The Woman He Loved Before (46 page)

‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry you’ve been through all that. I don’t know how you survived.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.’

‘It’s not an easy thing to talk about.’ He got up. ‘I’ll be honest: I’m struggling, but I don’t want to lose you. I need some time by myself right now. I’ll sleep in the spare room. But only for the rest of tonight. Tomorrow, if it’s what you want, we can go back to normal, OK?’

I nodded.

‘And we won’t talk about it again.’

‘If you think you can do that.’

‘I’d really like us to try, if you would?’

‘Yes, I’d like that very much.’

‘Goodnight, Eve.’

‘Night.’

*

That was a week ago. And he was as good as his word. The next day, we went back to normal. It is normal. But not the same. Can it ever be the same? Ever?

13
^th
June 2000

Yesterday at college a woman called Michelle was talking about her relationship with her ex-husband.

I can’t even remember what got her going on the subject, but she’s really loud and talkative, always chatting about really personal stuff that most of us don’t talk to our best friends about. I was only half listening but then she said that they’d split up a long time before they actually physically separated, which got my attention.

‘We didn’t start arguing or anything, it was just over for such a long time before I had the guts to go.’

‘Why, what happened?’ someone asked. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want her to think I was that interested. Because if there’s one thing Michelle likes more than talking about herself, it’s getting other people to talk about themselves – personal stuff she’ll keep asking you about until you give in and tell her to get her off your back. I try to keep under her radar, so I was dead glad when someone else asked the question.

‘I don’t know for sure,’ Michelle said, ‘but I think it was after I was sexually harassed by someone I used to work with. It was all sorted out, at work, I mean, and the guy was actually sacked because it wasn’t only me he’d been doing it to, but after that, I don’t know, he kind of withdrew from me. He was supportive and made all the right noises at the time but, afterwards, it was as if a barrier of Clingfilm came over him and we were never really close again.

‘He’d hug me, kiss me, give me special little pats on the bum, we’d watch telly all snuggled up, we had sex, but all of it was like he wasn’t completely there for it. You know, on paper he was the same loving, caring man I’d married, but in reality it felt like it was his body doing it; his mind and heart never really engaged.

‘It’s hard to explain if you’ve not been in a situation like it, but it kind of kills you slowly but surely. What’s that saying about death by a thousand cuts? That was so it.’ I sat listening, knowing that I’m in that situation with Jack.

‘What do you think caused it?’ someone asked.

‘The sexual harassment stuff, I think,’ she said. ‘He was on my side, but I guess a little needle of doubt stuck in his head. He couldn’t be quite sure that I hadn’t encouraged this man, flirted or whatever – basically brought it on myself. I reckon in his head it was sort of cheating. He thought I’d cheated on him, but not completely, so he could still be with me, but I suppose the image of me and this other man wouldn’t go away. It drove a huge wedge between us.

‘I thought I was going crazy, for a long, long time. I thought it was me and it wasn’t until I asked him what had changed and he kind of shrugged and said he didn’t know, but something had. I suggested counselling, but he wasn’t up for that. Most men aren’t. Don’t think he wanted to admit to himself or me or a stranger that he blamed me. So we split.’

I listened to her and knew that I wasn’t going crazy. Jack has been lovely since that night. Asking me how I am, asking if I want to talk about my mum, making me cups of tea, cuddling me, kissing me, telling me he loves me. But it’s all done robot-like. As though he is acting on the memory of what it is like to do those things rather than actually doing them because he feels them; he’s been pretending – with the biggest pretender of all. I thought it was me, I thought I was the one being overcautious, imagining things, seeing a withdrawal in him that wasn’t there. But it wasn’t me. He had done it.

And how can I blame him? I’ve lived my life and I still can’t handle it, how is he expected to? Sex was so important to him. He’d been waiting for the perfect woman and that woman, the one who he’d finally had sex with, was someone who sold sex. She was a
whore.
I hate that word, it is so cruel, so dirty, so demeaning. I feel subhuman whenever I hear it – even if the person using it is talking about someone else, even if I’m using it about myself.

It still makes me feel like a fourth-class citizen. When a man would
whisper it in my ear, would tell me to say I was a dirty little whore and I liked what he was doing to me, it used to kill me a little inside; it used to remind me that no matter how many times I showered, how much money I made, how I managed to get out of this business, I would always be subhuman and dirty; no one would ever respect me because I was a whore. I was someone who cheapened themselves, and cheapened sex by doing what I did. And here I was with a man who thought a lot of sex, who had taken his time and considered who he would take that step with.

The knowledge of what I had done must be killing him. He has been acting so normally, when he is probably disgusted by what I am and what I have done.

Again, is that what you do for someone you love? You put aside your feelings and do what you think is best for them?

I hope so, because I do love Jack. Which is why I’ve done this. I’ve left college early today and I’ve packed up my things. I was meant to be writing him a note, but I ended up writing in here instead – trying to organise my thoughts. I don’t know what to say. Unlike Elliot and Caesar, Jack doesn’t deserve to have me simply disappear. But whatever I write will sound as if I am blaming him, and it is not his fault. It is mine for not living a better life; for becoming a whore.

I didn’t think doing what I did could rob me of anything else, once I left Caesar, but now it’s robbed me of the chance of a normal life.

Time is ticking on. Maybe I should just go and then send Jack a note later. He’ll probably be relieved that the pretence is over and that he can go out and find himself a decent girl.

Because decent is the last thing that I am.

