The Woman He Loved Before (44 page)

Harriet smiled back and I felt Jack’s grin grow wider.
And fuck you, Caesar,
I thought,
fuck you
.

He would not leave that unanswered, of course. No one swore at him and got away with it. He used to tell me about the young upstarts who worked at the firm where he was a partner who thought they
could sideline him. Thought they could find a way to the top via him. He
always
stamped on those people.
Always
made sure they were there less than six months, and that he made them virtually unemployable with any good firms by sabotaging their reputations. I remember one business associate of his once left a mark on my face from where he’d hit me to get himself off. When I told Caesar who it was, he quietly erupted. I saw it in his eyes, and in the way his body almost solidified with rage. Yes, Caesar had set it all up, but he hadn’t sanctioned this, and he was not happy. Caesar told me a few weeks later that the business associate was being divorced by his wife, who had evidence that he had slept with his secretary, he was also being investigated for tax evasion and had lost his job. Caesar said it casually, as a by-the-way in conversation to let me know that anyone who crossed him would be dealt with. A reminder, too, that he would not hesitate in stamping on me if I even thought about leaving.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, then, when I opened the door earlier today to find him on the doorstep. All six foot of him, solid and ominous in his dark suit and black overcoat, black gloves on his hands.

Before I could react, his hand was around my throat, choking me, as he pushed me through the porch, into the hallway, kicking the door shut behind him and slamming me against the wall.

‘Don’t test me,’ he snarled. ‘I will think nothing of snapping you in two, you cheap little
whore
.’

Breathe, I can’t breathe,
I was screaming inside, clawing at his hand to try to get it off my throat.
Can’t breathe, can’t breathe.

‘You get out of my son’s life, and you stay out,’ he continued to snarl. ‘I don’t care what you tell him, or if you tell him nothing at all, but you leave him. Today. And don’t come back. I won’t ask again.’

He took his hand away and I collapsed to the ground, spluttering, trying to get air into my lungs, while holding my throat and shaking.

‘No,’ I said. Even though I was still gasping for air, my eyes were filled with tears, my face felt like it was on fire, I still found the words to defy him. ‘I’m not leaving him.’

‘WHAT DID YOU SAY?’ he shouted.

‘I said “No. I’m not leaving him.” There’s nothing you can do.’ I looked up at Hector, from my place on the ground, seemingly subservient, feeling anything but.

His fingers curled into the palms of his hands and I knew he was going to hit me. He could do a lot of damage with a punch, but that was no reason to do what he wanted or say what he wanted to hear. I had realised something the moment he stepped over the threshold, something that had never been as real a possibility as it was now that he had shown his hand. If he was so much in control, if he could get out of this unscathed because no one would dare leave or censure him, then why hadn’t he told Jack or his wife? If he was as powerful as he liked to make me believe, then why bother coming to threaten me? After all, I am a cheap little whore, I am not someone of consequence.

‘You have more to lose than I do,’ I said. ‘You hurt me, I will tell Jack everything. And then you’ll lose your sons, your wife, and I know the people you work with might turn a blind eye to what you do but not if it was made public. And you can kill me. It’s all written down. I’ve got dates, names, places. And you’ll never find my diaries before Jack does. So go ahead, do your worst, it’ll be you that suffers the most. Being a
whore
comes hand in hand with suffering: I can take it.’

‘If you ever breathe a word,’ he said, seeming to get taller and wider in that instant.

‘I won’t if you won’t,
lover,
’ I said. That was the sort of thing Honey would normally say. Not me. But I wasn’t Honey any more. Or was I? Had I been fooling myself all these years that she was a persona I had adopted? Or was she really just me?

‘You be very careful, little girl,’ he snarled again, baring even more of his perfect, even teeth. Then he was gone, slamming the door with a loud, heart-stopping bang.

I stayed slumped on the floor for ages, fingering the part of my throat that he had crushed, wondering how I was going to explain it away to Jack. Maybe it wouldn’t bruise too much, even if it went a little red. I’d wear a scarf or a polo neck for a few days, and it would be fine.

I know Jack’s dad will be back. Maybe not physically, but he will find a way to get at me, to get rid of me – it is just a matter of time. He might have more to lose, but he won’t let this go. He’s not that type of man. After I left, I always wondered if he came after me. I wondered if he thought I’d be back, or if he used those contacts he always boasted about to try to find me. I doubt it. I might have been his possession, and he might have had a cursory look, but there were plenty of other
whores
out there to take my place. And if he did have someone look, they can’t have looked very hard because they didn’t find me. It’s not as if I went very far away. Effectively, I was hiding in plain sight, if I was hiding at all.

He might have let me be if I had not hooked up with his son, if I was not in his life again. And if I hadn’t threatened him. What’s done is done, though.

I know it’s stupid, but I’m actually more scared by discovering that I might actually be more like Honey than I thought. If that’s true, then … all those things that I did in the past, I did them because I – EVE – was capable of doing them. I hadn’t stepped outside myself to do them; I hadn’t worn a mask to protect myself from the horrors of it all.

I, Eve, had been a prostitute.

I was dirty, grubby, and disgusting.

I was desperate, trapped, and afraid.

Those things were not in the past, they were in the present because Honey is in the past and Eve is the person I see when I look in the mirror. And if it was Eve who did those things, then she isn’t gone. She is in the here and now.

I am Eve. And I am a prostitute.

Me

14
^th
February 2000

This is what happened this morning.

