The Accidental Wife (42 page)

‘I’ll help, though,’ Amy said, and the pair trotted off to the kitchen, reassured for the time being.

‘What if he’s run away, Marc?’ Alison asked her husband once her daughters were out of earshot. ‘Gone back up to London? We might never find him then, not if he’s gone back up there.’

Marc took her in his arms and held her for a moment.

‘Come on, you were right the first time: he’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘He’ll be holed up somewhere playing silly buggers and hoping like hell that he’s causing all of the fuss and grief that he is. I’ll go out, you ring round. He’ll turn up.’

‘OK,’ Alison said, feeling suddenly awkward in his embrace.

‘You know that you and I are a good team,’ Marc said, holding her a little tighter for a second.

Alison disengaged herself from his grasp. ‘Just find him, Marc,’ she said. ‘And when you do, don’t be too hard on him. Once upon a time you and he used to be such good friends. Don’t throw that away too.’

Jimmy was determined to be prepared as he climbed back on board his boat.

No more starting a conversation without thinking it through. Like the conversation he’d had with the girls on the boat earlier. Like when Donna Clarke asked him to go to the ladies’ loos with her even though he knew his wife was somewhere round the corner and he’d said yes. No more not thinking anything through.

The best thing in life that had ever happened to him, apart from his daughters, had been the one thing he’d put all of his forethought and planning strategies into. And that was getting Catherine to marry him. It had taken him ten months to get her to agree, ten months to persuade himself that one day she would have to love him as much as he loved her, otherwise she wouldn’t always look and be so happy when she was with him. Every single day he’d offer her another little bit of carefully gleaned proof that he was the man for her, until she dropped the last of her guards and defences and let him love her the way he knew he could, for ever. For ten months she’d resisted him and then one morning as he’d been proposing to her between kissing each one of her toes, she said yes.

Or more precisely, ‘Yes, yes, OK! Yes! Just stop it,
please
!’

‘Yes what?’ Jimmy had said, sitting up at the end of the bed, his heart in his mouth.

‘Yes, I will marry you, you idiot.’

‘Why?’ Jimmy had asked, crawling along the bed and stretching out next to her.

‘Because you won’t shut up about it,’ Catherine had retorted, pulling the sheet over her breasts, ‘and I’m tired of lying to my mother about where I am.’

‘Your mother doesn’t know you have a lover?’ Jimmy asked her playfully, enjoying the illicit implications of the word.

‘No she doesn’t,’ Catherine told him, her smile dimming. ‘I need to get out, I need to be myself and when I’m with you that’s who I am. You let me be completely me and you still seem to like me, so yes, I will marry you, Jimmy. You’re the best thing in my life.’

‘That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me,’ Jimmy said, grinning from ear to ear.

Laughing with pure happiness Jimmy had pulled her into his arms and kissed as much of her as he could before she squirmed away, rolling herself up in the sheet.

‘I love you so much too,’ he’d told her, intent on revealing those lovely breasts again.

‘I know,’ she’d laughed as he pulled her back close to him. ‘And knowing that makes me the happiest I’ve ever been.’

Twelve years ago months of careful planning and persistence had got him his wife in the end. And that was exactly what he needed now to get her back. Because when Jimmy thought of him and Catherine then, laughing and happy, entangled in that sheet, he knew he loved her just as much now as he ever did. No, he loved her more because after everything they’d been through she still had the strength and generosity not to hate his guts for it. She was the most amazing person he was ever likely to know, and even if she was never able to love him back in the same way, he had to try to make her see that he was still the man for her. He had to be able to know that at least he had tried.

So now he was going to think through from about a million different angles how he was going to tell Catherine he still loved her and persuade her to give him a second chance. He was going to be prepared for any eventuality. Every single one of them. He was going into this like a barrister: sharp-witted, determined to win and impossible to distract …

Jimmy paused. A plume of smoke seemed to be rising from the other side of the bushes that edged the towpath. He inhaled deeply. He’d know that smell anywhere.

Lightly Jimmy hopped off the edge of the boat and crept across the towpath.

‘Gotcha,’ he said as he jumped round to the other side of the bush. He stopped when he realised who the huddled figure was.

‘Dom?’ he said, looking at the crumpled teen, bundled in a parka, his hand trembling as he attempted to relight the joint that must have gone out almost the moment it was lit.

