The Accidental Wife (46 page)

‘Jimmy Ashley was the one that made your mind up to leave?’ Alison asked. ‘That’s ironic.’

‘Is it?’

‘Long story. Funny that after fifteen years and three kids there’s still so much you don’t know about me and so much I don’t know about you.’

‘How did it go with you and Cathy?’ Marc asked her suddenly, as if he had just remembered something about himself that Alison didn’t know.

‘It went well,’ she said. ‘We talked, we told each other … everything.’

‘Ah,’ Marc said. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘Marc,’ Alison said carefully, ‘do you honestly think there is still something there between you and Cathy? I mean something real? Because if you don’t, don’t go after her, please. Don’t get her caught up in everything that’s happening between us again. She doesn’t deserve it.’

‘There’s something there,’ Marc said, and Alison was surprised by how much the revelation stung her. ‘I don’t know if it’s real but there’s something, something that would be hard to leave alone.’

‘Just be careful with her, please,’ Alison said. ‘Don’t treat her like you treated the others.’

‘I won’t,’ Marc promised her.

‘Right,’ Alison said. She looked at the kitchen clock, it was barely ten p.m. ‘What shall we do now?’ she asked him.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ Marc said. ‘And if you don’t mind … can I sleep in bed with you tonight? It’s just that … you’re my best friend, Al. You’re the person I want to hold now this is happening to me.’

Alison nodded and held out her hand. ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Me too.’

Chapter Twenty-four

‘DO YOU THINK
you can sprain your vagina?’ Kirsty asked Catherine and Alison as they met for lunch on Monday. ‘Do you think it’s possible that too much sex in too many positions can actually make you pull an internal muscle – let’s call it the love muscle – because I’m telling you I’ve had so much incredible sex this weekend I think I might actually have sprained my vagina. I might have made medical history, because you know what, it is actually true. Sex is better when you’re in love with someone, isn’t it?’

Catherine ignored her tuna salad sandwich and Alison sipped her coffee.

‘God, I thought the whole point of you two making up is that the world would be a happier lighter place, ceasefires would be called across international war zones, mammals on the verge of extinction would start mating again, the ozone layer would repair itself overnight. If I’d known you were both going to be so miserable I wouldn’t have bothered getting you back together again, let alone asking you to meet for lunch. What is the point of me being blissfully happy and in love if I can’t share it?’

Catherine looked at her. ‘I think that being blissfully happy and in love is sort of the point.’

Kirsty raised a brow. ‘If you say so.’

She looked from Alison to Catherine. ‘OK, I give in. Go on, tell me what the problems are and make it snappy because I want to talk about me and Sam and the sex we’re having again before I have to go back to work, although if I’m lucky I probably could have sex in the storage cupboard with Sam if I got back before my two o’clock so …’

‘Jimmy told me he loved me, that he wanted to get back with me and then he went to London,’ Catherine blurted out.

‘No wonder he wouldn’t sleep with me,’ Alison said.

‘According to Jimmy, he’s always been in love with me,’ Catherine said bleakly.

‘Interesting,’ Kirsty said on a yawn, wincing as both women looked daggers at her. ‘Well, the fact that he’s in love with you and wants to get back together with you is old news. I could have told you
that
months ago. The part where he gets on a train and goes to London is a bit confusing. How does he think that’s going to help?’

‘He doesn’t,’ Catherine said. When Kirsty looked perplexed she went on, ‘Well, of course I’m not going to get back with him, am I?’

‘Aren’t you?’ Kirsty asked.

‘Of course I’m not!’ Catherine exclaimed. ‘I told him that I didn’t love him. I told him that we weren’t going to get back together. And he looked really, really sad and said he was going to London to find work.’

‘And let me guess, now you’re feeling really, really sad?’ Kirsty asked her.

‘What if I am? I don’t want things to be bad between us, do I?’ Catherine snapped at her. ‘He’s the father of my children …’

‘The love of your life,’ Kirsty mumbled.

‘He’s not,’ Catherine protested. ‘I told him, I took long enough to get over him. But I did. Our relationship is finished and that’s that.’

‘OK,’ Kirsty said, more than a little sceptically. ‘If you say so. What about you, Alison? Why are you in such a mope?’

‘Marc is moving out of the house at the end of the week,’ she said. ‘We’re appointing solicitors. We’re doing it, we’re getting a divorce.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Catherine said, reaching over the table.