Jack lay next to me in bed, watching me sleep until his probing
gaze was enough to stir me from a rather deep and satisfying slumber.

‘Morning,’ he said, leaning up on one arm and staring down at me.

Coffee. I could smell coffee. It was usually me who got out of bed and stumbled my way downstairs to get the fancy machine working and brought two mugs back to bed.

‘Hmmm,’ I said, knowing instantly that it was too early for niceties and too early for coffee. He was in one of his mental moments where he’d want to do something fit and healthy that was good for the body and mind, while I wanted to lie in and not think about anything until midday.

‘I’ve made coffee,’ he said.

‘Hmm-hmm?’ I replied, which was me asking,
What do you want, a round of applause or something?

‘And I’ve got you a present,’ he said.

‘Hmmm,’ I replied, thinking,
Can’t this wait? At least until it’s properly daylight.

He placed the ‘present’ on the pillow in front of me. ‘There you go, princess.’

I prised open an eye, and there on the white pillow lay a gold and diamond ring. Both of my eyes flew open and I stared at it, startled and slightly afraid.

My line of sight moved from the ring to his face, which was grinning at me. He was wide awake and his eyes were dancing.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’ he was asking.

I found my smile, looked back at the stunning diamond cluster and then returned my gaze to him.

I bit my lip as I nodded.

‘Come here,’ he said, gathering me his arms, knocking the ring somewhere into the bed.

‘No, you come here,’ I replied, submitting in his arms, but placing my hands on either side of his face and drawing him close so we could kiss and kiss and kiss the morning away.

Eve

March 2000 (just a quick update)

The phone keeps ringing and then being hung up the second I pick it up.

It only happens when Jack isn’t here, and the silence at the end of the phone is so unnerving. I would prefer it if he told me what he wanted, what he wanted to do to me, that he was going to kill me. I would prefer that to the silence. Because it feels like it echoes into the house when I replace the receiver. It makes this place, my home, feel so unsafe. I stand very still and look around, searching for shadows that should not be there, listening for sounds that tell of an intruder, waiting for something to come out of nowhere and do me harm.

It’s Hector, of course. He started it since we announced the engagement. He wants me gone, he wants to scare me off. He does not want me to marry his son. His tactics are working, though: I am becoming more and more nervous. I don’t like being here alone now. It probably wouldn’t be such a problem if the place wasn’t so big, and constructed of so many small, intimate and scary spaces.

He’s rung ten times this evening. In the end I unplugged the phone. But I have to plug it in again when Jack comes home, and taking it off the hook feels like I’ve let him win. He knows that he’s got to me, scared me, unnerved me so I have to take measures to freeze him out. If I answer it shows that I am not that bothered. If I unplug the phone, it just rings and rings for him and he can’t be sure that I’m not too busy to pick it up.

Sometimes I wish he’d just come over and do it, would finish me off rather than torturing me. But he likes torture, doesn’t he?

I wish there was a way to tell Jack without it being the end of everything.

Me

libby

The phone is ringing upstairs.

The phone is ringing and ringing and ringing. It has been ringing for most of the day and the person never speaks when I answer.

It’s just a coincidence, isn’t it? It’s just a coincidence that Hector used silent phone calls to threaten Eve and now, when he has reason to threaten me, I have been receiving silent phone calls.

I blot the ringing out of my head and concentrate on the diaries.

It’s just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence.

eve

12th May 2000

The day I’ve dreaded and hoped for all these years has come.

A letter from Leeds arrived earlier and I haven’t dared open it. I wrote to my mother in February and told her of my engagement to a lovely man who I would like her to meet one day, and I, of course, heard nothing.

But now I have a reply, it seems. The address and my name is typed, but it’s postmarked Leeds and since contact has dwindled to nothing with all the other people up there I used to write to, it can’t be anyone else.

It must have been telling her I was engaged that did it. Maybe she thought that I would now be OK with her having a relationship with Alan because I finally understood grown-up love.

I’m scared to open it, though, in case she is cursing me. She is telling me that she hopes I never have a daughter that does to me what I did to her.

Can’t believe I haven’t opened it already. Any time before now I think I would have torn it open, but now I am too afraid.

I will open it later. When Jack is here and in bed. I need his presence but I do not want to tell him if it is bad. Later, I’ll do it later.

Eve

12
^th
May 2000

I made sure Jack was asleep before I slipped out and went into the room that is Jack’s office, and opened the letter. My hands were shaking, of course, because this was the first contact with her in so long.

It was one sheet of paper and on it, in neat handwriting, was everything I needed to know.

I’m sorry, I can’t write any more. I thought I could, but I can’t.

19
^th
May 2000

‘Are you having an affair?’ Jack asked me, when I came home today.

I had tried to creep in, to not wake him, but I needn’t have bothered, he was sitting on the third step of the staircase, waiting for me. It looked like he’d been there a while.

‘No,’ I said, a bit sad that he thought me capable of that.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I can’t help that, but I haven’t done anything to make you think I’ve been unfaithful.’

‘Well, the secret phone calls and getting all dolled up to go off to secret locations and coming back hours later than you said, suggest an affair to me. Plus I saw your friend from your English course. I asked her why she wasn’t on the day trip to Brontë country, she had no idea what I was talking about. When she realised you’d lied to me, she tried to cover for you by saying she’d been off sick so couldn’t really afford to go on the trip.’

‘Why do you think she was covering for me? She has been off sick,’ I said rather lamely, wondering why I was trying to keep this charade going.