Marshmallows for Breakfast (30 page)

“I can't see her,” he'd said as he frantically paced the kitchen floor. “I can't sit down and talk to her.” I'd reminded him that he had to because the children had to come first. And he'd explained: “It's not because I don't want to talk to her. It's because I'm afraid I'll beg her to come back to me. Most of the time I don't want her back, but if I see her, I'll probably say anything to get her to come back. I was doing it before. I was using the kids to get her to come home. I'm not doing that anymore and I don't want her back. But, God help me, if I sit opposite her, look at her, I know I'll lose it. I
won't remember the hell, I'll remember everything else. I did in New York.” Not long after that he'd hit upon the “inspired” idea of me going instead. Despite my protestations, he'd begged. And begged. And begged. I'd agreed to go and listen to what she had to say because he was so sincerely terrified by the prospect and, I have to admit, because I was curious, I wanted to find out for myself what Ashlyn Gadsborough was like.

After Jaxon's accident she'd flown back for a long weekend. She hadn't seen Kyle then, either. Instead she'd picked her kids up from school on a Thursday night and stayed with them over the weekend at her mother's place, let Kyle pick them up on the Sunday afternoon and had flown out on Monday morning.

As I approached her table I noted the differences between the photographic Ashlyn and the real one. She'd had her caramel- colored hair trimmed a couple of inches into long layers that danced around her shoulders. Like any woman our age she had crow's feet around her eyes, but her skin was flawless because of makeup.

For this meeting she'd obviously made an effort with her appearance. She'd blended several shades of pearly green and blue eye shadow around her eyes to make their deep green stand out; she'd curled on black mascara; she'd slicked on a shimmery red-pink lipstick; she was wearing a brown silk camisole top with a small sequin butterfly motif at the heart of the slightly plunging neckline. Her bare shoulders were a smooth, dark cream color.

“Hi,” I said to her as I arrived at the table and smiled. “I'm Kendra, you must be Ashlyn.”

A confused, cautious smile moved over her face as she looked me over. I'd made an effort with my smart navy-blue jeans, white T-shirt and red corduroy jacket, but it'd taken me awhile to decide on that—it's hard to know what to wear
to meet your landlord's estranged wife to discuss how they were going to proceed with custody arrangements for their children.

“Kendra,” Ashlyn repeated. “Kendra … Kendra … Kendra … ?” she mumbled over and over as though trying to recall where she'd heard it before. “Kendie?” she asked, catching on. “Are you Kendie?”

I grinned, should have remembered the children didn't call me anything else. “Yes, that's me.”

“Ah,” she said, spearing me to the spot with a look of understanding, “Kyle's not coming is he?”

“No, I'm afraid not.”

Her disappointment was heartbreaking: the light went out of her eyes and her face fell. She'd made such an effort, she'd made herself beautiful to see him and now he wasn't coming. It was for nothing.

“Sit down,” she invited. “You might as well.” Her thin, white fingers reached for her cigarette packet, unsheathed a cigarette. I noticed the slight tremble in her hands. Nerves, I assumed.

“He hates me that much,” she said, tapping her cigarette on the table in a nervous gesture.

“No, not at all. Not at all. He was just nervous about seeing you. He wanted me to talk to you instead.”

It wasn't difficult to see how they had once meshed together, how his quiet, barely contained strength fueled her bright exuberance. How her outward joyfulness inspired him. When that had changed was anyone's guess. “I suppose he's told you everything about me,” she said, a hopeful note suggesting she didn't want it to be true. That her estranged husband had kept her secret from the lodger.

“He's told me some things,” I said diplomatically.

Ashlyn's carefully painted mouth twisted into a bitter
little smile. “You mean he's told you that I used to be a raging alkie.”

Ashlyn had her first drink at fourteen.

She was with Tessa Brandhope, whose parents were going through a divorce. They were the only parents in the whole school who were splitting up. Ashlyn s parents were never going to get a divorce. Even though Ashlyn s father was always in a bad mood with her mother and her mother suspected he was having an affair, Ashlyn knew that people like them didn't get divorced. They didn't show to the outside world that anything was wrong. They hid their problems, got on with it. Ashlyn got on with it. Ashlyn and Tessa sneaked the alcohol from Ashlyn's parents’ drinks cabinet.

