The Accidental Wife (36 page)

‘OK. Well, you go and wash your hands and brush your hair and we’ll set off in a few minutes.’ Pam smiled at the girls scrambling up the stairs, climbing over each other in a race to the summit.

‘Why don’t they go to ballet class?’ she asked Jimmy. ‘Doesn’t she approve of ballet?’

‘It’s expensive, and money’s tight,’ Jimmy said.

Pam spent several silent moments clearly trying to hold back the words that threatened. She failed.

‘All night in that … that …
boat
,’ she huffed at Jimmy,
keeping
her voice low so that only he would hear her disapproval. ‘That’s no way for two girls their age to live.’

‘It was one night,’ Jimmy sighed.

‘It’s no way for a man of
your
age to live,’ Pam added, her voice tight with frustration. ‘It’s a wonder you’re not dead of pneumonia.’

‘It’s temporary,’ Jimmy said. ‘I sent off a new demo to record and publishing companies last week. It’s the best material I’ve ever written. It’ll get picked up, you’ll see.’

Pam sniffed dismissively. ‘Two years ago that boat was temporary. It’s been two years since you and Catherine separated and you’re still stuck living on that leaky old boat, still in the same situation as you were the day you left her. Why don’t you divorce her, James? At least then you can split your assets. It’s not right. Half that house is yours.’

Jimmy looked at his mum and took a painful breath.

‘All of that house is Leila and Eloise’s; it’s their
home
. It’s about the one steady thing they’ve got. Even if we did get the divorce I wouldn’t have them move out. They need stability, Mum. It’s not their fault that me and Catherine didn’t work out.’

‘No, well, if you’d listened to me and never married her in the first place –’

‘Then there would be no Leila or Ellie – would you want that?’ Jimmy asked her wearily. If he had a pound for every time he and Pam had had this identical conversation then he’d be living in one of those penthouses in the new warehouse conversion they were building across the canal from his boat. But his mum never tired of saying it. She never tired of being right.

‘You need to get a flat of your own,’ she told him. ‘Start afresh, face up to reality. Honestly, James, you’ve lived your life in limbo since you were seventeen years old. When are you
going
to grow up? Get a
proper
job, a teaching qualification like we’ve talked about. They’ll take anyone these days. I’d help you. You could live here while you went back to college.’

‘No, that is not who I am,’ Jimmy said, gesturing down at himself. ‘
This
is who I am. I’m a musician, a song writer – a
guitarist. This
is my life. I’m not going to get a qualification or a “proper job”, as you call it. I
love
what I do, Mum. I’m going to keep on doing it until I get my break or I die, whichever comes first, and if either one of those things happens while I’m living on a rotting old boat then so be it. But what I’m not going to do is give up. You don’t give up your passion.’

Pam sat back in her chair so that one chin tucked into another.

‘Is that why you’ve never divorced her?’ she asked him, as he knew she would.

‘I cheated on
her
, I left her,’ Jimmy repeated painfully. ‘I was the one who broke the marriage up. I did it. The reason we haven’t got the divorce settled is for the girls. The girls aren’t ready to deal with it yet.’

‘Are you sure it’s the girls who aren’t ready?’ Pam asked him, sighing heavily. ‘I don’t know what your father would have said.’ Jimmy looked sideways at his mother.

‘He’d support me,’ he said quietly. ‘Because he always told me to follow my dream and not let myself get trapped in a life that didn’t belong to me like he …’ Jimmy trailed off. His dad had died of bowel cancer when Jimmy was seventeen, something that neither he nor his mother had ever quite recovered from. ‘Dad always told me to give it my best shot, never give up. Don’t be a quitter, son – that’s what he said.’

‘Well, he should have said, quit while you’re ahead, James. Look, if everyone who ever wanted to be a pop star made it then you wouldn’t be able to walk out your front door without bumping into them. Wanting something to happen is not
enough
to make it happen. You can chase your dreams when you’re thirteen or twenty-three, but you’re
thirty
-three now. It’s time you grew up.’ Pam leaned forward so the girls wouldn’t hear her. ‘James, you’ve got two smashing girls. Wouldn’t you like to give them what they want – a few bobbles and some nail varnish, a couple of ballet lessons? It’s not that much to ask.’

‘I …’ Jimmy had been about to launch his usual defence when suddenly all his strength left him and he reached out across the table and gripped his mother’s hand. Pam looked up, startled.

