After Ever After (49 page)

‘I was so, I was just so … angry.’ She advances into the room. ‘You already had it all. I just didn’t know why you wanted what I had as well.’ She shrugs and produces a packet of pins from her pocket. ‘Come on, I’ll fix it up so no one’ll notice.’

I back away from her impulsively. ‘Clare, please believe me. I didn’t know about you and Gareth.’ I think about the way he talked about her, but decide to leave that out of it. ‘And you have to believe me, I never wanted what happened to happen …’ I turn my back on her and begin hastily reapplying mascara in thick sticky globules. ‘Oh look, you can think what you like, but I’m sorry.’

Clare puts her hand on my shoulder and turns me around. She has slotted several pins between her lips and extracts one as she begins to take up the straps.

‘All these pins might help you hit the high notes if you move too quickly,’ she says between gritted teeth. ‘And actually, I do believe you. I’ve been the stupid one,
again
.’ I look into her face and see tears standing in her eyes. ‘Should have known that nothing like that ever happens to me. I was just so jealous of you, Kitty. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. With your lovely house and your proper family. Even though I liked – like – you so much, there you were with all that … easiness at your feet, moaning about pretty much everything you could think of. I know the grass is always greener and all that, but sometimes I just did think you were acting sort of ungrateful. I’m sorry.’ Her eyes avoid mine as she carries on her work, and I shake my head, startled by her clear picture of me, which I observe as if standing outside of my own body.

‘Don’t be sorry, Clare – you’re not stupid, I am. You’re right. I was complaining about having it all. But you know what I think? It was all such a shock. Meeting Fergus, loving him. The wedding and Ella. All so whirlwind and wonderful that when the fuss died down and I was left with my life I felt sort of disappointed and I felt sort of absent. I should have realised how it must have looked to you. What a stupid cow!’

Clare holds my shoulder and looks at me. ‘Yeah, well. None of that excuses what he did to you. None of it.’

Now it hits me – she knows everything.

‘But …? You were with him just now? Are you okay?’ I touch her hand and look at her. ‘What’s he done to you, Clare?’ I ask her, my voice low with anger.

‘He’s here because he wanted to see you, couldn’t believe you’d go through with it. Said you didn’t have the guts.’ She removes her hand from under mine and carefully inserts another pin. ‘I thought he was a bit cold, you know, when it came to sex. But he was always so sweet and attentive in conversation, really romantic, and he said all the right stuff, you know, made me feel special. After you went that afternoon he was fantastic, fantastic until we went to bed, and then it was like he was … like I wasn’t even there. I thought that, well, things like that take time … and then the next day Ted set him off. He was bouncing on the sofa while Gareth was trying to watch the racing on TV. He told him a few times to give over, but Ted’s just a baby! He thought it was a game. Gareth just picked Ted up and shook him and threw him back down on the floor.’

Her hand had begun to tremble and I held her wrist still.

‘I couldn’t believe it. I flew at him – no one touches my kid like that, no one, and he, well, he hit me, Kitty, knocked me on the floor, and then … then he left. Ted and me weren’t hurt too bad. I was a bit bruised and Ted was more shocked than anything else, but it was so quick, over before it even began. I almost wondered if it had happened at all.’ She bites her lip over a cautious smile. ‘But after he’d gone and I’d checked us both over, I realised that he wasn’t that sweet sensitive bloke I thought he was at all. I realised that maybe you were telling the truth, and, well, it was too late by then, the costumes had already gone.’

We hold each other hard for a moment.

‘Oh God, Clare. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. You’ve been such a good friend to me. I really think, I really do, that if I hadn’t met you I’d have gone insane even more than now! Imagine!’

Clare and I laugh and cry and hug, and in that instant I have an idea.

‘Ouch,’ I say loudly, and then ‘Owwwwww!’

Clare springs back in concern. ‘What is it, a pin?’ She examines me.

‘No, I’ve sprained my ankle,’ I say woodenly. ‘Ow. Owwwww. Ouch.’ I try louder, hoping to attract some more attention. Clare looks at me askance.

‘What are you on about?’ she giggles. ‘The stress
has
finally sent you mental!’

Caroline opens the door and scowls at me.

‘The audience can hear you screeching, you know. Victorian ventilation system.’ She eyes Clare speculatively as I press home my plan.

‘I’m sorry, Caroline, I just turned my ankle over and it’s agony, I’m practically crippled, so there’s no way I can go on for the second half. Ow. Clare’ll have to do it.’

