Another Mother's Life

by Rowan Coleman

  “Whatever,” Dominic said, standing. Alison sensed the connection between them was gone.

  “I promise you everything will be fine,” Alison told him as he closed the door on her. He didn’t reply.

  After Dom had gone Alison lay back on the bed and covered her eyes with her hands.

  Of course it was easy for Dominic to imagine that she could just walk away from this life, her marriage with Marc. That it was simply a question of making the choice and completing it. After all, she’d believed exactly the same thing at his age. She’d made the choice to be with Marc, to leave behind her home, her parents, her exams, her future, and it had been a simple choice to make. At the time it hadn’t even felt like a choice. It was something she had to do.

  Now, though, she was living with the consequences of that decision and at thirty-two it wasn’t that easy to simply overturn a lifetime of consequences. You don’t just pick up, pack your bags, dump your old life, and take off. It was impossible to imagine living without Marc and all the complications he created. Trying to picture it made Alison’s head hurt.

  As the noise from downstairs gradually began to ebb and fade away, Alison realized something. She had never thought it would be possible for her to be happy without Marc in her life. The key to happiness, she was sure, lay in finding the way to make their life together work once and for all the way she wanted it, with him at her side, no other women in his bed, and the children happy and secure in their family.

  Only now, after the party tonight and Cathy coming back into her life and taking her back to the point when she’d made her reckless choice, could Alison start to glimpse that that resolution might not be possible. Only now did she begin to see that she might never be happy as long as she was married to Marc James.

  Thirteen

  Jimmy looked out between the still-drawn living room curtains at the cold, misty early morning outside and wondered what exactly had changed last night. The street still looked the same as it always did, except the pavement was gilded in dew and shimmered under the threat of the rising sun. The trees stood like sentinels along both sides of the road, guarding the same row of cars parked nose to tail, in exactly the same order as they always were. Other people were still asleep in their houses—as far as Jimmy knew—living their lives exactly as they had yesterday.

  Yet in the space of one night everything had changed for him completely, he just couldn’t quite put his finger yet on how. He only knew that for some reason it felt as if this dirty February dawn, so far removed from any promise of spring, was a new start for him. Apart from everything else, this had been the first night he had spent in his home in two years.

  His wife had not spoken to him once on the way home from the party. He’d walked a step or two behind her, weighed down by Eloise, who was actually much heavier than she looked, as Catherine marched on carrying Leila like she was a bag of feathers. Jimmy hadn’t attempted any conversation. He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking or feeling and he had no idea how to approach her. It wasn’t just the reappearance of Alison and Marc that had rattled her, he’d pissed her off too. He’d shared her confidences without seeking her permission, which Jimmy had realized, on reflection, wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had.

  When they had finally gotten home, Jimmy had followed Catherine up the narrow stairs and helped her get the girls undressed and into their beds. As Jimmy had watched her, murmuring to the half-asleep children, buttoning their pajamas and tucking them in, he’d thought how nice it must be to feel as safe and as warm as his two girls must’ve felt just then.

  After kissing his girls good night he’d walked downstairs and found Catherine standing in the living room, her long arms wrapped around her slender body, her head bowed as she stood in front of the cold grate.

  “Will you make a fire?” she asked him before he could say good night. “We never have a real fire anymore. I can never get it to light. And I feel cold, I feel cold in my bones.”

  “Sure,” he said, attempting to mask his surprise at her request.

  “I’ll make tea,” Catherine told him, lifting her head as he walked through the kitchen to the back door. “Or would you prefer something else?”

  “Tea, thanks,” Jimmy said, pausing by the back door. “Just so I’m clear here, you want me to stick around for a bit, yeah?”

  Catherine walked into the kitchen and picked up the kettle.

  “Would you?” she asked him. “I’d like it if you’d stay.”

  And the feeling that Jimmy got in the pit of his stomach, as he headed out into the freezing midnight air to fetch some logs from the shed, frightened him to death.

