The Accidental Wife (49 page)

Jimmy Ashley had noticed her when she was seventeen, he had admired her in her tight tops and little skirts. And who knew, perhaps … perhaps if she had never found out about Catherine’s secret boyfriend, perhaps while Cathy was busy
with
Marc, Jimmy Ashley would have finally noticed how much she fancied him and put down his guitar long enough to ask her out. Alison closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be Jimmy Ashley’s girlfriend back then, holding hands with him in the cinema, being the girl he sang to at gigs, kissing him like crazy on her parents’ doorstep. Would he have stayed with her for a couple of weeks or months, or maybe, just maybe, if she hadn’t left town and he hadn’t fallen for Catherine, maybe he would have always stayed in love with her? Maybe if she’d never known Marc they’d still be together now … except they weren’t together now and she had met Marc, and Jimmy Ashley was in love with Cathy.

Alison shook her head and patted her cheeks. If only he wasn’t so hot. Even when he was drunk and miserable he was gorgeous. Even when he was clearly only sizing her up because he was desperately in love with Cathy and only wanted someone to take his mind off that, to stop him from taking any positive action, he made her knees tremble. Even though Jimmy Ashley was only flirting with her because he was drunk and in love with another woman, she couldn’t help but like it, a lot.

Reapplying her lip gloss, Alison wiped away traces of eyeliner that had run around her lower lids with the edges of her thumb. She tossed her hair back over her shoulders and straightened her shoulders. This was her chance to show Cathy that she could be a good friend to her, even one of her best friends again. Jimmy needed to remind Cathy exactly what their relationship used to be like, and even though Alison had no idea what that was exactly, from the way she felt when Jimmy looked at her she could hazard a pretty good guess. She knew exactly what he had to do to bring Cathy to her senses. And even if Cathy never knew that she’d given up the chance to get off with Jimmy Ashley for her, it wouldn’t matter
because
Alison would know. And she’d know that she’d done the right thing.

It was then that she looked back up at the mirror and saw Jimmy reflected in it too.

‘You and me, babe,’ Jimmy whispered in her ear, his arm encircling her waist. ‘How about it?’

‘So,’ Catherine said, handing Marc a glass of wine, ‘how are things?’

‘Difficult,’ Marc said. ‘But I can’t complain. I’ve brought it all on myself. I’ve got to start looking for a place to live but I can’t quite bring myself to do it.’

‘Oh? Where do you think you might look?’ Catherine asked him, desperate to make small talk, as if trivial conversation might fill in all the gaps between them and stop him from coming any nearer her. ‘Kirsty’s boyfriend lives in this quite nice place up by the golf course, really excellent double glazing …’

‘I don’t care really,’ Marc said. ‘I don’t care where I live.’

‘Oh, well, it’s good that you’re flexible. They say often when people are looking for property they have expectations that are far too high.’

‘You do know why I came here, don’t you?’ Marc asked her. He put down his glass of wine; Catherine looked at it. She held on to hers as if it were a talisman that might protect her from what she knew was coming next.

‘For a bit of a chat?’ she said.

‘Because the last time I was here we were interrupted,’ Marc said.

‘Oh, right, that.’ Catherine heard herself laugh, conscious that mirth was the last thing she was feeling.

‘I think,’ Marc said, leaning over and taking her glass out of her hands, ‘that I was just about to kiss you.’

‘Um, well,’ Catherine said, backing away, ‘you were, but in the meantime I’ve been having a think and I wonder if really you kissing me is the most sensible thing for either of us to do because …’

And then his mouth covered hers and whatever she had been about to say was lost, engulfed by his kiss.

‘Foxy lady,’ Jimmy muttered as he pushed Alison back against the tiled wall of the cubicle, forcing the door shut behind him and locking it. He kissed the curve of her neck, his hands in her hair, as his tongue flickered in her cleavage. ‘You are a very sexy woman,’ he told her.

‘Oh God,’ Alison sighed, trying to find the will to push him away. ‘Jimmy.’

‘Baby,’ Jimmy said, running his hands over her shoulders and cupping a breast in each hand, ‘need to get this top off, too many buttons, might have to rip it.’

