The Accidental Wife (51 page)

‘I don’t have to go,’ Jimmy said, leaning across and catching her hands. ‘Tell you what, I won’t go. I’ll come with you now. I want to, Cat, because all that stuff you just said – it’s made me pretty much the happiest man alive on this planet.’

‘Oh, I want you to come back but you can’t,’ Catherine told him, briefly pressing her cheek to the back of his hand. ‘You have to go – this is your big break! Go on tour and have fun, be brilliant and enjoy it, Jimmy. Because I’ll be waiting for you when you get back and anyway, missing you will be almost nice now that I know it won’t be for ever.’

‘They’ll be the longest eight weeks of my life.’ Jimmy pulled her close to him and kissed her as the train pulled into the next station.

‘This is the happiest goodbye I’ve ever had,’ Catherine told him, her fingers entwined in his as she stood up.

‘This isn’t a goodbye,’ Jimmy said, kissing her hand before he let it go. ‘This is the beginning.’

As the train pulled out of the station Catherine Ashley
stood
on the platform for a very long time, trying to understand exactly how her life had just changed. And then something occurred to her.

She had absolutely no idea how she was going to get home.

‘Thank you,’ Catherine said to Alison as they sipped tea and watched the sunrise together for the second time. ‘And thanks for lending me the money to pay for that cab. I don’t think any of this would have happened tonight if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘It’s my pleasure,’ Alison said. ‘Are you sad that he’s gone for eight weeks?’

‘I’m happy because I know that at last, maybe for the first time, I’ve made him happy. And anyway, I’ve got the rest of my life to enjoy with him,’ Catherine said, smiling fondly. ‘Besides, I enjoy spending sunrise with you. It’s becoming a regular thing.’

‘Did you ever think we’d be like this again?’ Alison asked her. ‘Friends, I mean?’

Catherine shook her head. ‘No. No, I never dreamed that we would be friends again but now that we are I can’t imagine a time when we won’t be.’

‘And to think now our daughters are friends like we once were. Do you remember how we used to talk about that, how we said we’d always be together for all of our lives, how our children would be friends and we’d always have each other?’

‘We were almost right,’ Catherine said. ‘In the scheme of things it hasn’t been that long that we’ve been apart. And now the girls have found each other I suppose we’ll be together a lot more.’ She smiled at Alison. ‘It’s good to have you back, Alison.’

‘You don’t know how glad that makes me feel, hearing you say that,’ Alison said, her voice catching a little as she turned her face away from Catherine.

They sat in silence for a few minutes longer and then Catherine put her arm around Alison.

‘Are you OK?’ Catherine asked her friend.

Alison looked into the rising sun so that the light drenched her face, and smiled.

‘I’m going to be,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a funny feeling that I’m going to be.’

Read on for a sneak peek at

The Memory Book

The uplifting and beautiful novel about
mothers and daughters

Prologue

Greg is looking at me; he thinks I don’t know it. I’ve been chopping onions at the kitchen counter for almost five minutes, and I can see his reflection – inside out, convex and stretched – in the chrome kettle we got as a wedding present. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, checking me out.

The first time I noticed him looking at me like this I thought I must have had something stuck in my teeth, or a cobweb in my hair, or something, because I couldn’t think of any reason my sexy young builder would be looking at me. Especially not on that day when I was dressed in old jeans and a T-shirt, with my hair scraped back into a bun, ready to paint my brand-new attic room – the room that marked the beginning of everything.

It was the end of his last day; he’d been working at the house for just over a month. It was still really hot, especially up there, even with my new Velux windows open. Covered in sweat, he climbed down the newly installed pull-down ladder. I gave him a pint glass of lemonade rattling with ice cubes, which he drank in one go, the muscles in his throat moving as he swallowed. I think I must have sighed out loud at his sheer gloriousness because he looked curiously at me. I laughed and shrugged, and he smiled and then looked at his boots. I poured him another glass of lemonade and went back to my last box – Caitlin’s things – yet another box of stuff I couldn’t bring myself to throw out and that I knew I’d be clogging up the garage with instead. It was then that I sensed him looking at me. I touched my hair, expecting to find something there, and ran my tongue over my teeth.

‘Everything OK?’ I asked him, wondering if he was trying to work out how to tell me that my bill had doubled.