  Once the fire was lit Catherine sat on the rug in front of it, legs curled up under her chin, as she hugged her mug of tea, watching the flames.

  Jimmy sat on the armchair, holding his own drink. He wondered about what to say to her. The two of them sat like that for a long time and then finally, Jimmy pulled off first one boot and then the other.

  “Look,” Jimmy said, because it somehow felt that Catherine was waiting for him to talk. “Okay, she’s back. He’s back. It’s weird, because they were so important to you in the early part of your life, but it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? You came through all of that business, with your parents and the … you know. And you made yourself into an amazing woman, a great mother. So yes, they are here and it’s weird, but once you’ve gotten over the weirdness, do you really care?”

  Catherine thought for a moment.

  “When I saw him my heart just lurched,” she said. “It was like I was seventeen again going to meet him in the park. He doesn’t look the same, he’s older and fatter and he’s got less hair, but it was still him. Still that face I’ve been waiting to see for all of these years.”

  Jimmy sat up a little in his chair, trying to hide just how much her words wounded him.

  “Well, yeah—because it was a shock. But just because you felt that way when you saw him doesn’t mean you still have feelings for him … does it?”

  “I don’t know,” Catherine said. It was not the answer, Jimmy realized, that he’d been hoping for and he felt his gut clench.

  “Right,” he said, concentrating on sounding neutral. But he couldn’t help the uneasy churning of his stomach when Catherine talked that way about Marc. He felt sick with jealousy, because he knew Catherine had never felt the way about him that she’d once—and maybe still—felt about Marc.

  “Obviously I’m not in love with him, I mean I’m not insane,” Catherine said, perhaps reading some expression on Jimmy’s face that even he wasn’t aware of. “It’s just that I saw him and even all these years later I felt like a girl again. I felt drawn to him. I remembered all these powerful feelings and what it was like to love him. What it was like to love like that, so deeply and so much.”

  “Heavy shit,” Jimmy said idiotically to cover the sting her words unwittingly inflicted on him. In all the years they had been married she’d never once talked about her feelings for him that way. He tried hard to regain control of the situation, keep the atmosphere light and easy between them. “But I mean you wouldn’t fall for him now, because he’s like married, and plus I think we’ve established that he’s a heartless wanker, right?”

  Catherine smiled.

  “He can’t be that bad, he stayed with Alison when she was pregnant, and they are still together, but even so I wouldn’t fall for him now, no,” she said with less conviction than her words suggested. “I’m just saying that’s how I felt when I saw him—all jangled up.”

  “Good, I mean good for you, not about being jangled up, good about not cracking on to him because I don’t think that would help anything …” Jimmy stalled. “Just ignore him, I reckon like when you see someone you’ve slept with who you don’t really like anymore, the best thing to do is to ignore them.”

  “Oh, Jimmy, you are such a kid!” Catherine laughed.

  “I’m not a kid, Cat,” he replied. “I’m a man, this is what
men do. And if you doubt me then wait and see. I bet you Marc, or whatever his name is, ignores you from now on. I bet he acts like he never knew you.”

  “I hope so,” Catherine said, with a wistful tone that belied her words, returning her gaze to the fire.

  “And what about her? How do you feel about her?” he asked, referring to Alison.

  Catherine set down her teacup and rested her chin on her knees.

  “The morning after they’d left, Alison’s mum and dad came round to our house. Banging on the door at seven in the morning. Her mum had gone to take Alison some tea in bed and found her daughter had gone, leaving only a note. ‘Mum, I’ve run away with the man I love, we have to be together. Love Alison.’

  “Alison’s mum was clutching it when she came round, they all thought I would know where she’d gone. My mum dragged me downstairs to see them but I could see she was pleased that Alison’s parents were going through this. It was proof, proof of what kind of daughter they had. My mum was enjoying it.

  “I told them I didn’t know where they had gone. I could see that Mum was itching to slap me across the face. She told me now was not the time to be protecting my friend.

