The Accidental Wife (41 page)

‘I love you too,’ Catherine said, feeling tears spring into her eyes that somehow made the morning seem all the more bright and clear. ‘You feel very sad, don’t you, about me and Daddy?’ She looked at Leila. ‘You both do.’

The girls nodded but did not speak.

‘It is sad, and I am so sorry,’ Catherine told them, looking at each in turn. ‘And I am so sorry that it happened to you. When I married your daddy and we had you, we never,
ever
planned
that this would happen, that we wouldn’t always be together, all of us. But sometimes life has a way of sweeping you off course when you are not looking, and turning things upside down. It makes you feel cross and sad, and it takes a while to get used to the fact that nothing is going to be the same any more. So I’m sorry, I’m so sorry you have to feel sad because of me and Daddy getting swept off course. But, you know, we both love you so much and we will always look after you, even if Daddy lives in a boat and we live here. We will always be a family.’

She hugged the girls close to her and kissed each one on the forehead.

‘I expect God is proud of you, Mum,’ Leila said into her hair. ‘Because you are trying very hard, and God loves a trier, Mrs Woodruff says.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Catherine said.

‘And, Mummy,’ Eloise said. ‘I’m sorry I was horrible to you.’

‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ Catherine said. ‘I know you didn’t mean it.’

‘Mummy …’ Leila said after a moment or two. ‘I was never horrible to you at all, was I? Do I get a treat?’

‘I think we all deserve one,’ Catherine said, pretending to look thoughtful. ‘How about we all … watch
Beauty and the Beast
until Daddy gets back with the food?’

She covered her ears to protect her pounding head from the cheers, but the meagre shelter of her hands was not nearly enough.

Chapter Twenty-two

ALISON TOOK A
long time to get back home because she didn’t want to face Marc and, besides, she knew what would happen the moment she saw him. Her phone had run out of charge at some time in the night so she was spared any demanding or angry messages he might have left her. He’d want to know all about her night with Catherine and she didn’t want to tell him. The time she’d spent with her old friend had gone better than she could have imagined and this morning she felt for the first time in a long while as if some unnamed disjointed part of her life had clicked back into place. Last night was purely hers and she didn’t want to share it with Marc, so after she had left Catherine’s, as tired and as nauseous as she was feeling, she did for the first time what she had either neglected or had been unable to do since she had arrived back in Farmington. She went for a walk in her heeled tan boots and she visited all of their old places.

At last Alison felt as if she had been handed a passport to her past.

Her first port of call was the tree in Butts Meadow; they used to climb and hide out in its canopy for hours, telling stories and jokes, reading comics and, later, magazines. Alison was delighted to see that the tree was still there, its branches bare now and braced for spring. She stood at the foot of its
trunk
and looked up into its tightly laced branches. It was there as a nine-year-old that Alison had persuaded Catherine to wind the hands on her watch back one hour so they could have some more time to finish their game. The following Monday at school Catherine had shown Alison the bruises on her legs she had suffered for the extra hour.

Then Alison walked through the near-silent town to the coffee shop, ‘Annie’s Kitchen’ as it used to be called. Now it was a PC repair shop, and Alison pressed her nose against the window and peered through, trying to imagine how it used to be.

It was in Annie’s Kitchen that they’d tasted their first cappuccinos, aged twelve, and where Alison had made them come back every single day until they got a taste for its bitter sweetness and could tell the other girls with all honesty that they were bunking off PE to go for a coffee. Thanks to Alison, Annie’s Kitchen had become the hot spot for schoolchildren for several years.

Taking a step back, Alison looked at her reflection, wan and transparent in the glass, and she wondered how long the café had lasted in Farmington after she left, how long it had taken for change to overcome it so that all that remained of that hot and crowded landscape of her childhood existed only in her memory. It was then, with her head pounding and her mouth parched, that she retraced her walk to her son’s school on the hill, the school that had once been hers and Cathy’s.

She felt the heels of her boots sink into the churned mud and grass as she crossed the playing field to find the copse at the back of the school, backing on to a paddock of horses. This had once been, and still was, judging by the butts that littered the muddy floor, the smokers’ den. It was here Cathy would sit and smile and listen while Alison and the other girls smoked like troupers but did not inhale.

