The Woman He Loved Before (25 page)

‘I wanted to buy it,’ I said, giving her a bigger hold over me, giving her a chance to act even more snotty and superior and snide.

‘It’s a designer original, costing well over four hundred pounds. Do you really have that sort of money?’ she said, not adding that she fully expected me to try to steal it. I would never steal something as incredible as my dress. I would never steal, full stop.

‘Yes,’ I said, trying to be brave.

The corners of her mouth twitched because she was going to start laughing at me. I felt the tears trickling down my throat and rushing like a fast-moving stream to my eyes. I did not want to cry in front of her. The metallic whoosh of curtain rings being pulled back filled the gap between us and we both turned to the small changing booth at the back of the shop. Out stepped a woman wearing my dress.

It felt like she was wearing my wedding dress, and she was going to marry my groom because of it. It was like she had skinned me alive and was wearing my skin. The pain was immense, and like nothing I had felt in so long. She had something that should be mine and she could afford it. She could buy it whenever she liked. While, I … I would always be on the other side of the glass, looking in at things
like this. I would always be on the wrong side, because I did not deserve to have nice things.

‘You look absolutely divine in that!’ the saleswoman said brightly, more for my benefit than hers. She wanted me to know that she knew I was scum. She left the counter and walked towards the woman in my dress, shutting me out, telling me to leave, I was not welcome here. ‘I absolutely insist you buy it.’

‘It’s a little out of my price range,’ the woman replied.

‘Don’t worry about that, we have some very reasonable discounts and payment terms for our favoured customers,’ she said loudly, because she was actually talking to me. ‘Leave a small deposit and you can pay the rest off over a month or so.’

‘I wasn’t aware you did things like that,’ the delighted wearer of my dress said.

‘As I said, we do for our most favoured customers.’

‘Oh God, should I? It is a beautiful dress, it does look lovely on …’

‘It certainly suits someone like you. Very few people can get away with wearing something this beautiful. It wouldn’t suit just anyone.’

‘Oh … it is lovely.’

No, it isn’t!
I wanted to scream at her. It is not lovely or beautiful or any of those pathetic, lowly, unworthy words you’re using. It is divine. It comes from the place where the sun gets its rays, it is made from the cloth woven from pieces of rainbow, it was sewn by angels, it is so much more than beautiful or lovely. It is perfection.

I turned away, ripping my eyes from what was happening in front of me. I could not watch her buy something that she did not have full appreciation for, not when I would love it much more. This was what it would feel like to watch the man you love, have given your life to, marry someone else. I never wanted to feel like that again.

I knew the woman who owned the shop would be smiling as she watched me leave in the mirror, feeling superior and satisfied that she has seen off scum like me. I never did anything to her, but still she took great pleasure in putting me in my place.

I walked home in a daze, feeling like I’d had the fight kicked out of me. Didn’t realise how much that dress had given me purpose.
Focus. I didn’t seriously think I’d buy it but, I suppose, the possibility that I might had kept me going. The possibility that I might one day own something pretty, something nice – like the other girls who I used to work with and who I pass all the time in the street – kept me from going completely insane. Kept me from questioning why I haven’t tried harder to get more temp work, instead going back to Habbie’s night after night, coming out smelling of the foul creatures who walk in the door, and barely being able to look myself in the mirror.

I suppose the dress has been a sign that I was capable of changing my life. Of doing better. Of being ‘normal’ again.

Going to bed now. Will phone in and say I’ve got my period. No point in getting up tomorrow.

Love,

Me

29
^th
November 1988

Hadn’t been past the shop in weeks. No point. Still hurt that someone else had the dress –
my
dress. And I was still smarting from how that stuck-up bitch treated me.

So, guess how I reacted when I finally had to go past the other day – otherwise I’d be late for work – and it was there again. The dress. My dress. Back in the window on the shiny faceless mannequin like it’d never been taken off and tried on by that woman. The shop was closed, so I couldn’t go in, but I did stop, even though I was late, and stare at it. I stared and stared, then I reached out and touched the glass, imagining I could feel its soft folds through the window, the vibrations of its divinity gently flowing through me.

This was my second chance. My chance to show that bitch, and my chance to prove to myself I could do better. I could own something perfect.

I gently took my hand away and then had to run the rest of the way to work. I knew what I had to do. I knew that I had to do anything ANYTHING I could to get the money to buy that dress. ANYTHING
.

jack

Sometimes, being in Brighton feels like being in London, surrounded by lots of people all looking different, all with their busy lives. I’ve stayed a few nights in London, I’ve lived in Oxford and in Brighton (and now I’m settled in Hove) and I’ll never grow tired of the ability to hide in plain sight. It feels even easier to do in Brighton because the best bits aren’t as spread out as they are in London.

Walking through the cobbled streets of North Laines, I feel anonymous and free, like I am Jack Britcham again. I am a man in my thirties, who has his whole life before him. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to. Nothing can hold me back. Among the crowds I am merely another obstacle in the road to step around, another being who happens to be in the same city at the same time as the people passing by. I am not important. I like not being important. I often crave being no one. In my world, with the people I know, being no one is not an option.

Set up on the corner of Gardener Street and Church Street, right before the road narrows into a claustrophobic alleyway flanked on both sides by shops, a street-seller’s stand catches my eye. He has a perforated board leaning on an orange plastic milk crate with neat rows of crystal hearts. Some are smooth and clear, others are almost brutally cut with visible facets, others still are
smooth but with roughened surfaces. They are striking in their simplicity, the way they catch the light, their myriad colours like droplets of the entire colour spectrum, dripped onto the board. They’re cheap, but incredibly beautiful in a way I rarely see.

