The Woman He Loved Before

  I stood where I was, wondering what I should do. I still had the keys to my studio, so I could go back, but everything was here. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. I could sleep in one of the many spare rooms, but would he want me to leave and never come back? Minutes later, he reappeared on the stairs wearing running shorts, a T-shirt, socks and trainers. He walked past me as if I wasn’t there. I spun on my heels to watch him open the front door, exit, and then shut it behind him.

  That was two hours ago. He’s still not back.

  I don’t know what to do.

  I’ve been sitting on our bed, in my funeral clothes, since then.

  I don’t know what to do. Or how to check he’s all right.

  I’ve ruined everything, again. By telling another person I love the truth, I’ve ruined everything.

  Me

  26th May 2000

  It’s been an odd, unsettling few days and I don’t think either of us has any real idea what is going on.

  That night I told Jack almost everything, he went out for a run and didn’t come back for hours. It was nearly midnight when he left, so he stayed out until four or something like that.

  I must have dozed off at some point even though I didn’t think I could sleep. My head had been buzzing with all the stuff that people had said to me at the funeral: how my mum had been so proud of me going out there to London on my own and sticking it out in an accountancy firm, then moving to Brighton and starting work as an administrator for a group of solicitors. Mum had made up this whole life for me based on my letters that she read, kept, but never replied to.

  And then when I got engaged, she was so excited about the wedding we were going to have. How it would be beside the sea and she would have to travel down for it.

  Bea, Mum’s best friend from the bingo, took me to one side later because she knew the truth about why I left. She told me that Mum threw Alan out after my first postcard from London. Apparently, the fact I had moved so far away from her made her realise I’d been telling the truth. She knew, Bea said, I would never have gone if I was making it up or if I was mistaken, as Alan had convinced her I was.

  ‘But I called one time and he answered the phone,’ I said.

  ‘So that was you. She was so sure, but we tried to tell her not to get her hopes up. No, lovey, that wasn’t him – it was Matthew, my husband.’

  ‘What do you mean, “get her hopes up”? She didn’t reply to my letters, so why would she be hopeful about the call?’ I asked.

  ‘You know how it is, lovey, a letter is one thing; speaking to someone is another. Shame’s a terrible thing. Your mother was so ashamed that she didn’t believe you, that she didn’t see what was staring her right in the face. She never forgave herself. Many’s the night I held her while she sobbed over how she had let you down. She often said your father would have been ashamed of her for not protecting you. I tried to tell her to contact you, to try to make things right, but she wouldn’t listen. You know what your mum was like, she was so hard on herself. But she could not have kept her distance and kept on punishing herself if you were on the end of the phone or on her doorstep.’

  Oh my God, oh my God, I thought. If I’d just spoken …

  ‘I would have come back if I’d known he was gone.’

  ‘I tried to tell her,’ Bea explained. ‘“Even send her a birthday or Christmas card,” I said, but your mother thought you were happy. In your letters you were always happy and you didn’t seem to need her.’

  I collapsed where I stood. ‘That’s not true,’ I replied. ‘That’s not true. I needed her. I needed her so much. So many times in my life I just wanted my mum.’ I started sobbing then, couldn’t stop myself. Until that moment, it hadn’t seemed real, it hadn’t seemed possible that I would never speak to her again. And it hadn’t mattered as much because I thought she still considered me a liar. But if I had been honest with her, if I had told her just once how horrible my life was and how much I wanted her to help me fix it …

  Bea hugged me, and tried to console me. That’s why I was so late back. I just couldn’t move from where I’d collapsed and I couldn’t stop crying so I missed my train. Everything had gone wrong when I left Leeds, and I wouldn’t ever have the chance to fix it now because I’d done so many awful things, and my mother was not here to comfort me, to make it all better.

  ‘I’ve never seen her as happy as she was when she heard you’d got engaged,’ Bea kept saying as she held me. ‘She was so happy now that you had someone to look after you.’

  In the wake of what I’d told Jack, I’d been picking through all these things, wishing as I had done on the train back from Leeds that Mum had just called me, talked to me. At some point I must have fallen asleep.

  When I woke again, Jack was standing in the doorway, staring at me. He was all sweaty, his clothes sticking to him, his usually muscular body looking diminished and drained. His hair was almost black with perspiration and his face was pale. I didn’t know how long he had been standing there, staring at me, but his presence, his demeanour, wasn’t malevolent considering the emotions he must have been going through.

  ‘Jack?’ I asked.

  Without saying anything, he turned and walked down the corridor to the main bathroom. A few seconds later, I heard the shower come on. I sat on the bed, waiting, not sure what to do.

  Eventually he returned, a towel wrapped around his waist, and he went straight to the wardrobe, took out a bundle of clothes then went into the en suite bathroom to get dressed. I pulled my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I was still dressed in black, still dressed in the clothes I’d worn to my mother’s funeral. It was quite appropriate, really, given that another relationship – killed by my truths – was about to be buried.

