The Woman He Loved Before (45 page)

He nodded. ‘Which friend am I talking about?’ he asked.

I stared at him in silence.

‘So, I’ll ask you again, are you having an affair?’ he said.

I stared at Jack, wishing it was as simple as an affair. Wishing that
it could be something as fixable as an affair. I shook my head in answer to Jack’s question.

‘What’s going on?’ Jack asked. ‘Your silence is scaring me.’

The corners of my mouth turned down and the strain of the last few days came spilling out, shivering through my body, making me weak and insubstantial; I did not know what was holding me up because my body did not feel as if it was strong enough to be defying gravity at that moment. ‘If … if I tell you, I’ll have to tell you all of it. I can’t see how I can’t tell you all of it. And if I do that, you’ll wish I hadn’t told you. You’ll wish that it was something as simple as an affair.’

‘You can tell me anything, Eve, I thought you knew that.’

I managed to stop myself laughing at him. Laughing at my poor innocent Jack. He had no idea; nothing in him could conceive of my life so far. I liked that about him, loved that about him. It repulsed me a little, too. How could someone so close to me not have even the slightest clue what I had done? Was I really that good an actress? Had I truly buried it that deep? Did the world really see me as Eve Quennox, erstwhile waitress, part-time student, loving fiancée and nothing else?

‘Tell me, Eve. Where were you today?’

‘I was …’ I was holding up a knife to throat of the image of the current version of Eve Quennox. And the next few words would carve up her visage, and then would draw the knife across her throat, murdering her in the eyes of the man I loved. ‘I was in Leeds.’ The knife plunged into Eve’s flesh, hacking away. ‘At my mother’s funeral. I haven’t spoken to her in seventeen years.’ Eve’s face was almost unrecognisable now for the knife wounds. ‘Not since I told her that her boyfriend had been trying to rape me since I was fourteen and she didn’t believe me.’ The knife wounds were almost comforting, the pain expected. ‘She died last week in her sleep.’

‘Eve, why didn’t you tell me? I could have come with you. I could have supported you.’

I was bewildered by his concern, it had no place in this.

‘Because, Jack, I … I …’ I shook my head, trying to clear it, trying
to make him understand. ‘I have done some terrible things because I had to leave home that early. I loved her so much, and because she chose him over me, I dropped out of school and didn’t finish my A Levels, I moved to London and I tried to make contact so many times over the years but she always ignored me.’

‘None of that is your fault. I’m just astounded that you were forgiving enough to go to her funeral after all that.’

‘She’s my mother. Of course I went. I love her. She was the most important person in my life.’

‘I still don’t understand why you couldn’t tell me this. None of it is your fault.’

The knife, having hacked away at this new improved Eve’s face until it was in ribbons, was back at her throat for the final slaughter. ‘But everything I did after that is.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘After I came to London, I had a job, but I was made redundant so I … erm … I eventually started working,’ I paused, amassed all the courage I had, ‘in a lap dancing club to earn money.’ The knife bit into the flesh of Eve’s throat, going deep, drawing blood.

‘Behind the bar? There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘I was seventeen, Jack, they check your ID if you want to work behind a bar, make sure that you’re old enough so they don’t lose their licence. If you want to work as a dancer, they generally just take your word for it that you’re over eighteen.’

I saw the horror of realisation dawn on his face, his eyes growing wide with shock. ‘But … but you needed the money. If you had no real qualifications or work experience, then you obviously needed the money.’

‘Yeah, I needed the money. And it’s for the same reason, a few years later, when my druggie boyfriend’s habit almost bankrupted us, I started to sell my body to make ends meet.’ The knife was drawn smartly across Eve’s throat – no fuss, no mess. Just over.

Jack’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, wondering if I was making it up. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What are you saying to me?’

‘I’m saying that until the end of 1996 I was a prostitute.’

I don’t know how I expected him to react, what I thought he would do, but I was still surprised when he sat and stared at me. Every passing second, though, saw him draining more and more of colour, saw the healthy glow he had disappear until his face, his lips, his hands were grey-white.

His eyes were trawling through his memories, trying to work out if anything had told him, if there’d been any clue. ‘But you can’t have been,’ he said, lifelessly. ‘You can’t have been. The summer of 1996, me and you … You didn’t ask me for money. I didn’t pay you. You can’t have been.’

‘I was. When we … I was.’

‘So, my first time, I …
with a prostitute
?’

His body started to convulse as though holding back retches. ‘Have you been laughing at me all this time? Was that some kind of sick game, bagging a clueless virgin? Then helping yourself to the cash from my wallet while I was sleeping?’

‘No, Jack. God, no! It was nothing like that. I didn’t take any money from you. Remember how you felt at the time? I felt exactly the same way. If you had any idea how much that meant to me … I’ve had sex with a lot of men, but you’re the only man I’ve ever made love to. If you believe nothing else, please believe that.’

His body convulsed again, holding back another retch. Then he was suddenly on his feet and, without saying another word, he turned and climbed the stairs, walking as though there was lead in his shoes; moving as though there was lead in his bones.

I stood where I was, wondering what I should do. I still had the keys to my studio, so I could go back, but everything was here. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. I could sleep in one of the many spare rooms, but would he want me to leave and never come back? Minutes later, he reappeared on the stairs wearing running shorts, a T-shirt, socks and trainers. He walked past me as if I wasn’t there. I spun on my heels to watch him open the front door, exit, and then shut it behind him.

That was two hours ago. He’s still not back.

I don’t know what to do.

I’ve been sitting on our bed, in my funeral clothes, since then.

I don’t know what to do. Or how to check he’s all right.

I’ve ruined everything, again. By telling another person I love the truth, I’ve ruined everything.

