Another Mother's Life (33 page)

“Get out of here!”
Suddenly Marc sprung up from the table and hauled Dominic away from it by the collar of his shirt, slamming him back hard against the kitchen wall.

Dominic just laughed in his father’s face. “Yeah, that’s it, hit me. Show your true colors, Marc, show us what you really are. Just a thug who can’t keep his dick in his trousers, that’s the real you, isn’t it, Dad? Might as well knock your kids around too!”

Before Alison could move she saw Marc grab Dominic with his left hand and draw back his right fist.

“Daddy don’t!”
Gemma screamed over her sister, who was
wailing uncontrollably. “Don’t hit him, don’t hit him,” Gemma sobbed.

Marc paused, and Alison saw that his arm was trembling.

He released Dominic, taking a step back, staring at the boy as if he had no idea who he was. Shrugging his ripped shirt back onto his shoulders, Dominic pulled himself off the wall and, looking Marc right in eye, spat in his face. Picking up one of the opened beer bottles Alison had left on the counter, he slammed out the back door.

Able to move at last, Alison gathered Amy up onto her lap and put her arms around Gemma. She felt something pawing her foot and realized that Rosie was cowering under the table.

“Never mind, never mind,” she whispered to them. “Silly old Dom and Daddy. They didn’t mean it … never mind …”

Ciara looked regretfully at the plate of food that was still steaming in front of her.

“I’ll go after him, Mrs. James,” she said, standing up. “He’s been wound up all week, really angry about something, but he wouldn’t say what. I didn’t know he was going to do that or I would have tried to stop him.” Ciara paused, not quite sure how to exit. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he’s okay. And thanks very much for dinner.”

She edged quite calmly past Marc, who was still standing facing the wall, his fists clenched.

“I’m going out,” Marc said once the girl had gone.

“Marc,” Alison said as evenly as she could. “Don’t go, wait, please. We need to talk about this.”

“Do we?” Marc said. “It’s quite clear who you talk to in this family and it isn’t me. You didn’t have to do that, Alison. You didn’t have to turn my own son against me.”

“Me turn him against you?” Alison snapped. “You
lie
to him, you
ignore
him, you threaten him, and you think
I
turned him
against you? I didn’t have to say a word to him. You did that all by yourself.”

Marc turned to Alison, who was still shielding her daughters, and she saw the fury in his face. The two of them stared at each other across the tops of their childrens’ heads, the unspoken anger crackling in the air.

“I’m going out,” Marc repeated, and he left, picking up his wallet and keys on the way.

Alison sat with her two crying girls and she rocked them, all three of them going back and forth until all she could hear was the ticking of the kitchen clock.

When both her husband and her son had come in tonight they had both planned to hurt her. They’d both wanted, for very different reasons, to show her what she was doing to their family.

Marc wanted things back the way they once were and Dom wanted everything to change. Strange, then, given how different they wanted things to be, that they’d both gone about it in exactly the same way.

It had taken Alison a long time to get the girls to sleep, and only when she allowed Amy to climb into bed with Gemma and Rosie did they eventually drift off, after insisting that Alison sit by them until they were asleep.

It was Amy, who had done most of the crying, and her puppy who had surrendered to sleep first. Fighting sleep willfully, Gemma had looked at her mum from the bed.

“Will you and Daddy split up, Mummy?” she asked Alison.

Alison closed her eyes, feeling as if she were crumbling and collapsing from the inside out.

“No,” she said because she wanted her eight-year-old to be able to go to sleep without being afraid. “It was just a silly row, that’s all, between Daddy and Dom.”

“But Daddy and you don’t like each other as much as you used to,” Gemma said. “You pretend to, but I can tell. You’re all …far apart.”

“Things are just a bit funny at the moment because we’ve moved to a new house, and we’re both a bit tired and grumpy, that’s all. You’ll see, when things calm down everything will be fine.” Alison fought to maintain the soft, calm timbre of her voice.

“Do you promise, Mummy?” Gemma asked. Alison bent over and kissed Gemma on her smooth round cheek.

“I promise you,” she said.

And as she walked out of the room, she didn’t care what she had to do or give up to keep that promise, she just knew she had to make it true. So what if other people risked failure to be happy? Perhaps happiness wasn’t as important as the world kept on insisting that it was. Perhaps it didn’t matter if she didn’t love Marc the way she used to. Maybe if she stuck with him the feeling would come back. Dominic thought he knew what was best for her but he was just a boy, he had no idea what it really meant to be married, committed to a relationship come what may. Marc had behaved badly in the past, and almost unforgivably tonight, but like he’d said he cared about her, he loved her the very most that he could, and perhaps she’d just have to learn to live with that.

As Alison walked down the stairs in the dark, she told herself again and again that she could make it work. Maybe after tomorrow she and Cathy would be friends again and perhaps in time good friends. If she had Cathy to lean on, she thought she could manage it, she thought she could do anything for her daughters. Anything that would prevent Gemma from knowing that her mother was a liar.

At just past eleven Alison was trying to work out exactly who it was she was waiting up for.

She’d called Dominic several times, but of course his phone wasn’t switched on.

At one point she almost phoned Marc, to tell him that Dom was wrong and he was right, that the family was worth staying together for no matter how difficult it would be. But her thumb hovered over the call button and eventually she set the phone down. She had to see his face when she told him that, she had to see the way he looked so she could be sure she was doing the right thing.

She sprung awake when she heard the front door open and close; sitting up, she saw Dominic appear from the hallway.

“Is he here?” he asked her.

“He stormed out too,” Alison said. “The two of you are so alike.”

“Don’t say that,” Dom said, but his voice was drained of all aggression.

