The Woman He Loved Before (32 page)

‘And also, don’t have a set rate. Have a vague idea of what you’ll charge, but look at the man who’s offering and price accordingly. No point doing it for fifty with a man who carries five hundred in his pocket as loose change.’ I was grateful to her for the tips. I was grateful to her for not trying harder to talk me out of it because it probably wouldn’t have taken me much to cave in and not do it.

What she’d said about not knowing how to do anything else scared me because it reminded me of how disconnected I am from the world again. I haven’t read a book in so long, and I used to love reading. Now all I do is get up, walk to work, clean, come home, worry about money and sleep. I hardly look at my beautiful dress any more; I have nothing new to remind me who I am; I do nothing
pleasurable to remind me I am more than just a machine trying to make money to pay off debts.

What if I do this thing and even more of who I am is erased away until there is nothing left?

The Person Living This Life

11
^th
April 1992

I told Elliot what I am going to do. He said nothing, although his mouth started to quiver as if he was going to start crying again. And I knew that I could not spend another night comforting him. It’s all too much as it is – where is my comfort while I am trying to fix this? Where is the person to throw their arms around me and tell me that everything would eventually be all right?

He didn’t cry, although his brown eyes, eyes that I had once been so enchanted by, did become wet.

‘I’m sorry,’ he eventually said.

Fuck off,
I said in my head. ‘I know,’ I said with my mouth.

And that was the end of that, I suppose.

Me

libby

I can hear the house phone ringing upstairs. I want to ignore it, but it could be Caleb, I’ve tried to call him a number of times to tell him he has to come and get Butch, or find someone else to look after him, because as soon as Butch is taken care of, I’m going to find somewhere else to live.

I understand now why Jack has been so keen not to tell me what happened directly after the crash: it shows that he doesn’t really love me. He has just been going through the motions. His reaction to finding out it was me in the car and not Eve was like the difference between a family member and a colleague being at death’s door – with one you’d give anything to make it all right, with the other you hope as much as you can it’ll be all right.

I place the diaries on the ground. Jack won’t be around for a little while longer: I’ll talk to Caleb and then come back.

I get to the phone just in time.

‘Yo, Sis, what’s up?’ His voice is crackly and far away because he is far away.

I have some money saved so I could possibly find somewhere to rent, or I could bite the bullet and move back in with my parents. It’s not ideal, but it’s got to be better than being in Eve’s house with Eve’s husband.

‘You need to come home,’ I say to him.

‘Why? What’s happened? Is Butch all right?’

‘Yeah, he’s fine, but I need you to come home and get him or find someone else to look after him.’

‘What do you mean?’ Suddenly the line is clear, I can hear his voice. Suddenly he is bothering to speak to me properly, probably by doing something as basic as putting the phone to his ear. The ten messages I’ve left saying to call me obviously haven’t told him that something could be wrong.

‘We can’t look after Butch any more, so you need find alternative arrangements,’ I say.

‘Hang on, Sis, what’s happened?’

‘I just need you to come and get Butch or tell me what to do with him.’

‘If it’s a real emergency and you can’t look after him any more, then you can take him back to my house. The person I’ve got house-sitting will look after him, no problems.’

‘The person you’ve got house-sitting? You mean, all along there’s been another option and you forced your dog on me?’

Silence.

‘OH MY GOD! What is wrong with you? Why have you guilt-tripped me into looking after your dog when there was someone else to do it all along?’

‘Cos you need him. Butch is feisty and good-hearted like Benji and you need someone to look after you. I know you always feel better around Benji, so Butch is the next best thing cos, Sis, you ain’t in a good place. I knew it when I walked into that hospital. And your voice on the phone told me you was sinking, so I thought he could stay with you to help sort you out.’

My brother, the most selfish man on Earth, did that for me? I cover my mouth with my hand for fear I’ll start sobbing.

‘Look, take Butch to my house if you want, but he’s good to have around. Even if he a bit feisty.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll, erm, let you now what I decide to do.’

‘All right, Sis. Hope you’re feeling better. I’ll call you soon.’

‘Yeah,’ I say as he cuts the line.

When did I stop taking care of myself
? I wonder. When did I become so immersed in Eve’s life that my own seemed so secondary and unimportant? Because it has, clearly. I’ve been scrabbling around finding out about her, trying to work out what Jack was keeping from me, but I haven’t thought about me, about my recovery, about what I need to push forwards. If I’m not well, how can I move on from Jack? If my life is so dependent upon what he is feeling, about him not talking to me, about unpicking the life of the woman he loved before me, then where am I in all of this? What will happen to me when her life is revealed? What will I have left to live for? I’m not keen on going back to work because that would mean a wig and heavy make-up for months, and having people stare while they try to work out what exactly is wrong with me.

Right now, I have nothing. I need to start rebuilding my life. That doesn’t mean finding out about Eve; it means finding out about me and where I go from here.

‘I need to get a counsellor,’ I say. I need someone to help me find out who I am now I don’t have my other life any more.

Butch’s barking makes me stop staring at the table and focus on him.

‘You think I need a counsellor, do you?’ I say to him.

He simply stares at me.

‘Right, I’d better put those diaries away and then come back and find the number of someone to talk to.’

Butch gives a satisfied bark, as he meanders back to his basket.

jack

Libby hadn’t started dinner when I came in, but she was sitting at the kitchen table, in the dark, waiting for me. Unlike usual, Butch didn’t scamper up to greet me. He stayed in his basket until I got closer to him, then he raised his head a little and let out a little whine of solidarity.

I pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down.

She was staring down at the tabletop and didn’t acknowledge me for the longest few minutes of my life. It reminded me of the minutes before the ambulance crew pronounced Eve dead. I knew what they were going to say, but I’d been holding my breath and willing them not to say it. I was doing the same with Libby, holding my breath and willing her not to say it.

