Another Mother's Life (37 page)

“What shall I sing him?” Kirsty asked them.

“Well, what’s your song? What number sums up the precious moments that you’ve spent together?” Alison asked.

Kirsty thought for a moment. “Well, his mobile phone did go off once during sex. Apart from that we haven’t got a song, unless you count the combat training megamix workout at the gym. We used to take that class together.”

“Well … how does it go?” Alison encouraged her.

“Sort of da, da, da
da da
, da da
da da, da! Da! Da!
”

Catherine and Alison joined in with gusto if not exactly any skill, and leaning haphazardly against one another, the three of them sang at the tops of their voices.

Once they’d run out of breath they paused, looking up at the lit window, waiting for a response. None came.

“ ’S not working,” Kirsty said, her shoulders dropping.

“Double bastard glazing,” Alison said. “Keeps out singing, which in my opinion is an unforeseen drawback. No wonder romance is dead in the modern world.”

“We need to drink more,” Catherine suggested. “If we drank
more we’d have a better plan. I think I’m sobering up. For some reason I seem to have a terrible headache.”

“Wait!” Kirsty grabbed both of them and froze to the spot like a meerkat in the desert. The lights in the communal stairwell were coming on one floor at a time. Someone was coming down the stairs.

“Hide!” Catherine hissed, tackling the others into the bush just outside the door.

“I’ve broken a nail because of you!” Alison groaned miserably, wiping her muddy hand on her sweater. “Bitch.”

“I wonder who’s going out at this time of night,” Catherine said somberly as they waited for the front door to open. “Must be a drug addict. Only a drug addict would be out now.”

“Right, wait until whoever it is opens the door and then rush the door,” Alison said.

“Okay,” Kirsty said. “Why?”

“Because then we’ll be inside, of course,” Alison said. “I bet the doors inside aren’t double-glazed.”

The three held their breaths as the last sets of lights switched on.

“Now!” Kirsty yelled, making one poor unsuspecting man jump out of his skin, gripping onto the door for dear life.

“Please don’t hurt me, just take my wallet, plea—Kirsty, what the fuck are you doing here and why are you all covered in mud?” Sam eyed Catherine and Alison warily.

“Are you all in some kind of coven?”

“Oh, do you live here?” Kirsty asked him. “What a coincidence. We were just out on the town having a carefree, devil-may-care girls’ night out, like happy single women do, when Alison here lost her car keys and so we were looking for them.”

“Here?” Sam smiled at her. “She lost her car keys here? What were you doing with your car here and … well, anyway,
I’m not being funny but I don’t think any of you should be driving.”

“I know,” Alison said, tottering over to Sam, putting her arm around his neck, and fluttering her lashes. “Which is why it’s your civic duty to make us all coffee.”

Sam laughed. “I haven’t got any milk,” he said. “I was just off to the twenty-four-hour gas station to get milk. I couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s okay,” Alison said in a husky voice. “We like it strong and dark.”

“And bitter,” Kirsty added.

“And slutty,” Catherine piped up.

Sam rubbed his hand over the top of his head.

“I must be crazy, but you’d better come in before you get arrested.”

“Oh God, I love you,” Kirsty gushed before catching herself and saying, “I mean thanks ever so. Most kind of you.”

“Plus you have a very nice arse,” Catherine said as she walked in. It took her the three flights of stairs to believe what had just come out of her mouth.

“Coffee was a bad idea,” Alison said to Catherine, peering down at her ruined sweater. “Because now I’m starting to realize I’m in some strange man’s flat covered in mud with a jackhammer going off in my head.”

Catherine leaned her head against the cool pane of the window she was looking out and sipped her coffee.

“I don’t think I’ve stayed up this late since … since Jimmy played this gig at the Marquee in London. It was supposed to be his big break, supporting some American band. We all got excited and stayed out all night, watched the sun come up in Regents Park. Nothing came of it, of course, but I think that was the last time I stayed out this late, before Eloise was born.” She paused
and pinched her temple. “My eyes hurt. Is it possible for eyeballs to explode?”

