The Accidental Wife (7 page)

‘It is fair,’ Jimmy said. ‘The girls need something constant in their lives. They’ve grown up here, Leila was born here while I played Clapton to her so it would be the first thing she’d ever hear. I want to keep this place for them. And besides, I’m moaning now but you wait. In the summer that boat’s a little paradise. The chicks really dig it.’

Catherine found herself laughing. ‘It’s just that you’re getting on now,’ she reminded Jimmy playfully. ‘You don’t want to be getting arthritis in this weather.’

‘Hey, lady,’ Jimmy warned her with a grin, ‘I’m still young. I’ve still got it all ahead of me.’

‘Have you?’ Catherine asked him sceptically.

‘Course I have, and so have you.’

‘Have I? Sometimes I think I don’t want anything new in my life. I think that just the way it is now is enough for me. I love the girls, and you and I are friends now, more or less. Everything’s ordered and calm. If all I had in front of me was fifty more years of the same I’d be happy enough.’

‘Happy enough? Happy enough isn’t enough. If it was, then Billy would have kept taking his medication and living a half-life, and I’d have given up my music years ago and become a postman. I’ve thought I’d quite like the early mornings and the uniform,’ Jimmy said, making Catherine smile just as he intended. ‘Everybody needs to be loved, everybody needs to love someone.’

‘And some people need to love everyone,’ Catherine added wryly.

‘I don’t, though,’ Jimmy said, tipping his head back on the sofa and looking at the ceiling. ‘I don’t love anyone. Not since us. But I know I will love someone again and that someone will love me, because I need that to happen and so do you. It’s what makes us human.’

Catherine wanted to disagree with him but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

‘I’d better get going,’ Jimmy said after a while, finishing his glass of wine. ‘If I don’t get the stove lit now I’ll be a block of ice in the morning and frozen corpses hardly ever have number-one hits on iTunes. I’ll leave the electric here, if you don’t mind. If the damp gets into her she’ll be knackered.’

He kissed Catherine briefly on the lips as she stood up to let him out, and then with his hand on the latch of the door he turned round and looked at her.

‘Look, I don’t know why I’m saying this – but try and remember the last time you were really in love, Catherine, the last time your heart burst out of your chest every time you thought about that person. The nights you spent awake just dreaming about what it would feel like to touch them, longing for their arms around you. He hurt you, I know he did, and she let you down and left you alone to cope with everything. But sometimes I think when you buried the hurt and the pain they left you with, you buried a bit of yourself as well. I know
it’s
none of my business any more but I’m only saying you deserve to be loved, so try and remember what it felt like and then maybe, when the time comes, you’ll be able to let it happen again. I just want you to be happy. Really happy.’

Jimmy nodded once and then closed the door carefully behind him so as not to wake the girls.

Catherine tweaked back her curtains and watched him hunched up against the cold as he marched stalwartly towards the canal, his long hair whipped by the wind, clutching his acoustic guitar by its neck.

Despite everything he was still the only person alive who really knew her, who understood her better than she ever understood herself.

Chapter Five

IT HAD BEEN
almost unbearably hot the day Catherine had met Marc James.

She been waiting for Alison, of course; a lot of her childhood had been spent sitting in parks, loitering in corridors or sheltering in rainswept bus stops, waiting for her best friend. As the two girls reached the age of seventeen in tandem it was no different. If anything, it took Alison longer to get anywhere, particularly since she had learned that most people, especially boys, would wait for her arrival almost indefinitely. And that summer, even though Alison was nursing her own secret crush, she started getting boyfriends. Not the kind she used to have – some fleeting alliance that would begin at registration and be over by the afternoon break – but dates with real boys to the cinema, McDonald’s and sometimes even the pub, where Alison would sip Cinzano Bianco and lemonade.

Catherine had both laughed and listened wide-eyed to her friend’s detailed descriptions of her first kiss, the first time a boy put his hand up her top, and how it had taken David Jenkins ages to undo the hook of her bra because his hands had been shaking so much in excitement. It was a development in her friend’s life that was as alien as it was fascinating to Catherine. Her imagination simply could not
conceive
what it would be like to touch a boy, hold his hand or even kiss him, so limited was her experience of the opposite sex. All she knew was that ever since Alison started properly going out with boys, her lateness had increased, and once or twice she hadn’t shown at all.

