The Accidental Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Then one day after dropping Gemma off I asked Lou if everything was all right. I told her I was sorry if I’d offended her in some way and that maybe I was just being stupid and pregnant but if I had I hoped she’d forgive me. She burst into tears and she told me right there in the reception at the nursery. She told me she’d been seeing Marc and she hated herself because she knew he had two kids and another on the way, but she couldn’t help it, she loved him …’ Alison trailed off into silence and Catherine waited, impassive, for her to go on.

  Perhaps almost a minute passed before Catherine prompted her. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I took Gemma out of nursery. I hadn’t wanted her to go in the first place. It was Marc’s idea. He thought I’d need a break from both the kids during my pregnancy. And I waited until Marc came home that night and I said to him very politely that if he didn’t stop seeing Lou at the nursery I would be leaving with both of his children. He wasn’t shocked or horrified that I’d discovered him, just … regretful. He apologised, said it wouldn’t happen again and that was that. Looking back, I can’t believe how calm I was. How ready I was for the whole incident to be over and for me to not have to think about it again, to go on as before. I think I was more upset about Lou being off with me than about her sleeping with Marc. Probably I had been expecting him to stray sooner or later. I’d prepared myself to accept it. And I had a baby on the way, I was in my twenties with three kids and I’d never had a job. I couldn’t think of a job I could do. Being on my own just wasn’t an option.’

  ‘But that wasn’t the last time?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘No.’ Alison shrugged. ‘There were four more that I know of after that. The last time was at Christmas. One of his salesmen’s wives came up to me at the Christmas party and said, “Look, Alison, I don’t want to do this to you, but it’s not right. Everyone knows what he’s doing except you. He’s with her right now.” And she told me he was with his PA in the office.’ Alison’s laugh was mirthless. ‘The thing was, his PA was my next-door neighbour, a woman of about my age. I’d got her the job with him because she wanted something part time now her children were at school. We used to go to Pilates together on a Thursday morning. And the salesman’s wife was right: this time Marc had been extra careful that I shouldn’t find out. But everybody else knew. All the mums at school, the families along our street, the people at the dealership, even Dominic. It was as if my whole life was colluding to keep Marc’s secret for him. For the first time in ages I hadn’t seen it coming and that’s why I think it hit me, hit us, so hard. The love and passion I had for him had begun ebbing away long before that night. But I think I used up the last little bit I had right then.’ Alison turned her face to the window, her features fading in the glare of the sun. She closed her eyes briefly and then turned back to Catherine. ‘I look at him now and really try to feel something, but I don’t, not a thing. And the funny part, the really hilarious bit is that one minute he’s crying his eyes out over me telling him I don’t love him, and the very next … he’s coming round to pick up where he left off with you.’

  ‘It’s hard when someone has cheated on you,’ Catherine said, her features still implacable. ‘I know that. I sympathise. But if I’m honest there’s a bit of me right now that’s saying, “Serves you right.” It’s not a bit of me I like very much but it’s there. And there’s no point in me pretending not to feel how I do. Otherwise we’d never get anywhere.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Alison said, pausing for a second. ‘It was just after Christmas that I started wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake. I started to think that instead of fixing things, making them right, I’d run off with your life and you’d accidentally ended up with mine. I began to think that that was why Marc and I never really fitted properly, not even when we were happy, and when Marc moved us back here and I found out that you were married to Jimmy Ashley – my Jimmy Ashley – it seemed even more possible. I let myself think that the reason you and Jimmy weren’t together was for the same reason that Marc and I couldn’t be happy. Because we had each other’s lives.’

  ‘Really,’ Catherine said, without emotion.

  ‘I know, it sounds deluded and I was a bit. I was looking for meaning and symbols where there weren’t any. The truth is when I left with Marc I was too young to know what I was doing to me, to my parents and most of all to you. I thought I was in love, and I was if being in love means being jealous and obsessed and competitive.’ Impulsively she picked up Catherine’s sun-warmed hand, holding on to it when Catherine tried to pull it away.