Tucking myself in to avoid disturbing the crowds trying to get past, I stare at them, transfixed. The seller is probably my age, wearing a grubby, mustard-yellow wax jacket with a straggly, fair beard and sunken eyes. His fingers are exposed in green fingerless gloves and his nose is red as if permanently cold. ‘Make them all meself, mate,’ he says with a thick London accent, then loses interest in me and returns to rolling a cigarette. I’ve been hypnotised by these glass gems.

Libby would love one of these. At least I think she would. I have been wandering around Brighton trying to find the perfect gift. Everything I have seen that I think she would love is too expensive for her to enjoy. Other men, I’m sure, would be envious of me having a wife with modest tastes. She likes beautiful things – she knows instantly the label of something and if it is a fake or real – but she rarely indulges in said items. She cannot bring herself to spend that money – even if she doesn’t say it aloud, I can see she is thinking,
That’s nearly a month’s mortgage payment
, when confronted with buying non-essential things.
If I couldn’t pay my bills because of this, what would happen?
She always has to contextualise it to see if it is truly worth what she would have to pay for it.

When we were first married, I said to Libby I’d pay for her to go back and finish her PhD if she wanted. She’d smiled at me, her face lighting up as it creased with joy. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much for the offer,’ she said. ‘But no, that ship has sailed. I’m a beauty therapist now. I was actually saving to go back but now I don’t really want to.’

‘Because you’re scared you won’t be able to catch up?’ I asked.

She shook her head and said, thoughtfully, ‘No, because I’m a beauty therapist.’

‘Well, we could finance you opening your own salon down here in Brighton or Hove,’ I suggested.

Again, she smiled that smile of pure delight, her joy dancing in her eyes as she looked at me. ‘That’s a brilliant offer, Jack. Thank you, but no.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘I’m just not that ambitious.’

‘You’re incredibly ambitious and motivated, you have passion and drive.’

‘I think what I mean is, I don’t have the type of ambition that will make me do anything at any cost to get what I want. I couldn’t finish my PhD because I didn’t want to be beholden to the people who would finance my research. I don’t want to open a salon with your money because I don’t want to be indebted to you.’

‘I’m your husband; it’s our money.’

‘Morally, legally, maybe yes, but in here,’ she put her hand to her head, ‘and here,’ she lay the flat of her hand over her heart, ‘it’s your money. You earned it or were given it way before you met me.’

‘But that’s crazy,’ I told her.

‘Maybe, and I’m sure I’d feel differently if we had children. But right now, when it’s just you and me, I still think of that as your money. Now we’re together, anything we earn is our money.’

‘Still crazy.’

‘I’ve been poor, Jack. I’ve seen what the need for money, the desperation for it, can do to people. You have very few choices when you’re desperate for money, and so far I’ve managed to avoid being forced into making those choices.

‘And, yes, if I’m honest, there was something else I wanted to do when I went into beauty therapy, and that was to start my own line of beauty products. But it’s something to work towards, not something that should be handed to me on a plate. What’s the point of doing something if you know that you’ve got someone to rescue you if you fail? I like to work hard at something and then to reap the rewards. I take pride in what I do. What’s the point if I know my rich husband will bail me out if I mess up?’

That made me think of my complicated relationship with my father. Hector was always trying to get me to rely on him. He didn’t like that I did things without consulting him first – he liked (
needed
) to be in control. He was always giving Jeff and me money, telling us we could come to him if we had problems, never letting us stand on our own two feet – which meant our successes and our failures were nothing but reflections on him. I’m always having to temper and hide my battles to be out of my father’s control because my mother is so keen for us to be a close family. I often fear it would break her heart if she knew how much I hated him most of the time, and just why he thought so little of me. I often look at my father and see everything I hate about being a man, and then I look at my mother and remember I would never want to hurt her.

Eve was very much against my father’s attempts at control. She kept saying we shouldn’t accept financial gifts from my parents but I found it hard to say no because I knew how much it meant to my mother to be able to help Jeff and me. Eve found a way to get the point across by donating the ninety thousand pounds he gave us from the sale of one of his properties to a women’s refuge and a homeless charity. I would never have had the ability to do that but afterwards, when I told him where the money had gone, my father had stopped giving us money.

I want to buy Libby a glass heart. They are not too expensive, they are beautiful, but I am not sure if it is the sort of thing she would truly like. Eve would have loved one, I think. I’m not sure. The pair of them become mixed up in my mind sometimes, to the point where I do not know which one likes what, and which one doesn’t. They were/are both unimpressed by money. They both liked/like beautiful things. They both make my heart beat in triple time. But they are not the same. They are different in many, many ways, but at times like this I forget which is which. Who is who. The subtleties that make a person who they are, that make a woman the person I fell in love with, are sometimes so blurred I am scared to speak to the woman who I am married to.

I am scared that I will credit Libby with something that Eve said or did or liked, and she will never forgive me.

My eyes are drawn to the cloudy clear heart at the centre of the board.

My fingers close around it, unhooking it from the board and encasing it in the palm of my hand. The blood pumping through my body seems to focus on this hand and it feels as if the heart is beating in my palm. It is alive and well and beating.

Even if Eve would have loved this, I’m sure Libby will like it, too. And what else can I give her after everything she has been through except this: my imperfect heart.

eve

1
^st
December 1988

I spoke to Connie today, asked her about how to make more money so I could buy that dress. I didn’t tell her what is was for, I doubt anyone would understand why I
needed
a dress – I just told her I needed more money as soon as possible. She stopped leaning forwards to see herself more clearly in the light-bulb surrounded mirror in the dingy backroom laughably known as the dressing room as she applied make-up. Connie turned on her swivel chair to me. Connie’s the only person at work who I trust, really.