She shifted her attention to the kitchen, where Kirsty was helping Sam with the instant coffee.

“Do you think they’re talking in there or having sex?” she asked Alison blurrily. “Based on the coffee I’d say having sex.”

But to Catherine’s surprise Kirsty walked out of the kitchen fully dressed and sat on the couch, nursing a mug of steaming coffee.

“I’m sorry about all this,” she said to Sam as he sat down precisely one cushion apart from her. “We drank tequila and then they said we should come over and do stupid stuff.” She pointed at Catherine and Alison. “They made me do it.”

“We did,” Alison said, winking at Catherine. “We’re evil.”

“It’s the coven, you see,” Catherine said. “It demands a sacrifice.”

“We all just wanted to see you, all of us together,” Kirsty attempted to explain. “To, you know, see how you are. How’s Sam? we wondered, and the next thing we knew we were here. That’s tequila for you, because you know I’d … we’d never do anything so stalkery without the demon tequila.”

“You didn’t have to do mud wrestling to get my attention.” Sam smiled. “If you wanted to see me you should have rung the bell. I was up anyway. Like I said, I couldn’t sleep.”

“
We
didn’t know if you wanted to see
us
,” Kirsty said with heavy emphasis on the plural. “
We
thought you might be with some other slut.”

“Of course I wanted to see you,” Sam said, looking puzzled. “You’re the reason I can’t sleep. I thought that you … all … didn’t want to see me. You haven’t spoken to me since we spent the weekend together. I thought that you weren’t interested anymore and that you’d had your fun and moved on. It’s been getting me down,
actually, because I can’t stop thinking about you, by which I mean just you and not those two other scary women you brought with you, no offense.”

“Ahhh,” Catherine and Alison chorused, catching each other’s eye and giggling.

“What—pardon?” Kirsty said, rubbing her ear vigorously just in case she’d misheard.

“I like you Kirsty, a lot,” Sam told her.

“But you left without saying good-bye or anything,” Kirsty said. “You just went. I thought that was your way of telling me it was a one-off.”

“I had a run scheduled with a client,” Sam explained. “Six a.m. every Monday before he goes to work in the city. He’s training for the London marathon. I left you a note on the pillow next to you.”

“Oh,” Kirsty said. “I’m a very restless sleeper.”

“You didn’t see it on the floor?” Sam asked her.

“There’re a lot of things on my floor,” Kirsty said. “Sort of hard to pick one thing out from another if you don’t know what to look for.”

“Oh, so he’s not a heartless philandering sex pest after all,” Alison cut in happily. “Shame.”

“So,” Sam said. “What do you want to do now?”

“Go to bed with you, please,” Kirsty replied instantly.

“And after that?” Sam smiled.

“I don’t know, maybe breakfast and then more bed … ?”

“No, I mean, do you want to go out with me? Be my … actual girlfriend?”

“Oh.” Kirsty looked thoughtful. “Okay, then. Can we go to bed
now
?”

“A-hem,” Catherine coughed loudly. “And what about us?”

“You know the way home, don’t you?” Kirsty said, unable to take her eyes off of Sam.

“Actually, no,” Alison said. “This block of flats wasn’t even here last time I lived in Farmington. I have no idea where I am.”

Kirsty looked pleadingly at Catherine.

Catherine sighed.

“You can come back with me, I suppose,” she said. “It will be morning soon anyway.”

Kirsty got up and hugged both of the women.

“You see, this evening has gone exactly as I planned. It’s gone perfectly. I so totally knew what I was doing. I never had a single doubt.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Catherine said to Kirsty in a low voice, as Alison made her way out of the flat and gingerly began the descent down the stairs. “Just one more thing.”

“What’s that?” Kirsty asked her.

“I’ll deal with you later,” Catherine promised her.