  ‘Please, listen,’ Alison pleaded. She felt Catherine’s hand relax in hers. ‘I did the wrong thing. I should never have slept with him behind your back or run away with him. But I realise now, it wasn’t your life I stole. It was mine. It was the ten more years I could have had with you of messing around like we did last night, having fun, being free, being young. I should have grown up with you. Instead I tried to grow up alone, overnight, and I failed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Catherine, I’m sorry for everything I did, and if I thought there was any way that you and I could be even just polite to each other in the playground I’d feel so much better. I’d feel so much stronger. Even if that’s all that we can manage – what do you think?’

  Catherine considered, pursing her lips.

  ‘I don’t know, Alison,’ she said slowly, withdrawing her hand from Alison’s. ‘You sitting here in front of me and knowing where you are again makes me feel – I don’t know – sort of completed, but at the same time I just can’t get my head round that you and I being friends again should be that easy. It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Do you remember that time when we were about nine that we fell out and the whole of our class fell out along with us? I mean, you were either on Cathy’s side or you were on Alison’s. You got all the nerds and I got all the cool kids, remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ Catherine said. ‘It was horrible. I used to dread going to school. I can’t even remember why we fell out.’

  ‘Heather Hargreves invited you to her party and not me. I got jealous and uppity and I took it out on you because Heather Hargreves was too scary. That’s why we fell out,’ Alison said. ‘I could be a little cow even then.’

  Catherine shrugged. ‘How is this relevant?’

  ‘I remember it so clearly, Cathy,’ Alison told her. ‘I remember how awfully sad I felt every single day and how empty. I was so angry with myself for falling out with you but I couldn’t admit that I’d behaved stupidly. I couldn’t bring myself to apologise. I’d see you in the playground hanging around with those other girls and all I wanted to do was to come over and say hi. I knew that all I had to do was to say hi and that we’d be friends again, just like that.’

  ‘It took you long enough,’ Catherine commented.

  ‘I was waiting for you to do it first,’ Alison said. ‘But you were stronger than me. You stuck it out because you knew I was in the wrong. It seemed to go on for ever.’

  ‘It was probably about a week, if that,’ Catherine said.

  ‘Do you remember how we made up?’ Alison asked.

  Catherine nodded, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

  ‘We were in the gym, getting changed for PE. I sat down next to you on the bench and I said, “Hi, Cathy, I’m sorry.” And you said, “That’s OK”, and that was it. In an instant we were best friends again. It was back to you and me against the world and I can still remember to this second the enormous relief that I felt in that moment. It was as easy as saying “hi” – that’s all it took to make everything all right again. And I think I’ve been living with that sense of loss and panic all these years, waiting to see you and say hi and tell you that I’m sorry.’ Alison paused as she studied Catherine’s profile. ‘What I’m trying to say is that if you want to get to know me again it doesn’t have to be hard or painful. You can just decide to do it.’

  Catherine was silent for a long time and then she turned to Alison, the morning sun
igniting her hair.

  ‘I’m going to have to insist that you don’t sleep with my ex-husband,’ she said. ‘I know I don’t have a right to insist it. But if you did, that would be it between us because I … I just wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘He turned me down pretty conclusively,’ Alison said. ‘I won’t be asking him again.’

  Catherine nodded once. ‘One day, when you and I know each other properly, and when I … if I feel like I can trust you again I’ll tell you about the abortion. I have to tell you about it, Alison, about everything that happened with my parents after you went and how I got up the courage to leave home and why it’s taken me years to be able to feel good about myself again. I’ll have to tell you about it even though it will be painful and difficult. And I’ll blame you for some of what happened, which I know isn’t fair because you were only a seventeen-year-old girl and you weren’t responsible for me, but I will anyway, and I think you’ll need to accept that.’

  ‘OK,’ Alison said steadily. ‘I’ll be ready.’

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ Catherine said, and suddenly tears sprang into her eyes. ‘I’ve missed you a lot.’