They glugged the whiskey into a tall, straight glass almost to the top, then refilled the bottle to the right level with water. Upstairs in Ashlyn's bedroom they drizzled the strong- smelling amber liquid into their half- empty cola cans until the glass was almost empty.

She started coughing after her first gulp. It burnt her throat, made it impossible to breathe, caused an intense bout of spluttering.
I don't like this,
she thought.
It's disgusting.

She pretended to Tessa it was the most delicious thing ever. She pretended she was like all those people on television who knocked back alcohol and loved the taste of it. They spent the afternoon giggling in her room. Tessa passed out. Laughing one minute, then out cold on the bed. Ashlyn tried to wake her, shook and shook her best friend but she'd just flopped around like a rag doll, a silly grin fixed to her face.

When Ashlyn's mother called them for dinner Ashlyn had been giddy. The burning in her throat had become a warm glow in her stomach and a gentle fuzziness in her head. She was happy inside; calm and excited. She could feel the blood flowing through her veins for the very first time. She felt alive. Ashlyn had smiled at her mother from the gap in her bedroom doorway and said they weren't hungry.

She saw her mother's face contract in displeasure; she knew she was in trouble. Her mother didn't argue, she wouldn't raise her voice with a guest in the house, but Ashlyn knew she'd be in trouble the next day. And she didn't care. Everything was soft and fuzzy around the edges; smoothed out and easy. The world was nicer, softer, gentler. Tessa was still snoring in the middle of her bed, saliva dribbling from the side of her mouth, her face flushed. Ashlyn sat on the edge of her bed, draining the last of the cola from her can, and then gulping down Tessa's half-full can. Ashlyn still didn't like the taste. But she was buzzing. She didn't feel sick, out of control or like passing out like Tessa had done. Ashlyn climbed on the bed beside Tessa, a smile spreading across her face. Bliss. This was bliss. This was what it must feel like to be someone other than Ashlyn Clarke-Sellars.

I watched Ashlyn raise her cigarette between her forefinger and middle finger. Her nails were long pale ovals that had been manicured awhile ago so were now ragged when the rest of her was polished. “Kyle exaggerates you know,” she said. “He exaggerates how bad I was.”

She woke up fully clothed on her bed. Her eyes were swollen and felt like two gritty tennis balls in her head; her mouth was so dry her tongue hurt. The space where her head used to be was banging like an army of miners who were eking out a very good living. She rolled over onto her side and pain bolted through the left side of her body. She lifted her hand, the mound of the palm and wrist were scraped raw, grit and gravel embedded into the wound. She balked as she stared at it.
How did that happen?
she asked herself as she became aware that her knee was throbbing. Looking down, she found her black tights in shreds around her knee, long ladders snaking up and down her leg. Instinctively she touched her face. It was tender. Bruised. Bits of dried blood sticking to her fingers as she took her hand away.
What happened?

Ignoring the pain, Ashlyn lay flat on her back, stared up at the ceiling. The night before she'd been out with Tessa, Audrey Narten and Lesley Trindale. They'd gone down to the swings at the local park—a few of the boys hung out around there. Justin Sharpe hung out around there. Audrey looked oldest out of all of them and she'd managed to steal her older sister's driver's license so she'd bought a couple of bottles of Crazy Cat 40/40 fortified wine and a bottle of whiskey. Crazy Cat was too sweet for Ashlyn—in the past two years she'd grown ac customed to the smoky taste of whiskey and liked the way it spiced up cola, the way it produced quicker results if she drank it neat. They'd changed into short skirts; Ashley hated the mottled skin on her legs so she'd pulled on tights. They'd been playing Bros and Culture Club, Ashlyn remembered that. She remembered that the edges of her day—revising for her mock exams, listening to her mother complain about her father, watching her dad avoid looking at her or her mother once during dinner—had been planed off very quickly by her drinks. Quicker than usual. Lately, she hadn't needed as much for the fuzziness to descend. For the world to be a nicer, brighter place; for her to be pretty, to be good enough to speak to Justin. Or any other boy. Nowadays it didn't take long for the world to become the kind of place where she fitted, felt wanted, felt important.

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.