Another Mother's Life

by Rowan Coleman

  Jimmy thought about the ladies’ loo in the Goat Pub.

  “Well, nobody’s perfect,” he said. Alison looked up at him over the rim of her coffee cup with her tranquil blue eyes.

  “Did you cheat on Cathy?” she asked. “Is that why you two aren’t living together anymore?”

  Jimmy shrugged and nodded. The whole town knew about him and Cat, so there was no point in trying to cover it up. “It was only once, though.”

  He waited for Alison to pass judgment but she didn’t, she just watched him through the steam from her drink and finally said, “Have you noticed that all of us have been unfaithful to Cathy in some way? We’ve all betrayed her.”

  “Yeah, but me and Cat don’t have anything to do with you and him and her,” Jimmy said, shifting in his seat and glancing at his watch again. “We’re not part of that.”

  “I think you are,” Alison said. “I think the mistakes we all made back then affected your chances of having a successful marriage with Cathy. I think I’ve stolen her life and she got mine by mistake.”

  “What?” Jimmy leaned forward in his seat. “Alison, what are you talking about?”

  “I don’t love Marc anymore,” Alison said, finding that saying it was oddly liberating. “I’m thinking of leaving him, which is a freaky and terrifying thought, but if I can get myself together and find the guts I need to be on my own for the first time ever in my life, maybe it might be the right thing to do. What really worries me is that I was always so sure that it was right for us to be together. I loved him so much that I couldn’t see how my life could ever be any other way. I wanted him, I was jealous of Cathy having him right from the moment I set eyes on him. I was obsessed with him, to the point that nothing else mattered but finding a way to be with him. Not my mum and dad, not Cathy, even the risk I was taking having unprotected sex with him, I’d do anything just to have those few minutes of his attention …”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said, tapping the table. “Slightly too much info there.”

  “Well, Cathy did it too,” Alison said, looking slightly hurt.

  Jimmy was silent. He didn’t want to think about that.

  “Anyway,” Alison went on. “What’s been driving me mad ever since I saw Cathy again and you is this—now that I don’t love him anymore, what have I got? I gave my future to him, gave up my dreams of university, a career for him. I conducted the last fifteen years of my life, had his children, put up with his affairs for nothing. If I still loved him it would almost be bearable, but I don’t. And if I don’t love him then what’s left? An uneducated woman in her thirties with three children and no prospects.”

  Jimmy looked over his shoulder as if he was hopeful of making a quick exit through the unisex toilets.

  “Look,” he said after a while. “I’m not really qualified for all this chick stuff, about feelings and love. I don’t really know why you’re talking to me about it.”

  “But this is important to you too,” Alison said.

  “Er, how exactly?” Jimmy said.

  “I stole Marc from Cathy, like a jealous child snatching a toy. He said he wouldn’t have stayed with her, but he never really got the chance to find out. Maybe if he had, things would have been different, right? Maybe he would have been different. If he’d stayed with her he might have changed for her, but in the right ways. By dropping all the bad bits and keeping all the good. He might have been a whole man for her. She might have been able to keep her baby.”

  “And what about your baby?” Jimmy asked. “What would have happened to Dominic?”

  Alison thought of her son, who she had delivered half asleep to the school gate earlier that morning, his tousled hair pulled over his eyes in a bid to try to hide the eyeliner he had applied that morning. She thought about him, his bravery and determination, and her heart ached. She’d like to think she would have kept him whatever had happened, but she remembered the terror that had engulfed her the second she realized what was happening to her body. And the absolute total determination she’d had to have Marc by her side while she had his baby no matter what. She couldn’t be sure that if Marc hadn’t yielded to her persuasions and her demands, then she wouldn’t have done the same thing Cathy and a hundred other lonely and frightened seventeen-year-olds had done. All that mattered, she told herself, was that Dominic was here now and she loved him.

  “Dominic exists and I love him,” Alison said. “He’s a fact.”

  “Good,” Jimmy started, tapping his fingers restlessly on the arm of the leather sofa. “I’m glad you feel that way about him. But there’s no way Marc and Cat were meant to be together. It would never have worked, he couldn’t love her the way that … that she needs to be loved.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Alison looked at him thoughtfully, leaning a little closer to him. “But I don’t think Marc feels the same way.”

  “What?” Jimmy leaned backward as far as the sofa’s plump cushions would allow him. “You think what?”

  “I know my husband,” Alison said urgently. “I know that sooner or later his curiosity is going to take him back to Cathy. He is going to want to see how he feels around her, if he can recapture anything that he’s lost. He’s going to want to know how he makes her feel. And I’m going to let that happen. If he wants to try and get back anything of what he once had with her, then I won’t stand in his way because I want that too, I want her back too.”

  “Look, if you want to be Cat’s friend again then that’s cool. I actually think she might go for it,” Jimmy said. “But there is no way, there is no way at all that I’m letting that creep back into my wife’s life again to mess with her all over again. No way.”

