Another Mother's Life (9 page)

Which was reassuring, because she hadn’t expected Marc to
be there at all. She’d prepared herself for disappointment, relieved that she hadn’t told Alison about him.

But as she made her way under the bridge she could see that Marc was already there waiting for her, leaning against the trunk of the tree they had met under, the August sun painting his bare chest with patches of gold as it danced through the tree’s canopy.

Catherine stopped in her tracks and looked at him. She was seventeen, the most inexperienced girl in her class, if not the whole school. She was thin and flat-chested, with long, bony fingers and feet. What did Marc want with her? Because he could not want her like
that
. He couldn’t look at her the way other boys looked at Alison and actually want her. Besides, he wasn’t a mere boy. He was a man, more than three years older than her. His waiting there under the tree didn’t make any kind of sense.

Instinctively Catherine knew that now was the time she should turn back, it was her chance to heed the warning he had given her yesterday and leave. But even as in her mind’s eye she was rotating on her heel and scurrying away to the shelter of the library, her treacherous body carried her right to his side.

“I saw you watching me,” he said, smiling up at her, blinking against the bright sunlight. “Having second thoughts?”

“No,” Catherine said. He reached out, catching her hand, and pulled her down onto the grass. “It’s just, I look at you and I … I don’t know what you want with me.”

Marc laughed. “Whatever it is, it must be something pretty strong, because after we said good-bye yesterday I swore blind to myself I wasn’t coming here today. But here I am. And now that you’re here I feel happy. I hardly ever feel happy. I brought you something.” Easing himself up, Marc reached into his back pocket and produced a creased and dog-eared postcard. He handed it to her. “You were right, it is meant to be that character you said and
I think that’s the name of the artist you told me. It’s not much of a gift, but I thought you’d like it.”

For a moment Catherine gazed down at the painting of Elizabeth Siddall floating in water, wearing a silver embroidered dress, her body wreathed in flowers as she portrayed the doomed Ophelia, and she smiled. “Thank you,” she said, impossibly touched by the worn reproduction.

“Read the back,” Marc urged her.

Holding her breath, Catherine turned the card over. Written on the back in large and loose handwriting were the words “To Catherine, more beautiful than Ophelia.”

The two of them watched each other and the anticipation that he might kiss her again made Catherine’s insides burn.

“So what do you want to do today?” Catherine asked him instead, still holding the card between her palms.

Applying very gentle pressure on her shoulders, Marc pushed her back into the long grass and lay alongside her, his head propped up on one elbow. “I want to lie here in the grass, talking and kissing you,” he told her. And that was exactly what they did, while Marc wove buttercups and daisies into her hair to make, he whispered in her ear, his own masterpiece.

They met every chance they could, every free hour that Catherine could steal from her mother and explain away to Alison. She would have been content to lie in the long grass with Marc day after day, but one day Marc pulled her to her feet and said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“Where else?” Catherine was reluctant, afraid of who might see her and afraid to tell Marc that she felt that way, because she didn’t want to hurt him.

“The movies,” Marc told her, raising his eyebrows. “They’ve got a showing of that film
Ghost
on at the cinema. I’ve heard it’s rubbish, but girls like it, right?”

“You’re taking me to
Ghost
?” she said, repressing a laugh because it seemed like such a normal thing for a boy and a girl to do and exactly the sort of thing she thought she would never do, especially not with Marc.

“I’m doing better than that.” He grinned, tugging at her hand. “Come on.”

Never in her life as the tallest, thinnest, most ginger-haired girl in school had Catherine ever felt as self-conscious as she did that afternoon, walking hand in hand with the shorter, compact, shirtless Marc through the town toward the Rex cinema. She was sure that this would be it, this would be the moment when one of her mother’s friends or, worse still, her mother caught her in a lie and the daydream she had been living would be over. Amazingly her luck held, and as they approached the grand but shabby art deco building Catherine saw a small queue forming outside its doors.

“This way,” Marc said, not leading her to the entrance but pulling her down a narrow alley that ran alongside the building.

“What are we doing?” Catherine asked him, giggling.

“I met this guy in the pub last night, works in the projection room.” He pulled her into a doorway with a locked fire door that was marked “Fire Escape, Keep Clear!”

“Years ago this old heap was the go-to place for miles around, he reckons. Gold paint on the ceiling, velvet chairs, cocktails brought to your table.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” Catherine said with an uncertain smile. “I’ve seen some of the old photos in the local history books. So?”

“
So
, there were boxes, just like you get in a theater for the really posh people to sit in. They don’t use them now, except for storage, but they are still there …” He smiled at her and kissed her gently on the lips. “And the bloke said if I bought him a pint, he’d let us in the side entrance and we could watch the film in a box.”

“Really?” Catherine gasped, delighted more that Marc had
been thinking of her when he came up with the plan than with the plan itself.
Ghost
was one of Alison’s favorite films and they had seen it so many times she was fairly sure she knew the script better than Demi Moore did.

Marc nodded, looking pleased with himself as he banged several times on the door. After a while the door swung open and Marc and the projectionist exchanged a few words.

“Don’t get up to anything too energetic in there,” the projectionist told Marc as he pointed them toward the box, chuckling to himself.

“Do you mind,” Marc said, smiling at Catherine as he held the door to the box open for her. “I’m with a real lady here.”

They sat side by side on plush old velvet seats, Marc’s arm around her shoulders.

“This film is crap,” Marc said after about twenty minutes, making Catherine laugh.

“Do you want to leave?” she asked him.

“No,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I want to make out.”