  When Jack re-entered the room, he didn’t look as vacant as he had a few minutes earlier. Now he looked as close to normal as I guessed he was going to get. Normal, clean, cleansed.

  He sat carefully on the edge of the seat of the leather armchair by the dressing table, and then reached out and turned on the sidelight, even though the day was creeping in through the open blinds and we would soon be starting Saturday morning proper.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘I need to know everything. Please tell me. I want to know. I’m going to try to listen without being judgemental, but I think it’ll be easier if I know it all.’

  ‘Are you sure, Jack?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know how we’re going to get over this if you don’t tell me everything, otherwise I’ll just imagine it is worse than it is.’

  ‘So you think we can get over this?’

  He stared at me, and slowly nodded. ‘Yes. I hope so. It’s what I want more than anything. So please tell me.’

  I told him. I stepped outside of myself and I told him: about the lap dancing, about Elliot, about leaving London, about trying to get a job in Brighton, about the escort agency. I told him about Caesar, but I did not use that name. I said I met a man who seemed nice and who eventually became my pimp but never gave me any money and made me go with lots of different men until I ran away. I did not tell him, either, about the baby, about the loss.

  ‘The only time I stood up to him was the afternoon I spent with you. I couldn’t even think about letting another man near me after I’d spent some of the best hours of my life with you. I hope you believe that. And that’s it. That’s everything.’

  Jack had not interrupted, he had listened, he had flinched and he had held back his retches as much as he could. It hadn’t been easy for him, but he had done it. Was that what love was about? Doing something like that because you love the person so much?

  ‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry you’ve been through all that. I don’t know how you survived.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.’

  ‘It’s not an easy thing to talk about.’ He got up. ‘I’ll be honest: I’m struggling, but I don’t want to lose you. I
need some time by myself right now. I’ll sleep in the spare room. But only for the rest of tonight. Tomorrow, if it’s what you want, we can go back to normal, OK?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And we won’t talk about it again.’

  ‘If you think you can do that.’

  ‘I’d really like us to try, if you would?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that very much.’

  ‘Goodnight, Eve.’

  ‘Night.’

  *

  That was a week ago. And he was as good as his word. The next day, we went back to normal. It is normal. But not the same. Can it ever be the same? Ever?

  13th June 2000

  Yesterday at college a woman called Michelle was talking about her relationship with her ex-husband.

  I can’t even remember what got her going on the subject, but she’s really loud and talkative, always chatting about really personal stuff that most of us don’t talk to our best friends about. I was only half listening but then she said that they’d split up a long time before they actually physically separated, which got my attention.

  ‘We didn’t start arguing or anything, it was just over for such a long time before I had the guts to go.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’ someone asked. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want her to think I was that interested. Because if there’s one thing Michelle likes more than talking about herself, it’s getting other people to talk about themselves – personal stuff she’ll keep asking you about until you give in and tell her to get her off your back. I try to keep under her radar, so I was dead glad when someone else asked the question.

  ‘I don’t know for sure,’ Michelle said, ‘but I think it was after I was sexually harassed by someone I used to work with. It was all sorted out, at work, I mean, and the guy was actually sacked because it wasn’t only me he’d been doing it to, but after that, I don’t know, he kind of withdrew from me. He was supportive and made all the right noises at the time but, afterwards, it was as if a barrier of Clingfilm came over him and we were never really close again.

  ‘He’d hug me, kiss me, give me special little pats on the bum, we’d watch telly all snuggled up, we had sex, but all of it was like he wasn’t completely there for it. You know, on paper he was the same loving, caring man I’d married, but in reality it felt like it was his body doing it; his mind and heart never really engaged.

  ‘It’s hard to explain if you’ve not been in a situation like it, but it kind of kills you slowly but surely. What’s that saying about death by a thousand cuts? That was so it.’ I sat listening, knowing that I’m in that situation with Jack.

  ‘What do you think caused it?’ someone asked.

  ‘The sexual harassment stuff, I think,’ she said. ‘He was on my side, but I guess a little needle of doubt stuck in his head. He couldn’t be quite sure that I hadn’t encouraged this man, flirted or whatever – basically brought it on myself. I reckon in his head it was sort of cheating. He thought I’d cheated on him, but not completely, so he could still be with me, but I suppose the image of me and this other man wouldn’t go away. It drove a huge wedge between us.

  ‘I thought I was going crazy, for a long, long time. I thought it was me and it wasn’t until I asked him what had changed and he kind of shrugged and said he didn’t know, but something had. I suggested counselling, but he wasn’t up for that. Most men aren’t. Don’t think he wanted to admit to himself or me or a stranger that he blamed me. So we split.’

  I listened to her and knew that I wasn’t going crazy. Jack has been lovely since that night. Asking me how I am, asking if I want to talk about my mum, making me cups of tea, cuddling me, kissing me, telling me he loves me. But it’s all done robot-like. As though he is acting on the memory of what it is like to do those things rather than actually doing them because he feels them; he’s been pretending – with the biggest pretender of all. I thought it was me, I thought I was the one being overcautious, imagining things, seeing a withdrawal in him that wasn’t there. But it wasn’t me. He had done it.

