It shouldn’t have been a surprise, then, when I opened the door earlier today to find him on the doorstep. All six foot of him, solid and ominous in his dark suit and black overcoat, black gloves on his hands.
Before I could react, his hand was around my throat, choking me, as he pushed me through the porch, into the hallway, kicking the door shut behind him and slamming me against the wall.
‘Don’t test me,’ he snarled. ‘I will think nothing of snapping you in two, you cheap little whore.’
Breathe, I can’t breathe, I was screaming inside, clawing at his hand to try to get it off my throat. Can’t breathe, can’t breathe.
‘You get out of my son’s life, and you stay out,’ he continued to snarl. ‘I don’t care what you tell him, or if you tell him nothing at all, but you leave him. Today. And don’t come back. I won’t ask again.’
He took his hand away and I collapsed to the ground, spluttering, trying to get air into my lungs, while holding my throat and shaking.
‘No,’ I said. Even though I was still gasping for air, my eyes were filled with tears, my face felt like it was on fire, I still found the words to defy him. ‘I’m not leaving him.’
‘WHAT DID YOU SAY?’ he shouted.
‘I said “No. I’m not leaving him.” There’s nothing you can do.’ I looked up at Hector, from my place on the ground, seemingly subservient, feeling anything but.
His fingers curled into the palms of his hands and I knew he was going to hit me. He could do a lot of damage with a punch, but that was no reason to do what he wanted or say what he wanted to hear. I had realised something the moment he stepped over the threshold, something that had never been as real a possibility as it was now that he had shown his hand. If he was so much in control, if he could get out of this unscathed because no one would dare leave or censure him, then why hadn’t he told Jack or his wife? If he was as powerful as he liked to make me believe, then why bother coming to threaten me? After all, I am a cheap little whore, I am not someone of consequence.
‘You have more to lose than I do,’ I said. ‘You hurt me, I will tell Jack everything. And then you’ll lose your sons, your wife, and I know the people you work with might turn a blind eye to what you do but not if it was made public. And you can kill me. It’s all written down. I’ve got dates, names, places. And you’ll never find my diaries before Jack does. So go ahead, do your worst, it’ll be you that suffers the most. Being a whore comes hand in hand with suffering: I can take it.’
‘If you ever breathe a word,’ he said, seeming to get taller and wider in that instant.
‘I won’t if you won’t, lover,’ I said. That was the sort of thing Honey would normally say. Not me. But I wasn’t Honey any more. Or was I? Had I been fooling myself all these years that she was a persona I had adopted? Or was she really just me?
‘You be very careful, little girl,’ he snarled again, baring even more of his perfect, even teeth. Then he was gone, slamming the door with a loud, heart-stopping bang.
I stayed slumped on the floor for ages, fingering the part of my throat that he had crushed, wondering how I was going to explain it away to Jack. Maybe it wouldn’t bruise too much, even if it went a little red. I’d wear a scarf or a polo neck for a few days, and it would be fine.
I know Jack’s dad will be back. Maybe not physically, but he will find a way to get at me, to get rid of me – it is just a matter of time. He might have more to lose, but he won’t let this go. He’s not that type of man. After I left, I always wondered if he came after me. I wondered if he thought I’d be back, or if he used those contacts he always boasted about to try to find me. I doubt it. I might have been his possession, and he might have had a cursory look, but there were plenty of other whores out there to take my place. And if he did have someone look, they can’t have looked very hard because they didn’t find me. It’s not as if I went very far away. Effectively, I was hiding in plain sight, if I was hiding at all.
He might have let me be if I had not hooked up with his son, if I was not in his life again. And if I hadn’t threatened him. What’s done is done, though.
I know it’s stupid, but I’m actually more scared by discovering that I might actually be more like Honey than I thought. If that’s true, then … all those things that I did in the past, I did them because I – EVE – was capable of doing them. I hadn’t stepped outside myself to do them; I hadn’t worn a mask to protect myself from the horrors of it all.
I, Eve, had been a prostitute.
I was dirty, grubby, and disgusting.
I was desperate, trapped, and afraid.
Those things were not in the past, they were in the present because Honey is in the past and Eve is the person I see when I look in the mirror. And if it was Eve who did those things, then she isn’t gone. She is in the here and now.
I am Eve. And I am a prostitute.
Me
14th February 2000
This is what happened this morning.
Jack lay next to me in bed, watching me sleep until his probing gaze was enough to stir me from a rather deep and satisfying slumber.
‘Morning,’ he said, leaning up on one arm and staring down at me.
Coffee. I could smell coffee. It was usually me who got out of bed and stumbled my way downstairs to get the fancy machine working and brought two mugs back to bed.
‘Hmmm,’ I said, knowing instantly that it was too early for niceties and too early for coffee. He was in one of his mental moments where he’d want to do something fit and healthy that was good for the body and mind, while I wanted to lie in and not think about anything until midday.
‘I’ve made coffee,’ he said.