“Like I care,” Kirsty said, and she slammed the door shut in her face.

C
atherine handed Alison a cup of tea, conscious of her old ex-friend looking around her tiny living room.

“Bit different from your place,” she said.

“Yes,” Alison admitted, taking the tea carefully as if she expected that at any second Catherine might throw it in her face. “But if anything, it’s nicer—more homey. Marc picked out our house. Sometimes it feels like a bit of a mausoleum. Sort of a fitting setting, really, for the death of our marriage.”

“Homey is one way to describe it,” Catherine said, glossing over Alison’s reference to her marriage. “Pokey and tatty is another.”

The pair sipped their tea in silence for a few minutes, sitting at the small square oak table, each one trying to work out how to talk to the other, or even if she had anything to say.

“This is not at all how I imagined meeting you again would be,” Alison said suddenly, setting her mug down firmly and looking at Catherine.

Catherine sat back in her chair and took a steadying breath. The moment to really talk had finally come. “Me neither,” she said. “I could never have imagined on our first proper meeting after sixteen years we’d be high on tequila and trying to break into some strange man’s flat. But that’s Kirsty for you. She’s got the brain of an eighteen-year-old inside the body of a thirty-year-old woman, although she would also insist she had the body of an eighteen-year-old if you asked her.”

“But haven’t we all?” Alison asked her. “I think I have, especially now things are coming to an end with Marc. Especially in Farmington. I feel like I’ve been playacting at being grown-up for the last fifteen years and now that I am actually a proper grown woman I don’t want to play anymore.”

Catherine looked at her. “No,” she said simply, half shaking her head. “I don’t feel like that. I feel more comfortable in my own skin now than I ever did when I was a teenager. It’s taken me a long time to get here, but now I’m here. I’m … strong.”

The two of them watched each other for a moment. It was Alison who dropped her gaze first.

“I thought that when we,
if
we saw each other again there would be a lot more shouting and tears. And a lot more bitterness and recrimination,” Alison said.

“I don’t really shout,” Catherine said. “I hardly ever cry, but I do still have some bitterness and recrimination. I do still feel …
angry
, Alison. I thought I didn’t, but then we spent tonight together and it was fun and I liked being with you.” She shrugged and glanced out the window where the sunrise was bleeding into the sky. “So now I’m angry, don’t ask me why.”

“I was only seventeen,” Alison said quietly, offering a tentative excuse.

“So was I,” Catherine pointed out. “I look back now at what I was doing, getting involved with some older strange man I met in
a park, when I’d never even kissed a boy, never mind had sex with one. Letting him take me home, and take me to bed. I think about that and I can’t believe that was me, that I did something so idiotic and dangerous. It makes me terrified for my daughters.” Catherine shook her head in disbelief. “Marc told me on that first day that he would be no good for me but I didn’t care. It was almost as if I
wanted
to be hurt by him, I
wanted
to have my heart broken because then I’d feel something that would be mine and only mine. It was like living in a dream. But I always knew he would have hurt me anyway, all the signs were there if I’d known where or how to look for them. We never once talked about contraception. He told me that if he was careful we wouldn’t need it. He never spoke about a future beyond the summer holidays, about what would happen to our great love affair once his contract was finished and he had to move on. And he knew I was pregnant, Alison. The night he ran away with you he knew and he didn’t look back once, didn’t call, didn’t write, didn’t try to check on what happened to me and his child. Not once.

“I got involved with a bad guy just as my mother said. And I think that that’s why I’m not angry at Marc. Because he never tried to hide who or what he was from me. He never put on an act, or made promises he couldn’t keep. Even when he said he loved me I knew instinctively that it was a temporary emotion, one that might even vanish the second I left his sight, and I wasn’t too far wrong, was I? I was stupid enough and naive enough to hope that with me he could be better than he was. But that was my fault, not his. So rightly or wrongly, I’m not angry with him.”