She remembered them leaving, the four of them with different colored miniskirts, sloppy tops that hung off their shoulders over colored vests, tights, legwarmers, and their hair teased up to be big and bold. They strutted down the street like they owned it. Ashlyn had her black bomber jacket on and in the pocket she'd slipped three miniatures—a bottle of Malibu and a couple of Baileys—she'd found stashed at the back of her parents’ drinks cabinet.
The memories started to fade at this point, became ghostly shadows she couldn't quite hold onto. They got to the park. Justin was there. He'd been talking to that idiot Eric. And then … nothing. It was gone. No, wait, she had talked to Justin. He'd told her a joke. He must have, because she remembered laughing. Giggling. Throwing her head back and laughing. Was it loud? Did she imagine that she saw Justin give her a strange look? That the others were all looking at her? What happened next? The fingers of her mind groped around, trying to grasp hold of what happened after the laughing. How she hurt herself. How she got home. Wasn't she meant to have stayed at Tessa's? How did she end up here? The blackness was deep and wide, blanketing over the whole of the night before.
The fear of that made her shiver inside. What had happened? Why couldn't she remember? Was it really the drinks she'd had the night before? That hadn't happened before. Not ever. The fear shivered inside again. She pulled her jacket over her chest, turned onto her right side and curled up.
It'd be all right, she told herself. It was only this once. And once she'd spoken to Tessa, she'd know what happened. It'd be all right. Of course it would.
I ordered coffee and a glass of water and we sat in silence as we waited for it to arrive. I was struck again by the surrealism of the situation. A needle of doubt was prodding at my conscience. I really shouldn't have come. I should not have gotten involved. I had never been married, I knew nothing of their marriage, I could do so much more harm than good.
The waitress clattered my coffee onto the table, folded the bill and placed it in the middle of the table, then left us alone.
Tessa said a lot of things. That Ashlyn had been out of control. She'd been laughing and Justin had looked at her like she was a weirdo. Ashlyn had decided to show them all how high she could go on the swing. And she showed them. Higher and higher she went until she'd lost her grip and had fallen off. Everyone started laughing at her, even though she'd scraped her hand and her face and her knee and there was blood. She'd jumped to her feet and run off. Across the grass and then away out onto the street. Tessa had been calling her, had tried to chase her, but Ashlyn had raced ahead of her, a lightning streak of humiliation. Tessa had also said that she was worried by how much Ashlyn was drinking. She'd seen the bottle Ashlyn kept in her desk at school. She'd noticed how Ashlyn was often pale and quiet and tired in the mornings. She was worried that Ashlyn hadn't been able to remember what had happened.
If you were me, Ashlyn thought, you'd understand why I need a little pick-me-up now and again. It was all right for Tessa: she could talk to boys; her mother wasn't always on her case for every little thing; she was beautiful. Tessa had it all, Ashlyn didn't. She needed a little liquid confidence every now and again, just to get her going. Tessa didn't understand. Ashlyn thought they were friends, but obviously she was wrong. Ashlyn and Tessa stopped hanging around together as much. Ashlyn found new friends. Ones who didn't judge her. Ones who, when she blacked out again, would tell her what had happened and wouldn't give her a lecture. If she wanted a lecture, God, if she wanted to be reminded of every wrong thing she'd ever done, she'd talk to her mother.
CHAPTER 27
I might have guessed he'd pull something like this,” Ashlyn said.
“It wasn't malicious,” I said. “He was a bit freaked out by the solicitor's letter.”
“We weren't exactly getting anywhere on the phone and I had to let him know I was serious about wanting the kids. It killed me that Jaxon was hurt and I wasn't there. He should have been with me.”
“He knows you're serious. He does want to sort things out—I think after New York he was just worried that the pair of you might start rowing again. This way, with someone acting as a bit of a buffer, maybe you can move forwards. Do what's best for the kids.”