  “But she’s not your wife anymore, is she?” Alison said. “I mean for all practical purposes you are single. If you wanted to you could …” Alison caught herself on the verge of saying something highly inappropriate to Jimmy Ashley. “You could come to bed with me,” she had been about to say, but instead she bit her tongue, her heart pounding with the thought of what she had nearly said.

  “Could what?” Jimmy said.

  “Could be with anyone you wanted,” Alison said, dropping her gaze and studying the contents of her cup. “Like I said, you’re not really Catherine’s husband anymore.”

  “She’s … look, I know that, but I still care about her.” Stung from the slap of reality that Alison had just dealt him, Jimmy stood up quickly. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and he walked away.

  As Jimmy’s train rolled into the station he hesitated. Maybe he shouldn’t get on the train after all, maybe he should go straight back round to the house and see how Cat was. Alison might be right. Marc might be heading there right now. Jimmy had no idea what would happen. But given that he’d only just worked out that he had never stopped loving her, he wasn’t quite ready for her to move on yet. The train squealed to a halt alongside the platform and a handful of people got out, walking past Jimmy as he stared at the carriage.

  Sixteen

  Alison looked at herself in the wall of mirrors in the private exercise room as she waited for Kirsty. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were hot and glittering, and she hadn’t done a stroke of exercise yet.

  Since she had told Marc she didn’t love him anymore she felt as if she was going a little bit more mad as each minute passed, especially in that second when she had almost asked Jimmy to go to bed with her. The thought of saying those words out loud shocked and exhilarated her almost as much as saying them. It was as if, after fifteen years of keeping herself on track, suddenly she’d derailed and was careering out of control downhill. Alison had no idea what was happening with her and Marc, because since they’d talked on the lawn in the morning mist they hadn’t spoken at all. She had barely even seen him. He’d spent the rest of the weekend at the dealership and when he came home he went to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms. Alison felt as if she should feel more about what was happening, but it was hard to accept that this was reality. It was hard to accept that things wouldn�
�t eventually go back to the way they had always been, even though this time she knew this was really the end. She should be crying, she supposed. She should be screaming and tearing her eyes out, but just at that moment there was nothing there, a void. A vacuum of emotion waiting to be filled with a sudden indrawn breath.

  The door swung open and Kirsty walked in. Alison smiled at her. Kirsty didn’t smile back.

  “You might as well know, I’m Catherine’s best friend,” she said, crossing her arms under her chest. “I had no idea who you were when I started teaching you. But if it’s a question of sides, then I’m on hers and don’t try and make it any different. Got it?”

  Alison looked at her. “God. It’s exhausting always being the villain,” she said, and sat down on the floor and wept.

  “Well,” Kirsty said, handing her a tissue she had retrieved from her handbag. “I didn’t expect you to cry. That’s kind of thrown me a bit.”

  “All this is happening to me too, you know,” Alison sobbed into the tissue. “I don’t want you to take sides, I don’t want there to be sides. It’s just that I’m breaking up with my husband and I’ve just come face-to-face with my best friend again after fifteen years and it’s very confusing. I’m not evil, you know. I’m not some crazy scheming witch, I’m just trying to sort out this whole mess and put things right again.”

  “I didn’t know you and him were breaking up,” Kirsty said. “Catherine doesn’t know that.”

  “No, well, I didn’t know it until I saw Cathy. Until I realized there was an alternative to being miserable married to him. I don’t love him anymore and when I saw how he looked at her … I don’t know if the way he loves me will ever be enough. And now my only friend is a fifteen-year-old boy who wears eyeliner and periodically despises me.”

  “Catherine doesn’t hate you,” Kirsty said after a while. “She’s extremely freaked out that you are back. But when we talked about it, about how she felt when she saw you, ‘hate’ was not a word that cropped up.”

  “I miss her,” Alison said, drying her tears. “Especially now. I feel like I’ve been in suspended animation for fifteen years playing at being a grown-up, but really I haven’t matured by one second. Today I almost asked Jimmy Ashley to have sex with me.”

  “You did what?” Kirsty exclaimed. “You nearly asked Catherine’s husband to have sex with you? Thank God you didn’t say it out loud to him because I don’t think that is necessarily the best way to get back into Catherine’s good books, given that the last time she saw you you were running off with the love of her life.”

  “They’ve split up, haven’t they?” Alison challenged her weakly.

  “Technically yes, but in my book splitting up means burning photos and never speaking to each other again, it doesn’t include sharing meals, taking long country walks, and always living in each other’s pocket, which is pretty much what they do. There’s something unfinished there and if you hope to be Catherine’s friend, I suggest you stay well out of it, at least until they’ve worked out how to finish it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Alison sniffed. “I wouldn’t ever say it out loud. He doesn’t look at me that way anyway. In fact I can’t remember the last time anyone ever looked at me that way, apart from Marc.” Alison sighed and sniffed again. “Look at me, I’m crying because you were a bit mean to me, but I can’t cry over my marriage disintegrating. I’m a mess. I’m a big fat useless pointless mess. I’ve got two little girls who don’t know their lives are about to fall apart, a son who holds me in contempt for about ninety-five percent of the time, and a husband who … who I don’t love anymore.”