‘Me too,’ Alison said, biting down hard on her lip. ‘It’s so stupid, I keep crying. It’s me that wanted it. It’s me that doesn’t love him any more and it’s him that’s a selfish unfaithful pig, so why am I
crying?
’

‘Because it’s the end of a part of your life,’ Catherine told her. ‘A part of your life that when you started it you believed would always be wonderful, and would always be happy. And when you have to face up to the fact that that isn’t going to happen any more it’s sad and makes you want to cry.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Kirsty said. ‘You two are really bringing me down here.’ She turned to Alison. ‘Look, you’re doing the right thing. You’ve just got to tough it out now because things will sort themselves out. You might even end up being best friends like Catherine and Jimmy, although that degree of closeness can lead to confusion for some ex-spouses, particularly the less intelligent ones like Jimmy.’

‘He is not less intelligent,’ Catherine said indignantly. ‘He’s one of the cleverest, most brilliant and sensitive men I know, the ignorant pig.’

‘Is he?’ Kirsty said mildly. ‘You should marry him then – oh, no, wait, you already have.’

‘He was brilliant with Dominic,’ Alison said, and when it became clear that neither Catherine nor Kirsty knew anything about Dominic she filled them in on his disappearance and how Jimmy talked him into going back. ‘He even said something to Marc. Something that made him decide to leave.’

‘Now that’s what I call marriage counselling,’ Kirsty said. ‘It was probably, “Hey, mate, fancy coming on the pull?”’

‘What did he say to him?’ Catherine asked Alison, studiously ignoring Kirsty.

‘He said that you can only ever ask someone to forgive you once and if you do you have to really mean it and never let them down again. And if you don’t think you can do that you shouldn’t ask them. Marc said he couldn’t ask me to forgive him again because he knew I wouldn’t be able to do it.’

Catherine stared at her tuna and salad sandwich. ‘He’s such a bastard.’

‘Who, Marc?’ Kirsty asked.

‘No, Jimmy. Jimmy is such a bastard,’ Catherine said furiously. ‘I was happy with him, I trusted him – it nearly killed me to let myself do that after … well, after you know what. But I did it. And then he had sex with Donna Clarke in the ladies’ loos in The Goat. Now he’s saying that he still loves me, that he still wants me and he’s going around rescuing teenage boys and giving the kind of advice that finally makes men leave their wives and he’s doing it all too late. Two years too late. And that makes him a selfish, fucking bastard. And I hate him. I hate him because I can’t love him now. It’s too late.’

‘Have you ever thought,’ Alison said, laying each word down ever so carefully, ‘that the reason you feel so angry towards him is because you do still have feelings for him?’

‘No,’ Catherine said firmly.

‘OK then,’ Alison said, catching Kirsty’s eye.

‘Come on, ladies, snap out of it,’ Kirsty said, banging her fists on the table so hard it made the two old ladies at the next table send her disapproving glances. ‘Let’s summarise. You,’ she said, pointing at Catherine. ‘The man you say you don’t love has just cleared off to London for a few days. What’s the
big
deal? There is no big deal, that’s what.’ Kirsty shifted her attention to Alison. ‘And as for you, your no-good cheating husband, who you don’t love anyway, has finally packed his bags, leaving you in the nice house with every chance of a great big fat divorce settlement. We shouldn’t be moping, we should be celebrating! I know, let’s go out tonight. Let’s go to The Goat. I hear there’s a great new band playing and every chance of some toilet action if you play your cards right.’

Catherine and Alison looked at each other across the table.

‘Well, I suppose I’ve got free babysitting until the end of the week,’ Alison said. ‘I should probably make the most of it.’

‘And I’m sure Mrs Beesley would babysit if I asked her,’ Catherine said, a little less certainly.

‘Great,’ Kirsty said. ‘Let’s tear this town up. Monday night in Farmington, rock on. Two bitter single chicks and their blissfully happy friend – how can we fail to have a great time?’ Kirsty flashed her best smile at the outraged old ladies. ‘Now can we get back to talking about me and my vagina?’

‘Mummy, what are you doing?’ Eloise asked Catherine as she hovered in front of the mirror that hung over the fireplace, her nose about an inch from its surface.