Mrs. Gadsborough nodded. She was deeply disappointed. She made no secret of it. She stared forlornly at the slip of white paper between us, then looked up at me. Her eyes narrowed a little and she turned her head slightly, exploring me with slightly suspicious eyes. “Kyle's in love with you,” Ashlyn stated.
I stared at her, wondering what she expected me to say to that.
“He is,” she said, “I know him.”
“You've had no meaningful contact with your husband for months, Mrs. Gadsborough,” I said, “so forgive me if I don't quite believe that you know what he feels.”
Her lips curled up into a smile, not unpleasant, more self- satisfied, as though I'd proved her point. “See, that's exactly the sort of thing that makes you the type of woman he likes. Loves. Straight- talking. Strong. Incredibly sexy. Nothing fazes you.”
Bless Mrs. Gadsborough. She'd known me all of ten minutes and she had managed to get every little thing wrong about me.
“That's not me, by the way,” she said as she laid her cigarette beside her coffee cup, stroked her finger over the frayed top of the collapsing foam of her cappuccino. “I'm none of those things. That's the sort of woman Kyle used to go out with before me.”
Ashlyn and Kyle had been in the same group of friends and slowly she'd become closer to him. She'd fallen for him the moment she met him. He was good- looking, quiet and incredibly kind. For years she was in love with him but he didn't know she was alive; she was just another friend in his large collection of friends. She had tried to make him notice her by studying the sort of people he went out with, the women he slept with, the women he casually dated, the ones who became his girlfriends. She kept trying to be like them—changed her hair, changed the way she dressed, even tried to change her personality—so he'd notice her. When trying to be someone else didn't work, when he still just treated her like a friend, she resorted to telling him the truth. She invited him over for dinner, she made fresh pasta with spinach and ricotta sauce, she poured him a glass of expensive white wine and told him she was in love with him. She decided not to hold back—if he knew how deeply she felt he might give her a chance. He was taken aback, had stared at her and said nothing. A little part of her died at that moment because she knew, just knew, he didn't feel the same way.
But Kyle eventually said, “Let's go on a proper date and see what happens.” Obviously that made her fall in love with him even more. He didn't have to, but he did. So they went out. And then they went on another date. And another one. And all the while she was thinking, he's just seeing what happens, so she was always on her best behavior. Didn't drink because she could never stop at one and she didn't smoke. She also let him decide when they should go to bed. Because she thought he was testing her. He clearly wasn't that into her because he waited eight weeks before he made a move on her. A few months into their “just seeing what happens” dating, someone asked her out. She thought it would be easier for both of them if she said yes. Then he'd have a way out, she'd be off his hands and maybe this new guy would like her better. When she told him …
“When I told Kyle that someone had asked me out, he went mental.” Ashlyn shook her head before a smile crept onto her face. “I mean completely and utterly lost it. ‘My girlfriend,’ he said. ‘What right has some bloke got to ask out my girlfriend? I'll kill the bastard.’
“I'd never seen him like that before. I've never seen him like that since. Me being so pleased that it seemed Kyle had fallen in love with me at last, ignored the obvious. I was young and naïve and desperately in love, I didn't want to see the obvious. Do you know what the obvious is, Kendie?”
I shook my head. I suspected I knew but I didn't want to interrupt her, to stop her flow, because then I'd be required to speak. And, seriously, what would I
say? I'd wanted to know what Ashlyn was like and this was it. She was the type of person who shared things a stranger shouldn't know.
“No, it's not that he wanted me because someone else wanted me. The obvious was that he wasn't in love with me. Kyle always wants to do the right thing. Always. And the right thing was not to reject me out of hand, because that would hurt my feelings. The right thing was not to just let me go when someone else was interested, the right thing was to give me a chance. The right thing was to feel jealous when someone else moved in. That's what motivates Kyle, doing the right thing. And dating me was the right thing. It wasn't love that brought us together—well, not on his part—it was his decency.