  ‘Me too!’ Alison said, and then briefly, clumsily, the two women reached across the table and hugged each other very hard.

  And then both of them laughed, the tension in the room deflating in an instant like a popped balloon, sucking fifteen years of time out with it.

  ‘Your face, when Kirsty picked up that brick,’ Alison said with a giggle.

  ‘And your singing,’ Catherine retorted. ‘Thank God those windows were double-glazed otherwise we’d have been arrested for noise pollution.’ They chuckled again.

  ‘Well, I’d better go. Marc will want to go into the dealership, I expect,’ Alison said. ‘It’s going to wind him up something rotten that I was out with you all night. It will make him competitive, you know; he’ll want you to like him more than me.’

  Catherine raised her brows, and rubbed the back of her aching neck.

  ‘Well, if you’re going to promise not to sleep with my husband, I think I can manage to return the favour.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ Alison said, making Catherine’s head snap up in surprise.

  ‘Pardon?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not saying sleep with him, if you don’t want to. But as much as I hope I could do something with our marriage I know now that I can’t. All I can do is try to find the best way to end it for all of us, the children especially. When Marc brought us back here part of the reason was to try and find that ideal version of himself that he’s never quite been able to pin down since the summer he met you. Maybe that man exists, maybe he doesn’t. But I’d like him to find out if he does and I think maybe he needs you to help him with that. So if you want to sleep with him, then I won’t mind.’

  ‘Right,’ Catherine said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ Alison said. ‘So I’d like to have your girls over for tea. Maybe next Wednesday?’

  ‘They’d love that,’ Catherine said slowly. She half smiled at Alison. ‘I’m sorry, this all feels a bit surreal.’

  ‘I know,’ Alison said. ‘It’s cool, isn’t it? And maybe you and I could have a coffee sometimes … or even go out for a drink, maybe with Kirsty too?’

  ‘If she’s not too loved up to notice us,’ Catherine said. ‘That would be good.’

  ‘OK then,’ Alison said, picking up her coat and pausing for a second to look down at her mud-smeared clothes. ‘Well, goodbye then.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Catherine said as Alison headed for the door, then added, ‘Hang on a minute.’

  ‘What?’ Alison turned and smiled at her.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to climb out of a window?’ Catherine asked.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ‘THIS HAS GOT to be the first properly sunny morning we’ve had in months,’ Jimmy said as he steered the boat back down the canal towards Farmington. ‘You can even feel the warmth on your face. Maybe spring’s on its way at last, hey, girls?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Leila said, sitting at his feet, happily chalking a masterpiece depiction of Jesus and a lot of angels in heaven, having tea with God, in God’s car, on the painted door of the boat.

  Eloise sat opposite him on the little bench at the helm of the boat, her arms crossed, her face turned away from him, looking at the canal bank as it slowly drifted by.

  ‘Did you have a good weekend, Ellie?’ he asked her. ‘I mean, after the bit where we all nearly froze to death.’

  ‘Course I did,’ Eloise said, smiling at him. ‘I liked going to the multiplex with you and Leila and Nana Pam. I love this …’ She put her hand on her new sparkling hot-pink and silver scarf that Jimmy’s mother had bought her, and which clashed violently with her hair. ‘And even the cold and rainy night on the boat was fun, because we were with you. I just wish I didn’t have to go home, that’s all. I’d rather spend a hundred cold and rainy nights on the boat than go home to her.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, so don’t try and make me,’ Leila scoffed, as she drew.

  Jimmy sighed. Eloise had been making digs about her mother all weekend, just the odd word here and there, and of course his mother had loved it, but it had upset both him and Leila, who at one point had punched Eloise hard in the arm, causing a full-blown fight to break out, Leila launching herself onto her sister, her arms flailing wildly.

  ‘Tell her to stop it!’ Leila had protested when Jimmy lifted her bodily off, copping a few punches as he did so. ‘She is not being kind!’

