Alison didn’t know who she hated the most just then, her friend for stealing away her lover, Marc for not seeing he had met the wrong girl, or herself for doing what she knew she was about to do.
After Cathy had gone Marc turned back to Alison and looked at her lying in the sun. He waved a half-hearted hand.
‘See you then,’ he said, as if he was going to leave.
‘Stay and talk to me a bit longer,’ Alison said, dropping her shoulder back so that her chest pushed forwards. She patted a patch of grass next to her.
‘Thanks, but I should get some sleep before my shift starts,’ Marc said, looking at her legs. ‘You don’t want to be too tired, working on a railway line. I saw this lad get cut in half in Manchester.’
‘She was meeting me, you know,’ Alison said. ‘The afternoon you two met here.’
‘Really?’ Marc looked over his shoulder at the tunnel that led under the railway line and back to his bedsit. ‘So?’
‘Well, who do you think you’d have asked out if I’d turned up that afternoon? Who do you think you would have fancied if you met me first?’
Marc looked back at her, his hands on his hips, and he laughed.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’m interested, that’s all,’ Alison told him, tipping her head to one side, so her hair brushed her bare arm.
‘Well, I’ve never been with anyone like Catherine before,’ Marc said. ‘So if I’d met you both at the same time I’d have probably made a move on you. But then I would have missed out on knowing her. She’s a lovely person.’
‘Lovely?’ Alison laughed.
‘Well,’ Marc put his hands in his pockets and looked awkward as he shrugged. ‘She is.’
Alison had never been able to believe the words that had come out of her mouth next, only ever able to justify them in later years because for so long she was certain that all she was doing was restoring order to the universe.
‘You can make a move on me now if you like,’ she offered.
Marc stood still, a slow smile spreading across his face. ‘I thought you were her best friend. She talks about you all the time.’
‘I am,’ Alison said. ‘But anyone can see you’re not right for her. You two don’t fit together. You’ll just end up hurting her. She deserves better.’
‘And you don’t?’ Marc sounded sceptical. But he still hadn’t walked away.
‘I can handle you,’ Alison said. ‘And anyway, I know that if you’d met me first you’d be with me now. I know it.’
Marc shook his head. ‘You’re very confident.’ He stood still, taking her in.
For what seemed like an age neither of them said anything or moved a muscle. Then suddenly Marc walked decisively over to her and held out a hand.
‘Come on then,’ he challenged her. ‘Come back with me.’
‘What, now?’ Alison said, scrambling to her feet.
‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ Marc asked her.
‘Yes, yes, it is,’ Alison said. And the decision was made.
*
Afterwards she had lain in the tangle of sheets on his single bed and stared at the ceiling.
‘Have you done that with her?’ she asked him. His eyes were shut, his face perfectly still.
‘I’ve never done anything like that with her,’ he said eventually.
Alison found it hard to read the tone of his voice, it was so … closed. This moment was not at all like she had expected it to be. She had expected his arms to be around her, for him to be holding her, kissing her, but he hadn’t touched her since he’d pulled out of her. Quite a feat in a single bed. Alison fought the urge to cry, telling herself that this was just the beginning. She still had a way to go but she’d get him in the end. She’d make him understand.
Making herself smile, she sat up and leaned over him so that her breasts brushed his chest. He opened his eyes.
‘That was my first time,’ she told him, careful to erase any trace of vulnerability from her voice.
‘I know,’ he said, watching her face. ‘I’m sorry if I was a bit … rough.’
‘I liked it,’ Alison said steadily. ‘It was passionate.’
‘You are very sexy,’ Marc told her, his voice still unyielding. ‘You’ve got an amazing body.’
‘Do you feel bad?’ Alison asked him. ‘About Cathy?’
‘I am a bad person,’ he said. ‘I told her that the day I met her. I thought I could be better than I am if I was with her, but I can’t. This is the way I am.’
‘You’re not a bad person, you just don’t fit with her, that’s all,’ Alison said, leaning over him. ‘If you are with the right person then you don’t even have to change.’
