The Woman Before Me (13 page)
“Nightcap, pet?”
“Great. The Grosvenor?”
“No. My room.”
This time the room was tidy. The bed was made, clothes hidden, CDs in a pile. A bottle of red wine stood waiting, with two mismatched glasses. You knew I’d come back with you.
Oh God, please let me do this right.
I was a freak. A 28-year-old virgin with a lanky body and breasts like half-risen pastry. I was odd, but then my life had been odd. My best friend was a 70-year-old widow and the only boy who ever fancied me was creepy Alfie.
You uncorked the wine, an expensive bottle that had come from the hotel cellar, and poured, downing a glass before handing me mine. Your stained mouth was tight as you re-filled the glass. The warm alcohol hit my curdling stomach, tasting like medicine, and I felt sick. Pressing play on the CD player, the same music as before, you sat next to me, close enough for me to see the stubble on your chin, the patch of freckles on the bridge of your nose. I wanted you to touch me, but I was so afraid. My feet felt itchy, ready to take flight. I crossed then recrossed my legs before standing.
“I think I’d better go, Jason.”
I got my jacket from the floor, checked my keys in my pocket. In seconds I was at the door, my hand opening the latch, nearing safety, turning to say goodbye, when you were there, in front of me, too close. I was backed to the door, when your hand slapped against it, slammed it closed.
“I don’t want you to go.”
You came closer, your breath in my mouth. I could feel your heat, my own temperature soaring. The kiss was full and fierce, your tongue quickened in my mouth as your hands stroked my neck, over my back, under my top. I felt like you were falling on me, crushing me, and I was glad, hardly coming up for air.
You pulled away, steadied yourself, and opened the door. It was time for me to leave. It was over. I looked at your downcast face, saw your eyes slide away.
“See you tomorrow?” I begged.
You shrugged, nudged me into the corridor and left me standing in front of a closed door.
The next day you didn’t show up at work. At first I thought maybe you’d just switched shifts, or that you were too hungover, but when you didn’t show the following day I knew something was wrong. I’d lost you. The opportunity had slipped through my grip. You had gone. You had left me. It was my fate to be alone.
I made mistakes in the kitchen, cut my finger on a paring knife, sliced meat into vegetarian meals. Eventually Chef threw down his tea towel. “What is it, Rose? You’ve been a klutz all day. It’s not like you.”
I chewed my nail. “For God’s sake!” he yelled, ripping my hand away from my mouth, “whatever it is, don’t come back until it’s sorted.”
I left the kitchen, heading into the main part of the hotel where some guests were checking in. The receptionist was busy handing a key to a man in a morning suit, and I ducked through the door that led to the staff accommodation. The nylon carpet crackled under my feet as I walked past an open bedroom door, where two waitresses leaned out of the window, smoking and laughing. Someone was in the communal kitchen, bent over a cereal bowl, but it wasn’t you.
Your door was shut and I stood listening to the silence. I leaned my forehead against it, and, without hope, I lifted my knuckles to the door and tapped lightly. No response. Panic rose in my throat. I would never see you again.
I rapped louder, the blows of my fist matching the beat of my heart.
“Jason? Jason? Jason. Please. Jason.” Several doors opened along the corridor, but I couldn’t stop, my voice getting louder and louder.
When you flung open the door I nearly fell in. You stood, naked except for a hand towel held around your waist, bleary eyed from sleep. “Christ, Rose. Where’s the fire?”
I pushed past, diving into darkness. I was shaking, as you called down the corridor, “it’s okay, everyone. It’s fine.” Then you closed the door and turned back to me.
“What’s up?”
I stood still, trying to control my breathing. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”
You sauntered sleepily back to bed, dropping the towel on the floor as you slid under the duvet, pulled it high to your cheek and yawned. “I’m knackered. I didn’t get to bed till 5.”
You closed your eyes. The room was warm and dim, cocooning us. I knelt on the floor beside the bed, my face close to yours.
“I thought you’d gone away. When you didn’t show up for work…”
You didn’t open your eyes. “Yeah, well. I’ll say I was ill.”
“Why haven’t you been at work?”
“I was with Emma.”
My chest felt tight. “Are you back with her?”
