The Woman He Loved Before (41 page)

Also, I sometimes felt that the scars I had on the inside were visible on the outside so I had to hide myself away, to stop people staring, to stop people wondering, to stop feeling like a freak of nature.

No one cared about my scars – and they wouldn’t even if they were on the outside – because people are too wrapped up in their own lives, their own loves, their traumas. You, especially if you are stranger, are too insignificant for them to notice. I know this, but I still hang my head, avoid the eyes of others in case their looks, however fleeting, exposes my scars and imperfections to the world.

‘Just Eve as I live and breathe,’ he said when I settled the cup on the table.

My eyes flew up to find his and our gazes collided.

‘That rhymed,’ he said. ‘Did you notice that?’

I couldn’t help but smile at him, and he grinned back at me.

‘Jack,’ I said. And I heard in my voice that I still had feelings for him, and I heard, too, that it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t the same, I suppose. Like I grew out of reading romance books, I’d grown out of being a fool in love.

‘You said my name,’ he replied, his voice was different too, he’d grown out of being that fool as well. ‘You never said it after that first time we met.’

‘That’s because I always thought of you as Jack Britcham, not simply Jack, for some reason, and I didn’t imagine for one minute you’d understand why I did it.’

‘Why did you do it?’ he asked, and I knew immediately what he meant.

I shrugged and shook my head. ‘Just because.’

‘Wasn’t it good?’ he asked carefully and quietly.

‘It was fantastic, Jack, really. It couldn’t have been better, but … it was what it was.’
It was the most incredible few hours of my life.

‘Even though Fate so clearly wants us to be together, I take it a drink is out of the question?’ he asked.

‘No, it’s not.’

‘You’ll come out with me? On a date?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ he asked, baffled.

‘Just because.’

‘Can I have your number then?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied, and the shock lit up his face again. He could have my number and I would go for a drink with him because I’ve been thinking a lot about moments of happiness. Jack featured in one of my biggest moments of joy. I only had a few, and I wanted to collect more. If there was even the smallest chance that he could be a part of another moment of happiness or even just of fun, then I was going to take that chance. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I was no longer going to martyr myself.

So, what began as an ordinary day became a good one. I had to go back to work and he sat and drank his coffee, and we kept looking at each other until he left. The tip he left – a fiver – was under a small square of white card. I knew what it was before I picked it up: it was his business card, of course. I turned it over and in my handwriting was the note I had written him all those years and lifetimes ago.

I tucked it into my bra and liked the feel of it there as I went back to serving customers (had to give Clara the fiver, of course).

Phone is ringing and I know it’s going to be him.

Eve

May 1999 (another update)

I’d forgotten how lovely it is to kiss Jack. Truly, I had. And kissing him is out of this world. I think we do most of that, although we do a lot of the other thing and that is incredible, too, but it took us a couple of months to go back there. Yes, I wrote that right – months.

We both had our reasons for waiting. I guess his were because I’d run out on him after the first time and he hadn’t done it with anyone else since me, which I was surprised at. But Jack seems to have remarkable self-restraint. While he likes the act itself, I’m sure, he doesn’t feel the need to do it all the time whenever the chance presents itself to him. And I’m pretty sure it presents itself to him on a regular basis because women present themselves to him on a regular basis. It’s odd that I didn’t notice it before, but women do stop and look at him when we’re out together. My self-consciousness about the internal scars that might be obvious and visible to others make me hyper-vigilant, but Jack is excellent camouflage because when I’m with him, I become invisible.

Women smile at him all the time, some say hello, others strike up conversation, and others still even offer him their number – even if he is holding my hand or has his arm around me. It doesn’t matter to these women because most of them are posh, rich girls who know I am not one of them and know he is one of theirs and do not see me as anything other than his plaything.

I love that Jack always introduces me into the conversation, and has more than once turned to me and said, ‘I don’t know, do we want to take (insert posh girl’s name) number?’ It throws them because, I guess, he wasn’t brought up to be so rude to one of his own. To be rude to a commoner like me, I’m sure they think nothing of it. But what I’m trying to say, of course, is that Jack could have had several women in the gap between our meetings, but he hasn’t. I could tell from the way he was around me that he’d been hanging on to the hope of us meeting again. I wonder sometimes how long he would have waited.

It’s obvious why I wasn’t mad keen to do it again.

It wasn’t Jack’s fault, but after the loss I spent a lot of time trying to get in touch with my body again. I wondered constantly in the early days afterwards if that was the reason why it’d gone wrong. If not being in touch with my body completely because I had effectively separated it from my heart and mind for so long was what made it happen. I knew logically that wasn’t the case, that there was very
likely something wrong with the baby – which I was meant to call an embryo – and that is why it didn’t develop. Nature has its way of handling things, apparently. And maybe considering its conception, it might have been for the best. But that’s all logical. The reality is, I thought of him or her as a baby, and I wanted them, I wanted someone to love and care for, and I lost them, and I had no real reason or explanation for it happening. It was something else I had to carry with me. Another scar that I feared people could see. And I blamed my body for it. What else could I do? When it came to something like this, ‘just because’ was not a good enough reason.

So I was not in a rush to have sex all over again, to take part in that act that had left me scarred. I don’t give a damn what anyone says about getting back on the horse again as soon as possible after a trauma – the last thing you want to do is go back to putting yourself in danger. Yes, even if that means you might not want to participate in that particular activity ever again.

