Because She Loves Me (21 page)

‘Take a look,’ Sasha said, handing me the phone.

There were two words on the screen, written in block capitals.

YOU’RE DEAD.

Twenty-four

Neither Sasha nor I could get back to sleep after that. I sat on the sofa drinking weak coffee while she paced the room, staring out the window and checking the chain was on the door every two minutes. By the time the sun came up I was exhausted, had that post-red-eye flight feeling, scratchy eyes and fuzzy brain.

The text had been sent from a blocked number. A quick Google search showed us how easy this is to do: there are numerous apps that allow you to either create a fake number to send from or block the caller ID altogether.

As soon as it got light, Sasha called a locksmith, telling them it was an emergency, and they promised to arrive within the hour.

‘You need to call the police next,’ I said.

She chewed her lip. ‘I really don’t want to. What am I going to do, tell them I suspect the boss I had an affair with, or his wife? It’s going to cause so much shit. I’ll be humiliated. It will be the talk of the office and most people will think I deserve it. Oh God . . .’

I took her by the shoulders. ‘Sasha, you have to do it.’

‘OK, OK.’ She took a shuddering breath. She held the phone to her ear and dialled the police station, and I listened to her tell someone what had happened. ‘They’re going to send someone round a bit later.’

I tried to bite down on a yawn but she saw.

‘You look knackered. You should go home.’

‘No, I’ll stay and wait for the police to come.’

This time, I was unable to suppress the yawn. I was dizzy and my body was screaming at me to let it sleep.

‘No, honestly. You get back, get some kip. I’ll be fine. The locksmith will be here soon and then I’ll wait in for the police. You don’t need to be here for that.’

‘All right. If you’re sure.’

‘I’m sure.’ She gave me a hug. She was still trembling. ‘Thank you so much for staying the night. I don’t know what I would have done without you.’

‘That’s what friends are for, Sash.’

I practically floated home. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this tired. It was about ten thirty when I let myself in the front door and entered my flat, dropping Charlie’s dry cleaning in the hallway and heading straight into the bedroom.

‘Jesus, you made me jump!’

Charlie was lying in my bed. As soon as I came in she sat up, in a move that reminded me of Nosferatu sitting upright in his coffin, a smooth elevation. And she looked like the living dead: her eyes were ringed with mascara smudges and streaks, her face white, her red hair sticking out at crazy angles, matted and stiff. She stared at me vacantly. She was wearing a pink camisole which looked like it had been scrunched up; there was a black stain on the front, like dried blood.

‘Charlie, are you all right? What are you doing here? I thought you’d be at work.’

She said something in such a low voice I couldn’t hear it.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said, did you enjoy fucking her?’

I hadn’t really been paying much attention, had been too tired, too busy trying to take my shoes off. Now, though, my head snapped towards her.

‘What?’

Her face twisted with anger, lip curled into a sneer. ‘I’m not. Going to. Fucking repeat myself.
Andrew
.’

Ice water had replaced the blood in my veins. I sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to her and saying, ‘Charlie, why are you—’

She shrank away like a vampire from garlic. ‘Get away from me. You stink of her.’

I had never had to deal with a situation like this before. What was I supposed to do? Part of me, the very tired part, wanted to ignore her and curl up with the quilt over my head. But this was not a mild attack of jealousy. She was shaking, and all I wanted to do was hold her, reassure her, make her feel better. Get this sorted out. The other option – getting defensive, starting an argument and telling her not to be so fucking stupid – barely entered my mind.

‘Charlie, sweetheart, what are you talking about? I slept on her sofa. Actually, I barely even slept. Sasha—’

‘I bet you didn’t. You were too busy fucking her. How does she like it, huh? Is she really dirty? No, no, that’s not right. She’s far too repressed, probably only wants it in the missionary position. Is that what you like, Andrew? You don’t actually want a woman like me, someone who is free, a proper, hot-blooded woman. You want that stuck-up, rude, cheating little bitch, someone who will fuck her boss and then boo-hoo-hoo about it like she’s the fucking
victim
.’ The last word came out as a strangled yelp.

I had no words.

‘What?’ Charlie said. ‘Are you just going to stand there with your mouth gaping open like a fucking goldfish? Not going to defend your girlfriend?’

‘You’re my girlfriend,’ I said.

She spat out a laugh and pushed herself up onto her knees. That was when I noticed the knife on the pillow: my sharpest kitchen knife, black handle, the one Charlie so often used to chop vegetables. Some dark substance clung to the blade.