The trouble was, Catherine had thought on that day, as she sat, her back against a tree, feeling its rough bark imprinting her skin through the thin cotton of her dress, she often felt a little bit as if her life wasn’t real when Alison wasn’t in it. It was like that riddle about the falling tree in an empty forest and whether or not it made any sound as it crashed to the ground because there was no one there to hear it. When Alison wasn’t there to see her, Catherine felt entirely invisible.

She closed her eyes briefly and pushed her sunglasses up her nose, tapping her feet as she hummed quietly to herself. And then the sunlight had dimmed behind her eyelids and the skin on her legs cooled as a shadow fell over them.

‘Well, about time,’ she said easily, pushing her sunglasses into her hair and opening her eyes, expecting to find Alison. Her vision was momentarily dazzled by the bright light. The shape that loomed above in the instant it took her to focus was male. It was boy – no, not a boy. It was a young man.

He was shorter than Catherine, she judged instantly, stocky, with muscular arms and a bare chest. He was holding his T-shirt in one arm and a can of Special Brew in the other. And yet Catherine remembered quite clearly she hadn’t felt intimidated by him. Not even then.

She had sat up, pushing her hair off her shoulders, straightening her back a little. She waited.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump,’ he said, even though Catherine hadn’t jumped, as he sat down on the grass with bare feet. Catherine noticed the soles of them were surprisingly soft and white. ‘I’m just so tired. I’m working
nights
on the railway line. I should be sleeping right now, but I can’t. It’s too nice outside to be trying to get some kip in some stinking bedsit. I wanted to come out and sit in the sun for a bit, but every time I relax I fall asleep, and I can’t have that. I’ll turn the colour of your hair and if I miss the start of my shift I’ll get laid off. So I thought I’d talk to you for a bit, if that’s all right. At least while you’re waiting for your friend … boyfriend?’

‘Friend,’ Catherine had corrected him hastily. For once she was glad Alison was late because she knew that if her golden friend had been here this creature would not be talking to her. He would not have even seen her.

He sat down on a patch of grass just beyond where the shade of the tree’s canopy ended, the sunlight reflecting off his amber skin.

Catherine had never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in her whole life before. The sight of him made her heart stop in anticipation.

‘My name’s Marc,’ he said, leaning back on his arms so the muscles in his shoulders and biceps stood out in sharp relief. ‘I’m from Birmingham. I go where the work is and this month the work’s here. That’s pretty much my story. Now it’s your turn. Tell me what your name is and why you are sitting under this tree all alone.’

And at his bidding, quiet, shy, awkward Catherine, who up until that point had been unable to hold anything other than the most stilted and awkward conversation with almost anyone other than Alison, started talking. Paralysed with social ineptitude in front of the skinniest spottiest seventeen-year-old, her response to this being, who was so palpably male, could not have been more different. It was as if by the simple act of noticing her he had burst a dam in her. Suddenly hundreds of words poured out of Catherine, thoughts and
ideas
that must have been building up pressure somewhere inside her for years. They talked about everything and nothing, and she looked at him, drinking him in like a thirsty person stumbling across an oasis in the desert: the light in his eyes as he watched her, the slope of his back as he shifted position, the set of his chin, the line of his nose. She was unable to stop looking at him and telling him about everything: school, her parents, her home life, her favourite books, music and films. Her hopes and dreams that she hadn’t even shared with Alison, and he
listened
. Not only could he hear her, he was seeing
her
. For the first time in her short life, Catherine felt like her own person and not just Alison’s friend or a neglected daughter. She knew what it was like to be truly seen.

Jimmy had asked her to remember the last time she was in love; looking back, Catherine realised that she was in love with Marc before they had even known each other half an hour. It had taken less than thirty minutes to happen, and how many years to shake off? Catherine wasn’t sure she could answer that yet.