‘Fine,’ he said, nodding. He was – is – a man of few words.

‘Good, and are you finished?’ I asked, still prepared for bad news.

‘Yep, all done,’ he said. ‘So . . .’

‘Oh, God, you want paying. I’m so sorry.’ I felt myself blush as I rooted around in the kitchen drawer for my cheque book, which wasn’t there – it was never where it was supposed to be. Flustered, I looked around, feeling his gaze on me as I tried to remember where I’d last had it. ‘It’s around here somewhere . . .’

‘There’s no hurry,’ he said.

‘I had it when I was paying some bills, so . . .’ I just kept wittering on, desperate, if I’m honest, for him to be gone and for me to be able to breathe out and drink the half bottle of Grigio that was waiting for me in the fridge.

‘You can pay me another time,’ he said. ‘Like maybe when you come out with me for a drink.’

‘Pardon?’ I said, stopping halfway through searching a drawer that seemed to be full only of rubber bands. I must have misheard.

‘Come out with me for a drink?’ he asked tentatively. ‘I don’t normally ask my clients out, but . . . you’re not normal.’

I laughed and it was his turn to blush.

‘That didn’t quite come out the way I thought it,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest.

‘You’re asking me on a date?’ I said, just to confirm it, because the whole thing seemed so absurd that I had to say it out loud to test I’d got it right. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you coming?’

‘OK,’ I said. It had all seemed so perfectly plausible to him: him and me, ten years between us, going out on a date. ‘Why not?’

That was the first time I noticed him looking at me, looking at me with this sort of mingled heat and joy that I instantly felt mirrored inside me, like my body was answering his call in a way that my conscious mind had no control over. Yes, ever since then I’ve felt his looks long before I’ve seen them. I feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, and a sense of anticipation washing over me in one long delicious shudder, because I know that soon after he looks at me, he will be touching me, kissing me.

Now I feel his hand on my shoulder and I lean my cheek against his fingers.

‘You’re crying,’ he says.

‘I’m chopping onions,’ I say, putting down the knife and turning round to face him. ‘You know that all Esther will eat is Mummy’s homemade lasagne? Here, you should watch me make it, so you know the recipe. First, chop the onions . . .’

‘Claire . . .’ Greg stops me from picking up the knife again, and turns me towards him. ‘Claire, we have to talk about it, don’t we?’

He looks so uncertain, so lost and so reluctant, that I want to say no – no, we don’t have to talk about it, we can just pretend that today is like yesterday, and all the days before that when we didn’t know any better. We can pretend not to know, and who knows how long we might be able to go on like this, so happy, so perfect?

‘She likes a lot of tomato purée in the sauce,’ I say. ‘And also a really big slug of ketchup . . .’

‘I don’t know what to do or say,’ Greg says, his voice breaking on an inward breath. ‘I’m not sure how to be.’

‘And then, just at the end, add a teaspoon of Marmite.’

‘Claire,’ he says with a sob, and draws me into his arms. And I stand there in his embrace with my eyes closed, breathing in his scent, my arms at my side, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. ‘Claire, how are we going to tell the children?’

This is the bracelet they gave you in the hospital – pink because you are a girl. It says: ‘Baby Armstrong.’ They put it on your ankle, and it kept slipping off because you were so tiny, a whole month early, to the day. You were supposed to be an April baby. I had imagined daffodils and blue skies and April showers, but you decided to be born one month early on a cold wet Friday, Friday 13th, no less, not that we were worried about that. If anyone was ever born to overcome bad omens it was you, and you knew it, greeting the world with an almighty shout – not a cry or a wail, but a roar of intent, I thought. A declaration of war.

There wasn’t anybody there with us for a long time. Because you were early, and Gran lived far away. So for about the first six hours it was just you and me. You smelled sweet, like a cake, and you felt so warm and . . . exactly right. We were at the end of the ward and we kept the curtain closed around us. I could hear the other mums talking, visitors coming and going, babies crying and fussing, but I didn’t want to be part of it. I didn’t want to be part of anything ever again except for you and me. I held you, so tiny and scrunched up like a new bud waiting to flower, and I just looked at you, slumbering against my breast, a deep frown on your tiny face, and I told you it was all going to be fine, because you and I were together: we were the whole universe, and that was all that mattered.

