The Woman He Loved Before (42 page)

‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘You were gone for such a long time I was about to send out a search party.’

‘Sorry,’ I said quietly. ‘I just … I don’t feel very well.’

‘You do look a little pale,’ he replied. ‘And you’re, you’re shaking.’ His gaze darted around, looking for the nearest flat surface. When he had disposed of our drinks, he came back and took my hand. ‘You’re freezing,’ he said, concerned. ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ I asked him. ‘Those tickets must have cost a fortune.’

‘It doesn’t matter, all that matters is getting you well.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You don’t have to thank me,’ he said. ‘I love you. You look after the people you love.’

Outside, in the fresh air, I felt a bit better, probably because I was further away from
him
. I inhaled London, remembering how in love with it I used to be, how perfect the city had seemed when I first arrived. And how scary and hidden with unknown dangers it seemed by the time I left.

‘You just missed my father,’ Jack said. ‘He was here at the opera. Should have known he’d be here. He tries to see every new production of
Madame Butterfly
.’

I barely heard the rest of what he said because the first part had forced me to turn to the nearest wall and bend double as I threw up.

Poor Jack was horrified. He took me in his arms after I had emptied my stomach, and then he held me until I’d stopped shaking enough to lean on his arm and walk with him back to the car. Later, he carried me up to bed and stayed awake until I had fallen asleep in his arms.

What do I do?

I have to finish things with Jack, of course. He’d been making noises about me meeting his family, but I hadn’t been keen. I couldn’t reciprocate, so I didn’t want to do that. I liked our world of two, as well. Having it made us seem all the more special. I didn’t like to let others in. And now I have more reason not to.

It was weird, thinking about it, how Jack and I never talked properly about our families. I knew he had parents and a brother, he knew my father had died when I was young and my mother lived in Leeds, but it was only surface information. Anything deeper hadn’t seemed required.

I should finish things with Jack, but how can I? When I haven’t been this happy in years, how can I be expected to just let him go?

It’s not fair, this, you know? Haven’t I atoned enough for what I did? Wasn’t losing my baby enough punishment? Why does it seem I have to lose Jack, too? Why did Caesar have to be his father?

libby

I throw the book to the ground, desperate to get it away from me. I stare at my hands, looking for the grime and filth that must have rubbed off from Hector onto me.

He can’t be Caesar, he just can’t.

My body is very still, except for my panicked breathing. I look around the cellar, searching for her because she’s gone. Of course she’s gone. She couldn’t stay here and face this.

I struggle to my feet, and start to pace, wringing my hands and fighting every urge in me to start screaming. How could she have lived with this secret? Did she tell Jack? She must have. But how could he have lived with it? Trying to force your son to have sex with a prostitute was one thing, but …

How am I going to face Jack after this? How am I going to talk to him like normal when I know? Hector not only enslaved a woman, that woman was the woman his son married.

Faintly, I hear a car pulling up outside, and then I hear Butch’s scampering and barking as the car door shuts. Jack.

Working quickly, I wrap up the diaries and return them to their hiding place, then leave the cellar as quickly as possible. I make it into the bedroom seconds before the door opens and Jack enters the house. Butch’s barking stops for a few seconds and then I hear his nails scraping along the wood floor as he runs back to his bed.

‘Libby?’ Jack calls.

‘Yeah?’ I reply from my place behind the door.

‘I found a couple of waifs and strays on the way back who need feeding,’ Jack says.

Angela and Grace. Oh, thank God. Thank God. They’ll hopefully stay all evening so I don’t have to speak to Jack and give away what I have just found out. I can work out how to deal with this.

I open the door and stick my head out, smiling as I do so.

‘Hello, Liberty,’ Harriet says.

‘Hope you don’t mind us dropping in like this,’ says Hector.

‘We were in the area and Jack didn’t think it would be a problem,’ Harriet adds

‘It’s not, is it?’ Jack asks.

Breathing, breathing, breathing. I just need to concentrate on breathing. Not talking, not standing, just breathing. ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘It’s fine.’

libby

Hector is sitting in our living room with a pre-dinner drink.

Eve’s Caesar is our living room waiting to be fed.

I’ve busied myself in the kitchen since their arrival even though Harriet has been trying to get me to take it easy, to go and sit down and talk to them. Hector makes everything about me crawl, as if I am covered in creeping, sliming film. Every time I look at him, I see nothing but the man who was capable of doing those horrendous things to Eve. How many others had he done that to? How many women had he paid for sex? Paid. For. Sex. The thought of it was bad enough, but to know that once he handed over his money, he saw nothing but a piece of flesh he could treat as he wanted …

‘What’s the matter?’ Jack asks me and I nearly drop the dish in my hands out of fright. I have been focusing as much as possible on dinner, on trying to put the things I know out of my head so I can eat a meal with the man in the other room, I didn’t hear him approach.

Does Jack know? Does he know what Eve did for a living because she felt so trapped by poverty? Does he know about Eve and his father?

I turn to him and force a smile. ‘Nothing, why?’

He reaches out to lay his hand on my arm and I flinch. His hand doesn’t make contact, but hurt spirals into his eyes. ‘You
seem very nervous,’ he says through his disappointment. ‘We can tell them about the divorce if you want, so you don’t have to worry about pretending, if that’s what’s making you stressed.’

Divorce
? I think for a moment.
Who’s getting a divorce
? Then I remember. We are. I am. ‘No, no, it’s not that,’ I say. ‘I just want things to be OK with the dinner.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to help?’ he asks.

‘Yeah, I’m sure.’

‘You know, Libby …’ he begins, then stops talking.