  “Right, well I didn’t know any of that, either,” Kirsty said. “You are in a pickle, aren’t you?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Alison said, stifling a sob.

  “I tell you what,” Kirsty said. “How about we sack the pilates and go for a cup of coffee instead. Maybe between you and me we can work something out.”

  “I don’t know,” Alison said with a watery smile. “The last time I went for a coffee I was on the verge of making random offers of sex to men who patently aren’t interested in me.”

  “Oh, honey,” Kirsty told Alison as she pulled her up onto her feet. “Welcome to my world.”

  Catherine lay on the sofa and stretched her toes. It was the afternoon and she had been lying on the sofa since she got back from work at just after ten that morning.

  For the first time ever in her three years of employment at the Stratham and Shah Agency Catherine had been sent home from work.

  She’d gone in as usual, her hair drawn back in a bun, a black sweater over black trousers, aware that her skin looked even more pale and stark than usual and that there were lilac shadows under her eyes. Catherine had been tempted not to go to work at all, but she refused to let herself give in so readily to the impulse to crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head, and stay there. She was not going to let anyone see that what had happened on Saturday night had affected her, and besides, she was hopeful that very few people had noticed her part in the drama. She was sure that the other guests would’ve all been looking at Alison, beautiful, glittering, golden Alison, as she slapped her husband across the face, eclipsing Catherine in her shadow as nothing more than a minor player in the drama.

  “There you are!” Emma, the receptionist, beamed at Catherine as she walked in the door. Catherine started. She never usually got more than a disinterested “Morning” from Emma.

  “Am I late?” Catherine asked, checking her watch. It had been a struggle to get Kirsty to stop talking about Sam and out of the house so that she could leave for work, but according to her watch she’d made it in on time.

  “Tell me all,” Emma said wide-eyed, leaning across the reception counter so that the glass beads she wore around her neck clattered on the wooden surface. “What have you got to do with Marc James? Is it all true?”

  Catherine blinked at Emma, and pressing her lips together, she put her head down and walked into the open-plan office. People stopped talking as she entered the large, busy room. Unspoken words hovered in midsentence above her head, eyes dropped, and swivel chairs rotated away from close conversations.

  “Morning, Catherine!” Her boss, Sunita, must have been looking for her because she came out of her office the second Catherine arrived. “Can you come in when you’re ready, please, I need to firm up some event dates with you.”

  “Will do,” Catherine said, conscious of everyone not looking at her. She sat down at her desk, flanked on two sides by dividing panels, and switched on her PC. She sat there staring at the screen as it leapt to life. Everyone was talking about her.

  “Did you enjoy the party, Cathy?” Francesca, a twentysomething bright young thing who had come to the office straight from university, appeared over the top of one of the dividers.

  “It was fine,” Catherine said, looking intently in her desk drawer for some unknown object.

  “So did you used to know the Jameses, then?” Francesca pursued.

  “A long, long time ago,” Catherine said.

  “And he got you both pregnant?” Francesca questioned.

  Catherine stood up abruptly, suddenly towering over diminutive Francesca.

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Catherine said stiffly, feeling her fury and embarrassment searing her skin.

  Francesca looked around at some of the other women in the office who were trying not to catch her eye, their hands covering their mouths.

  “It’s just that it all came out right in front of everyone and I thought you might like to set the story straight …”

  Catherine picked up her diary, walked around the partition, and stared down at Francesca, who wilted like a flower beneath her gaze.

  “No thank you,” she said before turning on her heel and setting off for Sunita’s office. She heard gasps and giggles as she closed the door behind her.

  “They love gossip,” Sunita said as Catherine sat down.
/>   “It’s not gossip,” Catherine said. “It’s nothing.”

  Sunita gazed at her for a moment. “You look tired, Catherine,” she said. “Perhaps you should take the rest of the day off, let it all blow over.”

  “I can’t.” Catherine shook her head. “If I do, then they will think they’ve won.”

  “Who will?” Sunita laughed. “Silly Francesca or nosy Emma? No one cares about them. Everyone here respects you and loves you, Catherine. We worry about you and we care for you. It’s almost impossible to ignore what happened on Saturday night, but I’m certain that most people here don’t want to pry or make things any harder for you. In a day or two everything will be back to normal. It’s just come as a bit of a surprise to us all to find out that …” Sunita trailed off.

  “What?” Catherine said.

  “Well, that you’ve had another life. One before the woman you are now. You always seem so serene and calm.” Sunita laughed. “It was a shock to discover you had a secret life.”

  “I don’t have a secret life,” Catherine said, surprising both herself and Sunita with the anger in her voice.

  “Go home,” Sunita said. “Don’t worry about what anyone thinks. Go home and rest and come back tomorrow. By that time Francesca will have a new boyfriend and Emma will have new nail polish, and everything will be as it always was and no one will give you a second thought.”

  Catherine looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. She didn’t know why Sunita’s choice of words stung her quite so much.

  As soon as she had gotten through the front door Catherine had flopped down onto the sofa and she hadn’t moved since, trying to make sense of everything that was happening.