Cath Staincliffe - Trio

She could never bring herself to voice the awful thoughts that haunted her, how she had wished Adam’s love child dead, hoped that Julie would miscarry. Evil, unchristian. Adam wept his crocodile tears and said a million sorrys and talked of mistakes and being weak and a fool. He said she had withdrawn from him, been critical, grouchy, he talked about the tranquilisers and how sleepy they had made her. A hundred excuses.

The counsellor made them consider the future, what they wanted for themselves, from each other, what they could give. She asked them to consider separation as well as staying together. Kay panicked. She would not condemn the children to a broken marriage whatever the cost to her. She could not. But she could not forgive Adam either. It was a stalemate.

‘Picture yourselves in five years time.’ The counsellor had smiled lightly. ‘Think of three words to describe your marriage as it might be then.’

Adam huffed and puffed and eventually came up with stable, loving and safe. ‘Faithful,’ Kay said crisply, ‘settled, friendly.’ It was the best she could do and even those modest aims seemed completely unattainable to her.

Adam had promised her he would never stray again and begged her to believe him.

‘I can’t,’ she said simply. ‘I tried before and look where it got me. You want my trust. You can’t have it. There isn’t any.’

He sighed as though she was being obtuse or unreasonable.

The marriage became a convenient arrangement for raising the children. Julie had the baby, a girl, and Adam arranged to pay maintenance. He never saw his daughter. Theresa and the others knew nothing about their half-sister.

Once the twins started college Kay planned to take up training in information technology. Her independence was just around the corner. She was determined to build a new life for herself. And when she was sure of her footing she would leave Adam.

Theresa

‘You may turn over your papers now.’

The last exam. Her eyes skimmed the paper, snatching at the key words of the four questions to see if her revision had covered all the items. Yes, more or less. The world-trade one would be the hardest, she’d have to waffle a bit, but the rest were items she’d gone over and over till she was sick to death of them. Three hours and it would be done. Freedom.

She began to write, her mind working more quickly than her fingers could. She finished fifteen minutes ahead of time and tried to read over her work, but by then she was exhausted, concentration spent, unable to think straight anymore.

She capped her pen, closed her eyes and sat back in her chair. Summer beckoned. Two weeks family holiday on the Costa Brava and then university. If she got her grades. Surely she would. She had worked so hard. The teachers thought she’d sail through. She needed a B and two Cs for Exeter, the course in geology.

‘Couldn’t you have found somewhere further away?’ Her father had joked and her mother had gone all soppy and said, ‘I can’t imagine you not being here. Oh, I know it’ll be wonderful for you and everything, but I keep thinking how did you grow up so quickly?’

‘It’s only three years, Mum. I’ll probably be dying to get back to Manchester by the end of it.’

‘I doubt it,’ her mother snorted.

Theresa tried not to think too much about the actual move. It was exciting but a bit scary too. She was going into student halls of residence for her first year. After that she could move out to a place of her own, or get somewhere with friends. It would be brilliant. Her own place, own key. She’d had a silver key on her eighteenth-birthday cake. Key of the door. It used to be twenty-one but now you were grown up at eighteen. They still kept to twenty-one at the Bingo place. She’d been with her mum once. To the Mecca. A fundraiser for the Catholic Rescue Society. Most of the people knew all the lines and they’d shout them out with the caller, and when there was a saucy reference the whole place would make a big ‘w-h-o-o-o’ sound. Theresa and her mum nearly wet themselves at some of the quips, and the characters.

The night before her eighteenth birthday she’d been helping her mum make vol-au-vents and her mum had spoken in that halting tone that Theresa knew as her important voice.

‘Now, you’re eighteen, if you ever want to trace your family, we wouldn’t mind, Daddy and I. We’d understand.’

‘I don’t,’ Theresa said, faintly embarrassed. ‘I don’t see any point.’

‘It’s just that we wouldn’t want any of you to feel… well, that you couldn’t find your natural parents, that we’d be upset. If it mattered to you, if it does in the future, then we’d be behind you.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ she said gracelessly and changed the subject. She hadn’t wanted to before, why should she feel any different now?

‘Stop writing now,’ Mrs Evans called out. ‘Pens down. Please remain at your desks while papers are collected.’

Outside in the glaring sunshine, Theresa joined her friends, swapping anecdotes from the exam. They wandered to the sixth-form common room and made coffee to go with their cigarettes.

‘Voila!’ Letty produced a bottle of martini and plastic cups. ‘A little light refreshment.’

Oh, yes please! It was the last exam. It was all over. Theresa took a big swig. Someone put Stevie Wonder on full blast. ‘Don’t You Worry Bout A Thing.’ Theresa finished her cigarette, drained her martini and felt a bubble of elation rise inside her.

‘C’mon.’ She pulled Letty to her feet and began to dance. Life starts here.

Kay

She had known she’d cry. She had worn waterproof mascara and had two neatly pressed handkerchiefs in her handbag. She held it in as much as she could, clenching her stomach and pressing her lips tight. But when they had made their vows she had felt her eyes fill and had to dab and sniff and hold on tight.

She and Adam had been so happy those first few years and then bang! Like hitting a brick wall at sixty miles an hour. The years since had been little more than a sham, a foundation for the children. Please, God, let it be better for them.

She glanced across at Craig’s family. His parents seemed nice. They’d only met two days before. The Murrays had travelled down from Aberdeen and were staying at the Midland in town. Craig she knew better, he’d visited several times in the three years that he and Theresa had been going out. He had a dry sense of humour which caught her unawares many times. He wasn’t good-looking, not in the conventional sense, his chin too narrow, nose too big, hair a mass of wiry brown curls, but he had a lovely manner and he plainly adored Theresa. Anyone could see that.

The two had met as postgraduate students at St Andrew’s. He was in archaeology – tombs and bones, he declared in sonorous tones – and Theresa was a geology student. Craig had made various puns about rocks and hard places when he asked her out.

Kay watched as Theresa raised her veil and Craig leant forward to kiss his new bride, and she felt the swell of emotion playing havoc with her insides. Who had decided that joy should make us weep? Adam squeezed her hand and she turned to smile at him, blinking hard.

The organ struck up and people prepared to follow the couple out of the church. She gestured to Dominic and the twins to get ready. She felt drained. There would be photographs now, then the reception, then a dance going on late into the evening. Hours before she could slip her shoes off and her girdle and lie down, and already she could feel a headache starting. Just tension. It was supposed to be a happy day but she felt silly and emotional and off-kilter. To do with her little girl being all grown up and married she supposed. Mrs Craig Murray. Theresa Murray. Tess, Craig called her, a nickname of his own which Theresa accepted without any qualms. Even though Theresa had left home six years ago for university, marriage put the seal on it. And they’d be so far away. Exeter had been bad enough but Craig had taken a post in Boston. Only for three years, Theresa had reassured her, we’ll be back then. But Kay wondered. They were always saying it was hard to find posts in the UK. You read about the brain drain in the papers. She would miss her. And if they had children…