After Ever After Read online

  By the time I was fifteen I didn’t argue about the housework any longer because I didn’t have a choice. I’d let myself in from school and there he’d be, sitting in the corner in exactly the same place he’d been when I’d left that morning, staring at the telly. By that time I had to do everything around the house because there was no one else but me. By that time he was slowly trying to kill himself, and I refused to be dragged down with him. A lot of the people round there thought I was heartless, uncaring and hard to leave him when I did, like I did; to go to the lengths of finding a way out when I was so young. But what they didn’t know, what they didn’t realise, was that I had to go then, I had to. I was saving my own life.

  So, to be an ironing expert – not to mention cooking, cleaning and washing aficionado by the age of eight – seemed very unfair to me both at the time and for ever after. In fact, no sooner was I settled into my shared room with an ex-public school girl called Sara from Dorset than I made it my task to instantly forget all thoughts of housework for ever, and the pair of us, free at last of our entirely different oppressive regimes, practised as much slovenly behaviour as was possible without contracting a flesh-eating disease. My general tidiness did gradually improve over the years, but the ingrained resentment I felt towards any kind of domesticity had never left me. I have always suspected, even now, that I should be out playing in the park instead.

  I’d explained this to Fergus not long after we’d met, and he had held me all night long, silent and shocked, as most of the people that I’ve told the story to normally are, but not so afraid by it or horrified that he couldn’t look me in the eyes. If by that time I had had any doubts about how much I loved him, it was his unflinching certainty that whatever had happened to me in the past would make no difference to our future that made me believe that I really could be happy.

  Then, after I left work, and after we’d left London, his understanding over my stance on ironing subsided somewhat. Out came the whole ‘I’ve got to commute and work all day while you stay at home with the baby’ speech, and although the motherhood thing was equally as hard (equally! Ha!) and important as his job, it was his job, after all, that was paying the mortgage, and the very least I could do for him was make sure he had a shirt to put on in the morning. And I agreed, secretly thinking that after giving birth to his baby, suffering stitches, losing any hope of a good night’s sleep, seemingly for ever, and gaining a stone that didn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon, it did seem the very least thing I could do for him. But I agreed to do it as I supposed he had got a point, even though the thought of him being half right made me baulk and, what’s more, anxious. Somehow, to have laughing arguments over ironing was something I’d never considered a consequence of marriage, but I’d shrugged off the discomfort and told myself to grow up. Marriage is about compromise; all the magazines say so.

  And so every morning he has one clean ironed shirt hanging on the bedroom door, but everything else, including all my clothes, can stay creased, just like me. Well, it’s a compromise, isn’t it?

  I wait a long time for Camille’s message service to pick up her number. She must be in a meeting or, more likely, on the phone to her mum.

  ‘Hi, Cam. It’s Kitty. Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for running off yesterday. I just, well, you know, suddenly got hot flushes and went a bit bad. Apparently it’s quite normal, but I’m sorry anyway because I was looking forward to seeing you and Dora. Will you tell her I said sorry? I’d call her too but I’m really pushed for time.’

  I let the lie crackle and fizz down the line. ‘So, call me then, we can catch up,’ I say despondently, unable to keep the down notes out of my voice, and hang up.

  Camille will call me back, I know, this afternoon maybe, or tonight. And so will Dora sometime in the next couple of days and we’ll talk, and laugh and gossip, but really everything’s changed. Yesterday showed me that, and now I have at least to try to let myself go with the flow, otherwise I’m going to go insane. I have to embrace my new life; I have to actually live it.

  Today is the day that I am definitely going to the One O’Clock Club, Berkhamsted’s premier and, as far as I can make out, only secular mother and toddler group. I’m definitely going in this time. I’m not just going to say I’m going and then decide to stay home to watch Crossroads at the last minute. I’m not even going to get Ella ready and put her in her pushchair and then go to the garden centre instead to browse happily alone. Or even wheel her right up to the town hall door and stand there for five minutes until another mother comes along and catches my eye with a friendly smile, sending me scarpering in the opposite direction as fast as the buggy will allow me.