  “I said I’m not protecting her, I hate her.

  “That shut them all up.

  “ ‘What do you mean you hate her?’ Alison’s mum asked me.

  “So I told them: because she stole my boyfriend from me. She took the one good, happy thing I had in my life and she ran away with him. I don’t know where. Mum hit me then, she couldn’t stop herself even though it shocked Alison’s parents. I didn’t cry, I didn’t even flinch. I told them his name and where he worked, where he had been staying. And I waited for Alison’s parents to leave because I knew that the moment they did, my mum would really wallop me.

  “I would have just taken it normally, wouldn’t have said a word. But now there was the baby. I was worried about the baby, so I begged her not to hit me. I told her I was pregnant.

  “She stopped in midstrike, her fist raised. I closed my eyes because I expected her to really lay into me, but she didn’t. She just stood there, staring at me, then she walked away. It was this thing that Mum used to do if she was really angry with me, she wouldn’t punish me then and there. She’d go all quiet and walk away. Just to let me know that she was thinking about how to really hurt me. Just to let me know that when the punishment came it would be especially bad.

  “What I should have done then was what Alison did. I should have climbed out of my bedroom window and never come back. I was seventeen, nearly a grown woman. If I’d had guts I would have gone out of that window. But I didn’t. I just lay on the bed waiting for my mother. I was scared. I had no idea where to go or how to look after myself on my own and pregnant. And the one person I could have trusted, the one person who I could have relied on had gone. Not Marc, but Alison.

  “It was dark by the time Mum opened the door again.

  “You do nothing but bring shame and disgrace on this family,” she said, her voice as cold as ice. “Fortunately now that I’ve uncovered your lie nobody else needs to know. We’ll sort this out between ourselves. Get rid of it and get back to normal life.”

  “ ‘Can I keep it?’ I asked her. I remember my voice sounded like a child’s in the darkness. ‘I want to keep it.’

  “ ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, and that was it. The decision was made. I should have fought it, fought for myself and the baby. But I didn’t. I let everything happen around me and all I could think about was how much I hated Alison.

  “I felt like she’d run away with my life, almost as if she’d run away with my baby. She had everything. She had Marc, her baby, she had her freedom. I didn’t even have the guts to fight them, Jim. I didn’t even have the guts to protect my baby. I didn’t know how to. I lay there in the dark and I hated Alison, I hated her with every single cell in my body.

  “In the clinic with my parents sitting on either side of me like prison guards I gave the doctor my consent to abort. I hated Alison, because it was her fault that I was there alone with no one to stand up for me. And when the baby was gone, and when I felt so empty and used up and lost, I hated her more than anything.

  “It was like an energy, like a power source. It was hating her that finally got me away from home. It was hating Alison that night I slapped my mother back, the night I told her about you. I hated Alison when I walked out of the house and told them I was never coming back. Even on the day Eloise was born, even at the moment they put my baby in my arms and I was so full of joy and love I hated Alison …

  “And then I saw her tonight out of the blue after all these years and I …” Catherine trailed off, gazing into the fire.

  “What?” Jimmy said.

  “I missed her,” Catherine said, perplexed. “I looked at her and the first thing I wanted to say was, ‘Oh, hello, it’s you. I’ve missed you.’ ”

  “And then the hate came back?” Jimmy asked her.

  “No.” Catherine frowned. “Just sadness, a lot of sadness. And some bitterness and anger, but not hate. I don’t hate her.”

  “What does that mean?” Jimmy asked, leaning forward in his seat.

  “I don’t know,” Catherine said. “All I know is that she’s here now and I don’t think they are going anywhere. How I cope with it, I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Jimmy. I’m a mess. You’d think that in all of these years I’d have grown up, gotten stronger. I’m a mother now, and a wife … I’ve been a wife. I’ve had a life since they left. A whole huge massive, wonderful, painful important life. But I’m still that silly little girl, I’m still that mess that couldn’t do a thing to stop her parents from aborting her baby.”

