Another Mother's Life (8 page)

He laughed and Catherine found herself laughing too, glowing at what she thought was the first compliment she’d ever received from a man.

“Tell me more about you,” Marc said, his voice low and gentle. “Tell me everything you know.”

And at his bidding, quiet, shy, awkward Catherine, who up until that point had been unable to hold anything other than the most stilted and awkward conversations, except with Alison, started talking. It was as if by the simple act of noticing her, this handsome, attentive young man had burst a dam in her. Suddenly hundreds of words poured out of her, thoughts and ideas that must have been building pressure somewhere inside her for years. They talked about everything and nothing as she looked at him, drinking him in like a thirsty person stumbling across an oasis in the desert. The light in his eyes as he watched her, the slope of his back as she shifted position, the set of his chin, the line of his nose. She wasn’t able to stop looking at him and talking to him, about everything: school, her parents, her home life, her favorite books, music, films, her hopes and dreams—things she hadn’t even told Alison. And he listened. And not only could he hear her, he was
seeing
her
. For the first time in her short life Catherine felt like her own person and not just Alison’s friend or a neglected daughter. She experienced what it was like to be truly seen.

Jimmy had asked her to remember the last time she’d been in love. Looking back, Catherine realized that she had been in love with Marc before they had even known each other half an hour. It had taken less than thirty minutes to happen and how many years to shake off? Catherine wasn’t sure she could answer that yet.

“So how about you, how have you ended up drifting from town to town?” she asked him at last, desperate to know more about him. “Why did you end up in Farmington?”

“You’re here,” he said to her, the roll of his Midlands accent washing over her. “That’s a good reason to come here and it’s a better reason than the one I’ve got. I follow the work. I’ve not got any skills, or degrees. I’ve not got a lot going for me.”

“You have,” Catherine retorted automatically. “I mean, you just probably don’t know that you have.”

Marc shifted his position once again, crossing his legs.

“I don’t know,” he said, with a one-sided smile. “I think the best thing I’ve got going for me at the moment is that you are talking to me. I like you, Catherine, you’re different.”

“I know,” Catherine replied in dismay.

“It’s a good thing,” Marc told her. “Most girls I try and talk to either won’t have anything to do with me, or if they like the look of me they turn themselves into idiots flirting and pouting and showing themselves off. I’m not saying I don’t like it when a pretty girl flirts with me, but well … I don’t know the last time I really talked to anyone, the last time anyone ever really cared about what I’m thinking or feeling.”

“Me either,” Catherine said, afraid to move in case she caused one second of the remaining time she had with him to fall away before she was ready.

Marc knelt and pulled his T-shirt on over his head, then walked over on his knees and stopped in front of her.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “Got to put my head down.”

“Okay,” Catherine replied.

“Will you be here tomorrow?” he asked, and Catherine felt as if lightning had just struck in the center of her chest, leaving a gaping, burning hole.

“Yes,” she said, unable to manage any dissembling.

“Can I meet you here again tomorrow at the same time?” Marc asked as he reached out and picked up her right hand.

“Yes,” she said again, her voice fading.

He pulled her gently toward his body until she was kneeling opposite him.

“Can I kiss you, Catherine?” he asked her, quietly, almost shyly.

“I …” Catherine froze for a moment, her lips felt numb and immovable. “I don’t know … how to,” she finished painfully, dropping her chin to her chest and closing her eyes.

The next thing she felt was the rough surface of Marc’s palms against the skin of her cheek, drawing her face back up to look at him.

“I do,” he said.

What she had felt first was the gentle pressure of his mouth on hers, the sensitive exploration of his tongue between her lips. And then she remembered his arms encircling her waist and the heat from his body radiating through the thin cotton of her sundress and penetrating her bones. Finally, as Catherine began to return his kiss, she realized that her arms had crept around his neck, the muscles of his shoulders contracting beneath her fingers as she held him.

Looking back, it wasn’t a long kiss, or a particularly passionate one. But it was perfect. It was a perfect first kiss. A kiss that
every other she might receive in her life would have to measure up to.

Afterward, with his arms still around her waist, Marc smiled into her eyes.

“I’ve never been with a girl like you,” he said, almost regretfully. “And I’m guessing you’ve probably never been with someone like me. You’re different, Catherine, fragile and … nice. And I’m nothing special, I’m not nice.” He grinned at her. “I’ve made a lot of girls angry with me and I don’t take things too seriously. I like you, I want to see you again, but I want to be straight with you, make sure you know what you’re doing.’’ Marc sat back on his heels, dropping his arms from her waist.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “If you don’t want to come tomorrow, I get it.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” she told him steadily, not certain at that second exactly how she was going to make that happen.

“Will you?” He watched her as he stood up, a faint frown between his brows. Catherine swallowed and took a breath. “Are you sure?” he said.

“You said I’m not like the girls you normally go with. You said I’m different, so if I’m different then maybe … this will be different. Maybe you’ll be different and anyway …” She had to force every single tendon in her body to relax sufficiently to allow her to say what she had to. “I’ve never had anything like this before, that’s mine, just for me. I just want to feel like this again—I don’t care what happens.”

Marc smiled. “Someday you’ll learn not to wear your heart on your sleeve,” he’d said, and then nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Catherine, same place, same time.”

Later that night, while her parents were watching the ten o’clock news, Alison crept into Catherine’s bedroom window as she had
done every night she could get away with it since they were twelve years old.

“Are you mad at me?” Alison whispered, easing first one bare leg and then the other through the window. Catherine, who had been lying on her bed reliving every single moment of her afternoon, sat up on her elbows and shook her head.