  This time I’m definitely going in. After all, I am one of them. They are no different from me, no more competent, professional or able than I am. Ella and I can go to the mother and babies club too. I’m sure that we can, and anyway, Mr Crawley says that once I’ve met some other mums I’ll realise what a good job I’m doing and I’ll stop worrying about everything I can think of.

  So, today’s the day, and after all I can’t go with dirty hair.

  Unable to wait for the bathroom to be finished I wash my hair in the kitchen, trying my best to ignore its distinctive sink smell, and as I wrap a tea towel round my head I watch Gareth – mentally dropping his surname in a bid to think of him in more friendly terms – as he fills green plastic bag upon green plastic bag with weeds. Every now and then he’ll stop and crouch down, fingering a plant with the kind of intimate care I reserve only for Ella and Fergus, take a notebook out of his top pocket and jot something down in it.

  ‘He’s having opinions,’ I think to myself. ‘He’s planning my garden, damn him, secretly. Well I’m not having it.’ I wring my hair out in the sink and head into the garden. Despite the spring sun, the chill of the morning air greeting my damp hair sends a shiver down my back. He stands to greet me, tucking his notebook back into his overall pocket. He’s not really skinny, I notice, just exceptionally tall, taller even than Fergus, I think, whose chin fits perfectly on the top of my head.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I ask, looking pointedly at the notebook pocket.

  ‘Piece of cake.’ He shrugs his shoulders and looks around at the few square feet he’s cleared so far. ‘Grunt work, that’s all. Not the creative stuff I usually do.’ He sounds defensive. ‘I reckon you’ll need to lay new turf, though. This grass has gone to pot. Do you want me to rotovate this when I’ve cleared it and get it ready?’

  I open and close my mouth. Do I? I haven’t got to lawns in my book yet.

  ‘Ummm, well, er, yes, I suppose I do. I mean, I do, definitely. Yes please.’

  He seems to suppress a smile and nods in affirmation of my hesitant command. Crouching again, he beckons me over, and lifting the branch of an overgrown conifer out of the way, says, ‘See here? Viola odorata. Sweet violets, a delightful little plant. Shy but tenacious and really very beautiful.’

  As I crouch down next to him and try to think of the last time I heard a man’s voice say ‘delightful’ without sounding camp, I imagine that I can sense his glance brushing my cheek. I look up quickly but he is still examining the plant.

  ‘There’s still quite a lot of lovely plants in this garden that you could preserve if you wanted to, some really marvellous rose bushes at the back there and a lovely Clematis over there.’

  He looks at me with a level assurance that I find obliquely disconcerting. There’s something about him, his poise and personality, that seems familiar. Maybe he reminds me of a film star or someone I once knew. No, that’s not it …

  ‘It seems a shame just to pull them out after they’ve struggled so long to keep growing in amongst all these weeds,’ he continues with a half-smile.

  I hold his amber gaze for a moment, mildly distracted by the dramatic sweep of his dark brows, and silently curse him for knowing more than me, although, granted, next-door’s cat knows more about gardens than I do, and I nod my head.

 
; ‘Well, leave what you think is worth leaving, then, and I’ll incorporate them into my plan if I agree, okay?’

  He nods and softly bites his lip, turning his face away from me for a moment. He’s trying not to let me see he’s laughing at me, damn him. He takes a second to compose himself and then turns back to face me.

  ‘Okay. Cool. Whatever you say.’ He smiles at me then and it’s all I can do to stay balanced on my heels. In that second every aspect of his face, his body and his presence conspires against me and knocks the wind out of me. I feel my heart race, my skin tingle and fizz, my stomach tie into knots. All the sensations I believed to be null and void spring suddenly, stupidly, back into life. Gareth Jerome is a very attractive man and I now know where I recognise him from: from girlhood dreams and adult fantasies. Gareth Jerome is my type.

  I blink at him, stupid with shock and shame, and scramble to my feet, turning back towards the house and shouting, ‘I’ll make you a coffee’ over my shoulder. Whatever happened to me then was written all over me, and he saw it. He saw, and what’s more it made him smile.

