The Woman He Loved Before (20 page)

I wish you well, whoever you are.

Love,

Eve

7
^th
December 1987

My name is Eve Quennox. I am sixteen.

I used to live in Headingley, which is in Leeds, with my mum, but now I live in London. It’s a long story about how I came to London, but I’m here now and I’m going to make the most of it.

My mum used to be my best friend. She’s not any more. And I don’t call her ‘Mum’ any more. We fell out two weeks ago and after that I couldn’t think of her as ‘Mum’, only the person who gave birth to me, my mother. But, before that, she really was my best friend.

My dad died of a heart attack when I was five years old. I still remember him a little bit. I remember that he used to laugh a lot and my mother used to laugh a lot when he was here.

I used to live next door to my Uncle Henry and my Aunt Mavis. They weren’t my real aunt and uncle, but I called them that because they had known me for ages and ages, and they knew my dad. Earlier this year they both died. Uncle Henry died of a heart attack, too, and then a week later Aunt Mavis died. I heard my mother ask the doctor if Aunt Mavis had died of a broken heart and he said yes. I was really sad when they died and then things just got worse and worse at home, mainly because of my mother’s new boyfriend, so I had to leave.

I didn’t take much with me. I took the green bag Uncle Henry had given me when I was nine. He had been in the army, it was one of his prized possessions, and he had given me it. I took a few of my clothes, but not many. I took my red-bead rosary that Aunt Mavis had given me, I took my post office savings book, and from one of the photo albums in the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe I took a small picture of my dad, my mother and me. It was my favourite picture of the three of us. We are standing outside our house, I’m about two-years-old, I have on a blue cord coat with fur around the hood, blue tights and black, shiny shoes. I’ve got a white hat on my head and white mittens on my hands. I’m holding my mother’s hand. She’s wearing a long black winter coat and a furry black and white leopard-print hat with a black peak. I’m also holding onto my dad’s hand. He’s dressed in a suit and has a long black coat on, too. We’re all smiling for the camera but, if you look closely, you can see that my parents are looking at each other from the corners of their eyes, grinning at each other. They’re in love. That’s what love is about. I’ve always believed that that’s what love is about. Not what my mother had with her new boyfriend.

I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment. I had one, he was called Peter and I really, really, really loved him. We even made love. I liked all his family and I could go to his house to get away from my mother’s new boyfriend, but then Peter’s dad lost his job and the only one he could find was in Canada. We both cried and cried when he had to leave. My mother came with me on the bus to the airport and slept on the floor of my bedroom that night because I was so upset. Peter and I wrote for a while, but it wasn’t the same and the letters took so long to arrive that in the end we just stopped. I still love him, though. I think I always will.

I took Peter’s letters with me when I came to London but I burned them the first chance I got because I didn’t want anyone else to read them. That’s why I have to be so careful with this diary. I don’t want anyone to find it.

I left everything else behind because I had to leave quickly two weeks ago. I told my mother everything, all the stuff I’d been keeping secret for two years and I thought she believed me. I thought she was
going to make her boyfriend leave. But she didn’t. He was sitting there at the breakfast table the next morning, so I just packed up and left. I saw my mother a couple of times, but she wouldn’t make him leave, so I realised I had to get as far away as possible.

So, anyway, here I am in London and starting this diary. One of my old teachers told us once that if we wanted to be a writer when we grew up we should start by keeping a diary. She said we should practise writing every day and that we should write down conversations with the speech marks, like they have in books. That would give us an idea of how people talk.

I don’t know if I want to be a writer. I like to read but I don’t know if I could ever write a book. I thought starting a diary might be good for me to get my thoughts down when I don’t have anyone to talk to, and to record what happens next in my life.

I was quite excited as I got the bus to London. I’d spoken to Dawn who I’d been friends with in fifth form in school until her family moved down here. She has her own flat and has said I can sleep on the sofa until I get a job and my own little place.

It’s dead nice here. I’m living in somewhere called Kentish Town, which is really near a massive park called Regent’s Park. Dawn works most nights in a club in town, so she’s out a lot and I’ve been signing on at temp agencies all around London. I haven’t had much luck since I don’t have any qualifications beyond O Levels and I’m not that good at typing. I’m too young to work behind a bar and I don’t have any experience of waitressing. Some of the agencies are nice about possible cleaning jobs, but no one’s really that keen on employing me because I’m so young. They think I’m going to leave when school starts again even though I’ve said I’m not going back to school. I’d love to go back, but to do that I’d have to move back home – there’s no way I could get my own place and not work. Everything is so expensive down here!

I’ve asked Dawn to ask if there are any cleaning shifts going at her place but she’s always forgetting. She comes in dead late and sleeps most of the day. She always looks wrung out, even after she’s been asleep until the afternoon.

I try to help out as much as possible – I clean up and make food,
which I buy. She doesn’t like to eat much because she says in the bar where she works it’s all about looking good to make sure you get the best tips.

I’d be lonely if I wasn’t so excited about seeing London. I get the bus right into the centre sometimes and then just walk about, looking at places, marvelling at how BIG everything is. It’s so full of people and the buildings are old and gorgeous. I expected everything to feel dirty but it doesn’t. The roads and the constant traffic feel like the blood in your veins; the people on the pavements are like a secondary circulation system – the lymph system. I remember reading about the lymph system in a book I got out from the library – it’s much slower, much closer to the skin than your normal circulation system but just as important. I love being able to launch myself into the stream, the circulation, and to move along with and be moved along by it. I love feeling a part of it and then, when it gets too much, when I want to stop moving, I can just step out, sit in a park, sit in a square, sit at a bus stop until I’m ready to join it all again.

