The Woman Before Me (14 page)

I wiped my hands dry and skipped down the stairs. I opened the door smiling, wanting Annie to see men’s shoes by the door, hear your voice calling. But her face was dark as thunder. For a woman in her sixties with a wide girth, she was formidable. She bared her false teeth at me.

“Rose. What the bleeding hell is going on?”

My smile was slapped away by Annie’s tone. I’d never heard her so angry before.

“Young lady, you are coming with me tonight.”

I tried to protest, but Annie reached her fat arm passed me and plucked my coat from its peg. “Now. We can’t be late.”

“Wait a minute,” I reluctantly pulled the coat on and bounded up the stairs away from her. You were lying on the sofa drinking a beer. “Jason?”

You didn’t look up from the screen.

“Do you mind if I go out for a few hours?”

A weary smile appeared. “Course not, pet. You go.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Take your time.” You reached for your mobile phone and started to scroll through your messages. I bent to kiss your cheek, and then trailed back downstairs to Annie. I cursed her for stealing time I wanted to give to you.

The front door was open and she was stood in the cold air. She held her arm for me to link and we walked quickly to the séance at the church hall.

“She’s glad to see you here,” Maureen said.

I knew who ‘she’ meant. I’d been coming here for so many years that Rita needed no introduction. And the regulars, women who remembered my aunt, turned and smiled at me. “She’s been waiting. You haven’t been for a while.”

Annie glared at me and I blushed. “I’ve been busy.”

Maureen nodded. “Rita says she knows. You’ve met someone.”

“Yes.”

“Rita says he’s very handsome, but his hair is like a girl’s.”

I laughed – that was Rita all over. She liked men like prizefighters, bulging muscles and shorn scalps.

“Your mum’s here too, Rose.”

The hairs on my arm bristled. Mum didn’t come as often as Rita, and when she did she usually stayed silent. “What does she say?”

“It’s about him. The man.”

“Yes?”

“She doesn’t like him, Rose. She says he doesn’t cherish you like he should.”

I hated to hear the truth, pushed it away. “We’ve only known each other a few weeks.”

“Your mum says he loves someone else.”

“He’s just got divorced. He hasn’t got over it, yet.”

Suddenly, Maureen came close, fear in her eyes. “Your mum says it’s dangerous. You should stop: walk away while you still can. She wants to protect you from pain.”

I felt Annie’s papery hand caress mine. Maureen’s eyes were still on me. Their intensity was suffocating.

“How can I make him stay?”

Maureen was silent. The whites of her eyes became crescent moons. When the irises returned they fixed on me, and I thought I saw my mother. “There will be a child.”

My heart leapt. “Our child. Jason’s and mine?”

“His child. It will bind you forever, but pain will follow.”

What did she mean? The pain of childbirth?

“Your mum says you should leave him.”

I pulled my hand from Annie’s grip. “I can’t do that.”

Maureen was so close I could smell her breath, spicy with rum. “Leave him now, while you still can. Once the child is born it will entwine you together and you will never be free.”

She was so close, her eyes boring into me, that I couldn’t bear it.

“Okay,” I said, just wanting her to leave me alone, “okay.”

Maureen stared at me for a long time, and then she smiled. “Your mum has gone now, Rose. There’s someone else with me. Is there anyone here with a cat in the spirit world called Ginger?”

She moved on to someone else and the spell was broken. The only person still looking at my burning face was Annie.

“Do you see why I made you come?” she whispered, her fat thigh pressed to mine. “Every week it’s been the same. And I said to Maureen that you needed to know, duckie.”

“I want to go home. I won’t stay for tea and biscuits.”

Annie hugged me tight, “Go on, duck. You do what your mum said. Remember; she knows best. You hurry along now.”

I did hurry. I wanted to see you so badly I tripped on the pavement, rushing down the street. But I would never do what Mum asked. However much you loved Emma, I couldn’t ask you to go. I had promised never to leave you. I loved you and I would make you love me. I would bind you to me forever, not through marriage – Emma had proved how weak that tie was – but with blood. Flesh and blood.

