The Woman He Loved Before (18 page)

I’m watching Hector. I’m looking for any hint that he visits or has visited prostitutes. Or that he letches after other women, because I have never before felt uncomfortable around him. I’m trying to see if I can catch him surreptitiously looking at Paloma or one of the other girls I work with, or Grace or Angela, or the wives of the women that Jack works with, or even Rachel. Nothing, absolutely nothing. The only time he notices them is when he’s talking to them. Maybe Grace got it wrong?

My eyes flick over to Grace, who is mercilessly questioning Paloma (as she did at our wedding) and probably has her sights set on the other girls for professional beauty secrets. Every so often, I notice that her gaze goes to Hector and, whenever it looks as if he is going to be on the same side of the room as her, she manoeuvres the person she is talking to away from the area, or she ends that conversation and moves to talk to someone else. It’s quite obvious, now that I know, that she is avoiding him. That he does indeed make her skin crawl. She hasn’t got it wrong.

‘How are you, Libby?’ Hector is standing in front of me, then he is bobbing down to get to my height.

‘Oh, I’m … I’m fine,’ I say, wishing that Mum was harassing me about the wig now, because at least I wouldn’t be talking to him. I don’t know what to say; I don’t know how to act. It’s like walking in on someone having sex – which happened to me with
my flatmates a few times when I was at university: you can never really get that image of them out of your head. I hadn’t seen Hector do it, but the image of him handing over a wad of notes before …

‘It’s good to see you looking so well,’ he says, his face and voice full of genuine concern. ‘Jack was very worried about you.’

I find Jack with my eyes across the room as I say, ‘I know. It’s been difficult for both of us.’

‘I’m glad you’re on the mend. I’m sure it’ll be no time at all until you’re at full strength and back at work.’

‘I hope so,’ I say. ‘Although I’m not really looking that far ahead at the moment.’

‘I understand.’

I spot an empty plate on the table: this is my way out of this conversation. It’s all a bit much for me. I put my hand on the arm of the sofa and lever myself upright, just before Hector offers to help me. ‘I’ll put this in the kitchen,’ I tell Hector, seizing the plate. ‘Then I’ll be right back.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Hector says, standing and towering over me.

Without looking back, I move through the room and out of the door, managing to breathe a little once I am away from the living room.

In the kitchen, I slide the dish onto the side and tell myself to breathe. It’s not as if Hector has done anything to me. It’s not as if he had taken me to a brothel. But the idea that he could take anyone to such a place, let alone his fifteen-year-old son, is one of those things that I find it hard to ignore. Hard to reconcile with the man who put his hand on the small of my back and wrapped his other hand over mine and whirled me around the dancefloor to … I can’t remember the song. How was I to know two years later I’d be trying to remember the tune we’d danced to so I could make myself feel even more sick?

I close my eyes and try to stop the world spinning so fast, and to give my stomach a chance to settle.

‘Are you OK?’ Harriet asks, causing me to jump and my eyes
to fly open. I immediately turn to the side, and move the plates together, concentrating on piling up the empty dishes. They clink together, the noise suddenly magnified in the quiet of the kitchen, even though there are voices and music in the other room.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ I say, trying not to sound flustered. I don’t want to look at her, I don’t want her to see disgust or the pity I feel for her on my face.

‘Are you sure? You seem very nervous.’

‘Oh, it’s … it’s … this is the first time we’ve had people over since the … erm … accident. Just a bit overwhelming. You know how it is.’

‘Here, let me help,’ she says, and starts stacking plates up for me.

‘Thank you,’ I say, and move away from the sink to the table.

‘You really should rest,’ Harriet says.

‘You’re probably right, but it’s hard with a house full of people.’

‘Would you like me to ask them to leave?’

Harriet is a lovely person. That’s why it kills me that Hector did that to her. And it sounds as if that wasn’t the first time. I shudder inside at the thought of it.
Does she know? Does she know and tolerate it, or is she completely clueless?