‘What is it, son?’ she asked.

‘I still love her, Mum,’ he said. ‘I love her and I’m going to lose her. After everything I did, two years after we split up, and I’ve only just realised it. I thought I could go on pretending that everything was fine between us, but I can’t. I’m going to lose her and there’s nothing I can do about it now.’

Pam watched him for a moment, her lipsticked lips pressed into a thin line, and then she covered his wrist with her free hand.

‘There’s more out there for you, James, a whole world of nice decent women who’ll treat you the way you deserve to be treated. Who’ll appreciate you like she never has. Look at that lovely Sally Mitchell from the bingo. She’s a lovely girl, steady, does a lovely roast. I could invite her for lunch tomorrow.’

‘No, Mum,’ Jim said sadly. ‘It doesn’t matter how nice Sally Mitchell is, or how many other women there are out there who’d be good for me. It’s her I love, it’s her I want. It will always be her.’

‘You know I don’t think she is good enough for you,’ Pam said, catching hold of Jimmy’s hand when he tried to withdraw it from her. ‘But I must say, I’m surprised at you, James Ashley.’

‘What? Why?’ Jimmy asked.

‘You’re the boy who spent his entire adult life chasing after one dream and never giving up. You had good A levels. You could have gone to university, could have a good job now doing something in an office with a pension plan. But no, not my Jimmy. My Jimmy never said, “It’s no good, I’m never going to make it. I think I’ll chuck it all in and become an accountant,” worst luck. You never give up, Jimmy, you never do. And yet here you are telling me you’re giving her up without even the ghost of fight. Now, after all these years of devoting yourself to her and your children, you’re rolling over and playing dead while she does as she pleases. That’s not my Jimmy.’

‘What are you saying?’ Jimmy asked warily, looking sideways at her.

‘She’s the mother of your children, and I suppose a good one judging on how those angels have turned out, despite the clothes she puts them in. And you say you’ve only just realised now. But I don’t think that’s true, James. I think the light went out of you when you walked out on her and I’ve been waiting for it to come back on but it hasn’t, so … so just think – what would your father say? What did he say when he was encouraging you to learn the guitar?’ Pam asked him.

Jimmy looked puzzled for a moment, and then his face cleared.

‘He’d say, give it your best shot, never give up, don’t be a quitter. If he was here now he’d tell me I’ve got to fight for her, go back to Farmington and tell her how I feel, tell her how she feels and why we were meant to be together. Why we were never meant to be apart. Tell her she can’t make any choices about what to do next until she knows that I still love her and that I always have. That’s what he’d tell me.’ Jimmy sat up a little straighter and squared his shoulders. ‘That’s what he’d
say
, wouldn’t he, Mum? He’d tell me to give it one more shot to make sure that I knew, absolutely knew, that I had done my best.’

Pam nodded, pursing her lips.

‘He talked a lot of rubbish, your father,’ she said, but she squeezed his hand as she said it.

Chapter Nineteen

‘OH MY GOD
, look at the face on you,’ Kirsty said when she opened the door to Alison. She quickly glanced over Alison’s shoulder and then dragged her indoors, slamming the door behind her.

‘What was that all about?’ Alison asked, smoothing herself down as she slipped off her coat.

‘What was what all about?’ Kirsty looked perplexed, as if she always greeted her visitors by hurling them into the living room. She looked Alison up and down, admiring her straight knee-length claret cord skirt, worn with soft light brown leather heeled boots and topped off with a tightly fitting cream cashmere sweater. ‘Is that your standard reunion with an estranged friend outfit? I’m just asking because it doesn’t seem to provide the option for a cat fight. You’d never get the blood out of that sweater.’

‘Ha, ha,’ Alison said mirthlessly. ‘Don’t wind me up, Kirsty. I don’t care how much this sweater costs, the way I’m feeling …’ Alison clenched her fists and actually growled.

‘What’s up?’ Kirsty asked her, hurriedly pouring Alison a large glass of white wine.