‘I hope you don’t mind if I stay here a bit longer until Caleb comes back for Butch and until I find somewhere to live.’ She was trembling as she spoke.

‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know, probably to my parents’ house,’ she said quietly. ‘Paloma has said she’ll keep my job open but I’m not sure I want to go back to all that. I don’t know, it’s a big old world out there. I’ll find something.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘I’d like it if we could still be friends,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to be your friend, I want to be your husband,’ I replied.

I saw the agony of those words rip through her. ‘I know you want to, but you can’t, can you?’ She stood up. ‘Because in your head, and everywhere else it counts, you’re still married to her.’

Running has always been a way to get rid of tension, to help clear my mind, it isn’t working now. Like the night Eve told me something that blew my world apart – I ran and ran for hours that night, and I still could not get it straight in my head.

Libby leaving me is bad enough, but having to face the possibility that she is right, that in my mind and in my heart I’m still married to Eve, would mean I have been so unfair to the one person who has been nothing but wonderful to me. Libby, not Eve, helped me to become the man I am today, and in return I’ve betrayed her.

libby

Eve is curled up in a foetal position on the boxes today, and she can barely lift her head to look at me as I open one of the diaries.

I know I’m not meant to be doing this, but I can’t stop reading about her. She was faced with a hideous choice about what to do to sort out her problems when I had to stop reading last time.

I know how she feels. Finishing with Jack last night was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But staying with him, living like this, as someone who would always be second best, would have destroyed me in the end. I know what I am like, and – just like with my career as a biochemist, as with my hair – I would rather have nothing than something that was all right. I thought he loved me as well as still loving Eve but he doesn’t. And I deserve better. Everyone does.

Eve deserved better than Elliot, but she was lucky: she got Jack in the end. And, I guess from the way he feels about her, that she was the best for him.

eve

13
^th
April 1992

‘Can I buy you a drink?’

‘Yes, if you’d like.’

‘Glass of white wine for the lady, please. Beer for me.’

Quietly: ‘Are you working?’

Just as quietly: ‘Yes.’

Even quieter: ‘How much?’

‘BJ, seventy-five; hand, fifty; full, two hundred.’

‘Greek?’

‘A grand.’

‘Without?’

‘Two grand.’

‘One-fifty for full?’

‘One-seven-five.’

‘Room 214. Ten minutes.’

‘OK.’

The wine is left untouched. In the room, the clothes come off slowly, teasingly, just as they used to in the club. The act is not unpleasant: there is touching and licking but no kissing. The dressing part is quicker than the undressing – then the realisation that money wasn’t taken upfront.

Ten twenty-pound notes are handed over – twenty-five pounds as a tip – and the bathroom is used to tidy hair, brush teeth, check make-up. A wave goodbye and a promise to do it again sometime.

That was my first time. Honey’s first time. The second time was worse. It was much the same as the first time, but – like the second night as a dancer – the second time tells you that this is the path you have chosen and it is going to be very hard to get off it.

I cried in the bath earlier. None of them had been awful to me; none of them had been hideous; they all paid and gave me a tip; they were all perfectly nice afterwards; I came home with six hundred and fifty quid – but still I cried.

I cried because I did not want Honey to do those things any more than I wanted Eve to. I cried because I should have stayed at home in Leeds. I should have let Alan rape me because if I had, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I wouldn’t be letting perfectly nice men, almost all of them with wedding rings on, hurt me in ways I did not know I could be hurt, and ways I cannot describe.

E

6
^th
May 1992

Every night I sit in front of the dressing table with my make-up in front of me.

I start with cover-up stick, to hide the blemishes – the patchiness of my skin, and the spots that have become red and inflamed, as well as the dark circles under my eyes. Then I move to foundation. I use a brush not a sponge – Connie taught me that you wasted less makeup that way. I stroke it onto my skin, moving with the contours of my face, then sliding down to my neck making sure it is the same colour as my face. I go right up to and just behind my ears, to make sure that it looks natural, even though I am applying a lot. I have to apply a lot to get me through the night, and right through everything I have to
do. I then set my foundation with powder, dusting it on with another thick, many-bristled brush. And then dusting some onto my lips to prepare them for lipstick. I use a black pencil to line my eyes, then a blue shadow to cover my lids. I then go back over the lines around my eyes with the pencil, then I stroke on mascara to make my eyelashes stand out.

I outline my mouth with a browny red, then I fill my lips in with a pale, tawny-red lipstick that won’t stain a man’s face or body. I blot with a tissue, then colour in again. Finally, I unclip my washed and dried hair and let it fall in loose waves to my shoulders.

I pull on the dress – usually black, short and tight – that is laid on the bed, then step into black stilettos. I pick up my bag (with condoms, two spare pairs of knickers, pressed powder, eyeliner, hairbrush, lipstick, toothbrush, mirror and keys) and return to the mirror, where Honey is looking back at me.

‘Hi, Honey,’ I always say.

I leave the bedroom, and walk through the living room to the door. Eve’s boyfriend, Elliot, sits on the sofa, watching TV and smoking cigarettes. He can afford to now that Eve gives him money. He says something that sounds like ‘Be safe’ and Honey ignores him. Outside of work, Honey would never speak to someone like him and just because he’s Eve’s boyfriend doesn’t mean Honey has to speak to him. She closes the door and walks the distance along the dingy corridor and down the stairs to the front entrance then steps out into the night. The air is usually cooler in the evening, and she breathes it in, allowing it to sear through her, scorching and strengthening her lungs, giving her the power to go out there and do what she needs to do to earn money.