Mum had given me the answer to my problem. If we had a child, you would stay with me. I would be safe.

I turned the key in the lock, my hand trembling, and called out your name.

But the flat was in darkness. You had gone.

21

I’d been in bed for two hours when I heard the key in the door. I kept my eyes closed, lay still, listening to the sound of the bedroom door over the carpet, the rustle of clothes being dropped. You got under the covers, keeping to the edge of the mattress. I moved against you, an arm over your waist, burying my face into your hair. I rolled you on to your back, kissing, touching.

“Where have you been?”

“Hmm?”

You pretended to be asleep, but your breathing was too shallow. The delicate scent of green apples was on your skin. You didn’t respond when I touched you and your penis was wet, already spent. I shook your shoulder.

“Let me sleep, pet.”

“Tell me, Jason!”

I pulled you onto your back and you stared up at me. “For pity’s sake Rose, I’m tired.”

“And why are you tired? Where have you been?”

You opened your sad eyes, “don’t Rose… you know where… with Emma.”

“That slut… that whore…” and I remembered Mum saying those same words to my father.

“She doesn’t want me, Rose” you said, voice wavering. You closed your eyes and tears tricked down your cheeks.

“Oh God, please don’t leave me, please…” I started crying and shaking and stuttering. “Jason, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“After she’d used me she asked me to leave.”

And then you started to cry, rolled onto your side, clinging to me like a child. You were still depressed, still so new to pain, and Emma had hurt you again. You let me hold you, comfort you.

I did the only thing I could: I reclaimed you, sucking in the pain. I stroked and caressed your shaking body, burying my agony as I pulled you into me. An animal marking her territory, wiping out the other female’s claim. I made you make love to me.

When I arrived at work the next day my anger was like a tumour full of poison ready to seep into my blood. If I tried to speak, bile rose in my mouth. I banged and crashed around the kitchen. Finally, when Chef was on his break, I took a steel ladle to the towers of fine bone china, delicate plates with blue detailing around their edges, piled high ready for service and lashed out. The crash of the falling tower, the shattering of broken china, was a perfect release. Standing in a ground zero of devastation, tears dripping but anger spent.

Chef ran in, began to shout and then saw my stricken face. “Don’t cry, love,” he said, “accidents happen.”

That night, when you cried in my arms still scented with Emma’s perfume, some kind of sorcery must have taken place because that was when I conceived. I felt something happen inside and I knew it was the baby Mum had told me about.

You never did say that you loved me, but there is something stronger than love. Need. You needed me. I had rescued you, salvaged you from the wreckage of your broken heart.

I want you to understand, Jason. To see how the seeds were being sown for what came later. Given a choice, I wouldn’t tell this story in words. I’d show you pictures to remind you – us throwing stones on the beach, watching TV in the dark, that night when you sobbed in my arms. I’d silently show you these pictures, and you’d understand.

Words aren’t easy, they can be twisted. The truth is that I loved you. I didn’t expect you to love me back. All you needed to be was faithful.

22

Cate drove past the flats on Coronation Road and parked further down the cul-de-sac. She didn’t want to be seen gathering her paperwork and applying lip-balm and mascara, which she had forgotten in the rush for work that morning. Amelia’s ankle was now strapped up and she was on four-hourly doses of painkillers, so the night before she had slept with Cate, whimpering even in her dreams. Watching her daughter she was smothered with guilt. Not just because she hadn’t been there when Amelia had fallen, but also because Tim had left them.

Cate had dropped Amelia at Julie’s along with a large bottle of medicine and promises that she wouldn’t be late this evening. To Julie she had been polite but cool, still unable to lose the feeling that if Julie had taken better care of Amelia the accident wouldn’t have happened.

She didn’t want to be outside the flat on Coronation Road, she wanted to be at home with Amelia, both of them snuggled on the sofa and catching up on sleep. She studied her bruised eyes in the rear view mirror. She looked as bad as she felt, and pulled her fingers through her hair in a futile attempt to tidy herself up.

