The Accidental Wife (22 page)

‘I call fucking some tart a bit more than being touchy-feely, Mum,’ Dominic said, his words but not his tone brutal. ‘Look, I’m not a kid any more. I see things, I hear things. We both know that everyone was talking about him before we left London, and you – they talked about you too. About what kind of woman you must be to put up with what he did. I know you like to tell everyone including yourselves that we moved because I’m such a dead loss and on the verge of becoming a hardened criminal. I don’t even care if that’s what people think about me, but we both know that’s not the real reason. We left London because you finally found out Dad was fucking that tart at the showroom. But not because of the actual fucking, because you’ve put up with that in the past and it didn’t seem to bother you. No, this time we had to leave because you realised that everybody, all your friends, all his slimy mates, knew about it for months and you didn’t.’ Dominic shrugged. ‘Dad did what he always does and promised that it would never happen again and you did what you always do and believed him. Only this time you couldn’t stand living in the same street, going to the same gym and the same school where everybody knew what he’d done to you, and what a fool you were. So you made us move back here and blamed it on me.’

‘Dominic,’ Alison said steadily, reeling from the so nearly accurate portrayal of her life her son had just related to her, ‘you can always talk to me, but please don’t use that language. It doesn’t shock me, it doesn’t mean anything. Talk to me like an adult, not some foul-mouthed kid who hasn’t got the brains to know better.’

‘Oh, come on, Mum,’ Dominic said. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t do the middle-aged parent thing with me. That’s not who you are. Not with me.’

‘That’s not true,’ Alison said, about to deny all of it, but then, weary of deceit, choosing only to deny the inaccurate parts of her son’s interpretation. ‘I didn’t want to come back here. You father wanted to come here.’

‘Why?’ Dominic asked her, his confusion framing her own.

‘Because …’ Alison remembered Marc’s reasons but none of them seemed very plausible any more. ‘He said it’s a nice place. It’s the place where we started and the place where he still has something to prove. And as much as you’d like to deny it, moving here had got plenty to do with you. You of all people shouldn’t listen to gossip, Dom. People say things that aren’t true … maybe that was part of the reason for leaving, but it wasn’t all of it. Both your dad and I wanted a fresh start.’

‘A fresh start?’ Dominic looked disgusted with her. ‘Mum, I don’t know what was going on back there with that woman, but this isn’t a fresh start. It’s an … old ending. Are you sure Dad didn’t just come here for that. For her?’

Alison stared at her son, the boy who might have been conceived on the same day as Cathy’s baby, Cathy’s long-gone child.

‘You don’t have to worry about any of this …’ she began, reaching out to pat his hand.

Dominic snatched it away. ‘Yes I do,’ he told her, making some effort to keep his voice down. ‘Of course I bloody do. Do you think your shit marriage only happens to you two? Do you think the rest of us aren’t involved? And it’s not just me. Gemma puts on a front but before we moved away she came and asked me to go to her school and beat up this boy who’d been saying things about Dad …’

‘You didn’t, did you?’ Alison asked him, horrified on all fronts.

‘Of course I didn’t. I’m not a psycho. I told her to tell him I would if he ever talked about it again and it seemed to shut him up. And do you think Amy would really be so shit-scared of everything if it wasn’t for the fear of you and Dad busting it all wide open? You think that everyone else looks at us and sees a perfect family, living in a nice house, with a perfect life. But you’re wrong. Everyone in London knew the truth about us and before long everyone in this dump will too.’

Alison didn’t say anything for a moment. She just stared at her hands on the bed covers, flat and immobile.

‘You’d be better off without him.’ Dominic said.

‘I … you can’t say that, Dom,’ Alison reacted at last. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know what we went through to be together and how hard we’ve fought for everything, we were only a little bit older than you when we met. No one thought we’d make it, and look at us. Grown-up life isn’t pretty, it isn’t easy. You do your best, you keep going, you wait for things to even out.’

‘Me,’ Dom said matter-of-factly.

‘What?’

‘What you two had to go through to be together was me. I can do maths, Mum. I know he got you pregnant with me when you were seventeen. You two got together because you had to, because of me, and you’ve been stuck together ever since, even though you don’t fit.’