  ‘Well?’ Eloise had exclaimed when Jimmy tried to talk to her. ‘She is not being fair to us! What the stupid little baby doesn’t understand is that it’s Mum’s fault we’re not together any more.’

  ‘I AM NOT A STUPID LITTLE BABY!’ Leila had screamed at the top of her voice, tearing herself out of Jimmy’s arms and launching herself at Eloise again. Jimmy had had to keep them in separate rooms for half an hour after that until the pair of them had calmed down.

  Jimmy had known that if he’d tried to talk to Eloise then, when she was angry, she would react just like Catherine did when she was angry, by getting even more angry. In the past, before the ladies’ loos in The Goat, Jimmy had known to wait until Catherine was mellow before trying to talk to her about anything. Eloise was sulky now, but at least she was chilled. And that meant she might actually listen to him.

  ‘Look, you can’t be angry at your mum, Ellie,’ he said. ‘Your mum didn’t make us break up.’

  ‘She did,’ Ellie said. ‘I remember it. She got really, really cross, and threw you and all your stuff onto the street. And me and her were crying and crying, but she still did it, even though she could see that we were crying because of what she was doing. She made you go and she won’t let you come back again, even though you are sorry. She said you only ever had one chance and you blew it.’

  Jimmy thought for a moment, realising that if his daughter was right about that then he was in an even bigger mess than he’d first thought because if Catherine wouldn’t give him another chance, and there was every possibility that she wouldn’t, he’d be heartbroken. And although he’d been heartbroken since the day he left, he hadn’t known it until a few days ago so it hadn’t, until now, seemed nearly such a desolate prospect.

  ‘She threw me out because I’d done something really, really bad,’ Jimmy said. ‘Mummy’s never told you what I did because she doesn’t want you to hate me, but if I hadn’t done the really, really bad thing – then who knows? We might all still be together now.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Leila asked him, looking up from her drawing. ‘Stealing? Lying? Worship a false idol? Did you covet thy neighbour’s wife?’

  Jimmy swallowed. When he’d started this talk he hadn’t planned far enough ahead to know quite how to answer that question. He basically hadn’t planned further ahead than the first three words he’d spoken out loud. He really needed to start thinking these things through a little bit more.
/>   ‘Do you know what covet means?’ he asked both the girls.

  ‘No,’ Leila said.

  ‘Not sure,’ Eloise mumbled.

  ‘Well, that’s what I did. I coveted my neighbour’s wife.’

  Leila screwed up her face in an expression of disgust. ‘What, Mrs Beesley? But she’s got a beard, Daddy!’

  ‘No, not my actual neighbour’s wife,’ Jimmy corrected her hastily, desperately wondering if he was doing the right thing talking to them like this or if this conversation was destined to come back and haunt him. ‘Not anybody’s wife, actually; she wasn’t married. But I did covet another lady, a lady that wasn’t as beautiful or as wonderful or as important to me as your mummy is, but I did it anyway because I was stupid and confused. And your mum found out I was coveting her and she got really, really upset. So she told me to covet off.’

  ‘Huh?’ Eloise said.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jimmy answered. ‘Anyway, the point is that I don’t blame her at all. I deserved it.’

  ‘You liked another lady apart from Mummy?’ Leila asked him, frowning deeply. ‘That’s wrong, Daddy, because you are married.’

  ‘I know, and the funny thing is that I didn’t even really like the other lady,’ Jimmy said. ‘I certainly didn’t love her the way I love, loved, your mum. But I coveted her and I was stupid, which, you’ll find as you grow up, most boys are.’

  ‘I know that already,’ Eloise said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Me too,’ Leila said. ‘And stinky.’

  ‘OK, well, that’s good, I think,’ Jimmy replied. ‘But the point is that the break-up was my fault. I risked everything I had over the chance to feel free and young and footloose again,’ Jimmy said. ‘But the funny thing is that ever since I’ve actually been free and footloose all I’ve felt is lonely and sad, and as if something is missing in my life. And the thing that’s missing is the thing I had to begin with. All of you.’