“No, I’m not, you’ll never …”

But Alison interrupted her. “When you hear what happened you’ll understand.”

Catherine sat up. Alison was so used to telling her stories, it would never cross her mind that Catherine might have one of her own to tell.

“Go on then, but be quick, Mum’ll be up as soon as the news is finished to tell me to turn my light off.”

“I was just leaving to meet you when
Aran Archer
rang me up and asked me if I wanted to watch a video at his house. Well, I had to go, didn’t I? Samantha Redditch has been after him since Easter. I thought she’ll die if she knows I bagged him.”

“But I thought you like …”

“Yes, of course I like him, I
love
him, but he hasn’t noticed me yet, so while I’m waiting why not go out with Aran Archer? He’s upper sixth, so there’ll be parties and I’ll get to hang out with my true love more.”

“If you say so,” Catherine said, having learned never to question Alison’s plans because Alison did what she wanted to do and worried about the consequences later.

“So I go round to Aran’s and his mum is out, of course. He draws all the curtains in the living room, tells me to sit on the sofa, and gives me a drink of orange
squash
!” Alison shook her head. “What a loser! Of course the film had only been on five minutes before we were kissing. His tongue was down my throat straightaway and his hand was up my top, squeezing them like they were lemons.”

Alison laughed, remembering to cover her mouth with her hand at the last second in case anyone heard her. “It was so not sexy,” she said. “So I push him off me and he says, ‘Oh go on, Alison, let me see them, please!’

“And I said to him, ‘Are we going out or what?’

“And he says yeah we are, all sort of desperate and pathetic, so I said, ‘Okay, then.’

“I couldn’t get him off of me for the rest of the afternoon. He wanted to go further but I wasn’t having any of that. I’m not losing it to him. Still he’s quite sweet really when he’s not with his mates. He said he’s fancied me for ages.”

“So you’ve chucked Ryan then?”

“Well, I will,” Alison said, glancing at her watch. “What about you? What did you do? I would have phoned you here to tell you but I knew you’d rather get out than be stuck at home cleaning up after the wicked witch all afternoon.”

Catherine thought about her kiss with Marc and how it would sound if she tried to explain it to Alison in the way Alison had just described her afternoon with Aran Archer to her. The moment was too precious for her to share with anyone, not even Alison. Especially not Alison, because once she knew she’d have questions like whose hand went where and what did it feel like and when could she meet him? Catherine had realized with a sudden lurch that she didn’t want Alison to meet Marc. The afternoon she had spent with him, the talk they’d had, and the kiss were hers. Catherine wasn’t ready to share them.

“We can do something tomorrow if you like,” Alison said. “Aran will be begging me to see him but I don’t think I should, do you? I’ll be fighting him off again all afternoon and it’s such a drag.”

“Actually I can’t tomorrow,” Catherine said quickly. She had already told her mother that she had forgotten a summer study
project she had to work on for school and she would have to be excused from the shop to go to the library. Her mother had not been pleased, not with her slapdash attitude to schoolwork or her absence from the shop. But she had agreed that Catherine could go because the only thing more important to her than keeping her daughter under control was keeping up appearances in the community, and having a child that did well at school was part of that. Catherine didn’t care if her mother eventually found out she’d lied. She didn’t care about anything except seeing Marc again.

“Really?” Alison looked disappointed. “The witch?”

Catherine nodded. “She’s got me sorting out all the paperwork from the shop.”

“Poor you.” Alison gave her a sympathetic hug. “Just think, one more year and we’ll be off to university in Leeds. I’ll be studying English literature and writing my novel and you’ll be doing art history and some hunky artistic type will fall in love with you and make you his muse.”

Catherine smiled and thought about Elizabeth Siddall. She didn’t suppose she would ever be Marc’s muse.

“We’ll sneak your application past your parents and once you’ve got your place you’ll never have to see them again. One more year and you’ll be free and so will I.”

“
Your
parents are lovely,” Catherine chided her.

“Yes, but they are so safe and careful, always saving. Always putting every penny aside for a rainy day. Do you know we can’t even go on holiday this year?”

“Because they’re saving money so you can go to college,” Catherine reminded her. “If I ever get there I’ll have to work about ten jobs to pay my way.”

“You will get there, and so will I. We’ll have the best time ever. Only one more year to go.”

“Yes,” Catherine said thoughtfully. “One more year.”

They heard a footfall on the bottom stairs.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Alison hissed as she climbed out of the window. “Same time, same place, okay? Love you!”

Hastily Catherine pulled the window shut after her, and glimpsed the silhouette of her friend on the garage roof before scrambling back into bed.

“Lights out now,” her mother said, opening the door.

“Yes, Mum.”

Her mother paused for a moment looking at the window, the curtain a little askew.

“Have you had the window open?” she asked Catherine.

“Sorry,” Catherine said.

“No windows open at night. Any madman could get in.”

Her mother shut the door behind her, snapping the light switch off as she went. Catherine remembered lying back in her bed, stretching from the ends of her fingers to the tips of her toes, knowing that at last she had something to dream about.

Things would have been so different, Catherine thought as she finished her glass of wine, if Marc just hadn’t turned up the next day.

She had told her mother she was going to study at the library, taking a big net bag of books and several pens to prove it.

Catherine remembered she deliberately walked along the canal toward the park in a bid to avoid meeting anyone she might know, including Alison, on High Street. The spot in the park where Marc had found her was out of the way, beyond the swings and climbing frame, under the canal bridge toward the back of the field where the park met the railway embankment and the grass was long. Catherine felt confident that once she was there she would not be spotted by Alison, her mother, or anyone.