Free Another Mother's Life by Rowan Coleman Page B

Catherine asked him instead, still holding the card between her palms.

    Applying very gentle pressure on her shoulders, Marc pushed her back into the long grass and lay alongside her, his head propped up on one elbow. “I want to lie here in the grass, talking and kissing you,” he told her. And that was exactly what they did, while Marc wove buttercups and daisies into her hair to make, he whispered in her ear, his own masterpiece.

    They met every chance they could, every free hour that Catherine could steal from her mother and explain away to Alison. She would have been content to lie in the long grass with Marc day after day, but one day Marc pulled her to her feet and said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

    “Where else?” Catherine was reluctant, afraid of who might see her and afraid to tell Marc that she felt that way, because she didn’t want to hurt him.

    “The movies,” Marc told her, raising his eyebrows. “They’ve got a showing of that film Ghost on at the cinema. I’ve heard it’s rubbish, but girls like it, right?”

    “You’re taking me to Ghost ?” she said, repressing a laugh because it seemed like such a normal thing for a boy and a girl to do and exactly the sort of thing she thought she would never do, especially not with Marc.

    “I’m doing better than that.” He grinned, tugging at her hand. “Come on.”

    Never in her life as the tallest, thinnest, most ginger-haired girl in school had Catherine ever felt as self-conscious as she did that afternoon, walking hand in hand with the shorter, compact, shirtless Marc through the town toward the Rex cinema. She was sure that this would be it, this would be the moment when one of her mother’s friends or, worse still, her mother caught her in a lie and the daydream she had been living would be over. Amazingly her luck held, and as they approached the grand but shabby art deco building Catherine saw a small queue forming outside its doors.

    “This way,” Marc said, not leading her to the entrance but pulling her down a narrow alley that ran alongside the building.

    “What are we doing?” Catherine asked him, giggling.

    “I met this guy in the pub last night, works in the projection room.” He pulled her into a doorway with a locked fire door that was marked “Fire Escape, Keep Clear!”

    “Years ago this old heap was the go-to place for miles around, he reckons. Gold paint on the ceiling, velvet chairs, cocktails brought to your table.”

    “Yeah, I’ve heard that,” Catherine said with an uncertain smile. “I’ve seen some of the old photos in the local history books. So?”

    “ So , there were boxes, just like you get in a theater for the really posh people to sit in. They don’t use them now, except for storage, but they are still there …” He smiled at her and kissed her gently on the lips. “And the bloke said if I bought him a pint, he’d let us in the side entrance and we could watch the film in a box.”

    “Really?” Catherine gasped, delighted more that Marc hadbeen thinking of her when he came up with the plan than with the plan itself. Ghost was one of Alison’s favorite films and they had seen it so many times she was fairly sure she knew the script better than Demi Moore did.

    Marc nodded, looking pleased with himself as he banged several times on the door. After a while the door swung open and Marc and the projectionist exchanged a few words.

    “Don’t get up to anything too energetic in there,” the projectionist told Marc as he pointed them toward the box, chuckling to himself.

    “Do you mind,” Marc said, smiling at Catherine as he held the door to the box open for her. “I’m with a real lady here.”

    They sat side by side on plush old velvet seats, Marc’s arm around her shoulders.

    “This film is crap,” Marc said after about twenty minutes, making Catherine laugh.

    “Do you want to leave?” she asked him.

    “No,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I want to make