‘So how about you, how come you’ve ended up drifting from town to town?’ she asked him at last, desperate to know more about him. ‘Why did you end up in Farmington?’

‘You’re here,’ he said to her, the roll of his Midlands accent washing over her. ‘That’s a good reason to come here and it’s a better reason than the one I’ve got. I follow the work. Labouring, railway stuff, mostly. I’ve not got any skills, see, or exams. I’ve not got a lot going for me.’

‘You have,’ Catherine had retorted automatically. ‘I mean, you just probably don’t know that you have.’

Marc shifted his position once again, crossing his legs, tucking his bare feet underneath each other so that Catherine could see the soft pale soles.

‘Girls like me,’ he said, with a one-sided smile. ‘And I like you, Catherine. You’re different.’

‘I know,’ Catherine replied in dismay.

‘It’s a good thing,’ Marc told her. ‘Most girls I try and talk to either won’t have anything to do with me, or if they like the look of me they turn themselves into idiots, flirting and pouting and showing themselves off. I’m not saying I don’t like it when a pretty girl flirts with me, but well … I don’t know the last time I really talked to anyone, the last time anyone ever gave a toss about what I’m thinking or feeling.’

‘Me neither,’ Catherine said, afraid to move in case she caused one second of the remaining time she had with him to fall away before she was ready.

Marc kneeled up and pulled his T-shirt on over his head and then shuffled over on his knees and stopped in front of her.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Got to get my head down.’

‘OK,’ Catherine replied.

‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ he asked her, and Catherine felt as if lightning had just struck the centre of her chest, leaving a gaping burning hole he could see right through.

‘Yes,’ she said, unable to manage any dissembling.

‘Can I meet you here again tomorrow at the same time?’ Marc asked, as he reached out and picked up her right hand. Catherine looked at the waxy alabaster of her fingers resting against the deep brown flesh of his.

‘Yes,’ she said again, her voice low.

He pulled her gently towards his body until she was kneeling opposite him.

‘Can I kiss you, Catherine?’ he asked her quietly, almost casually.

‘I …’ Catherine froze for a moment, her lips numb and immovable. ‘I don’t know … how to,’ she finished painfully, dropping her chin to her chest and closing her eyes.

The next thing she felt was the rough surface of Marc’s palms against the skin of her cheeks, drawing her face back up to look at him.

‘I do,’ he said.

What she felt then was the gentle pressure of his mouth on hers, the sensitive exploration of his tongue between her lips. And then his arm encircling her waist and the heat from his body radiating through the thin cotton of her dress and penetrating her bones. Finally, as Catherine began to echo and return his kiss, she realised that her arms had crept unbidden around his neck, and she felt the muscles of his shoulders contract beneath her fingers as she held him.

It wasn’t a long kiss, or a particularly passionate one, but it was perfect. It was a perfect first kiss. A kiss that every other she might receive in her life would have to live up to.

Afterwards, with his arms still around her waist, Marc smiled into her eyes.

‘I’ve never been with a girl like you,’ he said almost regretfully. ‘And I’m guessing you’ve probably never been with someone like me. You’re different, Catherine, fragile and … nice. And I’m not that nice.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’ve made a lot of girls angry with me in my time and I don’t take things too seriously. I like you, I want to see you again, but I want to be straight with you, make sure you know what you’re doing.’ Marc sat back on his heels, dropping his arms from her waist, and Catherine felt the chill of their absence.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want to come tomorrow, I get it.’

‘I’ll be here tomorrow,’ she told him steadily.

‘Will you?’ He watched her as he stood up, a faint frown between his brows.

Catherine swallowed and took a breath. ‘You said I’m not like the girls you normally go with. You said I’m different, so
if
I’m different then maybe … this will be different. Maybe you’ll be different and anyway …’ she had to force every single tendon in her body to relax sufficiently to allow her to say what she had to, ‘I’ve never had anything like this before, that’s mine just for me. I just want to feel like this again – I don’t care what happens.’

Marc smiled. ‘Someday you’ll learn not to wear your heart on your sleeve,’ he said, and then he nodded. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Catherine, same place, same time.’