  Jimmy had gotten up out of the chair and down onto the rug, kneeling next to his wife, before he realized what he was doing. The moment he put an arm around Catherine he felt certain she would bat it away. But she didn’t; instead he felt her body relax and mold into his.

  “You are the strongest person I know,” he told her. “Courageous, brave, fierce, loyal. You grew up with a woman who beat you, who hated you, and yet look at you. You are a wonderful mother to our two girls. To be able to be the parent you are after having grown up like that makes you incredible. What happened when you were seventeen wasn’t your fault, Catherine, you can’t go back in the past and change the person you used to be. It’s the person you used to be that’s made you who you are now. You were a child, with evil fuckers for parents and no one in the world to turn to. I just wish … I just wish …”

  “What?” Catherine tipped her face to look up at him.

  “I wish I’d found you earlier,” Jimmy told her, dropping his gaze from hers. “Before Marc did, before Alison left, before your mum could do what she did to you. I would have protected you. I’d have battered that old bag.”

  Catherine smiled, her head dropping onto Jimmy’s shoulder causing him to hold his breath, in case the slightest movement from him would make her move.

  “I can’t imagine you battering anyone,” she said.

  “Only because I’ve never had to batter anyone yet,” Jimmy told her. “But I will if the need arises. I’m like a tightly coiled spring. Ready for action at any minute.”

  Catherine moved and sat up away from him, brushing her hair behind her ear.

  “Jimmy, I’ve known you a long time now, you’ve never once been tightly coiled in your life.”

  “How long is it?” Jimmy asked, even though he knew exactly. “Not counting all those years we were at school together. It must be almost twelve years. I remember the first time I saw you. The first time I really noticed you, that is. You were at that party the band was playing, some bird’s twenty-first. We were on a break and I was at the bar getting a drink. You were standing at one end of it looking a bit lost, dressed all in black like you’d come to a funeral. I remember thinking to myself, that chick is tall.” Catherine laughed and rolled her eyes. “You were looking like you’d rather be anywhere else but there and t
hen the girl whose party it was—what was her name? Denise something—came over and hugged you and she said something to you that made you laugh. And you lit up, Cat, sort of from the inside out, like a lantern. I wanted to get to know you then. You didn’t make it easy.”

  “Because the whole of the town was queuing up to go out with you, I couldn’t think why you’d want me,” Catherine said.

  “I wanted to be the one to make you laugh,” Jimmy said. “I wanted to be the one who lit you up every day. I blew that. I blew it big-time.”

  He’d blown it because he’d cheated on Catherine exactly like Marc had, Jimmy thought bitterly to himself. He’d behaved no better than the other man. In fact, his act of betrayal was far worse than Marc’s because Marc had never loved Catherine the way he did. He’d hurt her because he loved her, and what kind of coward does that?

  “No, you didn’t blow it,” Catherine said. “I mean you did, but it wasn’t just you. It was me too …” She sat up, pushing her fingers through her hair, shaking it from her shoulders as if she were trying to wake herself up from a dream. “Look, Jimmy, let’s not rake all this over now. Not now when we’re friends at last, okay? Let’s just agree that we both did things wrong. That we’re better suited to being friends than husband and wife. Now that Alison and Marc are here, well, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I’m going to need you to be my friend. And I don’t want us to run the risk of falling out again.”

  “That’s not what I was trying to do,” Jimmy said awkwardly. “All I was trying to do was to … I don’t know. Make you see that you have changed, you’re not the same person you were at seventeen. You might feel like it tonight, but it’s temporary, I swear.”

  “Will you stay here tonight?” Catherine asked. Jimmy felt his chest tighten. “The sofa’s quite comfy.”

  “Yeah? I mean yeah, ’course. If you like.”

  “I would,” Catherine said. “Do you want some more tea?”

  “On second thought, have you got any whiskey?” Jimmy asked, and they got up and found the bottle that had been in the cupboard for two years, since Catherine won it in a raffle at the school fair.