If I fell off a horse and was left feeling as I am now about the things I did, I would never go near a horse again. Not until someone could guarantee me that the horse I next approached – all those years later when I could put my fear of what happened into some kind of perspective – was one hundred per cent safe.

Jack was safe.

It took me a couple of months to work that one out. But the kissing was the best part, anyway. He told me that he’d kissed a lot of people, because it was what he had done instead of the other thing, but he hadn’t realised how much he could enjoy it until he kissed me. Which sounds very silly written here, but at the time I knew what he meant.

I almost said (but didn’t) that he wouldn’t have to kiss anyone but me again, because I hoped I wouldn’t have to sleep with anyone else but him again. I’m sure, if this doesn’t work out with him, I won’t be doing it again. Not the sex part, anyway. No matter how much I want a baby, I don’t think I could face allowing another person into me.

Probably won’t be writing much in here again for a while because Jack and I spend most of our spare time together. Every spare moment we have, we greedily claim for ourselves. I’ve only been able to write in
here now because it’s Sunday afternoon and he has gone on a hunt for some food. We literally have nothing in the cupboards or fridge because we have not left the house, or really the bedroom, since Friday night. ‘I’ll go be hunter-gather,’ he said, beating his chest. And I’d had to kiss him several times before I felt safe enough to let him go.

It’s silly, but whenever we leave each other I have to tell him I love him and seal it with a kiss because I am scared that if we don’t see each other again he won’t know. I’m not planning on leaving or dying but sometimes I get an irrational fear that either Elliot or Caesar is after me and I think they will find me and kill me.

That doesn’t scare me as much as the thought of Jack not knowing before I die that in this life of mine, I have only ever loved one man. I loved Peter, but he was a boy. In this life, I have only truly loved one man and Jack is that man.

So that’s it, my update.

I don’t think I’ve made it clear how happy I am. Happiness is an alien concept to women like me, I think, but I am happy. He makes me laugh, he makes think, we talk, we kiss, we sometimes even decorate his house together. I won’t let him come to my flat because I think it’s important not to let another man – no matter how safe, no matter how much I love him – into my space again. I need a haven, and that’s why I keep the flat on even though I practically live here.

I am happy. I have my jobs, I have my Access course, and I have my Jack. So I am happy. That is all that matters in the end: I am happy.

Love,

Eve

22
^nd
November 1999

Hello old friend, you’re here again.

I like that you are always here, never judging, never leaving. No matter how long I leave you for, I always know where you are when I need you. And I need you.

What has happened now in the dramatic world of Eve? I have seen him again, that is what. Caesar. I have seen him again.

Last night, after much persuasion because I do not like to do the ‘date’ thing, Jack took me to the opera in London.

It was my chance to wear my dress. I haven’t worn it since that day I bought it, and putting it on again was like being embraced by an old friend. I felt as wonderful as I did that day in the shop, and I was grateful to Jack for persuading me to come to the opera, for giving me a chance to wear my dress.

The opera,
Madame Butterfly
, was beautiful. I allowed myself to float along with the music, experience the emotions of the words, having read the story years before. I felt for Butterfly, so willing to do whatever she had to – including denouncing her faith – to be with the man she loved when all along he just wanted to get her into bed.

During the intermission, I went to join the ladies queuing for the loo while Jack went to get us some drinks.

In the mirror in the toilets, I noticed how different I looked. Not only because of the dress, but around the eyes, in the eyes, I was different because I was happy. I had no make-up on – make-up reminded me of Honey – so I never wore it now. But still, I was and looked happy.

Making my way back towards Jack, I saw him talking to a man. No surprise, really, since Jack seemed to know people everywhere we went. But as I drew nearer, I realised who he was talking to.
What
he was talking to.

I stopped walking as I took in the full horrific sight of him: Caesar.

Jack knew Caesar. My knees went weak as I stood still, staring at the pair of them. Their body language was formal, reserved, so they did not know each other very well. But then, I looked from Jack to him and their similar height, their similar build, the shape of their faces … No, no, I shook the thought out of my head. No. Simply no.

At the same time, I backed away, and then escaped the way I came, back towards the powder room, away from there. Inside the plush interior of the loos, I frantically scanned the faces of the women, looking for her, seeking her out among the posh frocks, expensive hairdos and heady perfume. And there she was: a cool, tall blonde with up-do hair,
wearing a simple black sheath dress with pearls around her throat, expensive black shoes and bag, and immaculate make-up. Caesar’s escort. Other women would not notice her, would think she was like them, and there for the music, ambience and experience, few women would know that she was working. More of the men would know, because many of the men here could probably afford her.

She glanced at me, having seen me watching her, and gave me a glacial, near-smile and I knew she could see it in me. She could tell what I used to be. Our eyes met and I knew she was nowhere near where I was towards the end. She was probably still telling herself that the money was worth it, that she was helping those men, that she felt empowered and liberated by what she was doing. She was probably pitying me for not being strong enough to go the distance and letting it defeat me. Stalking past me, she went back out there, and I followed, sticking my head out of the door, to see if I was right.

I was. As soon as she saw that he was talking to someone, she kept her distance, hung around, looking in her bag, playing with her mobile phone, and generally being invisible until he was free.

The bell ringing, telling us it was time to return to our seats, made me jump, and I pulled my head inside the powder room before Jack looked up and around to find out where I was. I stayed in the toilets, in a cubicle, until there was no sound from outside, and the second bell rang to tell people the rest of the performance was about to start.

I waited a few more minutes before I went out outside to find Jack standing alone, holding our drinks, our programmes tucked under his arm.