Clare claps her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide at first with fear and then delight as she catches up with my plan.

‘Me?’ she gasps, and I suppress a giggle.

‘Ow, I mean. And after all, the show must …’

There’s a pause. ‘Very well! Curtain in one minute, get on with it!’

Caroline whirs out of the room as Clare and I hastily begin to pull out all of the pins.

‘Oh God, Kitty, oh God,’ she giggles as I help her into the dress. I step back and look her up and down. She looks beautiful.

‘Why, Wild Bill won’t believe his eyes,’ I say with a smile. ‘You were made to wear pink!’

‘Curtain!’ Colin hollers down the corridor.

‘Thank you, Kitty, thank you.’ Clare takes a deep breath and heads out towards the stage.

‘Well, it always should have been you, after all,’ I call out after her, and I smile to myself in the mirror. Tonight it’s been my turn to be fairy godmother.

Standing in my underwear I begin to wash away the thick sludge of stage make-up until my own skin appears in pink patches through the panstick. I start brushing the tangles out of my back-combed hair and dare to let the slightest edge of optimism into my thoughts. If Clare believes me, then it’s a start, and maybe, after tonight, I can get her to talk to Fergus and explain, and maybe, just maybe … I trail off and examine my hairbrush. What’s the point in hoping? If there had been any chance he would have stayed, or he’d be here now talking to me. Fergus has already gone back to his mum’s house, back to Georgina, Daniel and Ella, a perfect little family without me.

‘I just wish there was a way we could talk to each other,’ I say to myself into the mirror. That’s the irony of these kind of situations, the cruelty. There’s nothing, nothing I’d like to do more than be able to run to him now and tell him about all this, laughing together and holding each other the way we always used to. Even when we argued we were in each other’s arms. How can I, though? When the one person I want to confide in is the one who hurt me, the one who doubts and probably hates me? How can I, when I’m the one who kept pulling at the seams of our marriage until it came apart in my hands. ‘I can’t, can I?’ I tell myself. ‘I can’t do that ever again.’

‘I’m all ears, love,’ Gareth says over my shoulder. I stand still for a moment, caught between the urges to crumple and cower and to run. Then, in one breath, both of those impulses flee by themselves, leaving me alone to face him. Alone but not afraid.

‘What’s wrong?’ I say, turning to face him, straightening my shoulders. ‘No babies for you to bully round here?’

He smirks and closes the door behind him. I catch my breath in my throat, but I stand my ground. He will not see what I’m feeling.

‘Yeah, well, kids should know their place. My dad taught me that, remember?’ he says with a matter-of-fact tone as he leans against the wall to look at me. My stomach turns in disgust and I reach for my shirt, trying not to look rattled.

‘That’s not all he taught you, or did you make up all that crap too?’ I ask him, calculating the distance between him, me and the door.

‘I thought you understood me, Kitty,’ he says. ‘I thought that now that Clare and I are over we could pick up where we left off.’ He takes a step closer. ‘You’re looking good. It must be all this misery – helped you shed a bit of that weight.’

I shake my head and laugh, buttoning my shirt with trembling fingers.

‘Just leave, Gareth, just go,’ I say with as much authority as I am able, but he pushes himself off the wall and takes a step closer, his smile so sweet that for a split second I forget who he is, what he is, before it turns into a vicious leer.

‘Come on, baby, I’ll make it last longer this time, I promise.’

I don’t actually believe that he’ll do anything until he’s grabbed me and pushed me hard into the spine of the basin, his hands pinning my elbows to my ribs.

‘Go on, make a fuss,’ he says, and the last part of my courage dissolves. ‘I like my women feisty.’

And something incredible happens, something … wonderful and terrible. The anger, the pent-up fury that has been eating away at me since that first time, maybe for even longer than that, galvanises in the pit of my stomach and unleashes itself, flowing through my body, licking at my limbs like fire.

In this instant, in this breath, I know I will not let him hurt me; I will not let him touch me. Suddenly I feel a surge of strength, power and certainty that I never knew I had until this moment, and I shove him away from me making him stumble and lose his footing. He crashes to the ground, his head catching the edge of the toilet seat. A long gash opens up before my eyes and begins to bleed. As I watch the blood well and thicken I hear my own heart thundering in my ears, the rasping sound of my own breath, and I know that I am in control.