  And how can I blame him? I’ve lived my life and I still can’t handle it, how is he expected to? Sex was so important to him. He’d been waiting for the perfect woman and that woman, the one who he’d finally had sex with, was someone who sold sex. She was a whore. I hate that word, it is so cruel, so dirty, so demeaning. I feel subhuman whenever I hear it – even if the person using it is talking about someone else, even if I’m using it about myself.

  It still makes me feel like a fourth-class citizen. When a man would whisper it in my ear, would tell me to say I was a dirty little whore and I liked what he was doing to me, it used to kill me a little inside; it used to remind me that no matter how many times I showered, how much money I made, how I managed to get out of this business, I would always be subhuman and dirty; no one would ever respect me because I was a whore. I was someone who cheapened themselves, and cheapened sex by doing what I did. And here I was with a man who thought a lot of sex, who had taken his time and considered who he would take that step with.

  The knowledge of what I had done must be killing him. He has been acting so normally, when he is probably disgusted by what I am and what I have done.

  Again, is that what you do for someone you love? You put aside your feelings and do what you think is best for them?

  I hope so, because I do love Jack. Which is why I’ve done this. I’ve left college early today and I’ve packed up my things. I was meant to be writing him a note, but I ended up writing in here instead – trying to organise my thoughts. I don’t know what to say. Unlike Elliot and Caesar, Jack doesn’t deserve to have me simply disappear. But whatever I write will sound as if I am blaming him, and it is not his fault. It is mine for not living a better life; for becoming a whore.

  I didn’t think doing what I did could rob me of anything else, once I left Caesar, but now it’s robbed me of the chance of a normal life.

  Time is ticking on. Maybe I should just go and then send Jack a note later. He’ll probably be relieved that the pretence is over and that he can go out and find himself a decent girl.

  Because decent is the last thing that I am.

  Me

  16th June 2000

  Leaving Jack didn’t exactly turn out how I planned. I’d actually taken more clothes as well as everything that I usually took with me when I moved on, but I got to the bottom of the stairs to find him waiting for me.

  He’d guessed that I was going to leave. GUESSED! Can you believe it? He obviously knows me better than I know myself because it wasn’t until that morning that I’d decided what I was going to do.

  ‘Please don’t leave,’ he said, quietly, staring at Uncle Henry’s kitbag with his eyes scrunched up as if he was in pain and could hardly see, when it was because he was holding back tears through sheer force of will.

  ‘I’m trying, I’m trying so hard to put it out of my head. And I know it was before we … but it was also during the first time. And my father tried to make me go with a prostitute my first time … I …’ He was shaking from trying so hard not to cry. ‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t and then there was you. I didn’t know you but it felt so right so I did … And then … I can’t get the image of you with other men out of my head. I know it’s not fair on you, this is my problem, but please don’t leave. Give me some time. I just need some time. I’ll try harder, I promise.’

  ‘I can’t let you do that,’ I told him. ‘Jack, when you love someone like I love you, them being hurt is far worse than any pain you could possibly suffer. What I’ve done to you … I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t know—’

  In three strides, he’d crossed the distance between us, and without hesitating he put his arms around me, then kissed me. I took a moment or two to respond, to drop my stuff and to kiss him back. I probably shouldn’t have. I probably should have stuck to the plan to leave, but it felt so good to do it.

  It felt even better to make love right there, on the floor of the hallway. To tune out every do
ubt, everything in the world, and to strip away the words that weren’t enough to explain how I felt about him.

  Afterwards, everything felt different, a little better, a little closer. I knew I wouldn’t be leaving, and I was hoping against hope that somehow, with me having a break from the Pill, we had made a baby.

  Eve

  Late August 2000 (another update)

  The phone calls are driving me insane.

  They stop for a while, then just as I’ve started to relax, started to forget all about them, they’ll start again. He knows how and when to get to me. But then I know how to get to him, too.

  Earlier this month, one of the calls wasn’t silent. It was a voice – not his voice, but a male voice – telling me if I left I would get ninety thousand pounds. Basically, the payment from those months back in ’96. I didn’t even consider it for a second, and hung up.

  That was the first and last of the calls that someone spoke to me.

  Then, two weeks later, Jack and I were sent a cheque by his father for that exact amount. I felt nauseous when Jack showed it to me, knowing what that money represented, what it meant. Hector was trying to infect my relationship with the things that had happened in the past. Jack didn’t know what to do: he’s conflicted about taking money from his father, because of the control his father likes to have, but Jack knows giving him and his brother money is one of his mother’s ways of maintaining a relationship between them all.

  I KNOW YOU’LL USE THIS WISELY, his father had written.

  So, I told Jack we should give the money to a women’s refuge (the one that I went to for help) and a homeless charity. Jack was more than willing. Wish I’d been there when Hector found out.

  The phone calls started again the very next day. Probably my own fault for antagonising him, but I hate feeling so weak and defenceless.