‘I’m your girlfriend. Yes, yes I am. So why –
why?
– do you spend the night with another woman? Answer me
that
.’

My voice, when it came out, sounded weak. ‘But I told you I was going to stay over. You said it was fine.’

She didn’t respond, just stared at me with a thunderous expression.

‘Sasha has been having loads of weird stuff going on and she wanted me to stay over, make sure she was safe. You knew that.’

She tipped her head to one side. ‘The knight in shining armour. Saving the poor little damsel in distress. Come on, tell me, how many times did you fuck her? What are her blow jobs like? Better than mine? What’s her cunt like, eh? Nice and fucking tight?’

‘Oh my God. Charlie. This is ridiculous. Come on, please.’

Her face was red with rage. She jabbed a finger at me but her voice was quieter. ‘You can tell her . . . tell your bitch, that if she wants you she’s got to get past me first. I’m not the kind of woman who’ll sit back and let another woman steal from her.’

Tears dripped from her cheeks and the flesh was mottled pink around her collarbone, the same flush she got when she was aroused. The smell of stale sweat and alcohol came off her, which led me to spot the two bottles of red wine, one on the bed, folded in the quilt, another tipped over on the floor, a stain like blood on the carpet.

She picked up the knife from the pillow. I was sitting sideways on the bed, my torso twisted towards her. I backed away, held my palms up towards her. ‘Charlie, put that down, please.’

She didn’t put it down. She pulled up the front of the camisole with her free hand, revealing two long slashes across her belly, one either side of her navel. They were shallow, more like scratches than cuts. She held the long blade of the knife against her stomach, across her belly button, and stared at me staring at her.

‘Oh my God.’ I moved towards her.

‘Don’t,’ she hissed.

‘Charlie. Please. I love you. I promise, nothing happened. Nothing will ever happen between me and Sasha. Please, put the knife down. Don’t hurt yourself.’

She continued to stare at me.

‘I see Sasha like a sister. A friend. That’s all.’

I edged closer. Her arm was rigid, knuckles white where they gripped the knife handle. I reached out, terrified she would cut herself, a little part of me scared that she would lash out at me. She was silent, tears running down across her face, snot glistening in her nostrils, breathing audibly, deep, wet breaths.

My fingertips touched her arm. With all my might, I forced my hand not to shake.

‘Please, sweetheart,’ I whispered. My fingers closed around her forearm, and I felt her relax slightly. She let me gently pull her arm away, extricate the knife from her hand. I threw it across the room, where it skidded and spun beneath the chest of drawers.

I tugged the front of her camisole down and, shuffling towards her on my knees, pulled her into an embrace. Her body was rigid at first, but as I whispered to her and told her everything was going to be all right, she slowly relaxed. Finally, she hugged me back and started to sob.

We stayed like that for a long time before either of us spoke.

‘I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry, oh Andrew, I’m so—’

‘Sshhh. It’s OK, it’s OK.’

It was so quiet in the room that I could hear children playing in the grounds of the school three streets away, could make out the song on a radio playing somewhere else in the building.

Finally, Charlie pulled away from me and said, ‘Let me go to the bathroom.’

After she’d left the room I wandered into the living room. The TV was on and muted, the sink full of food, pasta splattered up the wall. A smashed glass lay on the floor.

The picture of me and Sasha on holiday had been taken down, removed from its frame, torn into strips and left on the carpet. I picked it up, shook my head. I could picture Charlie here during the night, drinking, going crazy, like a wild animal in a cage. I was amazed that she hadn’t bombarded me with calls or texts, hadn’t done so at all. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted me to know how she felt, had wrestled to control it, but finally lost the battle.

Charlie was taking ages in the bathroom and concern sent me into the bedroom to check she didn’t have the knife with her. I remembered it was under the chest of drawers and was bending to retrieve it when she came into the room behind me. I stood up and turned to meet her.

She had washed her face and pinned her hair up. Although she was still very pale, she looked a lot better, the mascara tears scrubbed away, her wild hair tamed. She wore a loose T-shirt and pyjamas bottoms. Her expression was sheepish.

‘Come here,’ I said, hugging her. My body felt alien, adrenaline draining, replaced by a profound tiredness. I guess I was in shock.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

We sat down together on the bed, holding hands.

‘I don’t want to make any excuses,’ she said. ‘I was fine when you told me you were staying over, at first. Then I started drinking, got quite drunk, and I looked up and saw the photo of you and Sasha and started to feel paranoid. I guess . . . I worked myself into a frenzy over the next few hours.’

‘How’s your stomach?’ I whispered.