Once when they had been alone Alison tried to explain to Cathy that all you had to do to fit in and look cool was to hold the smoke in your mouth and then blow it out again, tapping the ash off the end of your cigarette as often as possible so that it would burn down quicker. Eventually she had managed to get Cathy to try it, but all that had happened was that Cathy had accidentally inhaled and thrown up all over her feet just as the other girls arrived.

Alison sat down on the same low branch of a tree in the copse that she always used to and that somewhere under all the moss and mould must still bear both her and Cathy’s names, carved rather inexpertly with a knife nicked from the canteen, and looked out across the field that glittered fiercely as the sun strove to evaporate the morning dew.

Even on that night when she had left Farmington with Marc she’d always told herself that she was Cathy’s saviour, her crusader and her hero. Was the true sum of their friendship that she was always getting Cathy in trouble for being late, encouraging her to skip school, even trying to get her hooked on smoking? Not to mention breaking her heart. Alison had always thought that she was the strong one, the one that Cathy needed, but now she realised that not only was that no longer true, it had never been true.

The girl she had been sixteen years ago, Alison the hip kid, the sexy girl, the one who was in with the in crowd and fighting off the boys, had always needed Catherine to keep her anchored to the ground. And it was the moment, the very second, that she had chosen to let go of her friend that her life had begun, ever so slowly at first, to spin out of control. But with each revolution had come a fractional increase in speed, like the earth spinning on its axis so fast that you don’t even notice it. So fast that Alison didn’t notice until finally her world spun off its fixing point and she was floating free,
flaying
around in freefall without a clue how to land safely.

Cathy had always been the strong one, she’d always been the brave one, and if Alison was honest she’d always been the beautiful one too. All Alison had ever managed to do was to burn a little brighter than Cathy for a short while, to burn so angrily that she put her friend in the shade. Now though, Alison’s light was, if not out entirely, then almost extinguished.

And here she was, in this town that Marc had brought her back to. Here with her children and one hundred promises she could not keep.

As Alison sat there, the sun beginning to warm the sky, she understood that now she had to be strong, she had to stand on her two feet alone for the first time in her life. Because now there was only her, and no one else to blame if she got it all wrong.

At eight o’clock Alison headed back to the gym where she showered and changed into the workout gear she kept in her locker, and rang home to speak to her daughters from a payphone in reception. But the home phone was engaged, probably knocked off the hook at one of its many extensions, and it went straight to voice mail.

‘Hi, guys. I stayed at Cathy’s last night. Sorry I didn’t call but it was late before I decided to stay over. I’ll be home in a little while. See you then!’ Alison hung up the phone, knowing that the message would languish undiscovered until someone picked up the phone to make a call, which on a Sunday might not be for hours. She could have used her last twenty-pence piece to dial Marc’s mobile, she supposed. But then it would be him and only him that answered the phone and she still wasn’t ready to talk to him without the buffer zone her children provided, keeping things even and calm between them.

Alison left the gym and was on her way home when she saw a train rumbling into the station. The impulse to be anywhere
except
at home with Marc overtook her and she caught the next train to town, where she walked and shopped and ate a quiet lunch until she knew she could not put off returning home any longer. Once or twice she glanced at her dead phone, the screen silent and dark, and wondered what messages might wait for her locked inside it. Perhaps there were none. Maybe Marc was either too angry or not angry enough to phone her and ask her where she was.

Alison didn’t know which situation was preferable.

It was just after four that she finally arrived home, hesitating with her key in the lock, suddenly aware that she had no idea at all how to proceed with her life, and that for some reason she felt guilty. She felt as if she’d been seeing someone behind his back, and she supposed that in a way she had.

But before Alison could turn the key, Marc opened the door. His clothes were crumpled and his face was heavy with dark stubble.

‘Where have you been?’ he demanded, his body barring her entrance to the house.