‘Jimmy, wait,’ Alison said, planting the palms of her hands firmly on his chest and levering a few inches of space between their bodies.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jimmy asked, looking around at the cubicle as if he’d only just realised where he was. ‘You’re right, not here. How about out the back? It’s cold but I’ll warm you up …’

‘Jimmy!’ Alison protested, looking down at Jimmy’s hands, one of which still encased a bosom. She forced herself to concentrate. ‘Don’t treat me like this, Jimmy. I’m trying to be a friend to you and to Catherine. Don’t use me like this because you know how much I like you. It’s not fair.’ She rather awkwardly removed Jimmy’s hand from her chest and held his wrists down at her sides. ‘You know you are a really great guy, and if you and Catherine were properly split up, and you didn’t still really love her, and she didn’t still probably
love
you, then I’d do it with you right here. I’d take my top off for you anywhere, and I wouldn’t care because I bloody fancy you a lot. I always have.’

‘So we’re good to go then,’ Jimmy said, smiling and dipping his head forward to kiss her.

‘No, we are not,’ Alison said, turning her head at the last moment so that his lips grazed her ear. ‘I know you’re drunk, Jimmy, but didn’t you just hear what I said? Think about what you’re doing; think about why you are doing it and how bad it is going to make you feel if it happens.’

Jimmy took the one step back that the cubicle allowed and blinked at her. Without warning he sat down on the toilet and dropped his head in his hands.

‘OK,’ Alison said, feeling chilled now that the heat of his body was no longer pressed against hers. ‘A little less despair and misery would have been tactful.’

After a moment’s more hesitation Alison pulled her top back into place and crouched down in front of him. She put her hand on his shoulder and felt it shaking.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jimmy told her, struggling to control his voice. ‘You’re a nice person. You must think I’m a pig … I
am
a pig.’

‘You’re not,’ Alison said. ‘You’re just drunk and really, really stupid.’

Jimmy covered his face with his hands and Alison crouched there with him, holding his shoulder until finally the trembling stopped. Jimmy’s face remained covered by his hands.

‘I’m going outside,’ Alison said. ‘I’ll ask the barman to make you a coffee. Then I’ll walk you round to Catherine’s and you can tell her you’re going to Croatia. And I think I’ve got an idea that might make her sit up and think.’

‘Really?’ Jimmy said eventually. ‘Look, I know I’m drunk as a bastard but I’m sorry for behaving so badly. Catherine’s got a good friend in you.’

‘She has,’ Alison said as she straightened up with quite some difficulty. ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’

The moment that Catherine closed her eyes it was summer again and she could feel the heat of the sun radiate off his body as he pressed her back into the cushions that yielded beneath her like the soft long grass in the park. She felt the warm breeze caress her skin as his fingers deftly unbuttoned her shirt and ran lightly over her breasts, and she was powerless in his arms. More than that, she was seventeen again, fresh and new, with no idea what would happen next, and as long as she was in his arms, she didn’t care.

His stubble grazed against the skin of her neck as his kisses travelled lower, and Catherine knew that if she kept her eyes closed it would always be summer, that summer long ago when, for a few precious moments, her life had shone like other people’s always seemed to. Then she felt Marc’s hand on her breasts, his teeth on her nipples and she heard him groan. Opening her eyes just a little she saw his dark head, his tawny complexion contrasting starkly against her own alabaster skin and suddenly it wasn’t summer any more. Catherine wasn’t in that park, basking in the warmth of the sunlight, she was half naked on the sofa in her living room, her children asleep upstairs and letting a man she barely knew now, had barely known then, and still had no reason to like or trust, undress her.

Catherine realised that she didn’t want to be that powerless seventeen-year-old any more because her life had shone brighter since after she knew Marc than it had ever done when she was with him.

‘Stop, please,’ she said, stilling his hand and easing herself out from underneath him.

His hair ruffled, Marc smiled at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said,
sitting
up a little. ‘I’m going too fast. I wasn’t prepared for how much I wanted you. There’s still something between us, isn’t there, Catherine? Still something really strong.’

‘Yes,’ Catherine said, quickly buttoning up her shirt, her fingers fumbling the fastening as Marc watched her.

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I could unbutton that shirt all day long. All night long too.’