‘Applying eyeliner,’ Catherine told her. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know how people do it because as soon as I get this sharpened pencil anywhere near my eyes I want to screw them up, so I can’t see what I’m doing. I don’t understand eyeliner. It’s not natural. Why would anyone ever want to wear it?’

‘You are trying to wear it,’ Eloise observed, tilting her head to one side as she watched her mother jabbing at her eye. ‘Trying quite hard, and you never normally wear eyeliner, especially not green eyeliner.’

Catherine put the pencil down on the mantelpiece and looked at Eloise.

‘On the way back to work from lunch today I brought a magazine. I thought spring is here, it’s a new start, a fresh beginning, I’ll give myself a spring clean …’

‘Are you dirty, Mummy?’ Leila asked her as she stomped down the stairs in a pair of Nana Pam’s special clear plastic high heels that set off her Dalmatian pyjamas particularly well.

‘No, not that sort of a clean,’ Catherine said, looking rather perplexed at the magazine article she had open and balancing precariously on top of the TV so that she could refer to it while attempting eyeliner in the mirror. ‘Give Your Make-Up a Spring Clean and Put a Spring in Your Step!’ it yelled at her, the headline feeling more like a set of orders than a suggestion.

Catherine never normally bought magazines, especially not women’s magazines, because she supposed, perhaps a little loftily, that on some level she didn’t consider herself to be that kind of woman, concerned with earthly things such as shoes and make-up and … hairdos. But in the last couple of weeks her life had changed completely. Old wounds had closed and healed over, final breaks between herself and the past had been made at last and she felt as if she should be a new woman. Somehow the tentative renewal of her friendship with Alison had helped her see her life from a new perspective, as though through a fresh pair of eyes. She hadn’t realised until she had told Jimmy point blank that she was over what had happened between then, that it didn’t hurt her at all any more. And seeing Alison again now, as an adult, a mother with her own problems almost engulfing her, made Catherine realise she couldn’t blame either the woman she now knew or the seventeen-year-old Alison had once been for what had happened to her back then. She couldn’t even blame Marc because all that happened to her was the same set of wrong turns and bad choices that had beset almost every seventeen-year-old girl since the dawn of time, mistakes that had to be
made
and owned in order for her to become a whole person, a grown-up woman. Just recently everyone had been telling her how strong she was but it was only now that Catherine believed it. She would always mourn the loss of the baby that she never knew, always regret that she couldn’t have been close to her parents, but whereas once she thought those two things defined her, now she realised that although they were a part of her, they did not represent her whole. Finally, at the age of thirty-two, Catherine was ready to become herself.

The only trouble was she wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it.

And when she walked past WH Smith and saw the headline on a magazine that shouted out ‘Ten Steps To a New You!’ she picked it up and bought it, because it seemed a good place to start, and after a quick scan of the article so did eyeliner.

‘When I say a clean, darling,’ she told Leila, who had found her Dalmatian ears headband behind a cushion on the sofa and had shoved it unthinkingly on her head at a rather rakish angle, ‘I mean more like … well, a makeover.’

‘A makeover?’ Eloise perked up. ‘I can make you over, Mummy. I know all about makeovers. I’ve got makeover Barbie, plus Nana Pam makes us over all the time.’

‘Yes,’ Leila said. ‘From Orphan Annie to Little Princesses,’ she said as if she were remembering a direct quote, which she no doubt was. ‘Nana Pam said we could always look beautiful if only you put in some effort. Is that what you want to do to yourself, Mummy, put in some effort?’

‘Like Isabelle Jackman’s mum?’ Eloise asked her. ‘She always puts in effort and she’s …’ Eloise trailed off thoughtfully.

‘You could have coloured steaks in your hair,’ Leila said, her eyes widening in awe. ‘And glittery eye shadow, Mummy. I’ve got some of that!’ Leila was poised to race upstairs and retrieve it.

‘No, no, not that kind of makeover either,’ Catherine said hastily, as she envisioned her youngest child tearing her room apart in a bid to locate all of their secret cosmetics stash. ‘Apart from perhaps a bit of eyeliner. More than changing how I look I mean just trying to be a bit different, maybe doing things I wouldn’t normally do, being a bit more adventurous and impulsive.’

‘What’s impulsive?’ Leila asked her begrudgingly, clearly disappointed that she was not going to get to apply the glittery eye shadow.

‘Doing things without thinking,’ Catherine said.

‘Like buying eyeliner?’ Leila asked her dubiously.