Almost every night that she came back from seeing Marc, Catherine would hear Alison’s latest exploits with Aran, the things he tried to do to her or make her do to him, the things she sometimes let him do and the things she sometimes did. But it was never like that with Marc, he never tried anything with her beyond kissing. They’d sit or lie in the long grass, out of sight of the passersby while he stroked her hair and told her about his life, how he’d grown up alone, pushed from one foster home to another. How he’d been kicked out of foster care at sixteen and had to look after himself, make the choice between getting a job and turning over the local off-license with some of the other boys from the home. He’d chosen laboring work because he knew what he was like, he knew he’d mess up and get caught and then his life would be over.
Then suddenly he’d stop talking and Catherine knew he was going to kiss her. She would feel his hand in her hair, or on her waist, but never anything more.

She felt safe when she was talking to him, telling him about her parents, who did not love each other, let alone her, and all the anger and resentment they hid behind the facade of a neat and respectable Christian family. It didn’t seem so sad or so desperate anymore that she’d grown up in a house without any affection or compassion and that the nearest thing she had to a real family was the girl who lived down the road and climbed in through her bedroom window nearly every night.

Then on the ninth day something changed. Marc was kissing her, just as it seemed he always did, when suddenly without warning something shifted inside her. Catherine found her arms snaking their way around his neck, and she pulled his body hard into hers as she kissed him back, arching the small of her back so that their hips met. Marc stopped kissing her.

“Whoa,” he said, breathless.

“What?” Catherine asked him. “Did I do something wrong?

“Yes, I mean no, not wrong but …” Marc looked at her. “I don’t think you’re ready to …”

In the long pause that followed their bodies relaxed, and Catherine felt as if she was backing down from a fight.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“ ’Course you can,” Marc said, shifting his body weight to put some space between them.

“Do you want me, Marc? I mean in
that
way. Because we’ve been seeing each other for a while now and I love talking to you and kissing and I don’t even know what I’m asking you really except that do you
really
like me, or do you just kiss me when you haven’t got anything to say anymore? Because you feel sorry for me?”

Marc looked dumbstruck. “What?” he asked, sitting up and back on his heels.

“You’ve never tried to …” Catherine was at a loss for words to describe what she barely understood. “Do anything but kiss me.”

Marc laughed, flopping back onto the grass. “Oh Christ,” he said, his hands over his eyes.

“Don’t laugh,” she said, punching him lightly in the arm, unable to resist smiling. Suddenly he grabbed her forearm and pulled her on top of him, the expression in his eyes shifting in a second, all trace of humor gone.

“Of course I want you,” he said, making Catherine catch her breath. “But I told you. You’re different. You’re … precious. I’ve never talked to another person in my life the way I’ve talked to you. You know me, you understand me, and I think I know you. You’re pure.”

“So does that mean you don’t want to …” Catherine discovered in that moment that she was becoming very tired of her purity.

“No, it means I want to, I want to a
lot
. But look, Catherine, if we do that—have sex—it will change everything and I don’t know, I like this—the way things are. It doesn’t feel real, it feels like a dream, another world where it isn’t crazy for me to be in love with you.”

Catherine lay on top of him, her hair making a curtain for them both as she looked into his eyes.

“You’re in love with me?” she asked him.

“I want to be … I
am
in love with you,” Marc repeated, unable to look at her this time. “But I don’t know if that is enough. I’m not the sort of bloke who’s going to take you away from this or even stick around …”

“I don’t care,” Catherine said. “I love you too. And I don’t care what happens next week or next month. These have been the
best days of my life, Marc.” She paused, nipping sharply at her lip. “You might as well know I’m a virgin.” She saw Marc hide a smile.

“That obvious?” she asked him happily, before looking levelly into his eyes. “But I want more between us. I want us to do more … to do everything.”

“Are you sure about this?” Marc asked her.

“You said it yourself. We make each other different, better. This is right, I know it is.”

Marc brushed her hair back from her face. “It can’t be in the park,” he told her, his implicit assent making Catherine want to laugh and scream and cry all at once.

“No,” she said, blushing only now. He rolled her off of his chest and sat up.

“There’s my lodgings, but it’s not exactly romantic. You should have somewhere nice, with candles and flowers.”

“Marc.” Catherine laughed, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s go.”

Marc picked up her hand and kissed the back of it.

“Come on,” he said. And he didn’t let her hand go.

The room in the lodging house was small, a single bed against a wall, a sink, a stove, a tiny fridge that burred and hummed in the corner as if it was fighting for its life. The room was neat and clean and it seemed to Catherine that there was hardly anything of Marc there. His fluorescent work jacket hung over the back of the chair. There was a six-pack of beer on the kitchen counter and nothing at all in the fridge.

“Cup of tea?” Marc asked her as she stood in the center of the room.

“Um no, thanks,” Catherine said. “Can we just …”

“Get on with it?” Marc asked her, laughing. “I’m nervous. I don’t know why I’m nervous.”

“Don’t you be nervous! I’m far more nervous than you,” Catherine told him.

“We don’t have to go the whole way today, you know,” Marc said. “We can just take it slow. One step at a time.”

“No,” Catherine insisted. “I’m here now. Let’s do it.”

Marc nodded and took two steps closer to her. Catherine had to refrain from taking the same number of steps backward.

He pulled his T-shirt off over his head and then Catherine’s singlet over hers. She felt the touch of air against her skin raise goose bumps across her slender, pale body, the sunlight filtered a bloody orange through the curtains. And then the heat of his hands on her skin, and as he pulled her into an embrace, he was kissing her neck and shoulders. These were not the dreamy, gentle kisses Catherine knew from the park, but new, deeper and commanding kisses. In one movement Marc had undone her bra and slid it off her shoulders, pulling her back onto the bed. She heard a moan deep in his throat and she felt herself respond to him, and at last she knew for certain what it felt like to be desired.