Me

16
^th
June 2000

Leaving Jack didn’t exactly turn out how I planned. I’d actually taken more clothes as well as everything that I usually took with me when I
moved on, but I got to the bottom of the stairs to find him waiting for me.

He’d guessed that I was going to leave. GUESSED! Can you believe it? He obviously knows me better than I know myself because it wasn’t until that morning that I’d decided what I was going to do.

‘Please don’t leave,’ he said, quietly, staring at Uncle Henry’s kitbag with his eyes scrunched up as if he was in pain and could hardly see, when it was because he was holding back tears through sheer force of will.

‘I’m trying, I’m trying so hard to put it out of my head. And I know it was before we … but it was also during the first time. And my father tried to make me go with a prostitute my first time … I …’ He was shaking from trying so hard not to cry. ‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t and then there was you. I didn’t know you but it felt so right so I did … And then … I can’t get the image of you with other men out of my head. I know it’s not fair on you, this is my problem, but please don’t leave. Give me some time. I just need some time. I’ll try harder, I promise.’

‘I can’t let you do that,’ I told him. ‘Jack, when you love someone like I love you, them being hurt is far worse than any pain you could possibly suffer. What I’ve done to you … I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t know—’

In three strides, he’d crossed the distance between us, and without hesitating he put his arms around me, then kissed me. I took a moment or two to respond, to drop my stuff and to kiss him back. I probably shouldn’t have. I probably should have stuck to the plan to leave, but it felt so good to do it.

It felt even better to make love right there, on the floor of the hallway. To tune out every doubt, everything in the world, and to strip away the words that weren’t enough to explain how I felt about him.

Afterwards, everything felt different, a little better, a little closer. I knew I wouldn’t be leaving, and I was hoping against hope that somehow, with me having a break from the Pill, we had made a baby.

Eve

Late August 2000 (another update)

The phone calls are driving me insane.

They stop for a while, then just as I’ve started to relax, started to forget all about them, they’ll start again. He knows how and when to get to me. But then I know how to get to him, too.

Earlier this month, one of the calls wasn’t silent. It was a voice – not his voice, but a male voice – telling me if I left I would get ninety thousand pounds. Basically, the payment from those months back in ’96. I didn’t even consider it for a second, and hung up.

That was the first and last of the calls that someone spoke to me.

Then, two weeks later, Jack and I were sent a cheque by his father for that exact amount. I felt nauseous when Jack showed it to me, knowing what that money represented, what it meant. Hector was trying to infect my relationship with the things that had happened in the past. Jack didn’t know what to do: he’s conflicted about taking money from his father, because of the control his father likes to have, but Jack knows giving him and his brother money is one of his mother’s ways of maintaining a relationship between them all.

I KNOW YOU’LL USE THIS WISELY, his father had written.

So, I told Jack we should give the money to a women’s refuge (the one that I went to for help) and a homeless charity. Jack was more than willing. Wish I’d been there when Hector found out.

The phone calls started again the very next day. Probably my own fault for antagonising him, but I hate feeling so weak and defenceless.

No baby, and am back on the Pill.

Just sighed then. It’s painful sometimes how much I want a baby. I want a girl and I want to call her Iris after my mum. That’ll help. That’ll help with the huge pit of unhappiness that still lives inside me every time I think about Mum and the time we lost.

I think that’s partly why I want a baby, as well. I want someone else to love. But I don’t want to rush Jack. Only just got things back to normal, don’t want to rock the boat.

Me

21
^st
October 2001

One of my favourite people of recent times is Grace Clementis.

She’s one of Jack’s oldest and closest friends along with her husband, Rupert, and she has been so nice since I met her. She’s one of those rich girls who has lots of designer labels and seems to have had everything handed to her on a silver platter, but she’s incredibly warm and friendly too. I thought, when I first met her at a dinner Jack arranged for the four of us, that she was going to be a problem. Snide and condescending, but she was all smiles and hugs when we arrived at our table and she started to talk to me like she’d known me for years. As she teasingly questioned me about how Jack and I met, and what I thought of the house, and why I’d disappeared from his life for so long, I got the impression that she wouldn’t be doing it if she didn’t want us to be together. By acting as though we were old friends and any subject was ‘fair game’ she was telling me that I was part of their inner circle; they’d keep in-jokes to a minimum because I was now one of them.

‘Do you know the amount of phone calls I fielded from Jack asking me why I thought you’d just disappeared?’ she’d said.

‘Grace …’ Jack had warned.

‘What?’ she’d replied, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? My favourite was that you were on an undercover mission and shouldn’t have got involved with him.’ I’d grinned and she’d said, ‘Oh, yes, he really said that.’

At the end of the dinner, she gave me a hug holding me close like an old friend, and said to me, ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ as if she’d known me before, ‘I hope you’re here to stay.’

Tonight, she was a lifesaver because Jack was in one of the foulest moods I’ve ever experienced. He was fine as we got ready to meet them, and looked dashing in his navy blue suit with waistcoat and red tie, while I wore a simple, matching red dress. That wasn’t intentional, it was just what we both came up with while we were getting dressed.

We laughed and joked as always on the way to the restaurant, and
things were fine until the main course. After the main course was placed on the table, his demeanour changed, his face – usually so open and relaxed – closed in and he seemed to be silently grinding his teeth as he stared down at his plate. Roast lamb was a favourite of his and it didn’t seem too well done or too rare, while his potatoes and vegetables all looked delicious. The wine was fine, but he wasn’t drinking because he was driving. I didn’t understand the change in him. I reached out, put a hand on his leg to ask if he was OK, and he unsubtly shifted himself away from me. The message was clear: don’t touch me.