The Woman He Loved Before

  I sat on the end of the sofa, pulled my legs up under me. I wanted to ask her what had happened, what was wrong, but I didn’t want to force her to talk if she didn’t want to. God knows she was patient and kind when I wanted to talk about what had happened at home, and she never pushed me when I would clam up, my throat and mouth glued up with tears and sadness.

  ‘You all right, then?’ she asked, and smiled at me with her mouth closed. I knew why: when she’d laughed before I’d seen the grey and black devastation that was her teeth.

  ‘I suppose. Like I said on the phone, I’m out of work again. I’m so gutted.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. The out of work thing.’

  ‘Oh God, really? Sorry, didn’t realise. When did that happen?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not sure. Just remember waking up one afternoon and thinking I couldn’t face another night of shaking my bum in some guy’s face just so I could get enough cash to score. So I never went back.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I suppose, deep down, I knew what Dawn did and I knew why, but because she’d never told me, and I’d never officially asked, I pretended she really did work behind the bar in a club, that she liked pretty, spangly underwear and that the sickening smell from her room was the weird incense she burned. It was easier thinking that than thinking about the alternative.

  If she was no longer stripping and obviously still hooked on drugs …

  My mind went back to the day I saw her getting into that man’s car. God, surely not, I thought. ‘How are you getting by?’ I asked her, because while I didn’t want to know I could tell Dawn wanted to talk. And after all she’d done for me, the least I could do for her was let her talk.

  ‘What do you think? I let men have sex with me for money.’

  The first thing that came into my mind was my landlord – his face, his chubby hands, and his wobbly belly. Had he paid someone like Dawn? Had he paid someone like my friend to have sex with him because they were so desperate – for drugs or not to be thrown out onto the street?

  ‘God, I’m sorry,’ I said to her.

  Her face creased up into a smile. ‘What have you got to be sorry for?’

  ‘I’m just sorry that you need your drugs so much that you do that,’ I said, feeling a bit foolish at not having anything more suppportive to say.

  ‘Eve, never lose that, OK? Never become so … beaten down by the world that you lose your ability to feel compassion for someone like me. When I don’t really deserve it.’

  She was my friend, how else was I supposed to react? Was I meant to tell her she was disgusting and stupid and that I wanted nothing more to do with her? If I was, then something was wrong with me because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to think that way about her. Not when her stripping had given me a place to stay for all those months and she’d been so lovely to me and given me her suits. It wasn’t easy living with her at times but it’d been better than sleeping on the streets, I think anything would be better than sleeping on the streets, which is what I’m facing now.

  ‘What was it like?’ I asked her. ‘Stripping?’ Was it really that bad? When it made enough money to allow her to live in this expensive area of London and to support her habit for so long, could it have been that bad?

  ‘It was OK but after a while you see the same old faces, and the same old expressions, and it gets boring on top of everything else. You’re kind of dancing on autopilot, you’re not really giving it your all, which is what you need to do if you want to earn lots of tips. But, you know, some of the girls loved it. They said it made them feel powerful that men would come in to pay to watch them dance. I thought it made the men seem pathetic and me in the process.’ She shook her head. ‘But I needed to get my fix, so I did it. But it’s easy money if you’re desperate.’

  I was desperate, had very little money left, but the question was, ‘am I that desperate?’ Two months, or even two weeks ago, I would have said no. Now, I couldn’t say that with such conviction.

  I wanted to ask her about the sleeping with men for money, but I didn’t dare.

  ‘It’s better than what I do now in some ways,’ she said. ‘What I do now is real desperation, but then again it’s more money for less hours and I don’t have to give anyone their cut, like I did at the club.’

  ‘You have to give the club a cut of the money? I don’t understand.’

  ‘All the strippers work for themselves and you have to pay the club to be able to dance there. Which means, every night, you have to make enough to pay the club their fee, and then anything on top of that you get to keep. Sometimes, if it’s a slow night and the other girls are more bolshie and desperate than you, you won’t make enough to cover the fee so you go home making a loss.

  ‘That’s why what I do now is better in some ways. I always make a profit if I get a punter.’

  ‘Don’t you mind?’ I asked her. ‘Don’t you mind doing it with someone you don’t care about?’

  Dawn’s eyes drifted away as she thought about it. ‘Dunno,’ she said eventually. ‘Never really thought about it. I sort of fell into it. A man who recognised me from the club saw me in the street and asked me if I did “extras”. I thought, Why not? and followed him to his car. It was all over really quick and I’d made a hundred quid. I just kept on from there, really. I rarely get that much now. It doesn’t feel like sex, not like it did with Robbie. It’s just letting someone stick his thing in you.’

  From what I remembered with Peter, sex was more than that. But what did I know? I’d only done it with him.

  ‘Can we talk about something else? I’m bored of this now,’ Dawn said.

  ‘Yeah, course.’

  I stayed for another hour and we chatted about all sorts of things, but the talk was constantly punctuated with Dawn’s hacking cough. As time wore on, I could see she was getting jittery, and she started to get all clammy, the grey of her face deepening, while her eyes kept going to the wall on the clock. She was getting close to the time when she needed a fix, so I thought it best to leave her.

