Marshmallows for Breakfast (31 page)

I ordered coffee and a glass of water and we sat in silence as we waited for it to arrive. I was struck again by the surrealism
of the situation. A needle of doubt was prodding at my conscience. I really shouldn't have come. I should not have gotten involved. I had never been married, I knew nothing of their marriage, I could do so much more harm than good.

The waitress clattered my coffee onto the table, folded the bill and placed it in the middle of the table, then left us alone.

Tessa said a lot of things. That Ashlyn had been out of control. She'd been laughing and Justin had looked at her like she was a weirdo. Ashlyn had decided to show them all how high she could go on the swing. And she showed them. Higher and higher she went until she'd lost her grip and had fallen off. Everyone started laughing at her, even though she'd scraped her hand and her face and her knee and there was blood. She'd jumped to her feet and run off. Across the grass and then away out onto the street. Tessa had been calling her, had tried to chase her, but Ashlyn had raced ahead of her, a lightning streak of humiliation. Tessa had also said that she was worried by how much Ashlyn was drinking. She'd seen the bottle Ashlyn kept in her desk at school. She'd noticed how Ashlyn was often pale and quiet and tired in the mornings. She was worried that Ashlyn hadn't been able to remember what had happened.

If you were me,
Ashlyn thought,
you'd understand why I need a little pick-me-up now and again.
It was all right for Tessa: she could talk to boys; her mother wasn't always on her case for every little thing; she was beautiful. Tessa had it all, Ashlyn didn't. She needed a little liquid confidence every now and again, just to get her going. Tessa didn't understand. Ashlyn thought they were friends, but obviously she was wrong. Ashlyn and Tessa stopped hanging around together as much. Ashlyn found new friends. Ones who didn't judge her. Ones who, when she blacked out again, would tell her what had happened and wouldn't give her a lecture. If she wanted a lecture, God, if she wanted to be reminded of every wrong thing she'd ever done, she'd talk to her mother.

CHAPTER 27

I
might have guessed he'd pull something like this,” Ashlyn said.

“It wasn't malicious,” I said. “He was a bit freaked out by the solicitor's letter.”

“We weren't exactly getting anywhere on the phone and I had to let him know I was serious about wanting the kids. It killed me that Jaxon was hurt and I wasn't there. He should have been with me.”

“He knows you're serious. He does want to sort things out—I think after New York he was just worried that the pair of you might start rowing again. This way, with someone acting as a bit of a buffer, maybe you can move forwards. Do what's best for the kids.”

Mrs. Gadsborough nodded. She was deeply disappointed. She made no secret of it. She stared forlornly at the slip of white paper between us, then looked up at me. Her eyes narrowed a little and she turned her head slightly, exploring me with slightly suspicious eyes. “Kyle's in love with you,” Ashlyn stated.

I stared at her, wondering what she expected me to say to that.

“He is,” she said, “I know him.”

“You've had no meaningful contact with your husband for months, Mrs. Gadsborough,” I said, “so forgive me if I don't quite believe that you know what he feels.”

Her lips curled up into a smile, not unpleasant, more
self- satisfied, as though I'd proved her point. “See, that's exactly the sort of thing that makes you the type of woman he likes.
Loves.
Straight- talking. Strong. Incredibly sexy. Nothing fazes you.”

Bless Mrs. Gadsborough. She'd known me all of ten minutes and she had managed to get every little thing wrong about me.

“That's not me, by the way,” she said as she laid her cigarette beside her coffee cup, stroked her finger over the frayed top of the collapsing foam of her cappuccino. “I'm none of those things. That's the sort of woman Kyle used to go out with before me.”

Ashlyn and Kyle had been in the same group of friends and slowly she'd become closer to him. She'd fallen for him the moment she met him. He was good- looking, quiet and incredibly kind. For years she was in love with him but he didn't know she was alive; she was just another friend in his large collection of friends. She had tried to make him notice her by studying the sort of people he went out with, the women he slept with, the women he casually dated, the ones who became his girlfriends. She kept trying to be like them—changed her hair, changed the way she dressed, even tried to change her personality—so he'd notice her. When trying to be someone else didn't work, when he still just treated her like a friend, she resorted to telling him the truth. She invited him over for dinner, she made fresh pasta with spinach and ricotta sauce, she poured him a glass of expensive white wine and told him she was in love with him. She decided not to hold back—if he knew how deeply she felt he might give her a chance. He was taken aback, had stared at her and said nothing. A little part of her died at that moment because she knew, just knew, he didn't feel the same way.