“It was only while her bastard husband was at work. After we’d slept together she kicked me out. Bitch.” You rubbed your face into the pillow. “Last night my heart hurt and this morning my head hurts.”
“I would never throw you out, Jason,” I said.
You looked up from the pillow. Your hand snaked out of the duvet, tugging my arm. “Come here.”
Awkwardly, I joined you under the duvet. You pressed into my back, and I felt sweat on my palms. Through my jeans I could feel the contours of your knee, your thigh. Your mouth heated the skin under my collar. “You’d never leave me, pet?”
“Never.”
Your hand moved to the buttons of my shirt, unpeeling me. You unhooked my bra, pulled it away, so I was loose and exposed. Your mouth explored my breasts. You nuzzled my nipples, sending shivers through me. My stomach contracted as your hand found the zip of my jeans, tugging and pulling until I helped you fling them off. You rolled me onto my back and stroked my hips, your mouth travelling low to the waistband of my knickers, a wet line where your tongue traced the elastic.
My hand cradled your head as I felt your tongue lick my inner thigh, desperate for you to carry on but desperate for you to stop. You released me from the thin cotton, your mouth following your hands.
I went to an unknown place, somewhere above, and thought of nothing, but felt – oh, how I felt – every particle in my brain begging me to stop as my body gave itself to you totally. My heart and mind were hypnotised, seduced. I saw the soft shades of the rainbow.
Soon, you were rising above me, supported by your forearms as you lowered yourself down and into me. It hurt and I sucked air, tensed against the motion of you. A new stinging, an aching fullness.
I listened to your breathing, your guttural grunts as I realised you were about to orgasm. Then, after your shuddering release, you collapsed on top of me
I held you tight, kissing the damp nape of your neck, saying your name over and over. “Jason, Jason. I love you, Jason. Say you love me, Jason.”
You closed your eyes and whispered, “oh, Emma.”
You missed work again and got sacked. So you packed your few belongings into a carrier bag and came to live with me.
We never spoke about you saying Emma’s name. Nor did I tell you about it being my first time. But you must have known. And I knew I loved you, but you loved Emma.
I’m in my cell, lying on the bed.
Janie is with me, her head resting on my shoulder, and we’re sharing a joint. She’s listening carefully, as I read the latest letter from her father. She doesn’t read well, and his letters show that he’s barely literate himself. The lined sheet is covered with disjointed sentences and misspelled words, some thickly scribbled out by black biro. Thankfully, they’re always brief.
In two months Janie will be released, and the education staff have realised that she’s not equipped to deal with life on the out. To try and prepare her, they’ve organised day release for her to attend a course in basic literacy and numeracy at the further education college in Ipswich. She hates it, but she goes obediently, on the train, across town on a bus, to sit and learn lessons she should have done a decade ago. “How are the classes going?”
She grimaces like a child forced to swallow medicine. “It’s so hard, Rose,” she says, “but my teacher’s nice. I’m allowed to wait in the classroom during break,’cos I don’t like to mix with the other students. Miss Reed has a kettle and a jar of coffee in her desk, and we sit and have a drink together. Sometimes she brings chocolate biscuits.”
Typical, Janie has become teacher’s pet.
“How difficult would it be,” I ask, “for you to take a little detour? Into Ipswich, I mean. A bus ride away from the college.”
“Easy.” she boasts. “Last week when I got to the train station, I nipped into McDonalds and spent my bus fare on a chicken deluxe. I hadn’t had one for months and it was lush. I had to walk to the college, and I was nearly an hour late, but Miss Reed didn’t say a word. She didn’t even call the prison to rat on me.”
Janie is such a child that she gets away with light monitoring. Everyone is fooled by her stupidity. That will be useful to me.
I turn my attention to her dad’s letter, and begin to read.
As usual he makes excuses for not visiting her, claiming poverty and distance as the reasons. In the next sentence he’s telling her about his holiday to Spain. Sometimes I skip bits that I think will hurt, protecting Janie. I make other stuff up: “I hope you’re being a good girl,” I improvise, “and remember that I love you.” It’s a small gift, but she’s pleased. I don’t think a lie is wrong if it brings happiness.
I fold the letter back into a square, slip it into the scruffy envelope, and hand it back. Janie clasps it to her girlish chest. I touch my joint to her lips and tell her to breathe deep, which she does. She coughs, pushes the spliff away. I stroke her head back into my lap, playing with her mousy hair.
