The Woman He Loved Before (34 page)

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But that doesn’t change the fact I don’t like to live my life in a state of chaos or anarchy. I like to be in control as much as possible.’

Orla Jenkins sighs. ‘The thing is, Libby,’ she says in that tone someone uses only when they’re about to tell you off, ‘I’m concerned that you seem to be intellectualizing a lot of what has happened to you. You’re not allowing yourself to feel.’

Not allowing myself to feel? I feel a lot. I’ve cried,
buckets
. ‘I’ve cried more in the past few weeks than I’ve cried my entire life,’ I say to her.

‘But you’re not able to let go and cry properly, are you? You must be so angry and sad – I’m sure anyone would be in your situation – but you don’t seem to be allowing yourself the space or permission to feel that.’

‘What good would getting angry do apart from upsetting everyone around me?’ I ask her. ‘And who would I be angry at?’

‘Who do you think you would be angry at?’

‘The idiot driving the other car,’ I say without conviction. For some reason, I can’t think about him in terms of what happened after the crash. Whenever the police call to tell me what is happening, I can’t talk to them and I ask them to speak to Jack instead. The first few times he tried to tell me he stopped talking after a few words when he realised I was staring at him with glazed-over eyes and had put my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to know; I couldn’t know, for some reason.

‘You don’t sound very sure,’ Orla Jenkins says.

‘Has it been an hour yet?’ I ask.

‘No.’

‘Oh, well … Look, I’m sorry, you’re very nice and you have fabulous skin, and I’m sure you’ve helped lots of other people, but I can’t be here. This isn’t my thing at all. I think … I think I’m just going to have to get on with it. You know? Stop being so pathetic. If I try to be more positive, focus on the things I’ve got, I think I’ll be all right.’ I stand, pull my hat further down my face and wrap my rain mac around myself again. ‘Thanks, really. You’ve been great.’

‘I’m sorry this hasn’t been what you expected,’ she says, standing too. ‘But if you change your mind, you’ll know where I am.’

‘Thanks,’ I say again. ‘I’ll get in touch if I need to.’

I won’t. We both know that I won’t.

But I know exactly what I’m going to do when I get home.

libby

When I get home, the door to the ‘Eve cupboard’ in the cellar is ajar and it is empty. It wasn’t like that yesterday. I stand staring at it, a feeling of dread creeping through me. I hope he didn’t do that for me. I hope he didn’t dispose of her belongings because of me. I’m not worth it, not to him.

If he destroys or rids himself of her belongings because he thinks it will change anything between us, he will start to hate me for ‘making’ him do it, and he will hate himself for being weak enough to go through with it.

He can’t help not loving me. No more than I can help still being in love with him.

‘It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’
Eve says, sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest and watching me with sympathy.

‘For both of us,’ I reply. ‘And yes, I am aware that I have completely lost my mind – talking to my soon-to-be ex-husband’s dead wife is probably as close to crazy as a person can get.’

eve

25
^th
May 1995

So, now I’m in Brighton.

That last conversation with Elliot was the wake-up call I needed to get out of the life I was living. The second he left the flat the next day, I packed my diaries, my dress, Aunt Mavis’s rosary, my picture of my parents and me, and the cash I had hidden in Uncle Henry’s kitbag. I took as many clothes as I could get into the bag in a short space of time, then I ran for it.

After speaking to him, realising how little he thought of me, how much he thought of the money I made from what I did, I decided that I had to put myself first. I splurged on a black cab to Victoria and with every street the driver turned down, the knot of anxiety and fear loosened because I was going to be away from him. I’d already decided to leave London. There was no point sticking around here when there was even the slightest possibility of bumping into Elliot. It’d be too painful, too awful.

Walking away from everything wasn’t as bad the second time. Leaving my books, my clothes, my underwear, my crockery, cutlery, little knick-knacks was easier this time than it had been when I left Leeds. This time I knew what was important, what money couldn’t replace, and that nothing could be as hard as walking away from my mother.

So, I am here in Brighton.

I spent the first few nights in a hostel, then I found a pretty two-bedroom flat to rent in a place called Kemptown. It’s nice here.

I’m sitting in my clean living room, with seagulls wailing in piercing tones outside as if crying for some lost love, about to leave for my third admin interview of the day.

Since that birthday I spent in Brighton, I’ve always fancied living by the seaside. And now I am.

Fingers crossed I’ll get this job and then my new life can really begin. All that other stuff will be in the past and I’ll be worthy of my dress again. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed.

Eve (Yes, it’s really me again)

21
^st
September 1995

Six months in Brighton.

And this is what I have learned: the men you meet escorting are very different to the men you meet in hotels.

A lot of them have considered what they’re going to do, I suppose: planned for it, booked a hotel room or made sure they’re alone in their home for the night so they can get a girl like me over.

Towards the end of my stint in London, I’d lowered my prices because the men just weren’t up for paying as much as they used to. I don’t know why. Dawn muttered something about there being more supply than ever so the ‘clients’ got to be picky. Good old capitalism at work there. With this agency I’ve signed up with, I get much more money than I did, even after the cut they take (thirty per cent!). And they do checks on the men to make sure they are safe and legit. No more men waiting for me with knives.

Henrietta (don’t think that’s her real name but she calls me Honey, so there you go), the boss I had the ‘interview’ with, told me to get my hair done at a posh salon, to make sure I got regular manicures and facials, and that I bought some expensive underwear because
the men she sent girls to expected class. And I had a look of class about me … well, I could have if I got myself groomed. She reminded me of Ophelia a little: the same apple-shaped face, swept up greying hair, sophisticated clothes, and posh accent. But unlike Ophelia, Henrietta’s accent dropped every so often and I was sure I could hear hints of Yorkshire in there. But I could be imagining that because I am so often knocked over by homesickness.