Acting on instinct, I step forwards and slip my arms around him. It feels incredible to touch him again. I close my eyes and rest my head on his chest, listening to the beating of his heart. Slowly, cautiously he wraps his arms around me. He cups his hand around the back of my head, holding me gently against him.

I love you
, I think, hoping he can feel it through my touch, through my skin.
I love you so very much.

‘I won’t let them stay too late,’ he tells me. ‘Maybe we can talk?’

We haven’t done that, have we? It’s been too painful, the end too inevitable to have those truths of how he really feels about Eve, about me, spelt out to me. But how can I leave when we haven’t even talked it through properly? I haven’t even asked him how he truly feels about me. I have just assumed. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

He’s able to hold me closer then, to dare to breach the gap between us with a tighter hug, and I can feel his heart racing, matching the sudden racing of my heart.

‘Libby, that was fantastic,’ Harriet says, carefully placing her knife and fork on the plate side by side. I glance around at the plates, all empty – except mine. I didn’t realise until I sat opposite him that I would not be able to eat in Hector’s immediate vicinity. I’m finding it hard to talk as well, oh, and breathe.

‘Coq au vin is probably one of my favourite dishes,’ Hector says, cheerily. ‘I’m now torn between whose I prefer – yours or
my wife’s.’ He reaches out, places his wrinkled, veiny hand on Harriet’s. ‘No offence meant, my darling,’ he says sweetly to Harriet.

She smiles, receiving her husband’s touch with a grateful gentleness. ‘None taken.’

Horrified, I look away and stand to reach for the plates.

‘No, you are not clearing away after all that cooking,’ Harriet admonishes and suddenly she is on her feet, taking plates and cutlery. Jack gets up to help and I can see what is about to happen: they’re going to gather up the plates, they’re going to take them into the kitchen and then they’re going to load the dishwasher or wash up and leave me alone with him. And I’ll have to talk to Hector.

‘No, no, I’ll help,’ I say frantically.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Harriet replies.

‘No arguments,’ Jack adds, ‘you sit down and relax.’

When we’re alone, Hector sits back in his seat and smiles at me. I stare down at the table. The contours of his face are imprinted on my mind, so not looking at him isn’t even a respite. I can’t imagine what it was like for Eve after everything.

‘You’re looking very well,’ Hector says.

‘Thanks,’ I mumble.

‘You must be ready to think about going back to work now.’

I shrug, listening to the scraping and clinking sounds coming from the kitchen, willing Jack and his mother to hurry up and get back, to save me from this torture.

Hector stops talking, stops trying to connect with me and we sit in an uncomfortable silence. ‘Have I upset you?’ he eventually asks.

My body freezes. What do I say to him? He hasn’t done anything to me, but he did to Jack, he did to Eve. I feel sometimes that I went through what Eve did. But I didn’t.

I shake my head at him.

‘Will I be granted at least the favour of a glance and a verbal answer to that question?’ he says.

My mind is such a mass of confusion that I am actually doing as he asks. I lift my head and, inhaling deeply, I say, ‘No.’

His eyes, the same shape as Jack’s, hold mine and I can’t look away. I want to look as deep as possible into them to try and see the nature of the evil that lies in his mind, that lives within his soul; and I want to look away and never look at him again.

‘
How
have I upset you?’ he asks, reasonably, calmly – all the more menacing for it. The Hector I have come to know all these years is no longer in the room; the man who abused Eve is now sitting opposite me. I had no idea that they were so easily exchanged, so closely enmeshed. There is no point in lying to him.

‘I know about you and Eve,’ I say. ‘Or should I call her Honey?’ I sound more confident than I feel.

‘What is it that you think you know?’ he replies. The only thing that has changed in his expression is the set of his mouth – it becomes flatter, firmer.

‘I found her diaries,’ I say. And then I want to reach out and cram the words back in my mouth. He did it, he killed her. Of course he did. He killed her to get those diaries, to get the evidence she had on him.

And now I have told him that I have them, I have all but said: kill me too.

jack

I often wonder if my mother really has no idea what my father is truly like. Or if she knows and has decided to pretend it isn’t happening.

After we came home from that trip to London on my fifteenth birthday, I walked into the kitchen to find my mother waiting with a birthday cake. It had fifteen candles and she said, ‘I know it’s silly, darling, and you’re far too old for this, but I would love to hold on to you being my little boy for one more year.’ I was almost mute from what had happened, and I wanted nothing more than to be her little boy right then. My father had gone off into his study, as he often did when he was annoyed.

I went to her and threw my arms around her, my mother. I’d always shied away from her constant need to baby me, to treat me like a little boy, but right then I needed her to comfort me, to be my mother. Startled, she put her arms around me. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, concerned and confused in equal measures. ‘Did you and your father have a row?’

‘No,’ I said, trying to keep the sobs out of my voice. ‘No.’

‘Come on, tell me,’ she coaxed. ‘Tell me, I know something happened.’

I looked at the watch on my wrist that he’d bought afterwards as a cover for what my real ‘present’ was. He’d practically thrown
it at my head. ‘I, erm, don’t like the watch he got me,’ I said, erasing the sound of my inadequacy and juvenileness. ‘He got a bit cross.’

My mother hesitated, not sure whether to believe me or not, I realised. ‘Thank you for the cake,’ I said, stepping away from her. I had to behave like a man for the first time today, and not burden her with this. And how would I explain to her that I had seen him go off with someone else, when he had her at home? He had chosen someone so young to … ‘It’s chocolate, my favourite. Can we light the candles?’

My mother stood very still for a moment, then she turned on the smile that I loved and went to retrieve the matches from the kitchen drawer.

‘Make a wish,’ she said, once all the candles were dancing with flames in front of me.