Marc didn’t move a muscle.
‘I don’t think anyone can change me,’ he said eventually, and Alison got the feeling that he’d only spoken half a sentence out loud.
‘When you finish with her, be kind, OK?’ Alison said, sitting up and putting on her bra. A tiny, tender and bruised part of her was still wishing for the hearts and romance and flowers that she’d always dreamed would accompany this event, but still she told herself this was just the beginning. All of that would come when she really had him. ‘Don’t break her heart. Don’t tell her about us. We’ll stay a secret for now, until she’s over you.’
‘What makes you think I’m going to break up with Catherine?’ Marc asked her.
Alison looked at him, feeling suddenly out of her depth. ‘Well, you have to now, don’t you?’ she asked him. ‘We’ve had sex.’
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Marc said, turning his face to the window.
Alison felt she should have some right over him, some extra hold now that she had surrendered to him what Catherine had not. But she had no idea how to play this person. He was nothing like the boys she knew at school, the boys that she could manipulate so easily. Only then did she realise it was he who had a hold over her. He had her in the palm of his hand.
‘Are we going to do this again?’ she asked him bluntly, because he seemed to like that about her. Marc turned his face back to her, his dark eyes in shadow. One hand reached out and touched her cheek.
‘I wish I’d met you first because, you’re right, I wouldn’t have looked at Catherine, I wouldn’t have noticed or known her at all. I’d have gone straight for you. You’re very beautiful, you’re …’ His fingers traced a line down her neck to her shoulder. ‘You’re hard not to touch.’
‘So?’ Alison pressed him, with a little smile. ‘Are we?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I think we are.’
Every time they met after that, each secret hour of afternoon they spent together, they grew closer and closer, easier and easier together. Alison knew that Marc still saw Cathy whenever she could get away, that they still went walking in the park, or lay in the grass talking about his past because Cathy would tell her every night, her eyes shining. And somehow Alison could still manage to be happy for her friend because she knew the love that Marc felt for Cathy was entirely different from what he felt for her. He wanted the very bones of her, he wanted to consume her body from the inside out. He couldn’t get enough of her body and every single time they saw each other they went straight to bed.
One evening, just as the sun was low in the sky, bathing the room in gold as they were lying in his bed, Alison felt that something was different, something had changed between them. And then she realised: he had his arms around her, her head was resting on his chest, the unfamiliar sound she was hearing was the beating of his heart, slow and steady.
It was then she got a sense, the very first inkling, that eventually, one day, he would love her back.
Now, in the living room of their brand-new house, a lifetime later, Alison felt Marc shift his weight on top of her and she wondered where that desire, that unswerving love for him that she had sustained for so long had gone. He kissed her neck just as passionately as he had always done, his fingers as expert as they had always been in knowing how to plea
se her. But although her body responded to him, her heart was still and silent.
The truth was that Alison was waiting to be in love with Marc again. She’d been waiting now for what seemed like the longest time, and so far this time, the love for him that she had defined her life by had yet to make a return. She felt nothing.
Not for the first time since she found out Marc was bringing her back to Farmington, Alison found herself wondering, whatever had happened to Cathy Parkin after she left her.
What she could not have known was that her husband, still wide awake despite his closed eyes and perfectly composed features, was wondering exactly the same thing.
Chapter Seven
‘THIS IS RIDICULOUS,’ Catherine said as Kirsty, one palm firmly securing her forehead, plucked her eyebrows.
‘Only you would say that,’ Kirsty said through gritted teeth as she jerked another hair out of Catherine’s tender skin. ‘Only you would think that having eyebrows that frame your eyes instead of hanging over them is not a good plan.’
‘I don’t think anything about eyebrows. Eyebrows are not important to me,’ Catherine said, beginning to regret agreeing to go out with Kirsty at all.
Kirsty paused for a minute, the tweezers hovering menacingly in Catherine’s eye line.
‘Tell me you shave your legs,’ she menaced.
Catherine looked at her sensible shoes and said nothing.