But Kyle eventually said, “Let's go on a proper date and see what happens.” Obviously that made her fall in love with him even more. He didn't have to, but he did. So they went out. And then they went on another date. And another one. And all the while she was thinking,
he's just seeing what happens,
so she was always on her best behavior. Didn't drink because she could never stop at one and she didn't smoke. She also let him decide when they should go to bed. Because she thought he was testing her. He clearly wasn't that into her because he waited eight weeks before he made a move on her. A few months into their “just seeing what happens” dating, someone asked her out. She thought it would be easier for both of them if she said yes. Then he'd have a way out, she'd be off his hands and maybe this new guy would like her better. When she told him …

“When I told Kyle that someone had asked me out, he went mental.” Ashlyn shook her head before a smile crept onto her face. “I mean completely and utterly lost it. ‘My girlfriend,’ he said. ‘What right has some bloke got to ask out my girlfriend? I'll kill the bastard.’

“I'd never seen him like that before. I've never seen him like that since. Me being so pleased that it seemed Kyle had fallen in love with me at last, ignored the obvious. I was young and naïve and desperately in love, I didn't want to see the obvious. Do you know what the obvious is, Kendie?”

I shook my head. I suspected I knew but I didn't want to interrupt her, to stop her flow, because then I'd be required to speak. And, seriously, what would I say? I'd wanted to know what Ashlyn was like and this was it. She was the type of person who shared things a stranger shouldn't know.

“No, it's not that he wanted me because someone else wanted me. The obvious was that he wasn't in love with me. Kyle always wants to do the right thing. Always. And the
right thing was not to reject me out of hand, because that would hurt my feelings. The right thing was not to just let me go when someone else was interested, the right thing was to give me a chance. The right thing was to feel jealous when someone else moved in. That's what motivates Kyle, doing the right thing. And dating me was the right thing. It wasn't love that brought us together—well, not on his part—it was his decency.

“I like to think sometimes that he did fall in love with me. But if he did it wasn't love that made him fall in love, it was his sense of decency. And because of that, I always loved him more than he loved me. And that's why I had a few drinks. After a few drinks I felt good enough to be his wife. After a few drinks I seemed to have it all. I was everything that Kyle wanted.”

“I see,” I said and trained my line of sight on my coffee.

Had these two people—Kyle Gadsborough and Ashlyn Gadsborough—actually
met?
Were they at all acquainted with the other person, because seriously, the pair of them sounded as though they were married to completely different people. Neither of them ever felt good enough for the other. They were both so desperate to be good enough, they never bothered to find out if they were. Or even what they could do to be good enough.
Is this what marriage does to you?
I wondered. You don't speak to each other, you don't tell each other the truth, try to find a solution to your problem together. Instead you go away and self- destruct: you fall in love with someone else, you sleep with someone else, you drink, you gamble. You do anything except be honest—
talk
—with the person you're meant to spend the rest of your life with.

“Marriage is easy when you drink a little to take the edge off things. My marriage was easy when I could take the edge off things. And when I stopped drinking because Kyle
wanted me to it became less easy. The sharp edges and nasty bits came back. It became a nightmare.”

The pink tip of her tongue slipped out between her moist lips and she licked the small bubbles of the cappuccino foam off her finger. The move was so breathtakingly erotic, I had to look away in embarrassment. The man at the next table stared at her with his mouth open, his sandwich frozen between his plate and mouth; his male companion nearly fell off his chair. How this woman thought she wasn't good enough for anyone was a mystery. She was so sexual and beautiful. Most women would kill for either of these, let alone both.

“My father was an alcoholic,” Ashlyn said matter-of-factly. “That was the big family secret. I didn't even know for years. Not till I left home and my father died. That was why my mother was so controlling—she had no control over his drinking, so she tried to control me.

“At least he was fun sometimes. He might have been falling-down drunk, but all I remember is the fun. The presents he'd buy, the funny stories he'd tell. Mum tried to tell me that he'd get nasty, but I don't remember that. She was the one always being nasty. Trying to make every little thing perfect. Wouldn't you know it, her daughter's not perfect so I paid for that…” Her voice and her eyes drifted away for a moment. “Maybe my father was an alcoholic, but it doesn't mean that I am. Kyle knew about my dad, which is why he threw that in my face.”

In all the research I'd done since I'd found out about Ashlyn's problem, it constantly said that alcoholism was handed down from generation to generation. Now she had confirmed that it hadn't started with her. Slivers of fear ran through me: Summer or Jaxon or both? Who would it be passed down to? Who would find themselves powerless around alcohol? I'd been looking and looking but hadn't yet
found the answer as to whether it was a fait accompli. Were one or both of them going to end up on that path, become like Ashlyn no matter how they were brought up?

“I want my kids back,” Ashlyn said to me, as though sensing I was thinking about them—being their mother connected her so closely to them that even when a stranger was thinking of them she could tell.

“That's what I wanted to tell Kyle but instead he sent you. I also wanted to tell him I wasn't that bad,” Ashlyn said. “Kyle was always on my case about how much I drank but I wasn't that bad. I bet the way he tells it I was some kind of monster. But if you go to meetings you'll hear far worse stories. You'll see that I'm not so bad.