  She hugged me at the door and said it was nice to see me. I said it was lovely to see her and I meant it because underneath it all, she was still Dawn. I offered her some money – I had twenty pounds in my purse – and I saw her eyes widen as she stared at the battered purple note. I could see how much she wanted to take it, but something stopped her. ‘Nah, thanks Eve, you’re really sweet, but taking money off you would be like taking the food from the mouth of a puppy. Thanks.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked her.

  ‘No, of course not. But please put it away before I do take it and I feel worse about myself tomorrow.’

  I can’t stop thinking about her. She seems so fragile, I don’t know how much more she can take before she permanently breaks. I wish there was something I could do to help her, but I can’t even help myself right now.

  Something good has got to happen soon, hasn’t it?

  Eve

  17th September 1988

  Ah, another day, another diary entry.

  It’s been a while, though, hasn’t it? Three months. And everything is so wonderful again. Hahahaha! I can’t believe I’m lying to my diary. What will I do next? Try and hide from my reflection in the mirror?

  Well, at least I’m still in my flat, and I didn’t have to ‘bunk up’ with the landlord to stay. I swear he actually thought I would. When I rang him to tell him I had another job he sounded quite disappointed.

  I’ve also started smoking. I tried it when I lived with Dawn, and I’ve got a real taste for it now. It’s something to do to pass the time and to calm me down. So, what am I doing? Guess. Yes, I got another job as an admin assistant for a big accountancy firm. Well, that’s what I told my mother in my last letter to her.

  The truth is I’m now doing what Dawn did. I’m a stripper. But I don’t just take my clothes off, I dance for men with virtually no clothes on.

  Time ticked away from me and while I got the odd day’s temping work here and there, it w
as getting closer and closer to the time where I would have to pay my rent and I wouldn’t be able to pay it. I couldn’t sleep for the worry, and I spent all day every day feeling sick.

  I even considered going back to Leeds, but the thought of living under the same roof as ‘Uncle’ Alan, my mother’s boyfriend, waiting for the day he would corner me and rape me was too scary. Because I know even then he’d find a way to convince my mother it hadn’t happened. I could have gone back if I’d known my mother believed me, or even if Uncle Henry and Aunt Mavis were around still because they’d known what was going on and had me over at theirs whenever possible. I almost wrote to my mother to ask her if she’d consider asking him to leave so I could come back, but her face when I told her what he’d been doing to me and the way she’d believed him over me stopped me.

  So, I went to the Job Centre to find out about signing on. But when I looked in the local paper and Loot for flats or studios, even the ones that took benefits people were just too expensive. I thought about moving out of the area, but the only places I could afford were so far out, that I’d be isolated and find it harder to get into town to get jobs. I tried shops, cafés and cleaning, but nothing. Now my office experience worked against me because they all thought I’d leave the moment I got an office job and they didn’t want to take that risk. They said it to my face: I was a gamble they couldn’t afford to make in a recession.

  So, I was desperate. When I went to see Dawn I knew I was desperate, but I didn’t know if I was as desperate as she must have been – then came the day when I realised I was. I was desperate enough to at least give it a try. I’d almost given Dawn a call to ask her advice but then thought better of it. She had her own problems and I knew she’d try to talk me out of it.

  I looked in the local paper and the Yellow Pages for any clubs in the area and found there was one about a fifteen-minute walk away. After memorising the address, I changed into my best set of underwear – just in case they wanted me to take some clothes off – then I pulled a comb through my hair, put on some lipstick and mascara, and left before I could change my mind.

  I kept my head down and walked quickly to the club, every step taking me nearer to where I would change my life, but I knew I had to do it. It was that, the streets or going back home. This was the least worst option. Well, that’s how it felt.

  The club was down a backstreet that I had never been near before. It was quite desolate even in the middle of the day. At night it must have been like walking around an industrial desert. The club had two huge black iron doors, thick bars on the windows and obscene graffiti decorating the walls outside. Hanging above the left door was a sign that said ‘Habbie’s Gentleman’s Club’ in unlit pink neon; the name was also painted on the right door in the same lettering.

  My legs almost turned themselves 180 degrees on my body to walk away, very fast, but my brain was in charge so I raised my hand and made a fist, then knocked. I almost ran away again in the moments it took for the door to be opened, and then I actually took a step back to run when the tallest, widest man with the thickest neck I’d ever seen opened the door. ‘Yeah?’ he asked through the slabs of muscle that were his face.

  ‘Are there any jobs?’ I asked, my voice sounding pretty normal considering I was terrified that this man could snap me in two just by breathing too hard in my direction.

  He stepped back, jerked his head to mean, ‘Come in’ and I realised that he could murder me and no one would know what had happened. I hadn’t told anyone I was coming here. Still, I stepped in and found myself in a long, wide corridor with an unmanned pay booth to my right, and a grubby carpet that seemed to lead down to somewhere there was music. There were stairs to my left, going up to the depths of hell – at that moment, I felt like I’d stepped into whatever place was lower than hell.

  ‘Down there,’ he said and waited for me to walk ahead of him.