‘It’s all fanny at the end of the day, darling,’ she said, ‘but these men think the fannies they “visit” should be neat and groomed and smelling sweet. Totally unrealistic view of what women are all about, but what do I care? They can pay anything in the region of five hundred pounds per hour for the right girl, which makes me very happy.’

It isn’t all about fucking, I soon found out. Some of them do actually want you to escort them to places – to events and dinners, shows, and even the cinema. Some of them want to take you to dinner first, to talk to you, to ask you questions, before you go back to their place. They like to have someone good looking on their arm while they are seen out and about, or they like to pretend they’re on a date. Whatever the activity, it doesn’t bother me – I’m getting paid by the hour so the longer they want to spin it out, the more cash I go home with.

Some of them don’t want you to fuck them the first few times; they like to talk to you, they want a cuddle, they want to be held. They want you to verbally stroke their egos while you physically stroke their bodies. Some ask you to take your clothes off and to lie in front of them so they can touch you, they can try to pleasure you.

The bottom line is the talking: the men I escort almost always want to talk. And they are almost always married or attached, and keen to tell me how their wives or girlfriends just don’t want to put out any more. They don’t say it like that; they say their wives don’t want to have sex, that they’re too busy with children, or they feel they’re too old for all of that, or they don’t have as high a sex drive as he does and he’s at his wits’ end and in desperate need of that physical release.

I nod, because I can feel their pain, I gather them in my arms, I allow them to enter my body, I caress them better, I make sure they get that release they so desperately need.

Then I go home and become Eve and roll my eyes at the bullshit I have been spun. If I had not been a lap dancer, or the girlfriend of a drug addict, or worked as a prostitute in London, I might have bought all that nonsense. I might actually feel the empathy and understanding I showed them. But I have been all those things, so I know: if you’re that unhappy you leave, do not hurt another person with lies and theft. I have to stop my thought processes there because if I think it through much more, I will start to feel guilty about taking their money and I would not be able to earn my keep.

I still go through my Honey ritual, just with more expensive makeup and more pricey clothes, because I do not want Eve to cry. It is more money, they are safer working conditions but it is still selling my body, it is still slicing off pieces of something precious and giving it to the person with the right amount of cash in his hand. So it is still enough to make me cry.

No one wanted me, by the way. In the four months down here I spent applying for admin and clerical jobs, no one wanted me. Those positions were going to graduates, or even people with A levels. They all liked me, they all thought I was bright and would throw myself into the role, but to them taking on someone who was a cleaner with ten O levels instead of someone who had at least A levels and usually relevant work experience was not an option.

‘I once fucked the sales director of an international company for three hundred quid, doesn’t that count as relevant experience?’ I almost said to the last person to deliver the news over the phone. The ones who really liked me always phoned – and that was worse in some ways. Telling me I was nice but just not good enough was bad when it was written down, but when you were then forced to reply to them, to say that you understood, that was the nasty part.

And there I was again: someone who felt very small and scared and not good enough. So I went back to the way of making money that made me feel less small and less scared about being evicted. I
still felt not good enough, but this way it felt better than having nothing to eat and bailiffs at the door.

I’ve totally fallen in love with Kemptown. It’s dead easy to walk to the centre of Brighton from here, and to walk to the seafront. It’s got lots of cool little shops, lots of wonderful cafés, trendy clothes boutiques and there are loads of second-hand bookshops, which feeds my addiction.

Speaking of addiction, I spoke to my old landlord from London a while back. From Victoria, before I got on the train, I had sent him an envelope with a week’s rent in and a note saying I’d had to leave suddenly and I was sorry I hadn’t given more notice. I said he should keep my bond as the final month’s rent and that I was grateful to him for being so nice to me over the years.

I rang to double check it was all OK. Me being me, I felt guilty about leaving him in the lurch, and also I thought I would need a landlord’s reference. It turns out the people down here are much more laidback about such things if you show them you’ve got the cash.

He told me he was sorry to lose me as a tenant but had already found a new someone to move in. That was within a week of me leaving. ‘Who, Elliot?’ I asked.

‘Elliot?’ he asked, confused. ‘Is that name of idiot you live with?’ (His English had not improved.)

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘No. I throw him out day I get letter. Any man who live off woman … he no man in my eyes. I know he won’t pay rent. I no get into that sitting tenant nonsense. I have no time for it. I get some men, come over, pick him up, throw him onto street with his stinky drugs and stupid clothes.’

‘How did you know he lived off me?’ I asked.

‘Evie, my lovely little lamb, I know what you do. I have friends: they talk, they tell me things. I know what you do to pay rent. I feel bad, but rent is business. And I know that man who can let his lady do that, and take money from her, he no man.’

In his own twisted way, he was showing me he cared. Not enough
to leave my rent at what it was, or to not have suggested I fuck him to pay my rent before but few of us are perfect, after all.

It was an awful thing to realise that I didn’t really care what had happened to Elliot. I had loved him and propped him up for so long, but that had been eroded over time. Eroded and corroded until there was nothing but the vaguest, flimsiest memory left of what our relationship was like.

I’ve started to write to my mother again. I can tell her about Brighton, and what it’s like to live by the sea. I can tell her about the wonderful architecture, the salty air, the sound of the pebbles moving together under foot, the unique calls of the seagulls telling each other their latest adventures in high-pitched tones.

Still no reply, but that’s not going to stop me writing.