‘No, no,’ Alison said firmly, leaning forward and holding his wrists. ‘You’re a clever boy, Dom, but you’ve got that bit wrong. I loved your father so much. I wanted him so much. I was mad for him. When I realised I was having you it was a bit of shock. I was frightened and it was hard to know how to cope. But when your dad and I got together it was because we thought we could make a go of it, not because we had to. Not
because
of you, even though you would be the best reason in the world. We loved each other.’

‘But not any more,’ Dom stated.

‘That’s not … stop it, Dom, stop saying all of these things, just because you are angry with us. This is your father you are talking about and no matter what you say about him he loves you and you love him.’

‘I don’t,’ Dom said simply.

‘You do,’ Alison insisted.

‘Mum, I don’t even know him. I never see him except when he wants to bollock me. I never speak to him. He never even looks at me when we’re in the same room together. At least you shout at me sometimes – he doesn’t even do that. It’s because he resents me, because it was me in your belly that got him tied up in this family he’s so keen on wrecking.’

‘Now you’re just being silly,’ Alison said. ‘You and Dad talk and spend time together. Look at … well, what about when …?’ Alison trailed off. She couldn’t remember the two of them talking in the last month, let alone the last week. ‘He’s very busy at the moment,’ she said instead.

Dominic dropped his head so that his dark hair fell over his face and Alison wondered if he was crying.

‘Look, I maybe haven’t been the best mum in the world. You and I grew up together, and I’m still growing up, still wondering how to be your mum even now, especially now you are turning into a man. But I love you, Dom. I love you.’

Dominic looked up at her and his eyes were bright with tears.

‘Leave him, then,’ he said. It was the first time he’d asked her.

‘I can’t just …’ Alison began.

‘Leave him. We’d be all right on our own. I’d help look after you and the girls, and you could be you again. You say I
don’t
understand what life for an adult is like but even I know that if your life is shit and if you are unhappy then you have to change it, because you are the only one who can. Sometimes, Mum, you have to be brave.’

‘I can’t just leave him,’ Alison said, with some surprise because, despite everything, the thought had never once occurred to her until then.

‘You could,’ Dominic said. ‘If you wanted to.’

‘But I don’t want to,’ Alison said automatically. ‘Look, Dom, I’m glad we’ve talked, I really am, and the things you feel are so important, but you’ve got everything muddled. Dad and I are having a rough patch and it will be over soon. We’re not going to split up because, well, we’re just not. We are meant to be together. In the morning I’ll talk to him about you, about how you’re feeling. We’ll sort out some time for you two to spend together – how about that?’

‘Whatever,’ Dominic said, standing. Alison sensed the connection between them had gone.

‘I promise you everything will be fine,’ Alison told him just as he closed the door on her.

After Dom had gone Alison lay back on the bed and covered her eyes with her hands.

Of course it was easy for Dominic to imagine that she could just walk away from this life, her marriage with Marc. That it was simply a question of making a choice and abiding by it. After all, she’d believed exactly the same thing at almost his age. She’d made the choice to be with Marc, to leave behind her home, her parents, her exams, her future, and it had been a simple choice to make. At the time it hadn’t even felt like a choice. It was simply something she had to do.

Now, though, she was living with the consequences of that decision, and at thirty-two it wasn’t that easy simply to overturn a lifetime of consequences. You don’t just pack your
bags
, dump your old life and take off. It was impossible to imagine living without Marc and all the complications he created. Trying to picture it made Alison’s head hurt. Then she remembered something, or more accurately someone, that she had met only briefly last year but whose story kept coming back to her again and again.

Every Tuesday evening Alison had gone to aerobics at her local gym. She could have done it during the day much more easily but she liked the evening class better, she liked the female instructor who took it, and the energetic women who had worked all day but were still prepared to jump around for an hour just to justify the takeaway they were going to buy on the way home. Alison had made a few friends there, but especially a woman called Christina she used to giggle with in the back row, and who made Alison laugh because whenever the instructor wasn’t looking she’d stop with her hands on her hips for a breather.