  He reached above me to open the door and I found myself in a huge expanse with a bar that stretched from almost beside the door to the other end of the room. In front of me was a stage with shimmery curtains behind it and at its centre a huge, thick pole going up to the ceiling. There were tables around the room, with three or four chairs around each one. With the lights up, you could only occasionally see the little shiny squares of the glitter ball as it turned above my head, but you could clearly see the grubbiness of the place.

  ‘Wants a job,’ the big man said to another guy who I had only then noticed sitting at the bar. He was young and good looking in an odd sort of way – dark, slicked-back hair and friendly features but really unsettling eyes and a mouth that looked like it sneered instead of smiled. He was wearing jeans and a burgundy Fred Perry top, and had on a massive gold watch and massive gold rings on most of his fingers. Beside him on the bar was a short glass with an amber liquid in it.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Nineteen,’ I replied, lying. People didn’t ask your age unless it really mattered that you were over eighteen.

  ‘Yeah? What’s your date of birth?’

  ‘25 June 1969,’ I replied, quick as a flash, then raised an eyebrow at him. It was cheeky and pushing it, but I got the impression he wouldn’t believe me if I didn’t give him at least a little attitude.

  ‘You don’t look it,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘I know. It’s always made life easier, with not paying adult fares,’ I lied again. I’d never do anything like try to get away without paying the right fare.

  ‘Got any experience?’

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘And you think you can do this job even though you’ve got no experience?’

  ‘I’d like to try. I like to dance.’

  ‘Take off your clothes.’

  Inside I turned to jelly. But I couldn’t let him see that. From looking at him, I could tell that any weakness would be punished. I forced my fingers not to shake as I quickly undid the buttons on my denim jacket, and slipped it off. He and the big man were both staring at me, and revulsion slithered through me as I realised men like them and more would be looking at me like that every night if I got this job. I pushed that thought away, then closed my mind to all thoughts of how wrong this felt.

  When I was young, I saw the life story of the famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. She was really shy the first time she got up in front of an audience but she carried on despite her terror as she sang ‘Let Me Entertain You’ in front of a group of men who were wanting to see flesh and bumping and grinding. Right then, I tried to be Gypsy Rose, I conjured up the look of terror and defiance she had on her face as she carried on singing even though the men in the audience were laughing. I kept that scene in my mind and suddenly, without remembering quite how, I was standing in front of them in only my pink bra and pink knickers.

  Their eyes ran over me just as closely as their hands would have, feeling and touching every line, lump and goosebump.

  ‘Not bad,’ the man at the bar said. I realised that I didn’t even know his name but here I was without any clothes on in front of him. ‘Stomach’s good and flat, tits a nice shape. Turn around, let me see your arse.’ I turned around, still with ‘Let Me Entertain You’ in my head. ‘Hmmm, not bad. Bend over.’ I hesitated. ‘Open your legs and bend over,’ he repeated and I swallowed hard and did as I was told. ‘No, right over, as far as you can go. Put your hands on your knees if you have to … That’s right. Now look at me.’ The last thing I wanted to do was look at him. I did not want to look at anyone right then. I twisted my body slightly and did it. ‘That’s it. Now smile.’ He nodded. ‘Yup, that’ll do.’ The pair of them weren’t looking at my face: their eyes were groping my bum. ‘Stand up now.’

  I stood up and turned around. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take, but this was what the job was about, wasn’t it?

  ‘Take it all off,’ he said casually, removing a cigarette from the packet beside his glass.

  ‘Everything?’ I asked, the bile starting to slither through me again.
br />   ‘You got a problem with that?’

  ‘No, I was just wondering if I have to do that every night.’

  ‘Nah, usually just the top. I need to see down below to check you isn’t …’ He turned to his mate and they both grinned together at their private joke, ‘you know, carrying anything extra down below.’

  What? I thought.

  It must have showed on my face because the big man said, ‘That you ain’t a fella.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘But I’m not.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what they all say, love. Don’t always make it true,’ the big man said.

  Let me entertain you, I sang in my head as I did what they wanted.

  ‘Definitely a girl,’ the man sitting down said as he stared at the lower part of my body with his head on one side while lighting his cigarette. I hoped for a moment that he’d singe his eyebrows on his match, but he didn’t.

  ‘Yeah, definitely,’ the big man said, staring down there, too.

  The guy at the bar spun away, picked up his drink and took a swig. He was suddenly bored by me. ‘Shave your legs, shave your minge and you can start tomorrow.’

  I stood, naked, cold, exposed, listening to him, not knowing if I should get dressed yet or what. ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘You could sound a bit more enthusiastic. I’m taking a risk with you. Your tits and arse are OK, but you aren’t experienced. My punters don’t like being test-runs for inexperienced girls.’

  ‘I mean, thanks for the opportunity,’ I said, still not knowing if I could get dressed or not.

  ‘Get your kit on, then,’ the big man said.

  ‘Come in tonight, see how things are run,’ the man at the bar said. ‘Talk to the other girls, find out about the fees and the rules. Make sure you do, cos if you break ’em, you’re out.’

  He waved his hand to tell me it was over, I was dismissed. He stopped his glass halfway to his lips. ‘What’s your name?’