‘Good God, Catherine! What’s wrong with you?’ Kirsty exclaimed.
‘What’s right with me, you mean,’ Catherine retorted. ‘I don’t feel the need to denude myself in order to be attractive to men, and besides, what’s the point of shaving my legs? No one ever sees them.’
Kirsty attacked Catherine’s brow with renewed vigour.
‘The point of shaving your legs is the same as always wearing sexy underwear, even when you’re not on a date. It makes you feel both beautiful and womanly, and then your sexiness exudes from within.’ Kirsty yanked hard on a particularly stubborn hair, making Catherine yelp. ‘No wonder you are so …’ Kirsty struggled to find a suitable adjective and failed. ‘Look, imagine that you suddenly meet the man of your dreams tonight. There you are, in the pub, I’m in the arms of my personal trainer …’
‘Out of interest, does your personal trainer have a name?’ Catherine asked her, hoping in vain to deflect Kirsty’s line of questioning. Ever since she’d let herself think about Marc it had been hard to stop, and for at least three nights this week he had populated her dreams, dreams in which she was seventeen again, before he met Alison, before everything went wrong. She was seventeen and living those few brief weeks when, for the first time in her life, she had been completely happy. Why she had let him back into her head now, Catherine couldn’t comprehend. She was crazy to have listened to Jimmy and his rock psychology at all, telling her she’d forgotten how to be in love, as if she hadn’t tried to love Jimmy as well as she was able to.
The truth was that after Marc had gone, after Alison had left the way she did, it had taken Catherine a long time to make herself whole again, because she felt as if her guts had been ripped out of her. But Alison abandoning her was a turning point too. It was the beginning of her own life, the life in which her head ruled her heart and every other part of her. It was the time when she first got to know Jimmy, when the two of them became friends, and then finally more, and he gave her the final strength she needed to be able to leave home. It was around that time that Jimmy Ashley had told her he loved her and swore blind that one day she’d love him back in exactly the same way. It was a prediction that she had never been able to fulfil to his satisfaction.
Jimmy had not been back for the rest of week, but if he had Catherine would have told him. She would have said right to his face that it was he who had hurt her, he who had knocked her for six and ripped up their family. It was Jimmy who had driven her to decide she didn’t want another relationship, and if he couldn’t live with the consequences then he should just stay away.
And it was probably because he already knew that he had stayed away, because the relationship they had now was one he was determined to preserve.
‘Of course my trainer has a name,’ Kirsty replied indignantly, pulling Catherine back into the conversation.
‘What is it then?’
‘Sam,’ Kirsty said firmly. ‘Or Steve. It’s an “S” name and anyway, don’t try and get me off the subject. You know it takes me a long time to remember names. I was calling you Clara for the first six months we knew each other, and it doesn’t mean I love him any less. Anyway, there I am, in his arms – kissing him passionately – and up comes this man. He’s tall, dark, handsome and he wants you, sexually. He sweeps you off your feet and into his arms. He takes you to his bed –’
‘What, in the pub?’ Catherine asked.
‘Don’t be an idiot – unless he’s a barman. I had a fling with a Croatian barman once, very convenient for nightcaps. But anyway, he takes you home and then to bed and as he goes to run his manly hands along your long lithe limbs he recoils in horror because he’s got carpet burns on his palms.’
‘If he was the man of my dreams he wouldn’t mind,’ Catherine said stubbornly, remembering with sudden shocking clarity the pressure of Marc’s palms on her thighs. For once she welcomed the distracting pain of Kirsty’s attacks on her facial hair.
‘If he’s any man at all, barring a German one, then trust me, he’ll mind,’ Kirsty said. ‘There are some people that work on the “sod’s law” ethos that if you don’t shave your legs and you wear your worst pants you are much more likely to pull. I do not think that way. I think that you have to treat pulling as if you were in the SAS. Always be prepared.’
‘Isn’t that the Boy Scouts?’ Catherine asked her. ‘Isn’t the SAS “Who Dares Wins”?’