She pulled up her T-shirt and looked down. The scratches were shallow. ‘Quite sore. But I’m too much of a wimp to really hurt myself.’

‘Have you . . . have you done that before?’ There were no scars on her body so I knew she had never self-harmed in that way.

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘I promise you, Charlie, there is nothing between Sasha and me. I have no interest in any other women. I love you.’

‘I know. I’m an idiot.’

‘I’m so tired. Can we talk more later?’

‘OK. I’m exhausted too. You won’t believe what happened—’

She held up a hand. ‘Later. Please.’

‘All right.’

I undressed and slipped into bed beside her. We held each other. My brain was whirring, popping. The emotional storm echoed in the room, keeping us awake. Soon, we were kissing silently, and Charlie shrugged off her T-shirt and I ducked beneath the quilt and pulled off her PJ bottoms, and then we were making love, wordless, intense sex where we couldn’t get close enough to each other, though we tried, kissing hungrily, pressing our bodies together as hard as we could bear, arms and legs wrapped tight, like we were trying to melt into one another. A corporeal bliss touched every inch of my skin, buffed away the emotional pain. It was the best sex we’d ever had.

Twenty-five

I awoke in the early afternoon, lay there for a while listening to the rain lashing against the window. Charlie was deeply asleep and I left her there, hair splayed across the pillow, while I spent the next hour clearing up the mess she’d made during the night. I binned the wine bottles, threw away, with a flare of sad anger, the ripped-up picture of Sasha and me. When I’d finished I peeked into the bedroom: Charlie was still asleep, the picture of tranquil innocence. She’d slept through my futile attempts to scrub away the wine stain on the bedroom carpet.

I made myself a coffee and sat at my desk. I checked my phone. Sasha’s locks were changed and the police had been round. She had to go to the station to make a statement. She ended her text with
Thank you so much for last night. I don’t know I’d have coped without you. Love S xx

My thumb hovered over the text. Should I delete it? If Charlie saw it, it might cause another outbreak of jealous rage. I put the phone down. I couldn’t start hiding things, modifying my behaviour. The moment I did that, our relationship would be tainted. Doomed.

But what was I going to do? I had seen glimpses of Charlie’s jealousy before, like with the girl in the park, but this? This was something new. Something deeply disturbing.

A friend of mine called Belinda, whom Sasha and I had known at uni, had a jealous boyfriend. She told us about him after they finally split up, because she said she was too ashamed to tell anyone while it was going on. She said that if she ever spoke to another man, if she was late home from work, if she got a message or a text from any other young male, he would go mad.

‘He’d go quiet at first, which was when I knew what was brewing. Then he’d start asking snide questions, making sarcastic comments. Eventually, he’d get angry, start shouting, throwing things. He never hit me but he’d scream at me and threaten me and whoever it was he was convinced I was screwing. After that was over he’d be contrite, crying, telling me he was sorry, that he would get help. But he never did get help. It happened over and over again and every time I forgave him.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘I loved him. Because the rest of the time he was lovely. But it was always there, like a little . . . gremlin that lived in our flat, hiding, waiting to come out.’

I had shaken my head. ‘If that ever happened to me, I’d be out of there like a shot. There’s no way I’d put up with it.’

I looked towards the bedroom. It’s easy to feel certain of how you would act when you don’t have a real situation, real emotions, to deal with. I was shocked and upset by what Charlie had done, what she’d accused me of. I had a sickening vision of a future in which I could never relax, would repeatedly find myself in dramatic, disturbing scenes, a life where I could never accept the innocent offer of a lunchtime drink from a girl at work, never click ‘like’ on the picture of a woman I was friends with, eventually give in to the pressure to break contact with my female friends.

But when I pictured another future, one without Charlie in it, where I was alone again, the pain was even sharper. I was in love with her. Besotted. When we were together, the rest of my life felt sepia, dull, a black-and-white movie. The thought of losing her made me panic.

I hated to think of her suffering too. I wanted to make everything all right, make her happy. Perhaps, a little voice murmured, I
had
been in the wrong. I shouldn’t have spent the night at my friend’s flat, leaving Charlie here on her own, especially when we had been planning to talk about her moving in, when we were both expecting a fun evening together.

No, I told myself firmly. You are not in the wrong. You were being a friend to Sasha, that’s all. Charlie should understand that. And even if she was upset, she shouldn’t have reacted like that.

I knew that I was going to have to do something about this. Nip it in the bud.