Me

26
^th
May 2000

It’s been an odd, unsettling few days and I don’t think either of us has any real idea what is going on.

That night I told Jack almost everything, he went out for a run and didn’t come back for hours. It was nearly midnight when he left, so he stayed out until four or something like that.

I must have dozed off at some point even though I didn’t think I could sleep. My head had been buzzing with all the stuff that people had said to me at the funeral: how my mum had been so proud of me going out there to London on my own and sticking it out in an accountancy firm, then moving to Brighton and starting work as an administrator for a group of solicitors. Mum had made up this whole life for me based on my letters that she read, kept, but never replied to.

And then when I got engaged, she was so excited about the wedding we were going to have. How it would be beside the sea and she would have to travel down for it.

Bea, Mum’s best friend from the bingo, took me to one side later because she knew the truth about why I left. She told me that Mum threw Alan out after my first postcard from London. Apparently, the fact I had moved so far away from her made her realise I’d been telling the truth. She knew, Bea said, I would never have gone if I was making it up or if I was mistaken, as Alan had convinced her I was.

‘But I called one time and he answered the phone,’ I said.

‘So that
was
you. She was so sure, but we tried to tell her not to get her hopes up. No, lovey, that wasn’t him – it was Matthew, my husband.’

‘What do you mean, “get her hopes up”? She didn’t reply to my letters, so why would she be hopeful about the call?’ I asked.

‘You know how it is, lovey, a letter is one thing; speaking to someone is another. Shame’s a terrible thing. Your mother was so ashamed that she didn’t believe you, that she didn’t see what was staring her right in the face. She never forgave herself. Many’s the night I held her while she sobbed over how she had let you down. She often said your father would have been ashamed of her for not protecting you. I tried to tell her to contact you, to try to make things right, but she wouldn’t listen. You know what your mum was like, she was so hard on herself. But she could not have kept her distance and kept on punishing herself if you were on the end of the phone or on her doorstep.’

Oh my God, oh my God,
I thought. If I’d just spoken …

‘I would have come back if I’d known he was gone.’

‘I tried to tell her,’ Bea explained. ‘“Even send her a birthday or Christmas card,” I said, but your mother thought you were happy. In your letters you were always happy and you didn’t seem to need her.’

I collapsed where I stood. ‘That’s not true,’ I replied. ‘That’s not true. I needed her. I needed her so much. So many times in my life I just wanted my mum.’ I started sobbing then, couldn’t stop myself. Until that moment, it hadn’t seemed real, it hadn’t seemed possible that I would never speak to her again. And it hadn’t mattered as much because I thought she still considered me a liar. But if I had been honest with her, if I had told her just once how horrible my life was and how much I wanted her to help me fix it …

Bea hugged me, and tried to console me. That’s why I was so late back. I just couldn’t move from where I’d collapsed and I couldn’t stop crying so I missed my train. Everything had gone wrong when I left Leeds, and I wouldn’t ever have the chance to fix it now because I’d done so many awful things, and my mother was not here to comfort me, to make it all better.

‘I’ve never seen her as happy as she was when she heard you’d got engaged,’ Bea kept saying as she held me. ‘She was so happy now that you had someone to look after you.’

In the wake of what I’d told Jack, I’d been picking through all these things, wishing as I had done on the train back from Leeds that Mum had just called me, talked to me. At some point I must have fallen asleep.

When I woke again, Jack was standing in the doorway, staring at me. He was all sweaty, his clothes sticking to him, his usually muscular body looking diminished and drained. His hair was almost black with perspiration and his face was pale. I didn’t know how long he had been standing there, staring at me, but his presence, his demeanour, wasn’t malevolent considering the emotions he must have been going through.

‘Jack?’ I asked.

Without saying anything, he turned and walked down the corridor to the main bathroom. A few seconds later, I heard the shower come on. I sat on the bed, waiting, not sure what to do.

Eventually he returned, a towel wrapped around his waist, and he went straight to the wardrobe, took out a bundle of clothes then went into the en suite bathroom to get dressed. I pulled my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I was still dressed in black, still dressed in the clothes I’d worn to my mother’s funeral. It was quite appropriate, really, given that another relationship – killed by my truths – was about to be buried.

When Jack re-entered the room, he didn’t look as vacant as he had a few minutes earlier. Now he looked as close to normal as I guessed he was going to get. Normal, clean, cleansed.

He sat carefully on the edge of the seat of the leather armchair by the dressing table, and then reached out and turned on the sidelight, even though the day was creeping in through the open blinds and we would soon be starting Saturday morning proper.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘I need to know everything. Please tell me. I want to know. I’m going to try to listen without being judgemental, but I think it’ll be easier if I know it all.’

‘Are you sure, Jack?’

‘Yes. I don’t know how we’re going to get over this if you don’t tell me everything, otherwise I’ll just imagine it is worse than it is.’

‘So you think we can get over this?’

He stared at me, and slowly nodded. ‘Yes. I hope so. It’s what I want more than anything. So please tell me.’

I told him. I stepped outside of myself and I told him: about the lap dancing, about Elliot, about leaving London, about trying to get a job in Brighton, about the escort agency. I told him about Caesar, but I did not use that name. I said I met a man who seemed nice and who eventually became my pimp but never gave me any money and made me go with lots of different men until I ran away. I did not tell him, either, about the baby, about the loss.

‘The only time I stood up to him was the afternoon I spent with you. I couldn’t even think about letting another man near me after I’d spent some of the best hours of my life with you. I hope you believe that. And that’s it. That’s everything.’

Jack had not interrupted, he had listened, he had flinched and he had held back his retches as much as he could. It hadn’t been easy for him, but he had done it. Was that what love was about? Doing something like that because you love the person so much?