fear dissipate and Dora and I hold each other, each one of our years of knowing each other etched into the ease with which we are able to hold each other.

‘Oh God, Dors, you’ve done the right thing. You’ll be all right here,’ I say, holding her close.

‘I know, I know I will. Sodding Bruce. What kind of a twat is called Bruce anyway.’ Dora hastily wipes her tears away. ‘Listen, I’ll need to find a meeting locally, starting tomorrow. Will you help me? And can I stay here until I’m all right again?’

I nod yes and yes to both questions.

‘What about Bruce? How are you going to get him out of your place?’

Dora looks stricken for a moment. ‘I dunno, I could get him whacked, I suppose. I know people. Look, I don’t want to talk about Bruce any more. I want to talk about you. Something’s happened to you. Did you fuck the gardener?’ My face must have revealed the truth before I dissemble, and Dora’s eyes widen. ‘You did!’ she whispers. ‘You fucked the gardener! Fuck me!’ She looks at me with disbelief. ‘I’ve got to tell you, mate, I disapprove. I mean, Fergus – he adores you …’

‘Shhhh.’ I look hastily around. ‘Look, it’s not like that, it just sort of …’ I find that I can’t speak and just at that moment we hear Fergus in the hallway. I just press my lips together and silently plead with Dora to do the same. She squeezes my hand, frowning with concern as Fergus carefully places his tray of teas on the table.

‘So, Dora, what’s new?’ he says amid a luxurious yawn.

Dora shrugs nonchalantly. ‘Oh you know, escaping to the peaceful refuge of the country to avoid a life of crime and degradation in the big city. I expect Kitty’ll fill you in. Oh, and I missed you, Fergus, so much.’

Her tone is the gently sarcastic one she always uses with Fergus, and his returning smile is the same one of weary tolerance that it has always been. I breathe out in relief. Dora won’t let me down, not even if she disapproves.

Fergus looks at his coffee with a grim determination.

‘Have I made it too strong again?’ I ask him, wondering at his expression.

‘Nope, it’s fine.’ He smiles and then, as if he’s remembered something, says, ‘It’s just that you never know if today’s the day you’ll get the chop, you know.’

I lean against him, my arm about his shoulder.

‘Well, if it is, it is. We’ll be fine. You’ll get a bit of redundancy, won’t you?’

Fergus shrugs and nods. ‘A bit, yeah. And I’ve been looking about for something else, but pretty much the whole industry is in the same situation right now. No one’s hiring. I could always do some support work somewhere I suppose.’

Dora strolls into the kitchen with my honeymoon dressing gown on reading a letter printed on thick cream paper.

‘Your post came,’ she tells me, nodding at the letter. ‘“Dear Katherine, thank you for your recent application. I regret to inform that you that the post you applied for has already been filled …”’ Disappointment overtakes the violent urges her habitual intrusion of my privacy has always evoked in me. ‘“However, due to your skills and experience we would like to meet you for an informal lunch in the near future to asses your eligibility for any future positions that may arise, Yours Sincerely blah blah blah blah.”’ Dora drops the letter on to the counter. ‘Well, hold the front page,’ she says dryly as she pours herself a coffee.

I look at Fergus and smile.

‘There is a god,’ he says, and we hug, before kissing each other deeply.

‘Well, I’d better get off. See you, Dora.’ He kisses me on the cheek. ‘Tell that baby I hope she enjoyed her lie-in after her two-hour playing session with Daddy at three o’clock this morning. Do you know that after about an hour I kept hallucinating …?’

I follow him to the door and watch him disappear over the bend of the hill. It’s a beautiful morning, already warm and bright, with the smell of suburban hedges and flowers heavy in the air. The sort of place where nothing bad ever happens.

With a sudden impulse I step out barefoot on to the warm paving stone and walk lightly on to the street. Glancing quickly around, I reach up to the lowest branches of the tree outside our house and pull off some blossom, enough to make a posy.

‘What
are
you doing? Dora questions me from the door frame.

I smile at her and run full tilt back into the hall, wiping my bare feet on the dormat.

‘These are for Mum, for her anniversary. I want to put them next to that photo of us, the one where we’re wearing matching head scarves. I need to find a milk bottle … Do you even get milk bottles these days?’

Dora follows me into the kitchen shaking her head and hands me a small vase.

‘Your mum would love that. Here, try this.’ She appraises me carefully. ‘You don’t look like you’re about to leave him for the gardener,’ Dora says as I return to the kitchen. ‘You
look
like you’re about to do a photo shoot with
Hello!
magazine. “Cinderella reveals all – My perfect life with royal hubby”.’

I sigh and sit on a stool at the table, burying my head in my hands.

‘I’m not! I’m not about to leave him,’ I protest. ‘I love him, I … God, I’m not leaving him,’ I say, suddenly exhausted and desperate to go back to bed again and just sleep. If only I hadn’t seen Gareth that morning, if only I’d got on that train and gone to see Fergus. Then we’d have all of this new communication and happiness and I’d have none of the … guilt.

Dora raises an eyebrow at me. ‘Oh yeah? Well then why? Why did you shag … Gareth, is it? Cute, yes, marriage-wrecking material no, and I know you, Kits you’re not the type to do it just for kicks.’

I look out into the garden. The lawn that we laid together has started to grow out of control, inching thickly above the soft velvet surface I had imagined into a haven for angry cats.

‘I don’t know why it happened. I … Fergus and I had a big fight, just one of many over the last few weeks. We’ve both been tired, both had our own problems, both too scared to tell the other one because neither one of us wanted to admit things weren’t perfect … You know, when everyone tells you how right you are together it’s scary to think that they might be wrong, do you know what I mean?’

Dora nods. ‘Well, yeah, but if it isn’t you two then it’s no one and we all might as well go home,’ she says mildly. ‘And?’

I told her about the dinner and the port and me telling him I’d never loved him and she winced and grimaced in all the right places.

‘So the next day he flounced out without speaking, refused my calls and I was all set to go up to London and see him, to apologise and … well, Gareth just … appeared out of nowhere. He said did I fancy a ride out to the country, and he asked me about Mum and, well, I don’t know, he seemed like he might understand, so I told him. And then he sort of lunged at me and …’ I struggle to keep a hold of my voice. ‘It just happened. It was horrible. It was nothing.’

Dora examines me closely. ‘Then why did you let him do it? You could have just said “thanks but no thanks”.’

I bite my lip hard hoping for the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

‘I didn’t let him do it. I asked him not to do it but he did it anyway.’

It takes a moment for Dora’s face to clear with the realisation of what I’m saying.

‘Dora, please, don’t say anything, please. It was horrible – horrible – and I just want to forget about it, that’s all,’ I say, tears streaming down my face.

Dora winds her arms around my neck and leans her forehead against mine.

‘Kitty, shhh. Kitty.’ She takes my face between her hands. ‘You’re telling me that he … that he raped you, aren’t you?’

I nod, tasting the warmth of silent tears on my lips, desperately holding on to the scream in my heart.