  First of all, I hate men like Gareth Jerome. Good-looking men who know it and think it’ll get them whatever they want with the flash of some dimples and a bit of feigned sincerity, and secondly, I am suddenly aware of my wet hair hanging lank round my shoulders and yesterday’s milk-stained T-shirt and my still-too-tight jeans. I stand at the kitchen sink and compose myself. Although a steaming pot of fresh coffee bubbles on the hot plate, I take a jar of instant out of the cupboard and spoon it into my worst mug.

  This Gareth Jerome, he comes in here, he takes over my garden, he flicks his hair around like some bloody male model and then he goes and acts all handsome, and frankly I don’t have time to be worrying about my hair and eyebrow stubble regrowth.

  I don’t want a man I’m going to find attractive hanging round the house, it’s just not on, it’s far too Lady Chatterley, and I especially don’t want one who’s going to think he’s got a bored, sexually repressed housewife on his hands. Doesn’t God know I’ve been spending the last few months trying to fancy my husband again, and the last thing I need is some other man to go and kick-start the engine? It’s obviously some kind of anomaly in fate’s grand plan for me, and I’ll just have to take it into my own hands to correct it. I force myself not to look out of the window at him and peer steadily into the larder until I can be sure that my cheeks have returned to their normal pallor.

  Gareth Jerome. My type. Out there in my garden. That kind of roguishness, a brash kind of confidence in his own occupation of space. And the way he looked at me back there when he smiled. All that in those few seconds made me feel, just for a moment, the way I did that first night with Fergus. Just for a moment he looked at me like I wasn’t married and a mum. He looked at me like I was just me. It’s frightening, it’s wrong and, what’s more, it’s damned inconvenient.

  Or it could be hormones. This is the thing about hormones. Before you get pregnant you are pretty au fait with them. You know when they’re going to get you, when the rise in the level of your oestrogen or whatever is going to turn you into a snappy-happy drama queen. You sort of know that one week a month, when the diet goes out of the window, you will buy a pair of turquoise pumps that are a size too small and shout angrily at your boyfriend, best friend, boss, because it’s Tuesday and you just can’t take another Tuesday.

  Then, when pregnancy happens, it takes you a while to realise that that one week of the month has extended to every week of every month for nine months and then seemingly for the rest of your life. Yes, Gareth Jerome is fairly good looking. Handsome even. Before the atypical, kind, caring, generous and sweet Fergus came into my life he would have been my type. But he isn’t any more, because I no longer have a type and certainly not that kind of type. No. He has not been sent here to Berkhamsted from hell to taunt me.

  Now I’ve had time to think about it I’m certain it was just hormones, the same kind of hot flush I told Camille about on the phone. Nothing to worry about at all. After all, I am Mrs Fergus Kelly now, and I do not have a type.

  Fergus will have to fire him, that’s all.

  Chapter Six

  It has taken me the rest of the morning to get us ready to go out, and at last I’m changing Ella into what I hope is going to be her last outfit of the day on the kitchen floor, an idea which she is heartily against.

  ‘I know, darling, I know you don’t like to wear clothes, but I’m afraid it’s the law.’ She attempts to poke out her own eye in defiance of the law and kicks me in the chest.

  ‘Right little live wire you’ve got there, love.’ Gareth Jerome looms above the kitchen worktop. I jump and hastily scoop Ella up into my arms.

  ‘Oh, right, yes. Well, she knows what she likes, and it’s to be naked, mostly.’ I zip up her coat and do my best impression of a cool smile and glance out at the garden. Most of the grass has been cut back and the vague outline of what was once a bed-bordered lawn is slowly beginning to emerge.

  ‘Looks like you’re doing a good job,’ I say grudgingly.

  Gareth stretches his arms wide, opening his shoulders and revealing his throat briefly to the sun.

  ‘Well, I am good at my job and it’s a nice day. Added incentive. After all, that dank dark winter seemed to go on for most of the year.’ He pauses for a moment and leans against the kitchen bench. He’s rolled his overalls down to his waist and tied the arms around his hips, revealing long and lightly muscled arms.

  ‘Look, I know you’ve got your plans and all, but while I’ve been out there I’ve been brimming over with ideas. How about I make you a plan up, free of charge, mind, and then we sit down and compare ideas together. If you don’t like it, I’ll scrap it, no worries.’