She hated home visits. It was all about territory and the visitor was at a disadvantage. The only time in her working life that she’d been assaulted was when she visited a prisoner’s father, to check the home was suitable for his son’s release. From the second she walked in the father had been wound up and aggressive, and when she had tried to make a swift exit he shot from the chair and had her pinned to the wall. The stocky man had his fist in her face when her adrenalin kicked in. She pushed free and ran for the front door just as his knuckle connected with the brickwork. Afterwards she had pulled her car in a lay-by, and briefly but fiercely cried her eyes out. Then she had driven back to the office.

Nothing like that will happen today
, she reassured herself. She’d probably just find a lonely husband desperate to have his wife back at home.

Coronation Road was a crescent of seventies housing in the town centre, part of which had been converted into flats for rent. Lots of students lived in the area, and the unkempt gardens were testimony to this. Flat 38b was accessed from a side entrance and as Cate approached she saw a man’s face dart back from the upstairs window. He had been looking out for her, but still she rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by a tall man, over six foot, and slim, probably in his mid thirties. Good looking, he had high cheekbones, framed by a thick fringe of golden-red hair that partly obscured his eyes. Not the kind of man she’d pictured with dour Rose.

“Mr Wilks? I’m Cate Austin, from probation.”

He took a second to look her up and down then opened the door just wide enough for her to enter. The hallway was cramped and junk mail littered the carpet.

“Don’t mind the mess.” He looked down, as if he’d only just seen it and it had nothing to do with him. Like he was showing her into someone else’s home.

He led her up the stairs slowly, reluctantly maybe.

In the upstairs hallway a denim jacket was slung over a chair, a phone poised on a stack of telephone directories, plastic bags stuffed down the back of the radiator. “And it’s Clark, not Wilks,” he threw over his shoulder, “Rose and I aren’t married.”

Cate realised that Rose hadn’t told her this.

He led the way to the small front room, which would once have been a bedroom but now served as a lounge with a beige chenille three-seater sofa with fringed cushions and a stiff armchair. From the TV in the corner came the lively chatter of a daytime soap. The room was furnished with fifties furniture and there were piles of oddments and paperwork on every surface.

Jason stood awkwardly, as if he’d entered a conversation he wasn’t part of. “You want a drink?”

“Please.” Normally on home visits she refused hospitality, but this time she accepted. It would give her a bit of breathing space, time to take a measure of the place.

She sat on the sofa, which dipped under her weight so she could feel the springs beneath.

A few photos and cards were propped on the windowsill, others had fallen over and lay on the carpet. The TV chattered away as she took in the mess of CDs scattered on the carpet, stacks of local newspapers, and empty pizza box. The signs of a man living alone who hasn’t quite got the hang of looking after himself. Where the coffee table wasn’t covered it was marked with rings and in its centre was an opened can of larger, an ashtray full of dog-ends, and a mobile phone. Next to her on the sofa was a box of tissues and a pile of unopened brown envelopes, probably bills.

Jason Clark was gone for what seemed ages, but the kitchen was only a thin wall away. She could hear a cupboard door and a fridge being opened and closed. When he returned, he took up position on the furthest point of the sofa, placing a mug on the table. He hadn’t made a drink for himself but took a cigarette from a packet of Silk Cut and lit it.

He propped his elbows on his knees, his chest rising and falling rapidly, dragging on his smoke.

“As I said in my letter, I’ll be writing your wife’s – sorry, partner’s – parole report.”

“Yeah. She said.”

“I’ve met with Rose twice so far, and those conversations will provide the bulk of the information for the report. But I also want to include your opinions in it.”

“What for?”

Cate answered carefully. “Sometimes partners have mixed feelings about release. Rose has been in prison a long time. Having her back would mean an adjustment for both of you.”

He bit the edge of a fingernail; then, catching himself, stopped. “I’ve got used to it, I suppose.”

“But Rose being in prison must have turned your life upside down?”

“I suppose I’d already found out that life is shit, and her being in prison was just another thing to get used to.”

“Not easy though,” Cate suggested.

“I visit every month, and send her cards and that. Do my bit.” He sounded like he was justifying himself.

Cate sipped her coffee. It was very strong and the smell of the cigarette made her head woozy.