Cathy Glass - Run, Mummy, Run

He paused, but Aisha didn’t say anything, she looked ahead and waited for him to continue.

‘Christine was fun all right, the life and soul of the party, but she needed a drink to do it. In fact, she needed a drink for everything – she was an alcoholic. I’d had my suspicions early on but I hadn’t realized the implications until we’d been together for nearly two years. She was very clever at hiding it; they are, alcoholics. I enjoy a drink as much as the next person, but I’d never known anyone dependent on it like she was. It was a drug to her. The most important thing in the world. She used to live for the next drink. When I finally realized, I confronted her and there was a dreadful scene. She accused me of spying on her, but I was only trying to help. From then on it went from bad to worse. She no longer hid her drinking and drank openly, all the time. She lost her job, then didn’t have to sober up at all. She began staying in bed, just getting up to go out for more booze. I threw the bottles away, time and time again, but that always led to another ugly scene. She paid with her credit card; it didn’t bother her that she couldn’t afford it. I would come home from work to find her drunk or unconscious and lying in a pool of vomit.

‘I stood it for as long as I could and I tried to help, believe me, I did. I didn’t want another relationship to fail. Then, one night, she wasn’t there when I came home from work. I was relieved to begin with, but when it got to midnight I started to worry. I thought she could be unconscious somewhere, in a gutter, freezing to death. I didn’t know where to look so I sat up all night, waiting. She finally staggered in at four o’clock in the morning, completely paralytic. God knows where she’d been; she looked dreadful and stank of piss.’

He paused for a moment, struggling to find the words.

‘She wanted sex. We hadn’t made love for months; I hadn’t wanted to, not in the state she was in. It was disgusting, I couldn’t possibly. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept coming up and pressing herself against me. I could smell the sick and booze. In the end I pushed her away … I didn’t know what I was doing … I pushed her too hard, she fell and hit her head. That was the end for me. The following day I packed and left. I never saw her again. It was all so humiliating and ugly, Aisha. I just wanted to forget it. But when I felt the depth of your love today – your passion – I knew I should have told you sooner.’

He fell silent and Aisha heard his breathing soften and felt her own heart settle. He had told her his darkest secret, the worst had been said and it wasn’t so bad, not really; she was just sorry he hadn’t told her sooner. She hadn’t realized she was so unapproachable, so perhaps it was her fault after all. She reached out and touched his arm. ‘Mark, I’m glad you’ve told me now. Thank you.’

He turned to look at her, his face still pale, his expression tight. ‘Can you ever forgive me, Aisha? I’m sorry. I’ve hated myself these past six months for not telling you. And I’m sorry I overreacted back there, it’s not like me at all.’

She moved closer to him and slid her arms around his neck. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. I only wish you felt you could have told earlier. You’ve no idea how much you frightened me just now. I thought I’d done something awful.’

He pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair. ‘Oh, my little love! You could never do that. You’re perfect, so very special. I’d die rather than hurt you.’

He kissed her hair, then her face and neck, and she clung to him as relief flooded through her. It was his conscience that had made him react as he had and the depth of his love for her.

‘Can you ever forgive me?’ he breathed into her hair, holding her tight, so tight, as if he would never let go.

‘Of course I forgive you,’ Aisha said gently. ‘I understand why you behaved as you did.’

‘Do you? Really?’ Mark asked slightly surprised.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Aisha, can you ever trust me …’ His voice faltered. ‘Can you ever love me again? Can it be the same as before?’ ‘Yes I can, Mark. It will be.’

‘Can you trust and love me enough to be my wife? Aisha, will you marry me?’

Aisha gasped. Love flooded her heart as all fear of him vanished. It was going to be all right after all. She turned to him, took one of his hands in hers and kissed it gently. ‘Yes, Mark. I will.’

Chapter Nine

Mark and Aisha were married on the anniversary of their first date, exactly one year to the day after Mark had met her outside Harrods and taken her to The Crooked Chimney to eat. The date had been Mark’s idea, it was part of his happy knack of saying and doing the most romantic things, wanting above all to please her. He asked her father formally for his daughter’s hand in marriage, knowing he would appreciate the traditional approach.

‘I shall always regret my divorce prohibits us having a church wedding,’ Mark said. ‘I know how much you and Mrs Hussein would have liked it. I am so very sorry.’

‘We are all entitled to one mistake,’ her father replied convivially. ‘I was fortunate in being found the wife I was. I am pleased you’ve decided to follow the ceremony with a church blessing. You know that means a lot to us, as practising Christians.’

Aisha had said nothing to her parents about Mark’s ‘second mistake’ – his dreadful ordeal with Christine – only about his marriage to Angela. Why upset them with what they didn’t need to know? she reasoned. Why complicate the past, or detract from the present, when there was no need to? And perhaps part of Aisha knew that her father might have questioned her further about the circumstances of the break-up of Mark’s relationship with Christine, or cast doubt about his culpability, or disapproved of Mark having lived in sin, or disapproved completely. For there was a gap between her generation and her parents’, and indeed their cultures, which, since meeting Mark, seemed to Aisha to have widened. She had come to realize that while she was a true Westerner, her parents were not and would never be, even though they had tried and so wanted to be.

Aisha’s father shook Mark’s hand after he had given his consent and then congratulated them both, while her mother kissed their cheeks and dabbed at her eyes with a little lace handkerchief she kept tucked in the waistband of her sari. Then Aisha’s father had presented Mark with a cheque for ten thousand pounds. ‘Towards the cost of setting up home,’ he said. ‘It’s not a dowry.’ And they all laughed.

Mark hadn’t wanted to accept the money to begin with, but Aisha nodded to him that he should. It was a matter of pride and family honour, and to have refused her father, even for the right motives, would have been unforgivable.

‘It costs a lot to get started nowadays,’ her father said, ‘and it’s no more than I would have spent on a full white wedding had my daughter had one.’

Aisha’s heart went out to her father as he handed over his hard-earned money. He seemed so small and humble beside Mark’s worldly sophistication. But Mark’s gratitude was heartfelt and sincere and her father seemed to grow from his response. Aisha thought then, as she had done countless times before, that she was the luckiest woman alive, both to have found Mark, and to have his love. She couldn’t have been happier.

The wedding was a small, simple affair with twenty guests including Mark’s parents, brother, an aunt and uncle, Aisha’s parents, and a few close friends of Mark’s from work. Aisha had invited Grace, the only person from work she wanted to ask, but unfortunately she had been taken ill two days before and wasn’t able to attend. Aisha’s relatives in India were sent invitations, but for protocol only as there was no possibility of them coming – they couldn’t afford it. As her father had said, ‘If I offer to pay for some, the others will take it as a personal slight.’ Including cousins and their children, there were over sixty members of the extended family so they decided it was better to send the invitation only, and then post wedding photographs to all of them after the day.