Another Mother's Life (29 page)

“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.

Seeing Marc and Alison again had taken her by surprise, but somehow the way she felt about seeing them again surprised her more than the actual event. It was almost as if on some level she had always been expecting this moment, knowing that one day it would come. Now that they were back she felt curiously complete, as if a missing part of her life had been returned to her. Knowing where they were and what they were doing released the pressure of the past that had been building inside her, like a dam that had burst, and she could feel it flowing free out of her fingers and toes.

As she’d looked into the face of her old friend she’d felt happy and sad simultaneously, but the bitterness and anger she’d expected were not there at all. Alison looked almost exactly the same, except that in the brief moment Catherine had talked to her she hadn’t seen Alison’s fearlessness, that passion for life that had propelled Catherine through most of her teens, connecting her to the world outside of her parents’ house. Seeing Alison as she was now, the
real woman and not some imagined paragon leading a perfect stolen life, Catherine found herself wondering what had changed her friend so much over the years. She found herself wondering how Alison was.

Being confronted with Marc was altogether different. Jimmy had asked her how seeing Marc again had made her feel, and she hadn’t exactly lied but had edited the truth, because she couldn’t tell anyone, especially not Jimmy, how it made her feel to look into his eyes again.

Stretching her arms out over her head, Catherine sat up and looked at the clock; it was almost two. She had to get up and go get the girls soon.

The knock at the front door made her jump, sitting forward on the sofa. She looked at the door and for a few long seconds considered the possibility of not opening it because she knew who was standing on the other side of it.

She knew that she was wearing her work clothes, which were crumpled now, that her hair was messed up from lying on the sofa, and that the traces of makeup she’d put on that morning would have run around her eyes. And she knew the very last person in the whole world she wanted to see was on the other side of that door. But Catherine didn’t seem to have any control over her own limbs; just as she was thinking about sneaking out of the back door and taking refuge in Kirsty’s shed, her body had gotten up and opened the door.

And there he was. There was Marc.

And with the cooling insulation of her husband gone, she could feel how he burned with heat, as if he had somehow captured all the sunshine from that distant summer in his eyes.

“Morning,” Marc said. “I looked you up in the phone book. I was going to phone but the address was there and I just got this
feeling I should call round, see for myself how you were after the party. Maybe talk a bit about … everything.”

He paused. “So how are you?” he asked.

Catherine felt her rebellious body stepping aside to allow him in even though her head was shouting at her to slam the door in his face. “Fine. Just tired.”

She held her breath as Marc walked into her tiny living room. She suddenly saw her home through new eyes, through his eyes. The tiny room, the shabby sofa, the grubby carpet, and breakfast things still piled on the dining table. She wondered if it would have been possible for their lives to take more divergent paths than they had.

Marc turned and looked at her where she was still standing by the front door. He was wearing a camel coat over a suit and he held a pair of black leather gloves in his hand. She could still feel the heat of him even from three or four feet away.

“Drink?” she asked him, unable to think of anything else to say.

“Coffee?” Marc suggested.

Five minutes later, she sat down at the table and took a sip of coffee. While she was making the coffee she’d been trying to adjust to this new reality. Marc James,
the
Marc James, the man who had stalked her dreams for so long, was sitting at her table in her house. He’d even helped clear away the breakfast dishes. It was as if by allowing herself to think about him again, to dream about him, she had conjured him up out of thin air, like letting a genie loose from its lamp.

“This is all a bit odd, isn’t it?” Marc said finally.

“Yes,” Catherine agreed. “I sort of can’t believe that you are here.”

“Do you hate me?” Marc asked, glancing briefly sideways at her.

“I don’t think I ever hated you,” Catherine said. “But even if I did, all of that business was a long time ago. I got married, had children, moved on.”

Catherine wasn’t sure if she was lying or not, but it seemed like a sensible thing to say. It was a way to put distance between herself and him, even across this three-foot-wide table.

He looked at her, his sudden smile causing her to grip the sides of her chair beneath the table.

“You haven’t changed,” he said.

“I have,” Catherine replied. “And so have you.”

Marc laughed once and nodded. “I think about the kid I was back then, and wonder if I am the same person. I mean I can’t understand how I turned from him into me. It doesn’t seem possible.”

“Alison made it possible, I suppose,” Catherine said carefully. “It looks as if you two were meant to be together after all.”

“I didn’t want to let her down,” Marc said. “But I have. I never learned to resist that urge to spoil things that were good for me. You were good for me, you made me feel human. I couldn’t wait to ruin that.”