“I like to think sometimes that he did fall in love with me. But if he did it wasn't love that made him fall in love, it was his sense of decency. And because of that, I always loved him more than he loved me. And that's why I had a few drinks. After a few drinks I felt good enough to be his wife. After a few drinks I seemed to have it all. I was everything that Kyle wanted.”
“I see,” I said and trained my line of sight on my coffee.
Had these two people—Kyle Gadsborough and Ashlyn Gadsborough—actually met? Were they at all acquainted with the other person, because seriously, the pair of them sounded as though they were married to completely different people. Neither of them ever felt good enough for the other. They were both so desperate to be good enough, they never bothered to find out if they were. Or even what they could do to be good enough. Is this what marriage does to you? I wondered. You don't speak to each other, you don't tell each other the truth, try to find a solution to your problem together. Instead you go away and self- destruct: you fall in love with someone else, you sleep with someone else, you drink, you gamble. You do anything except be honest— talk—with the person you're meant to spend the rest of your life with.
“Marriage is easy when you drink a little to take the edge off things. My marriage was easy when I could take the edge off things. And when I stopped drinking because Kyle wanted me to it became less easy. The sharp edges and nasty bits came back. It became a nightmare.”
The pink tip of her tongue slipped out between her moist lips and she licked the small bubbles of the cappuccino foam off her finger. The move was so breathtakingly erotic, I had to look away in embarrassment. The man at the next table stared at her with his mouth open, his sandwich frozen between his plate and mouth; his male companion nearly fell off his chair. How this woman thought she wasn't good enough for anyone was a mystery. She was so sexual and beautiful. Most women would kill for either of these, let alone both.
“My father was an alcoholic,” Ashlyn said matter-of-factly. “That was the big family secret. I didn't even know for years. Not till I left home and my father died. That was why my mother was so controlling—she had no control over his drinking, so she tried to control me.
“At least he was fun sometimes. He might have been falling-down drunk, but all I remember is the fun. The presents he'd buy, the funny stories he'd tell. Mum tried to tell me that he'd get nasty, but I don't remember that. She was the one always being nasty. Trying to make every little thing perfect. Wouldn't you know it, her daughter's not perfect so I paid for that…” Her voice and her eyes drifted away for a moment. “Maybe my father was an alcoholic, but it doesn't mean that I am. Kyle knew about my dad, which is why he threw that in my face.”
In all the research I'd done since I'd found out about Ashlyn's problem, it constantly said that alcoholism was handed down from generation to generation. Now she had confirmed that it hadn't started with her. Slivers of fear ran through me: Summer or Jaxon or both? Who would it be passed down to? Who would find themselves powerless around alcohol? I'd been looking and looking but hadn't yet found the answer as to whether it was a fait accompli. Were one or both of them going to end up on that path, become like Ashlyn no matter how they were brought up?
“I want my kids back,” Ashlyn said to me, as though sensing I was thinking about them—being their mother connected her so closely to them that even when a stranger was thinking of them she could tell.
“That's what I wanted to tell Kyle but instead he sent you. I also wanted to tell him I wasn't that bad,” Ashlyn said. “Kyle was always on my case about how much I drank but I wasn't that bad. I bet the way he tells it I was some kind of monster. But if you go to meetings you'll hear far worse stories. You'll see that I'm not so bad.
“My husband thinks I'm the worst person on earth because I liked a drink, but no one got hurt. I think that's why he wouldn't go to meetings with me; he didn't want to know that I wasn't as bad as he made me out to be. In the grand scheme of things, I wasn't like the other people in the rooms.
“The main reason I wanted to meet was to tell him I want the kids. The letter was just a courtesy, a prewarning of my intentions. I was hoping we'd be able talk it through. I can't imagine Kyle's coping very well, and I know from what they say on the phone they miss me as much as I miss them, so, would you tell him that I want my children. I'm fine now and I want my kids.”
I couldn't help but think she was talking about Kyle, their father, as though he was a babysitter. She'd stepped out for a while and now that she was back, she wanted him to disappear.