I’ve just got to get away from my mother: she is driving me mad, which would be funny if I wasn’t already that way inclined. No, I’m not mad, that’s not right. Although I feel pretty angry.

It was the look on her face when we came out of the hospital appointment; the look she had all the way home. Stoical, stalwart, strong but bleak. She didn’t say the words, but I could hear them buzzing around in her head: ‘This is so typically Claire. To ruin everything just when it’s getting good.’

‘I’ll move in,’ she says, even though she blatantly already has, silently secreting herself in the spare bedroom, like I wouldn’t notice her, arranging her personal items on the shelf in the bathroom. I knew she would come when she found out. I knew she would and I wanted her to, I suppose; but I wanted to ask her, or for her to ask me. Instead she simply arrived, all hushed tones and sorrowful glances. ‘I’ll move into the spare room.’

‘No, you won’t.’ I turn to look at her as she drives. She is a very careful driver, slow and exacting. I am not allowed to drive any more, not since I killed that post-box, which carried a far more expensive fine than you would perhaps imagine, because it belongs to Her Majesty. It must be the same if you run over a corgi: if you run over a corgi, you probably get sent to the Tower. My mother is such a careful driver, and yet she never looks in the rear-view mirror when she’s reversing. It’s like she feels that, in that one aspect, it’s safer simply to close her eyes and hope for the best. I used to love driving; I loved the freedom and the independence and knowing that, if I felt like it, I could go anywhere I fancied. I don’t like that my car keys have disappeared, gone without me being allowed even to kiss them goodbye, hidden away in a place where I will never find them. I know because I’ve tried. I could still drive, I think. As long as no one put anything in my way.

‘It’s not come to you moving in yet,’ I insist, although we both know she has already moved in. ‘There’s still lots of time left when I won’t need any help at all. I mean, listen to me. I can still talk and think about . . .’ I wave my arm, causing her to duck and look under my hand, which I tuck apologetically back in my lap. ‘Things.’

‘Claire, this isn’t something you can stick your head in the sand about. Trust me, I know.’

Of course she knows: she’s lived through this before, and now, thanks to me, or strictly speaking thanks to my father and his rogue DNA, she has to live through it again. And it’s not as if I’ll do anything sensible like dying nice and neatly with all my faculties intact, holding her hand and thanking her, with a serene look on my face as I impart words of wisdom to live by to my children. No, my annoyingly quite young, reasonably fit body will linger on long after I’ve checked out of my mushy little brain, right up until the moment when I forget how to breathe in and out and in again. I know that’s what she is thinking. I know the last thing in the world she wants is to watch her daughter fade away and shrivel up, just like her husband did. I know it’s breaking her heart and that she’s doing her best to be brave, and stand by me, and yet . . . It makes me so angry. Her goodness makes me angry. All my life I’ve been trying to prove that I can grow up enough to not need her to rescue me all the time. All my life I’ve been wrong.

‘Actually, Mum, I
am
the one who can stick my head in the sand,’ I say, staring out of the window. ‘I
am
the one who can completely ignore what is happening to me, because most of the time I won’t even notice.’

It’s funny: I say the words out loud, and feel the fear, there in the pit of my stomach, but it’s like it isn’t part of me. It really is like it’s happening to someone else, this terror.

‘You don’t mean that, Claire,’ Mum says crossly, as if she really thinks that I mean I don’t care, and not that I’m just saying it to annoy her. ‘What about your daughters?’

I say nothing because my mouth is suddenly thick with words that won’t form properly or mean anything like what I need them to mean. So I stay quiet, looking out of the window, at the houses slipping past, one by one. It’s almost dark already; living-room lamps are switched on, TVs flicker behind curtains. Of course I care. Of course I’ll miss it, this life. Steam-filled kitchens on winter evenings, cooking for my daughters, watching them grow: these are the things I will never experience. I’ll never know whether Esther will always eat her peas one by one, and if she will always be blonde. If Caitlin will travel across Central America, like she plans to, or whether she’ll do something completely different that she hasn’t even dreamed of yet. I won’t ever know what that undreamed wish will be. They’ll never lie to me about where they are going, or come to me with their problems. These are the things I’ll miss, because I’ll be somewhere else and I won’t even know what I’m missing. Of course I bloody care.