‘Have you been out here all night, mate?’ Jimmy asked with some concern.

‘I couldn’t stay at home,’ Dom said. ‘Mum wasn’t there and Dad … I hate him. I really hate him. I couldn’t take his bullshit any longer, acting like he can tell me what to do. So I walked out. I hung out with my mates for a while but then they all went home, so I came down here to see if you were in. But your boat wasn’t there, so I got a bottle of cider and waited. I must have fallen asleep. I’m fucking frozen. Good job I’ve got some gear to warm me up.’

‘Get up,’ Jimmy said, holding out an arm and hauling the boy to his feet. ‘And that muck isn’t gear, it’s weed, if it’s that. It’s probably oregano that some arsehole’s sold you. Either way it’s muck, so come on, I’ll make you a warm drink and you can tell me why you’d rather freeze your nuts off out here than go home.’

With what might have been relief on his face Dominic pocketed the joint and followed Jimmy into the boat.

‘I can’t go home,’ he said as he watched Jimmy stoke the stove. ‘I can’t go home because I hate him and every time I look at him I get filled up with this …
massive
anger and I just want to punch him. I tried to punch him before, but he just grabbed my fist and laughed at me. Told me he could beat me to a pulp if he wanted. Well, maybe he could now, but not for ever. You wait, one day I’ll show him …’

Jimmy put the kettle on the stove and sat down opposite Dom.

‘I thought you might be cool, if I came here,’ Dom said blearily. ‘Because after all it’s your life he’s ruining, not only mine. So I thought I’d come here. But you weren’t in.’

Perplexed Jimmy got up again and poured boiling water on a tea bag, sloshing in the last of his milk and setting the mug down in front of Dom, whose face wrinkled with distaste as he took a sip. ‘Got any sugar?’ he asked

Jimmy spooned first one, then a second and a third spoonful into the mug until Dom stopped nodding.

‘I am cool about you coming over,’ Jimmy told him. ‘I’m just sorry that I wasn’t here for you, man.’

‘Whatever,’ Dom said, cupping his hand around the mug of warm tea, letting its steam bathe his chilled face. ‘It’s no big deal. I was all right on my own.’

‘You stayed out all night and your mum will be going spare,’ Jimmy said.

‘She won’t,’ Dominic said. ‘She went out with
her
, Dad’s latest tart. My mum actually went round to her house to play nice with her.’

‘With who?’ Jimmy asked.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Ashley, but my dad’s been seeing your wife,’ Dominic told him. He thought for a moment. ‘I’m sorry I called your wife a tart,’ he added. ‘But she is.’

‘He hasn’t,’ Jimmy said flatly. ‘Your dad hasn’t been seeing my wife.’

‘I saw him this one time last week, I saw them together,’ Dom protested. ‘I don’t know about other times. But I know my dad – there’ll be other times.’

‘I know about that, Dom,’ Jimmy said, nodding. ‘It was nothing, just two old friends catching up. Nothing was going on, I swear to you.’ Perhaps it was wrong to lie to the boy. After all, something had been about to go on, but in the end it hadn’t. And Jimmy didn’t want Dom getting angry over something that hadn’t happened. It seemed as if he had enough real stuff to try to deal with as it was.

‘Maybe not this time,’ Dominic said with a shrug. ‘But if he
wants
it, it will happen. He’s done it before, loads of times. He’s an evil bastard, he bloody is.’

‘I know,’ Jimmy said mildly.

‘It’s like he lives in this world where he’s perfect, where he’s king and he expects everyone else to fall into place around him.

‘Yeah?’ Jimmy said. ‘
Arsehole
.’

‘And he never looks at me, he never listens to
me
. The only time he sees me is when he’s so angry that he practically wants to hit me.’

‘You’re right, that doesn’t sound like good parenting at all to me,’ Jimmy said. ‘What a fucker.’

‘He’s scum,’ Dominic agreed. ‘I hate him. I wish he was dead, I wish he was dead, I do!’ The next breath that Dominic drew in was a ragged one that caught in his throat with the threat of tears.

Diplomatically, Jimmy looked out of the window for a moment or two while the boy composed himself.