I woke the computer from sleep and Googled ‘jealousy’. Unsurprisingly, the internet was awash with information. I quickly found an article about something called ‘morbid jealousy’, which is also known as the Othello syndrome, a suitably dramatic label. Morbid jealousy, I read, is where a person is convinced their partner is being unfaithful despite having no proof. They are delusional and become obsessed with the notion, torturing themselves and their other half.

The more I read, the more worried I became. The articles and Wiki pages were stuffed full of terms like ‘psychological illness’, ‘mental disorder’, ‘insecure attachment’ and ‘extreme obsession’. There were endless news reports of people – mostly men, which gave me some reassurance – who had become violent and attacked their partner because of perceived infidelity. Othello, if I remembered correctly, murdered his wife, but most sufferers of morbid jealousy kill nothing more than their relationship.

I read on. Apparently, for women, jealousy is more likely to be triggered by emotional infidelity than by sexual betrayal. I thought about Charlie’s rant about what she believed I’d done with Sasha. It had been intently focused on sex. But maybe, really, the attack was caused by me offering Sasha emotional support, my closeness to her similar, in Charlie’s mind, to a romantic attachment.

Charlie had, I was sure, a psychological issue, probably with its roots in something that happened in her childhood. She was so sketchy when it came to talking about her past that it seemed logical that there was something hidden in her past that she didn’t want to face; a history that was causing her to be jealous now.

Pleased with myself for finding a rational explanation, I sat back.

We would find Charlie a counsellor, a therapist. Someone who could help her get to the root cause of her jealousy. Then, I assured myself, everything would be all right.

I made coffee for Charlie and took it in to her, gently shaking her awake.

Her eyes were wild for a second before she focused on me.

‘What time is it?’ she asked as if she had somewhere she urgently needed to be.

‘It’s three o’clock.’ I handed her the coffee. Sitting up, she took a sip, grimaced and put it on the bedside table. ‘Listen, Charlie, I’ve been thinking, about this morning.’

‘Oh God.’

‘I think that we should find you help. You know, like a counsellor or a therapist.’

She looked at me sharply. ‘I’m not crazy.’

I was aware that I was talking to her like I would a child who’d done something very naughty. I changed my tone. ‘I know you’re not. But jealousy . . . It must be rooted in some . . .’ I struggled to find the right words. ‘. . . self-esteem issue or insecurity.’

She groaned and pulled the quilt over her head.

Flummoxed, I said, ‘Charlie?’

‘Yes,’ she said eventually from beneath the quilt.

‘Will you please talk to me?’

She slowly pulled the quilt down to reveal her face. ‘Do we have to talk about this now? I feel like shit and I don’t want . . . I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. Can’t we just forget it happened?’ She reached out and took my hand. ‘I promise it won’t happen again.’

‘That’s what Belinda’s bloke used to say.’ I wished I could remember his bloody name.

Charlie blinked. ‘Who?’

I explained about Belinda and her jealous boyfriend.

‘And you think that’s what I’m like? A jealous nutter?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t think you’re a nutter. But this morning, well, you scared me.’

She put her hands over her face. After a long pause she said, ‘Is it a condition of us staying together?’

‘What?’

‘If I don’t see a therapist, will you dump me?’ Her voice trembled on the last two words.

I was about to say no, to back down, but I stopped myself. I needed to be strong. ‘I think so. Yes. I don’t want anything to spoil what we have, Charlie.’

She stared at me with liquid eyes. ‘I don’t either. But this morning – it wasn’t me.’

‘You’ve never done that before? With anyone else?’

‘No. That’s why it got so out of control, I think, because I didn’t know how to cope with the feelings, with the . . .’

‘The what?’

She sank back into the bed. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’

‘But we have to,’ I said.

‘No. No we don’t. It won’t happen again. That’s all you have to know.’

This was so frustrating. But I was coming to see this was typical of her, clamming up, refusing to talk about things she didn’t want to face. ‘I want you to see someone, Charlie. Please. For me. Because morbid jealousy . . .’

‘Hang on,’ she interrupted. ‘Have you been Googling this? Trying to diagnose me?’

I didn’t reply.

‘Ha. You have. And you’re probably feeling pleased with yourself because Charlie has a problem and Andrew is going to fix it. Like I’m a leaky tap and the therapist is a plumber. You’re such a typical man.’ She pulled back the quilt and got out of bed, turning to face me, covering her breasts with a forearm. The scratches on her belly were red and livid.

‘Sometimes people act out of character. They get irrational. Do stupid things. That’s what this was. An aberration. But if you want me to see a therapist, fine. I’ll go. OK?’

She walked out of the room.