Her eyes met mine, then tried to dig into my head, trying to ferret out my unspoken thoughts and unexpressed feelings. “You don't like me very much, do you,” she stated.
“I don't know you, Mrs. Gadsborough, so I can't make any judgements on that. I try not to be judgemental.”
“I wouldn't like me if I were you. Here I am, a mother who left her kids. Is there any greater crime?” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied mildly, “lots.”
That grin, the slow, easy grin that was often captured in the photos on display in her house made its way across her face. I marvelled at how you couldn't tell that she'd once been a drinker. Not from just looking at her. Her skin was flawless under her makeup, her eyes clear. “Kyle must be incapable with you. Smart, sassy, no bullshit… Are you two … ? Or have you ever … ?”
“No,” I replied. Just no. I wasn't playing that game, didn't want her to start making up stories, to make suppositions, to try to name me in her divorce. “No.”
“That was straightforward. I thought I'd have to coax it out of you or work it out for myself.”
“I have nothing to hide, I have no interest in your husband other than as a friend. So, no.”
“I didn't want to leave them,” she said suddenly. There were tears in her voice, her body deflated a little. For the first time since I sat down at this table, I realized that I was being presented with the real Ashlyn.
“I really didn't.” She shook her head slowly, her eyes falling shut. “I couldn't take them with me. I didn't know where I was going … I thought about taking them with me but I had nowhere to go. I couldn't go to my mother's. I can't spend more than three hours with her without her driving me crazy. And I couldn't stand that right then.”
She stood in the upstairs corridor of her home, her bags sitting by the front door, dressed in her coat, the scarf her babies had bought her for Christmas wrapped around her neck as a reminder of how it felt when they wrapped their arms around her for a hug. She was shaking, tears had been running down her face while she'd been packing. She had to leave. She had to go. She couldn't stay another second here. Everything had gone wrong here and she couldn't stay. She'd just said good-bye to Jaxon. She thought of taking him with her. Of getting him dressed and taking him with her. But she didn't know where she was going. She had enough cash for a taxi to take her to the other side of Brockingham. She had a new, unused credit card stowed safely in her purse. But she had no idea where she was going. And she couldn't take Jaxon and leave Summer—it'd kill them to be apart.
“I'll come back for you,” she mouthed at Jaxon's bedroom door. “I promise, I'll come back for you.” She turned to her bedroom door where Summer was asleep in the big bed. “I'll come back for you, too,” she said t
o Summer through the door. “I promise you.” She almost changed her mind then. Almost decided to go back to the flat and unpack her bags. But she'd been here before. She'd packed to leave before but had decided to stay. And if she kept staying she'd suffocate. She'd die. She couldn't breathe here. She couldn't think, she couldn't feel, she couldn't live. Another day here would kill her. Or she'd kill herself. Alive or dead she had to leave.
The sound of the taxi pulling up outside made up her mind. She'd packed before but hadn't ever called the taxi. Now she had to go. Her escape was all mapped out, the plan was set in motion, she had to go.
Wiping her eyes determinedly, tears soaking into the wool of her gloves, she turned and made her way downstairs. She couldn't look as the taxi pulled away. She couldn't look at the house because if she did, she might just change her mind.
“I couldn't cope. There, I've said it, I couldn't cope.” She ground the palms of her hands into her eyes, smudging her carefully applied makeup. “Being a mother is isolating. I found it so hard to say to Kyle that I couldn't handle it all on my own. And I certainly couldn't say it to my mother. I didn't want them to think I wasn't good enough. And all my other friends seemed to be doing it so well. I say friends. I don't really have friends, not anymore.
“There's this idea that you meet lots of women in mothers’ groups, at the clinic, at the park. But what happens when you just have nothing in common with them? When you're sitting in a room surrounded by them and you have nothing to say. They all look well put together, their kids are all so cute and happy and get over any illness quickly. And you can't even pull a brush through your hair because one of your kids has colic and won't stop crying while the other has fallen off the sofa and bumped his head.