‘Don’t start,’ she said, ducking under his arm and heading for the stairs. ‘I’ve been out, Marc. I stayed out with Kirsty and Cathy last night and today I just needed some time to myself. And I’m sorry if you actually had to spend some time with your children instead of breezing in and out of their lives in five minutes flat, but frankly you are such a hypocrite. I left a message on the answer phone at least. How many times have you never bothered coming home without ringing?’

Alison had begun to race up the stairs when Marc’s words stopped her in her tracks.

‘Dominic went out last night and he hasn’t come home since,’ Marc shouted at her. ‘I called you, I left you message after message. Where were you?’

Alison turned on her heel and looked at him.

‘My phone went flat. What do you mean, he hasn’t come home? Is he with friends? What do you
mean
?’ she asked him urgently.

‘You went out,’ Marc began. ‘I was cooking the girls their tea when he came in. He’d obviously been drinking and he reeked of smoke. He said a few things, swore in front of the girls. So I said a few things and … it got out of hand.’

‘Got out of hand?’ Alison asked him, her voice tense. ‘Marc? Did you hit him?’

‘Did I …?’ Marc looked stricken. ‘No, Alison, I did not hit our son. He just makes me so furious, but I’d
never
hit him. I said a few things I shouldn’t have, but he … he makes me so mad. I don’t understand him, I don’t know him any more.’

Marc shook his head, as if these details were irrelevant. ‘He stormed off and I haven’t seen him since. I tried his mobile. It’s off. I’ve tried you a hundred times – where
were
you?’

‘I needed some time to myself,’ Alison said, biting back the anger she felt at Marc’s implied accusation because she knew he was worried. ‘Well, have you looked for him?’

She turned and walked slowly down the stairs, each descending step drawing her nearer to the fear she was beginning to feel for Dominic.

‘I tried, but I don’t know any of his friends,’ Marc said as she approached him. ‘I don’t where he goes, I don’t know anything about him. I put the girls in the car last night and again this morning and we drove around the school, and a few other places but we couldn’t see him. I don’t know where he is. I didn’t know what to do without you. I didn’t know what to tell the girls. I told them you were at a sleepover. Amy cried for you.’

‘I didn’t know, I thought everything would be fine here. Look, I’m sure Dom is fine,’ Alison said, for her benefit as
much
as Marc’s. ‘He’ll be at Ciara’s or maybe with one of the boys from Rock Club. He can take care of himself, and this is Farmington.’

‘You don’t seem very worried,’ Marc said, blame touching his voice.

‘Of course I’m worried, Marc, he’s my son,’ Alison snapped. ‘I asked you to look after them for one night –
one
night – and still you couldn’t be the parent, could you? You had to rise to him. No wonder he thinks you don’t love him.’

‘Mama!’ Amy shrieked, crashing down the stairs closely followed by her sister, hitting Alison’s legs with full force and buckling them so that she had to sit down on the bottom stair. ‘Where
were
you, Mama? Dom’s gone away and we don’t know where he is or where you were. Were you with him?’

‘No, I was having a sleepover with my friend, with Leila and Eloise’s mum, remember? I didn’t know Dom was gone until just now.’

‘Daddy didn’t know where to find him,’ Gemma told her. ‘We thought of everywhere we could look but he isn’t anywhere.’

‘Mama?’ Amy’s voice was low, her eyes huge as she wound her arms around Alison’s neck. ‘Is Dominic dead, like the teenagers on the news? Is he shot?’

‘Of course not, of course he isn’t. He’ll be fine, I promise you.’

She felt the weight of Marc’s stare on her and when she looked up at him, his whole body was clenched with anxiety.

‘You stay with them,’ he told her. ‘I’ll take the car out again and have a proper look. Do you know any of his friends’ numbers?’

‘No, but Ciara told us her surname; I’ll look in the book. I’ll try all the numbers under that name. If I can find her maybe she can tell me some people he might be with if he’s not with her …’

‘What?’ Marc asked her.

Carefully Alison kissed first Amy and then Gemma on the cheeks. ‘Would you girls go and make Mummy a sandwich? I’m ever so hungry.’

‘I can do that easily,’ Gemma said.