  He returns his gaze to me and I studiously examine the rotten wooden fence that is barely separating our garden from the neighbours’. I expect that after a few days I’ll stop being impressed by hawk-like eyes and raven hair and get over it, much the same way that I eventually had to stop the heart hammering, stomach-churning paroxysm that overtook me every time I saw Fergus or else I would have died, literally.

  I imagine sitting down with this Gareth Jerome, and I wonder what the harm in getting some expert advice outside of a book might be and decide it’s okay. I’ll just steal any of the ideas I like and do it myself. Sort of horticultural espionage.

  ‘Okay then. I suppose. When you come back tomorrow?’ I realise that between now and then I will have to finish colouring in my plan and read the chapter on ‘Planning and Planting’ in order to look professional. He flashes me that smile again and I manage to stiffen my knees in time.

  ‘Here we go!’ I say brightly to Ella as I wheel her out into the harsh daylight.

  ‘Have a good time!’ Mr Crawley’s head appears out of an upstairs window.

  ‘Yep! Yep, we will!’ I say, waving up at him, sounding as if I’m about to be put to death in a gladiator’s arena, but I have to look at it this way: either it’s the One O’Clock Club in the town hall or it’s a half-naked Gareth in my garden. The way I’m feeling today the One O’Clock Club is an altogether safer proposition.

  ‘And I meant what I said about those auditions. You’ll really enjoy it!’ Mr Crawley calls before closing the crumbling sash window.

  ‘Yep!’ I say again, to myself this time, my voice a strangulated squeak.

  If it wasn’t happening to me it would be funny. There I was yesterday, trying to recapture just a little bit of my old life, looking for just a moment of familiarity, and here I am today with a crush on my gardener, a trip to a toddler group and the promise of a part in the local amateur dramatics society’s latest production. I couldn’t make things much more different if I tried.

  It was Mr Crawley’s idea, of course, this whole auditions thing, and, I suspect, part of his secret plan to rehabilitate me into real life, just at it was he who had brought the One O’Clock Club leaflet and left it out for me to read. I was hiding in our living room from
Gareth when Ella had started to scream at the top of her lungs. By the time I reached her nursery, Mr Crawley and Timothy were singing ‘Ohhhhk-la-hom-a!’ to her with what seemed to be practised gusto, and she was giggling with abandon as Mr Crawley polkaed her around the room.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, smiling at them, and upon seeing me Ella instantly burst into tears as if she’d just remembered what a terrible mother I am.

  ‘Oh, darling, darling.’ I failed to pacify her and lifted her on to her changing table, knowing that this particular performance wouldn’t be over until she’d been changed and fed. At least it wouldn’t have been if it wasn’t for Mr Crawley and Timothy’s impromptu launch into ‘I’m just a girl who can’t say no’. I giggled too, then, more with relief than anything else, although Mr Crawley’s mid-west falsetto was pretty funny.

  ‘You two show a remarkably extensive knowledge of musical lyrics?’ I questioned, briefly wondering if a gay May-to-September romance might explain all of Mr Crawley’s more unusual traits.

  ‘Ah, well, the Berkhamsted Players, you see, Mrs Kelly. I am a stalwart member, and Tim here has picked up a bit along the way. Mostly chorus, I’m afraid, although I did play Fagin in the 1999 production of Oliver!, which was rather favourably reviewed in the Gazette, I might add.’

  I saw the genuine pleasure in his smile and hefted Ella back into my arms, whereupon she reached for my hair and yanked it joyously.

  ‘So, this year it’s all “surreys with fringes on top”, is it?’ I asked, my head at a forty-five degree angle.

  ‘No, no, that was last year. This year it’s Calamity Jane. We did wonder about doing two musical westerns back to back but, well, frankly our coffers are low and it saves on costumes.’

  I bit my lip as I took Ella down the hall to my bedroom and deposited her like a frog in a lily pond on the floral cover. She contemplated the whole sitting unsupported business for a few seconds before lunging forward on to her chin and proceeding to crawl backwards, which is the only direction she’s been able to master so far – to her certain doom, given half the chance.