‘Hmm-hmm?’ I replied, which was me asking, What do you want, a round of applause or something?
‘And I’ve got you a present,’ he said.
‘Hmmm,’ I replied, thinking, Can’t this wait? At least until it’s properly daylight.
He placed the ‘present’ on the pillow in front of me. ‘There you go, princess.’
I prised open an eye, and there on the white pillow lay a gold and diamond ring. Both of my eyes flew open and I stared at it, startled and slightly afraid.
My line of sight moved from the ring to his face, which was grinning at me. He was wide awake and his eyes were dancing.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’ he was asking.
I found my smile, looked back at the stunning diamond cluster and then returned my gaze to him.
I bit my lip as I nodded.
‘Come here,’ he said, gathering me his arms, knocking the ring somewhere into the bed.
‘No, you come here,’ I replied, submitting in his arms, but placing my hands on either side of his face and drawing him close so we could kiss and kiss and kiss the morning away.
Eve
March 2000 (just a quick update)
The phone keeps ringing and then being hung up the second I pick it up.
It only happens when Jack isn’t here, and the silence at the end of the phone is so unnerving. I would prefer it if he told me what he wanted, what he wanted to do to me, that he was going to kill me. I would prefer that to the silence. Because it feels like it echoes into the house when I replace the receiver. It makes this place, my home, feel so unsafe. I stand very still and look around, searching for shadows that should not be there, listening for sounds that tell of an intruder, waiting for something to come out of nowhere and do me harm.
It’s Hector, of course. He started it since we announced the engagement. He wants me gone, he wants to scare me off. He does not want me to marry his son. His tactics are working, though: I am becoming more and more nervous. I don’t like being here alone now. It probably wouldn’t be such a problem if the place wasn’t so big, and constructed of so many small, intimate and scary spaces.
He’s rung ten times this evening. In the end I unplugged the phone. But I have to plug it in again when Jack comes home, and taking it off the hook feels like I’ve let him w
in. He knows that he’s got to me, scared me, unnerved me so I have to take measures to freeze him out. If I answer it shows that I am not that bothered. If I unplug the phone, it just rings and rings for him and he can’t be sure that I’m not too busy to pick it up.
Sometimes I wish he’d just come over and do it, would finish me off rather than torturing me. But he likes torture, doesn’t he?
I wish there was a way to tell Jack without it being the end of everything.
Me
libby
The phone is ringing upstairs.
The phone is ringing and ringing and ringing. It has been ringing for most of the day and the person never speaks when I answer.
It’s just a coincidence, isn’t it? It’s just a coincidence that Hector used silent phone calls to threaten Eve and now, when he has reason to threaten me, I have been receiving silent phone calls.
I blot the ringing out of my head and concentrate on the diaries.
It’s just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence.
eve
12th May 2000
The day I’ve dreaded and hoped for all these years has come.
A letter from Leeds arrived earlier and I haven’t dared open it. I wrote to my mother in February and told her of my engagement to a lovely man who I would like her to meet one day, and I, of course, heard nothing.
But now I have a reply, it seems. The address and my name is typed, but it’s postmarked Leeds and since contact has dwindled to nothing with all the other people up there I used to write to, it can’t be anyone else.
It must have been telling her I was engaged that did it. Maybe she thought that I would now be OK with her having a relationship with Alan because I finally understood grown-up love.
I’m scared to open it, though, in case she is cursing me. She is telling me that she hopes I never have a daughter that does to me what I did to her.
Can’t believe I haven’t opened it already. Any time before now I think I would have torn it open, but now I am too afraid.
I will open it later. When Jack is here and in bed. I need his presence but I do not want to tell him if it is bad. Later, I’ll do it later.
Eve
12th May 2000
I made sure Jack was asleep before I slipped out and went into the room that is Jack’s office, and opened the letter. My hands were shaking, of course, because this was the first contact with her in so long.
It was one sheet of paper and on it, in neat handwriting, was everything I needed to know.
I’m sorry, I can’t write any more. I thought I could, but I can’t.
19th May 2000
‘Are you having an affair?’ Jack asked me, when I came home today.
I had tried to creep in, to not wake him, but I needn’t have bothered, he was sitting on the third step of the staircase, waiting for me. It looked like he’d been there a while.
‘No,’ I said, a bit sad that he thought me capable of that.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I can’t help that, but I haven’t done anything to make you think I’ve been unfaithful.’
‘Well, the secret phone calls and getting all dolled up to go off to secret locations and coming back hours later than you said, suggest an affair to me. Plus I saw your friend from your English course. I asked her why she wasn’t on the day trip to Brontë country, she had no idea what I was talking about. When she realised you’d lied to me, she tried to cover for you by saying she’d been off sick so couldn’t really afford to go on the trip.’
‘Why do you think she was covering for me? She has been off sick,’ I said rather lamely, wondering why I was trying to keep this charade going.
He nodded. ‘Which friend am I talking about?’ he asked.