I need to find a job soon, though. I’m going through my savings really quickly. I give Dawn some cash towards the bills and stuff, and she says she’s fine, she doesn’t need it, but I feel bad. I like to pay my way in the world, that’s something my mother taught me. She made me pay for all my trips to the cinema with Peter so he wouldn’t ever think I owed him anything. So even though Dawn doesn’t want my money, I give it to her all the same. It’s only fair.

So, that’s me up to date. I’m in London, ‘the big smoke’ people call it. I like it here. I think I’m going to stay, as long as I can get a job. Fingers crossed.

Love,

Eve

PS Sent my mother a postcard saying that I was OK and in London. I didn’t tell her where, but I didn’t want her to worry. I almost wrote that if she ever got rid of her boyfriend I’d come home in an instant, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to hurt her any more. And I wasn’t sure if
that was true. I’m not sure I could ever leave London now, if I’m honest.

12
^th
February 1988

I’ve got a job!

It’s all happened so quickly, I can’t quite believe it. I was sitting in Dawn’s flat getting ready to go out for a walk when the phone rang and it was a woman from one of the smaller agencies I’d been to. She was older than my mother and seemed really nice and concerned about me when I went to see her.

She’s dead posh and said on the phone, ‘Eve, darling, I’ve got a client who is an old friend who is in desperate need of someone to do some filing and photocopying at her little business in King’s Cross. I said I had just the person. Do I? Are you free right now?’

‘Me?’ I said to her, wondering if she was talking to me.

‘Yes, darling, who else would I be talking to on the phone called Eve?

You’re not on drugs, are you? I can’t abide people who take drugs.’

‘No, I’m not on drugs.’

‘Well, darling, grab a pen and write down the name and address of the company, then get yourself over there straight away. And, darling, make sure you wear a nice suit. Ophelia, that’s the name of your contact, but you must call her Mrs Whitston, can’t abide sloppiness. If you do well today, there’s every chance I can persuade her to keep you on.’

I didn’t have a suit, and I didn’t have time to buy one, so I had to borrow one from Dawn, who was still in bed in the bedroom. I didn’t want to wake her up, but I had to go to this job interview even if I only had the slightest chance of getting it.

After taking down the address, I told her I’d be there and that I wouldn’t let her down, then hung up. I knew Dawn would understand, so I crept to her bedroom door and opened it a crack.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was so strong and overpowering – it smelt like booze, I think, and something else. As if
something had been burning. I didn’t have time to work out what, I just focused on the wardrobe at the back of the room. Her bedroom floor was littered with clothes, damp-looking towels – she always
always
had a bath when she got in – as well as books, magazines and upturned shoes. She was like a face-down naked starfish in her bed with her arms spread wide and her face smooshed into the pillow, her long brown hair obscuring most of her face. I crept across the room, avoiding as much of the stuff on the floor as I could. In the wardrobe, I found more clothes – she probably wouldn’t have been able to fit all the clothes she owned in it – but a lot of the stuff hanging up was bikinis or posh spangly underwear. I stared at them for ages, wondering why she would hang them up and leave most of her other clothes lying on the floor.

But I didn’t have time to wonder for too long. I spotted a black skirt suit and a white shirt and unhooked them from the rail, then carefully made my way out again.

I left her a note in case she woke up before I got in, and then I left.

The job was working in a small accountancy firm not too far from Dawn’s flat. I did everything they asked – photocopying, making tea, putting invoices in envelopes, going to the post office – and at the end of the day they said I could come back again in the morning. Mrs Nixdon, the woman from the agency, was so happy with me and said that they were very hard people to please, so if they wanted me back I must have done something very right. My official job title is Office and Admin Assistant, and I actually love it. I only have one person above me – the office manager called Maggie – and she’s really nice and easygoing. She said to me that if I worked hard, I might be able to get a day release to go back to college and take my A Levels, especially if I think I might want to become an accountant.

So, I’ve been working there for over two months – Dawn said I could have all her suits as she wasn’t ever going to use them – and, now I’ve got a job, I can start looking for a place of my own. All the walking I’ve been doing has been really helpful because now I know little pockets of London really well and can take my time looking for somewhere to live.

Dawn’s been fantastic. She’s seemed more tired than usual recently and stays in bed later and later, but she keeps saying how pleased she is for me. ‘I’m so glad one of us managed to get a happy ending,’ she keeps saying, then she’ll collapse into fits of laughter. But I don’t think she’s being mean; I really think she means it.

So, that’s me. A proper job and everything.

I wrote to my mother again, told her about my new job and that I was going to be looking for somewhere to live, but I’d still be at Dawn’s for a while. I sent her card and a Marks & Spencer gift voucher for Christmas and got nothing in return. Not even a card. She didn’t reply to the letter about the job, just like she hasn’t replied to any of my other letters and postcards. I was wondering for a while if she was getting them or if her boyfriend was throwing them away. But I’ve written to Rhian from school as well and she said that when she ran into my mother, she had been raving to Rhian about the great time I was having in London. She can talk to other people about me but not to me. Sad, huh?

Never mind. Maybe she’ll call or write when I get my own place. She could even come and visit if she came on her own. I don’t think I could go back there again. This is my home now. I really am happy here.

Love,

Eve

31
^st
March 1988

Just got in from a night out with the people from work.

It’s so nice to work with people and to earn money. I sometimes forget that I’m only sixteen because they’re all so nice to me and they treat me like I’m one of them. We went out for a meal in Chinatown, and Dominic, one of the partners, was dead nice and sat next to me and told me what everything was on the menu. It was so tasty. I’ve never had proper sweet and sour pork before.