I force a smile at her. ‘Secretly? I’d love it if you did. But it’s not fair; they’ve come all this way to celebrate the fact that Jack and I are still here, so I shouldn’t really wish for a bit of peace and quiet, should I?’

My mother-in-law smiles at me conspiratorially. ‘Libby, if you knew the number of times I’ve thought the same thing at parties at my home … It’s expected, though, of a top businessman’s wife to be the perfect host. I’m a little envious of you sometimes that you haven’t allowed yourself to become simply Mrs Jack Britcham, if I may say that.’

‘But Jack’s nothing like his father when it comes to that world.’

‘No, he isn’t. But he could be, because the Britcham name means so much in the circles he works in.’

‘God, do you think Jack feels a bit wronged that I still work and have my own life?’
Did Eve slot into that world so much better than me?

Harriet beams at me, and it kills me inside again that she’s been so ill-treated – whether she knows it or not – by Hector. ‘I think it’s a credit to Jack’s character that he has managed to find not one but two wives who have their own lives.’

‘Oh, God, sorry, I’ve just realised how that sounds. I don’t mean you don’t have your own life, I just mean—’

‘I understand what you mean,’ Harriet interrupts. ‘And I’m not offended. I have my own life, but it is one that is based around my family and my husband. There’s nothing wrong with that choice, just as there’s nothing wrong with your choice. That’s what I like about the modern world: choice. We all choose what we have to live with.’

My hand automatically goes up to my hairless head: the choice I’d made because of the choice another person made. My loss because of someone else’s decision to be selfish and stupid. This is why I am not enjoying the party – it’s not something I would have
chosen
; it’s not the sort of party I would have thrown. And this isn’t a party, it’s the wake that would have happened if we’d died in the crash.

‘Actually, Harriet, would it be really awful if I asked you to get rid of everyone?’ I ask. I don’t like to feel weak and powerless: I don’t like not being in control of my life and my destiny. I don’t like having my choice taken away from me.

‘Not at all, Liberty,’ Harriet says, her eyes loaded with concern. That’s a look I don’t like seeing, because behind the concern there is also pity. ‘Not at all.’ She pats my hand on her way out of the door.

‘Are you OK, beautiful?’ Jack asks after everyone – including Harriet and Hector, who respectively stayed behind to clear up and talk to Jack – have gone. I heard Mum kicking up a fuss about staying to help tidy up but Dad wouldn’t let her – he said they needed to get back to help an elderly neighbour. Poor Mum
had been so conflicted, but when Dad actually got up and went to get his keys, she, thankfully, chose the neighbour – and needing to be up early for church in the morning. I couldn’t have withstood another conversation about getting a wig. A wig was not on the agenda, and that was a choice I
had
made not based on that driver’s actions.

‘Just tired,’ I say to Jack, allowing him to assist me in easing myself down onto the bed.

‘Here, let me help,’ he says, and gently tugs off my shirt, which I’ve been struggling to remove. I’ve left it too long between painkiller doses and my muscles are starting to protest at not being properly soothed, and so movement is hard. I’d known it was time for a dose of painkillers, but I couldn’t risk leaving my hiding place in the downstairs shower room for them – not when the goodbyes would then have lasted longer than the party. Gently, Jack takes off my T-shirt. ‘Lie back,’ he says, taking my hands so he can help me lie down.

Leaning over me, his scent fills my senses as he undoes the button of my jeans and unzips me. ‘If I didn’t know you better, Jack Britcham,’ I say, drowsy with pain, ‘I’d say you were getting some kind of cheap thrill out of this.’

He smiles sadly at me as he gently takes off my jeans and then stops to look over my body. I know what he’s seeing because I looked at my body this morning, too. My skin is black, blue, purple and yellow all along my left side. The bruises radiate outwards towards the centre of my body like paint spilled onto brown paper. Those are ‘multiple contusions’. My ribcage is still taped up to support the hairline fracture of my rib. I have the scar from my spleen operation, which is slowly healing, and other smaller grazes and scratches, most of which have scabbed over.