‘Even better,’ Kirsty said, making Catherine’s eyes water as she removed three or four hairs at once. ‘And that should be your motto, love. It’s much better than your current one.’
‘OK,’ Catherine succumbed to the inevitable with a sigh, ‘what’s my current one?’
‘She who doesn’t dare sits about on her arse all day turning herself into a decrepit old woman at the age of thirty-two who is afraid to be happy.’
‘That’s it,’ Catherine said, folding over miserably on the bed, drawing her knees up under chin.
‘That’s what?’ Kirsty asked with some concern, tweezers poised.
‘I’m just going to have sex with the first man I meet tonight, whether I like him or not, and then maybe everybody will stop going on at me. Maybe you’ll stop telling me I need to have sex to be happy, maybe Jimmy will stop telling me I’m some headcase who’s trapped in the past just so he can pretend it wasn’t his fault our marriage is over, and maybe …’ Catherine stopped herself. She had been about to say maybe the images of her and Marc that had been crowding her memory would leave her alone. But she’d never told Kirsty about Marc, Alison and everything that happened. And she wasn’t ready to now.
Contrite, Kirsty sat on the bed next to her and patted her shoulder.
‘Don’t have sex with the first man you meet tonight,’ she said gently. ‘He might be an old or a fat man, and besides, that’s not why I’m taking you out.’
‘No, I know why you’re taking me out: so I can be the gooseberry when you finally pull Sam.’
‘Or Steve,’ Kirsty added. ‘And that’s not why, either. Well, it is, but it’s not the only reason.’ Kirsty lay on the bed too so that she was facing Catherine, looking into her eyes. ‘You don’t see yourself, Catherine. You don’t see how stunning you are, with your incredible legs and all that hair and those eyes and those cheekbones. And I just thought if I got you dolled up a bit and we went to the pub, you’d see the way men look at you. The way they turn their heads to look at you when you walk past. And no, you don’t need to have sex to be happy and you’re not some headcase who’s trapped in the past, whatever the past is. But you are my friend now. And you are fit. And as well
as being a mum and an entirely arbitrary wife, you are also a beautiful woman. So don’t have sex with any of the men you meet tonight, just come out and stand in a room with your eyebrows plucked, some lippy on and smooth legs, and see what effect you have. Because when you do I bet you’ll feel great, I bet you’ll feel free.’
‘I’d like to feel free,’ Catherine said thoughtfully. ‘And actually the thought of having sex with the first or any man I meet makes me want to be sick, so I don’t mind leaving that part out after all.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Kirsty said, pulling Catherine into a sitting position. ‘We take baby steps, Catherine, baby steps. Right, now, where’s your razor?’
When Alison got home from the supermarket, her reluctant son in tow, Marc was in the kitchen with the girls, whose heads were bent over the drawings they were creating, felt-tips fanned out across the marble worktop.
Alison looked at her husband leaning over the girls as they coloured. The last fifteen years hadn’t been as kind to him as they had to Jimmy. Marc had filled out too, but it was a slight paunch and not muscle that had materialised underneath his shirt. And his hair had receded quite considerably, not that either of them ever mentioned it.
Of course, the change in his appearance wouldn’t matter if she could love him again, it was just that the more she tried, the harder it seemed to be, which wasn’t fair because when she loved him, everything else was bearable.
‘Mummy!’ Amy cried happily, as she caught sight of Alison’s arms laden down with bags. ‘And Dom, we’re all here in our new big house.’
‘All right, Muffin.’ Dom greeted his little sister with the first hint of a smile that Alison had seen since she announced to him he was helping to get the shopping for the weekend. ‘How was school today?’
‘It was OK today,’ Amy said. ‘There’s this quite nice girl I like.’
‘I had the best time,’ Gemma told him, glancing up from her colouring. ‘My teacher is lovely and all the girls like me. Eloise is going to be my best friend, though, because she understands me.’
‘Oh, does she now?’ Marc said, handing Alison a cup of tea. ‘Eloise must be a very clever girl.
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