Just before Christmas, Christina had invited Alison out for a drink with her and some of the others from the class and Alison had accepted gladly. Even then, before she had found out about Marc’s latest affair, Alison had been able to sense the barely tangible build-up of tension at home. At the time she put it down to the approach of Christmas, which always wound her daughters up, Dominic’s erratic behaviour and the fact that Marc was under so much pressure at work. The period of calm and contentment that Marc went through when he first met another woman must have passed by then because he was becomingly increasing terse and short-tempered with her. How Alison hadn’t guessed what was really going on she didn’t know. Perhaps she just hadn’t wanted to know. On the evening she went to meet Christina, though, she felt that she needed a drink.

Everyone else had already arrived when Alison got there,
over
an hour late and flustered because Marc had not got back from the office when he said he would and she’d had to wait, sitting on the bottom step in her make-up and going-out shoes, watching the clock until his key finally turned in the latch.

Christina had not been sitting with the other women from the class but was at the bar, deep in conversation with a blonde woman that Alison didn’t recognise. Pretty, with waist-length poker-straight hair, she was laughing with Christina about something.

‘Alison!’ Christina said finally, catching her eye as she hovered on the periphery of the occasion. ‘Come here. Come and meet my friend Sophie. She’s turned up this evening completely unannounced on a whirlwind visit back to London from her new life in the country, didn’t you, Soph?’

‘Well, I was going to stay in and be a good daughter but then my mum started getting her dogs to sing in harmony to the
EastEnders
theme tune and I thought a quick drink out couldn’t hurt.’

Alison laughed. ‘Hi, I’m Alison James.’

‘Sophie Mills,’ the woman had smiled at her. Alison guessed they were probably about the same age but Sophie looked, not younger than her exactly, but lighter, as if her life hardly weighed her down at all.

‘A new life in the country sounds exciting,’ Alison had observed politely.

‘Exciting! That’s an understatement,’ Christina jumped in as her friend rolled her eyes. ‘Listen to this. One minute Sophie here was über careerwoman, living for her job and nailing a massive promotion, and then out of the blue guess what happened.’

‘Um,’ Alison said. ‘Redundancy?’

‘No, she got custody of her dead best friend’s children. Two little girls, six and three, isn’t it, Soph?’

‘Oh!’ Alison gasped, thinking immediately of her own daughters. ‘Poor little things.’

Sophie nodded. ‘It was a difficult time. It’s still hard for them to get used to. They miss her.’

‘And Sophie dropped everything to look after them,’ Christina said.

‘Well, it wasn’t that big a deal …’ Sophie said. ‘Anyone would have done the same.’

‘Of course it was a big deal. It was massive,’ Christina insisted. ‘You’d only ever looked after your cat before those children came along. Anyway, it all kicked off, the kids’ dad came back, Sophie got offered this promotion at work and then the dad moved back down to Cornwall with the children and we all thought that normal service had resumed. Sophie the ice queen was back. But guess what happened then.’

‘Christina,’ Sophie crossed her arms and raised a brow, ‘Alison doesn’t want to know all about my life.’

‘Oh, give me a break, Sophie, of course she does. I never get bored of telling people this story. Maybe one day I’ll meet the love of my life and all I’ll be able to talk about will be me, me, me, but right now you are far more interesting.’

‘What happened?’ Alison had asked Sophie directly, laughing. ‘I have to know now!’

‘Well, I missed the children. I’d got to know them and I fell in love with them, I guess. I missed them – it took me by surprise how much. But then a good friend told me that if I was so unhappy without them it was simple enough to put right. I should go and move closer to them. So I did!’

‘I think you’re missing out something quite crucial,’ Christina observed, raising a brow.

‘No I haven’t,’ Sophie said, an air of challenge in her voice. ‘I’ve pretty much talked about myself all night. Let’s talk about
you
now, Christina.’

‘What’s she missing out is that it wasn’t only those darling little girls she fell in love with,’ Christina told Alison, despite Sophie’s warning frown. ‘It was their dad. The tall, dark and handsome Louis. He turned up after being away for years, and as he bonded with his children he and Sophie fell for each other.’ Christina sighed theatrically and fluttered her lashes. ‘The only man ever to melt the ice queen here. Many have tried and failed, but it was Louis that Sophie fell for, and it wasn’t just those girls she moved for, it was Louis too.’