‘Marc,’ Catherine said steadily, ‘there is something between us but it’s not real. It’s the past. It’s a moment in time where we both were once. A moment that meant a lot to us then, a time we’ve both often wished we could revisit but I think maybe that’s only because our lives now aren’t going the way we want them to, not because we still have feelings for each other. It’s summer fifteen years ago that’s between us, and all the heat and passion we felt then. But it’s not real, Marc. How can we feel anything real for each other when we don’t know each other at all?’

Catherine could feel the heat in Marc’s eyes as he looked at her. ‘Maybe you’re right but does it have to matter?’ he asked her.

‘What do you mean?’ Catherine asked him, wide-eyed. ‘Of course it matters. We don’t feel anything for each other. I don’t love you, Marc.’

For second Marc looked stung, but then his expression became still and thoughtful.

‘I loved you once, a long time ago, but I don’t suppose I love you now. I don’t see how I can when I still love Alison,’ Marc said, looking up at Catherine. ‘I still want you, though, more than anything. Loving her isn’t enough to stop me from wanting you.’

He leaned forward again to kiss her but Catherine stood up.

‘If you love Alison then why do you do this? Why have you tried so hard to see me again if it wasn’t because you thought
that
being with me again was somehow going to save you? You said you moved your whole family back to Farmington to find me when the only woman that can save you is the one you can’t be faithful to.’

‘I do this, I say all of this, because …’ Marc sighed, ‘because I wanted to have sex with you again. You’re a very desirable woman. And because that time we had together back then, when you were seventeen,
was
special to me. It was a time when I kidded myself I could be just like any other man out there, happy and content. But even that memory is a deceit. After all, it wasn’t so special that I didn’t sleep with someone behind your back. Not so special that I didn’t leave town with a girl who I didn’t know was pregnant because I guessed that you were. Catherine, a lot of the time I like to think that I’m misunderstood, that my nonexistent childhood scarred me and made me into the kind of man I am. Sometimes I like to think that if only I’d met the right person, stayed with the right person, then I could be a decent man, the man I pretend to be. But I think it’s time I stopped pretending to myself as well as everybody else. I’m the man who, loving his wife as much as he does, still pursues other women, including you, because at the end of the day that’s what you are to me, Catherine. Even you, that wonderful golden memory I’ve treasured all this time, is just another woman. And even though I know it’s wrong, right now I don’t care, because I want you and I think you want me.’

As Catherine looked at Marc, the intervening fifteen years since she had last kissed him settled quietly on his shoulders and he looked his age. Why Marc saying everything that she already knew upset her quite so much she couldn’t quite put her finger on, except that once she had carried his baby and cried for them both when they were taken from her. And because when she’d told Jimmy to leave, it was the thought in
the
back of her mind of kissing Marc that had partly spurred her on to end it, because she had to end it properly with Jimmy before she could explore any feelings she had for Marc. To discover so quickly that she didn’t have any was quite a blow.

‘I think you should go,’ she said.

Marc drank the remainder of his glass of wine in one and stood up.

‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘I’d thought we could both help each other through this period of transition.’

‘That’s just it,’ Catherine said. ‘For me this
is
a period of transition. For you it’s your life: this is what your life will always be, moving from one woman you don’t love to the next. I don’t want to be one of them.’

Marc nodded and shrugged on his coat.

‘Funny,’ he said, ‘how people are always so keen to tell me how to live my life. It used to be Alison, then it was my son, then it was your
husband
and now it’s you. You’re all the same.’

‘It’s not the same,’ Catherine said. ‘Alison, Dominic, and even Jimmy try to help you because they care. Because they want the people that love you to have a chance to be able to keep on loving you. But I don’t care. I really don’t care what you do next, Marc.’

‘You feel pretty good saying that to me, don’t you?’ Marc said with a hint of a smile.

Catherine thought for moment and smiled at him.

‘Damn right,’ she said.

‘Hello, darling,’ Marc said to his wife as she appeared at the end of the path, with Jimmy, whose shoulders were hunched against the chill of the evening, despite the pint or so of hot coffee that was swilling around inside him.

‘Hello, dear,’ Alison said, taking his appearance completely in her stride. ‘Pleasant evening?’