‘Why aren’t you disagreeing with me?’ Dom asked him after a while. ‘When I say stuff like that at home Mum always says, “No, you don’t hate him, Dom, you don’t wish he was dead, you don’t feel that way.” But I
do
, I
do
feel that way. I feel it so much that sometimes I think I might stop breathing because it fills my chest up. I thought it was your job to tell me that I don’t feel the way I do; I thought that’s what you lot did.’

‘So is that why you came here then? Is that what you wanted to hear?’ Jimmy asked him. Dominic shook his head, sinking his chin on his chest. ‘Look, I believe that you feel that way. The question is, why, and what to do about it?’

‘Why?’ Dom’s head snapped up. ‘Because of the way he treats Mum, because he’s a fucking hypocrite, playing at happy families with us while he’s off fucking everything that
moves
behind our backs. And because … because it’s never me, it’s never
me
he’s pleased to see when he gets in, or
me
he sits down and talks to. He hasn’t listened to me play my guitar for over a year, or asked me how school’s going since we moved to this dump. When I was brought home by the pigs
then
he looked at me. Or that time I beat up Joe Clayton over what he was saying about Mum. He had something to say to me then. The only time he’s got any time for me is when I’ve done something wrong.’

‘So actually you kind of miss him then,’ Jimmy said mildly. ‘You’re not so much hating him as missing him and feeling angry that he doesn’t seem to miss you.’

‘No, that’s wrong – I don’t …’ Dominic began to protest, then stopped to consider. ‘Nothing’s felt right for so long,’ he said at last. ‘When I was a little kid, Gemma’s age, a bit older, he’d take me down the park every Sunday to play footy. Sometimes he’d let me go to work with him. Sit in the cars and pretend to drive them. He helped me buy my first guitar. Not just any piece of crap but a Rickenbacker. He used to tell me he was proud of me, that he believed in me. I thought the sun shone out of his frigging arse. Then I found out about him and the other women. And he knew that I knew, that I saw him for what he really was. Not a hero, not my dad, but just some lecherous old creep that put fucking before his family. His hasn’t looked or talked to me since, not really. He hasn’t got the guts.’

‘Listen,’ Jimmy said, ‘I’m not saying you don’t feel angry or that you don’t hate him, I can see both of those things are true just by looking at you. But you know what? You don’t get either of those emotions without love. If you didn’t love your dad, then you wouldn’t be bothered what he did or how he treated you. He’d be nothing to you.’

‘I hate him,’ Dominic repeated, his voice low.

Jimmy thought for a moment. ‘A couple of years ago I thought I hated my life. I felt trapped by it. Somehow me, the rock god, the superstar in waiting, had got into his thirties with a wife, two little kids and a mortgage I could hardly pay. I woke up one day and I thought, what happened to my dreams? When did I forget to make them happen? I had no money to speak of, and not much prospect of getting any. I found myself thinking that if I hadn’t got married and spent so much of my life trying to get this woman to love me I’d have been free to really go for my dream, to make the band happen, to get discovered, get out of this dump, as you call it, really live life, live out my dreams because I’d always been so sure that was what the future held for me. A stadium full of seventy thousand people shouting my name. Not struggling week in and week out just to get by.

‘So I started to get angry, not loud and shouty angry but just everyday, whenever I looked at my beautiful girls and my incredible wife I’d feel a little bit more angry and I’d wonder what my life would be like without them. It was so settled, the same day after day, and I felt as if my guts were being hollowed out with a spoon. I couldn’t stand it.’

‘What’s this got to do with my dad?’ Dominic asked him bleakly.

Jimmy had to think for a moment or two; he couldn’t remember.

‘You’ll see,’ he said, hoping he looked wise and sagacious. ‘So one night I’m at this gig at The Goat – it’s a pub in the town. Cat’s there and so are all our mates. It was usually a good gig, loads of people, good atmosphere, but I was restless, angry. We were having a break and I looked round for Cat but I couldn’t see her so I went to get another drink, trying to drown the anger. I was by the bar when this woman Donna Clarke came up to me, told me she fancied me, told me she
wanted
to …’ Jimmy looked at fifteen-year-old Dom, ‘get off with me. And for a split second, I thought that getting off with her was what I wanted. I thought that would make me happy, that would make me free. And I was right. I went off with this woman and Cat caught me and her together. She set me free, all right. She booted me out that night.’

‘Are you saying that’s why Dad does it, because he feels trapped by Mum and by us?’ Dominic asked him unhappily, his voice sharpened with anger.