I see him swallow the lump of emotion at the back of his throat, as he tries to stop his face from crumpling with tears. This is why I’ve mainly undressed for bed alone, to spare him this sight knowing it’ll rip him up inside.

‘Do you want your bra on or off?’ he asks, even though his
chest is starting to heave as he tries deep, slow breathing to control himself.

‘Off,’ I say. I can’t wear it for too long during the day because it digs into me and aggravates the bruising.

Tenderly he removes that too, and then has to press his lips together to stop himself letting out a sob at the bruising on my breast. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says quietly as he reaches for my pyjama bottoms.

‘Shhh,’ I whisper. The aching is spiralling slowly but surely into intense pain, and it’s hard to talk, hard to breathe. ‘It’s all right. I’m all right. It’s not your fault.’ I close my eyes and am no help at all as Jack dresses me in my stripy pyjamas.

‘Libby, Libby,’ his voice says gently while his hand strokes my face. ‘Come on, sit up, take your tablets, and then we’ll go to bed.’

‘It’s early,’ I say, allowing him to prop me up. ‘You can stay up.’

My hand feels weak and not really connected to my body as I move the two tablets in my palm to my mouth. I spill a little water as I raise the glass to my mouth and Jack has to steady me. Tablets taken – although the jerk of my head to get them down was probably not a good idea – Jack moves me to my side of the bed, where he has pulled back the covers, then lays me in place.

He covers me up, then stands in front of me as he quickly strips.

‘You’re gorgeous, you know that,’ I say as my eyes flutter open and closed like the up-and-down movements of a bird’s wings. ‘Course you know that, everyone knows that.’

The last thing I remember is feeling Jack’s arms around me as he snuggles up behind me and carefully wraps his arms around my body.

‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ he whispers in my ear before the pain and the tablets take over and move me away from Jack and from consciousness.

libby

The door to the cellar is barely open before Butch has darted past me and scampered down the stairs.

‘Oi, you!’ I shout after him as he is swallowed up by the blackness down there. ‘If you fall down in the dark and hurt yourself you’ll get no sympathy from me.’ We both know that’s not true. He’s left extra special ‘presents’ in both my and Jack’s shoes and he’s managed to simper his way out of trouble. I’d be devastated if he was hurt.

I switch on the light and suddenly I can see down into the cellar. The noise of Butch’s paws on the stone rises up the steps at me. It is pretty nice as cellars go: the floor has been relaid, and the walls damp-proofed and painted white, even the old fireplace is restored and fitted with a Victorian black iron surround and grate. The cellar actually extends underneath all of the house, but the other chambers have been bricked up and nothing done with them. It’s also the only place in the house that I’m usually too afraid to visit.

By the time I have stiffly negotiated the stairs, Butch, who has been trying to get down here for over a week, is in front of the old wooden cupboard pushed in the corner right at the back of the cellar up against the wall. His black and brown white-topped paws are almost a blur as they scratch away at the cupboard doors.
It’s because of this cupboard that I have braved the cellar, and Butch seems more desperate to get in than I am. The doors of the cupboard are a smooth, pale wood with a keyhole at its centre, holding the two doors together. It is locked, and apparently there is no key.

A huge wave of disappointment swells inside me as I remember that the conversation about this cupboard was the first time I realised that Jack not only could but would lie to me. A month after we were married, when I’d had no problems going down into the cellar, I had been down here looking around and obviously couldn’t fail to notice the large, locked cupboard so naturally asked Jack about it. He’d looked at me a little vacantly and said, ‘Oh, that old thing? Is it still there? Had forgotten about it, to be honest.’

‘What’s in it?’ I’d asked.

He’d shrugged and glanced back at the TV, seeming even more vacant than he had been a few minutes ago. ‘Just stuff, bits and bobs.’

‘Aren’t you even curious?’ I’d pressed.

‘No, not really. Don’t even know where the key is.’

Like a door slowly being opened to shine light on the other side, it dawned on me why he was being so vague. ‘Does it have Eve’s stuff in it?’ I asked gently, and he flinched like he always did when I said her name.