‘When we moved here, back when I still thought we could salvage
something
from the wreckage of our marriage, Marc agreed that Friday afternoons would be family time. The one
day
of the week when we could guarantee that we would all sit down together and eat as a family. I knew it wouldn’t ever happen and it hasn’t. Yesterday Dominic turned up and went ballistic, just wound Marc up until he blew his top and they both walked out. The girls were there. They got so upset that Gemma asked me if Marc and I were going to divorce.’ Alison looked unhappily at Kirsty. ‘I couldn’t bear to see her any more upset, so I said no, and I meant it. I thought, I don’t care about anything except making my children happy. Oh, I know Dominic wanted me to leave him, but that’s just because he’s fifteen and angry. I thought I could talk him round, explain things to him like an adult. And Marc has seemed so
altered
since I told him how I felt, as if he is really affected. And I thought maybe this is it, maybe this is enough to get him to really commit to us. I told myself that it didn’t matter that I didn’t love him at the moment because in a few months or years I’d love him again. You see those old couples, don’t you, couples who’ve been married for about a hundred years, and you think, there is no way they have loved each other for all that time. At some point they must have hated each other’s guts. But then they come to a point where they can just rub along. And for the girls’ sakes, for all our sakes, I thought I could do that too.’

‘OK,’ Kirsty said slowly, looking at the door. ‘Far be it from me to judge your insane reasoning, but what’s changed and made you so cross?’

‘I found out he went round to see Cathy. I knew he would. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist it. But I hoped that he hadn’t because then there might still have been a chance for us. After everything he’s done to me I was still hoping for one last chance! I’m so stupid! But finding that out rather overshadowed all of his tears and declarations of remorse.’

‘Oh,
that
.’ Kirsty rolled her eyes. ‘That was nothing, it wasn’t even a kiss. It was barely a bit of hand-holding. It was all very repressed, all very
Brief Encounter
. Besides, Jimmy walked in at the last minute and broke it up.’

‘You knew?’ Alison exclaimed, finishing her drink and pouring herself another one from the bottle that Kirsty had left on the mantelpiece. ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

Kirsty pursed her lips, looking at her watch as she folded her arms.

‘Right, now listen, she’ll be here in a minute so let’s get this straight. First of all, I’m doing you a favour here that you begged me to do even though I’ve only known you five minutes. And secondly, no, I didn’t tell you but neither have I told her that you offered to have sex with her husband. So can it with the condemnations, lady. I am not part of your Jacobean tragedy.’

‘Oh,’ Alison said, her crossness stalling and stuttering to a standstill. ‘Well, OK then.’

‘And if Catherine not kissing Marc is enough for you to doubt your genius master plan to remain locked for ever in a sham marriage then maybe she actually did you a favour.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Alison said a little sheepishly. ‘I heard that a lot of women are perfectly happy in sham marriages. They have the money, the status, sex with their personal trainers on tap …’

‘Don’t talk to me about sex with personal trainers,’ Kirsty said crossly. ‘Now let’s get this evening back on track and concentrate on what it’s really about. Getting you and Catherine talking again.

‘OK,’ Alison glanced nervously at the door.

‘Good, well, I’m nothing if not a good hostess. So help me microwave these curries.’

*

‘I must admit,’ Alison said as she vigorously stabbed the film of one of the dishes, ‘I was surprised that she agreed to meet me quite so easily. What on earth did you say to her to get her to agree just like that?’

‘Nothing,’ Kirsty said, studiously reading the back of a packet of microwavable rice as if it held the secret to eternal life.

‘Nothing?’ Alison stopped stabbing, her fork hovering in mid-air.

‘Well, obviously she doesn’t know you’re going to be here!’ Kirsty exclaimed impatiently. ‘She would never have agreed to come then! No, this way is best, like ripping a plaster off a wound quickly. She’ll get here, she’ll be shocked and angry, possibly violent. And then we’ll all have a glass of wine and laugh about it.’ Kirsty bit her lip. ‘Hopefully.’

Alison put down the fork. ‘I’m going home,’ she said blankly, heading for the front door.

Kirsty stood in her way. ‘No you’re not. You’re the wound I’ve got to rip the plaster off.’ There was a sharp rap at the front door. ‘And besides, she’s here now. Don’t worry, this is Catherine. As far as I know she’s never hit anyone. Not since she decked that tart that slept with her husband.’

‘Hi!’ Catherine chimed as Kirsty opened the front door, determined to relax and enjoy the evening, even if she couldn’t stop thinking about Eloise. She handed Kirsty a bottle of sparkling rosé wine. ‘Do I ever need a drink. I hate it when the girls aren’t around, even if Eloise hates me. All I’ve done all day is pace around and think about …’