“There, there, lovely,” I murmur. This is when I like her best. She pulls her knees to her stomach and closes her eyes as I take a long drag, allowing the drug to leaden my limbs. “Your daddy loves you.” I tell her. “He’ll visit soon.”
“No. He won’t,” she says, surprising me with her insight. “But I don’t care.” She looks up, eyes wet. “No-one’s ever taken care of me like you, Rose. This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”
“But we’re in prison.”
She brings her head to my shoulder. Her breath warms my neck. “I’d rather be here with you than free and on my own.”
I let her nuzzle my neck like a puppy, her slim arms sliding around my waist. What a sad life it is if you’d chose this over freedom. I kiss her head, smelling the cheap prison-issue soap. Janie would do anything I asked. Such love is a gift indeed. This is what I’ve become, a scheming creature. I have to plan for the parole board, behave well and answer questions in a calculated way. I don’t recognise the girl I once was. How naïve I used to be.
I look at myself in the mirror and I look old. Although I’m still quite young, I feel ancient. Prison has aged me, it’s made me cynical. Ugly places make people do ugly things. So do ugly experiences. Do you think beautiful places lead to goodness? Remember Felixstowe beach, white shingle and yawning blue skies that make you ache, they’re so perfect. Remember the warm air breathing over our faces. We were happy, weren’t we?
Prisons are the ugliest places on this planet. All grey concrete and steel. The clangs and clicks, shouts and screams, doors banging, the locks and keys. It’s always cold. A bad place crammed with women who’ve done bad things. And the workers, who chose to be here, locked away with the rest of us, even if they do hold the keys.
I wonder what made Cate Austin want to be imprisoned. Not that she’ll ever tell me since her job is to get me to talk. She’s a listener. A judge.
She buttons herself down to keep herself strong. Even though she lives outside the walls she doesn’t bring the season in with her like other staff do. And though she can choose what she wears, she wears similar clothes every day, a uniform of navy jacket and white shirts, dark trousers. She stands apart from the others, the teachers and psychologists. Her hair is cut at an angle into a bob, which she scrapes back behind her ears. It’s the colour of autumn and could be pretty.
I need to know more about her to influence my report. She keeps her cards close to her chest but sometimes she let’s one slip. Her blind panic, for instance, when her daughter was hurt, how she ran to the door, forgetting everything, a part of her that she would prefer to keep hidden. Vulnerability. We’re both careful about what we hide, what we reveal. She has a job to do, a reputation to keep. She has to draw me out, know when to pounce. But the prize I play for is freedom. For me the stakes are higher. I’m playing for my life.
Her job is to take me back to the past. She takes me back to when I was centuries younger, when my face matched my age, and I had hope for the future.
Black Book Entry
I was finally normal. I shared my flat with a man, I had a lover. Your toothbrush crossed with mine in the beaker. My flat wasn’t much better than your room at The Grand, but I kept it tidy and clean. It was the upstairs part of a seventies house, with the front room as the lounge, a bedroom at the back and a small box room where I kept Rita’s things. Now your guitar was there, your empty suitcase. I crammed our tiny kitchen with treats from the hotel. Chef was always generous and I had vanilla pods and cinnamon sticks, saffron and even a bottle of Madeira. The flat was fine, apart from the downstairs neighbours who would sometimes argue at two in the morning and then make up even more noisily.
You still hadn’t found a job, but we got by. Chef knew you from when you had worked behind the bar, and would ask after you, giving me a couple of steaks or a leftover piece of salmon to take home. Sometimes I’d sneak a cigar as a special treat. Working in expensive hotels had given you expensive tastes.
You were bored with nothing to do all day. When I left for a shift, I felt guilty leaving you slumped on the sofa in front of Jeremy Kyle, strumming the guitar. I worried, too, about how you spent your days without me, knowing that you still kept Emma’s photo in your wallet, and your mobile phone was never out of your reach. If it buzzed you would check the text, but never tell me who had sent it and I didn’t ask.
Three weeks after you moved in I had a visitor. It was about seven in the evening on a Saturday, and you were watching Top Gear on TV while I washed up, when the doorbell rang. It rang so infrequently that I guessed it would be Annie.