I stared at him in silence.
‘So, I’ll ask you again, are you having an affair?’ he said.
I stared at Jack, wishing it was as simple as an affair. Wishing that it could be something as fixable as an affair. I shook my head in answer to Jack’s question.
‘What’s going on?’ Jack asked. ‘Your silence is scaring me.’
The corners of my mouth turned down and the strain of the last few days came spilling out, shivering through my body, making me weak and insubstantial; I did not know what was holding me up because my body did not feel as if it was strong enough to be defying gravity at that moment. ‘If … if I tell you, I’ll have to tell you all of it. I can’t see how I can’t tell you all of it. And if I do that, you’ll wish I hadn’t told you. You’ll wish that it was something as simple as an affair.’
‘You can tell me anything, Eve, I thought you knew that.’
I managed to stop myself laughing at him. Laughing at my poor innocent Jack. He had no idea; nothing in him could conceive of my life so far. I liked that about him, loved that about him. It repulsed me a little, too. How could someone so close to me not have even the slightest clue what I had done? Was I really that good an actress? Had I truly buried it that deep? Did the world really see me as Eve Quennox, erstwhile waitress, part-time student, loving fiancée and nothing else?
‘Tell me, Eve. Where were you today?’
‘I was …’ I was holding up a knife to throat of the image of the current version of Eve Quennox. And the next few words would carve up her visage, and then would draw the knife across her throat, murdering her in the eyes of the man I loved. ‘I was in Leeds.’ The knife plunged into Eve’s flesh, hacking away. ‘At my mother’s funeral. I haven’t spoken to her in seventeen years.’ Eve’s face was almost unrecognisable now for the knife wounds. ‘Not since I told her that her boyfriend had been trying to rape me since I was fourteen and she didn’t believe me.’ The knife wounds were almost comforting, the pain expected. ‘She died last week in her sleep.’
‘Eve, why didn’t you tell me? I could have come with you. I could have supported you.’
I was bewildered by his concern, it had no place in this.
‘Because, Jack, I … I …’ I shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to make him understand. ‘I have done some terrible things because I had to leave home that early. I loved her so much, and because she chose him over me, I dropped out of school and didn’t finish my A Levels, I moved to London and I tried to make contact so many times over the years but she always ignored me.’
‘None of that is your fault. I’m just astounded that you were forgiving enough to go to her funeral after all that.’
‘She’s my mother. Of course I went. I love her. She was the most important person in my life.’
‘I still don’t understand why you couldn’t tell me this. None of it is your fault.’
The knife, having hacked away at this new improved Eve’s face until it was in ribbons, was back at her throat for the final slaughter. ‘But everything I did after that is.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘After I came to London, I had a job, but I was made redundant so I … erm … I eventually started working,’ I paused, amassed all the courage I had, ‘in a lap dancing club to earn money.’ The knife bit into the flesh of Eve’s throat, going deep, drawing blood.
‘Behind the bar? There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘I was seventeen, Jack, they check your ID if you want to work behind a bar, make sure that you’re old enough so they don’t lose their licence. If you want to work as a dancer, they generally just take your word for it that you’re over eighteen.’
I saw the horror of realisation dawn on his face, his eyes growing wide with shock. ‘But … but you needed the money. If you had no real qualifications or work experience, then you obviously needed the money.’
‘Yeah, I needed the money. And it’s for the same reason, a few years later, when my druggie boyfriend’s habit almost bankrupted us, I started to sell my body to make ends meet.’ The knife was drawn smartly across Eve’s throat – no fuss, no mess. Just over.
Jack’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, wondering if I was making it up. ??
?What?’ he asked. ‘What are you saying to me?’
‘I’m saying that until the end of 1996 I was a prostitute.’
I don’t know how I expected him to react, what I thought he would do, but I was still surprised when he sat and stared at me. Every passing second, though, saw him draining more and more of colour, saw the healthy glow he had disappear until his face, his lips, his hands were grey-white.
His eyes were trawling through his memories, trying to work out if anything had told him, if there’d been any clue. ‘But you can’t have been,’ he said, lifelessly. ‘You can’t have been. The summer of 1996, me and you … You didn’t ask me for money. I didn’t pay you. You can’t have been.’
‘I was. When we … I was.’
‘So, my first time, I … with a prostitute?’
His body started to convulse as though holding back retches. ‘Have you been laughing at me all this time? Was that some kind of sick game, bagging a clueless virgin? Then helping yourself to the cash from my wallet while I was sleeping?’
‘No, Jack. God, no! It was nothing like that. I didn’t take any money from you. Remember how you felt at the time? I felt exactly the same way. If you had any idea how much that meant to me … I’ve had sex with a lot of men, but you’re the only man I’ve ever made love to. If you believe nothing else, please believe that.’
His body convulsed again, holding back another retch. Then he was suddenly on his feet and, without saying another word, he turned and climbed the stairs, walking as though there was lead in his shoes; moving as though there was lead in his bones.