‘You fucking bitch.’ He smears the blood away from his eyes and begins to rise. ‘You fucking bitch! I’m going to …’

I laugh at him, small and bleeding on the floor of the disabled loo. I laugh, and this time it doesn’t make him angry, this time it doesn’t give him power, it robs him of any that he had. He looks small and stupid. He looks pathetic.

‘What are you going to do, Gareth?’ I ask him. ‘Look at you, you can’t do anything to me, not any more. You really are nothing, just some stupid, self-deluded, preening prick. I can’t believe I let you bother me, you’re disgusting. You’re nothing, less than nothing.’

As Gareth’s face clouds with a mixture of embarrassment and maybe even fear, the toilet door slams open.

‘I may not have been there to stop you the first time,’ Fergus snarls, ‘but I’m here now and I’m going to stop you now.’ He lunges on top of Gareth, his fists already flying, and I realise that Fergus has hit him somewhere in the past few seconds and that he’s going to keep on hitting him again and again.

‘Stop! Stop it, Fergus!’ I scream. ‘It’s sorted, I’ve sorted it. Don’t!’ I shout, not knowing what I’m trying to say, only that I need to protect Fergus from his own rage. The room is full now and I see Mr Crawley and Bill Edwards pulling Fergus back into the corridor and I stumble after him, tripping over Gareth’s outstretched leg, so that I fall face first against the opposite wall in a heap at Fergus’s feet. Bill and Mr Crawley pick Gareth up by one arm each and fling him back into the loo. I think I hear his head crack against the sink.

‘Kitty.’ Fergus helps me stand and we cling on to each other for a moment as the world tilts before finally righting itself.

‘You’re bleeding.’ Fergus touches my face and I wince in surprise.

I stare at him in stunned disbelief as Mr Crawley emerges from the toilet, shutting the door behind him, and then finds a dust sheet and wraps it around my shoulders.

‘Would you get Dora and Camille. I think I have to go home now,’ I ask Mr Crawley in a small voice. ‘I think I need to go home.’

Mr Crawley looks at me and then, his arms still resting on my shoulders, reaches out to Fergus and in turn touches his shoulder too.

‘It’s okay,’ he says to us both. And then to Bill, ‘You should get back before Clare’s big number. You two, why don’t you go and sit at the back, watch the end of the show?’

I look at Mr Crawley, his tall and elegantly slim frame, and then at the closed toilet where Gareth is bound to be refuelling his fury even now.

‘What about him? …’ I say shakily, pointing at the door. ‘He’ll kill you …’ Mr Crawley smiles and shakes his head.

‘There is more than one way to skin a rat,’ he says serenely. ‘Just leave him to me, Kitty. I’ll just have a little chat with him, and I think you’ll find he will be out of town before morning, a very different man.’

I open my mouth to protest, but there is something in his quiet determination that makes me realise that I shouldn’t doubt him, let alone question him; that when pushed to the limit he can be a very formidable man.

‘And how are you going to do that?’ a more sceptical Fergus asks doubtfully.

‘Oh, I’ll just work my usual magic,’ Mr Crawley says, and his smile is quite chilling as he goes to open the toilet door. If it was anyone except Gareth in there I’d feel sorry for them.

‘Kitty.’ Fergus grabs my arm but I shake him loose instantly. My skin feels bruised all over.

‘Not now, Fergus.’ I can’t face him. ‘Just let things calm down a bit, okay?’

Fergus looks hurt and angry.

‘But I’ve come to tell you … to apologise …’

I start walking back to the hall.

‘As if you can do that now, just like that?’ I say over my shoulder.

Part of me thinks that I should be falling into his arms and kissing him passionately just like the girl does when the hero saves the day, and part of me wants to. But it wasn’t the hero, was it? It wasn’t Prince Charming on his white charger that slew the dragon. It was me, all alone. I rescued myself. I saved the day, Fergus hadn’t believed me, and for now at least I need to be alone to understand that, to feel what it means.

I can’t look at Fergus as we sidle into the back of the auditorium. I feel the kind of elation I previously imagined only athletes and fighters know. I’ve won. I’ve beaten Gareth and taken back myself. As we walk into the hushed auditorium I’m shouting, singing in my head. I just know that I’ve got control of my life, maybe for the first time, and that maybe I don’t have to wait for someone else to change things. That maybe, no
definitely
, I’m strong enough to change things for myself.