Alison held a hand out to him and reluctantly he came and sat down next to her.

“Why did you do that?” Alison asked him. “Why do that to your sisters? They were so upset.”

“They’re going to be upset sooner or later,” Dom said. “Divorce is hard on the kids, but if you’re up front with them they’ll take it better.”

“No,” Alison said. “No, they won’t …”

“Honestly, Mum, I’m sorry,” Dom said as if he hadn’t heard her. “I just lost it tonight. I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t even plan it. I just couldn’t stand him being at the table with us. Acting as if he cared, acting as if this family meant anything to him. And you’re wrong, Gemma and Amy will be able to handle you and Dad breaking up. In fact, probably once it’s out in the open they’ll be fine, because they’ll know where they stand and they won’t be worrying so much.”

“They already know where they stand,” Alison said, bracing herself.

“You talked to them?” Dominic asked.

“Yes.” Alison paused and picked up her son’s hand. “Dom, I told them that everything was going to be all right between me and your dad. I told them we weren’t going to split up. They won’t have to deal with anything … I’m going to fix things.”

“Mum …” Dominic shook his head. “Mum, wait, listen …”

“No, Dom, I’ve decided. I’m not leaving your dad. I know things aren’t perfect, but, well, your dad and I talked. I’ve made my feelings really clear, and it’s shocked him. It’s hurt him and I don’t think he really understood before what was at stake, what he risked losing. I think that if I … if
we
make an effort now, then we can really make it. I think this time your dad really listened to and understood how I felt. I think he’ll change, Dom. I think he’ll do his best to keep us all together. It’s what he wants and it’s what the girls want and so it’s what I want too. And I need you to support me. Who knows, perhaps once things have calmed down you’ll start to get on better with Dad.”

“You’ve talked and he’s changed,” Dominic said, shaking his head as if he hadn’t heard half of what Alison said. “When did you talk? Tonight, after I’d gone? Tell me, Mum, when did you talk?”

“Last Sunday after the party,” Alison said. “He’s been really good since then, I think he’s tried to be considerate, until tonight, that is.”

“Last Sunday,” Dom said. “That’s funny because on Monday I saw him with another woman.”

“What?” Alison was stunned into silence. “What do you mean? How—you were supposed to be in school.”

“We had a free period and it was almost the end of school, so I went down to the canal with some of the other kids,” Dominic said.

“You saw your dad in the park with another woman?” Alison laughed, the image was so absurd, it was as if Dominic had somehow glimpsed into the past.

“No, I was walking on the road down the bridge and I saw him at the door of a house. I was going to sneak by because I didn’t want him to see me, but then the door opened, and it was that woman. The woman who was at the party, Mum. Tall, with red hair. She let him in and closed the door.”

“He was at Cathy’s …” Alison whispered almost to herself. “I knew he’d go there. I knew he would …”

“That’s not all,” Dom said. Alison looked up at him. “He was in there for a while, so I thought I’d hang around, you know, see if he came out, ask him what he was doing. But he was in there for so long I crept up and looked through the window. They were holding each other. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen next. I didn’t want to see that so I legged it. I didn’t know how to tell you, Mum. I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you, but—”

“I really thought I’d know if he’d been with Cathy,” Alison said bleakly. “I really thought I would.”

“I’m sorry,” Dom said. “But I’m not lying.”

“I know,” Alison told him. “I know.”

She felt something flare in her chest, a reignited spark of that old passion, the fury and jealousy that had driven her to take Marc from Cathy fifteen years ago. That’s what had been between her and Marc at the beginning. And after any love they might have managed to conjure up between them had finally vanished for good, that was all that remained, fury and jealousy.

“So when you thought he was hurt and worried and upset he was already trying to get off with someone else,” Dominic said triumphantly. “Don’t you see that’s why we can’t go on like this? You have to end it.”

Alison was silent.

“I’m going to bed, before he gets in,” Dom said. “Maybe now you can see why I got so angry tonight.”

Alison nodded, “I see.”

Once her son had gone up she found that she was crying. But not only because Marc had betrayed her again. Because her friend had. And for the first time in sixteen years Alison knew what that felt like.

C
atherine lay in bed and listened to her empty house. If it had been her weekend to have the girls they would be downstairs by now, bashing about in the kitchen making themselves cereal, slopping milk onto the floor, and sloshing juice into cups. And then they’d eat, sitting on the carpet in front of the TV because it was the only day of the week their mother would let them get away with it.

But this weekend they were away with Jimmy and the house was quiet—no, it was more than quiet, it was hollow. It echoed with their absence.

Catherine stretched her fingers above her head and her toes toward the bottom of the bed, sat up, and paused not for the first time to reflect on how her absent family had been thrown off balance by everything that had happened. The return of Marc and Alison hadn’t thrown just her into turmoil, but the feelings and thoughts of those around her too, including her children, and she couldn’t stand that.

It frightened Catherine to death when she thought about the sane and steady life that she had worked so hard to sure up over the last couple of years being threatened, and she knew she had to do whatever she could to try to protect the makeshift harmony that she had created for her daughters. But, just as she was resolved to do just that at any cost, there’d appear a stealth image of Marc and the remembrance of the heat of his touch; her heart would beat a little faster and she’d feel the blood pumping in her veins, and for a few terrifying seconds she’d feel the impulse to throw everything away just to feel like that again, damn the consequences. She had felt like that once before and it hadn’t ended well.

Catherine got out of bed and pulled the curtain back; it was cold outside, a sharp blue sky promising chilly sunshine. She crossed the heat of her cheeks against the cool glass for a moment until the thought of what might have happened next if Marc had kissed her faded to a bearable level.