The Woman He Loved Before (50 page)

Silence.

I throw the receiver down and hug my legs closer to my chest, my heart still beating in triple time. I stare at the television instead of the phone, trying to calm my breathing, trying to ignore my fears. Each deep, laboured breath causes pain to shoot from my previously cracked rib. I push my hand on that area, trying to hold it together, physically and emotionally.

Logically, I know I should call the police, I should tell Jack.
But what will I tell them? That I’ve found Jack’s dead wife’s diaries and I think Jack’s father killed her because he paid her for sex and allowed other men to use her body? That I made the stupid mistake of telling him I had the diaries and now he’s trying to intimidate me too? I can see them all saying, ‘Yes, Libby, we can see how your recent trauma hasn’t twisted your perception of things, and yes, of course, we believe every single thing that is written in these diaries. We don’t think they are the delusional imaginings of a very disturbed young prostitute. Let’s arrest noted solicitor and pillar of the community Hector Britcham straight away.’

What was that noise?

My eyes dart to the door, because I’m sure I heard a creak and then a thud somewhere outside this room. It’s an old house and it creaks all the time, but this time I’m sure it sounded more purposeful, less random than that. My racing heart accelerates.

Maybe I should call Jack and ask him to come home. I’ll tell him everything. I’ll explain about the diaries; I’ll tell him that I know about Eve and Hector; I’ll say that I think Hector is out to get me like he was out to get Eve. And he’ll say … he’ll say …

I can’t even begin to imagine what he’ll say.

What could he say? What will discovering the full extent of what Hector did to Eve do to Jack? He clearly already struggles with the idea of her having been a prostitute, what will knowing about the abuse she suffered at the hands of his father do to him? He loved her –
loves
her.

Ring ring!
starts up the phone.

I stare at it. I don’t want to answer, but each time I do and I get the silent treatment is validation that I am not mad to be worried about Hector. It is also a reminder that he could murder me like he probably did Eve and get away with it if I don’t tell.

Ring ring!
it taunts.

I continue to stare.

Ring ring!

Ring ring!

I snatch up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘Hello.’

Silence.

I throw the receiver down, tears moving my body.

Immediately:
Ring ring.

Ring ring.

I snatch up the receiver again. ‘If you call me one more time, I’m calling the police,’ I say.

‘Libby?’ Jack asks cautiously. ‘What’s going on?’

Hearing his voice is such a sweet relief, I break down, my body racked with sobs that I can’t control. ‘Oh God, Jack,’ I manage between sobs. ‘I think someone’s trying to kill me.’

jack

Libby isn’t the hysterical type, so when she said someone was trying to kill her while
crying
down the phone, I took her seriously. I left work immediately and came back. I take the stone steps two at a time and slip my key into the lock, and almost knock Libby off her feet. She is standing there, behind the door, in bare feet with her mobile phone clutched in her hand. Just like Eve used to.

My heart turns over in my chest, seeing Libby looking as relieved and terrified as Eve did when I would walk through the door at night. Was someone trying to kill Eve? She never said as much, not even after the mugging. I constantly asked her why she was so jumpy but she always said it was because she’d stupidly watched a few horror movies, and had swapped ghost stories with the women at work and college. But for Libby to be doing the same thing after what she said on the phone … Maybe Eve
was
murdered.

Right, Eve, murdered. Why would anyone murder Eve? She left all that stuff with her past way behind, my father did not recognise her as woman he had been with, so no one had any reason to harm her. Besides, murder is something that happens to other people, other families. Accidents happen to people like me.

Libby flies into my arms, clinging onto me tight, holding on for dear life in a way she has never held me before. I never noticed before that Libby has never clung to me; she has never shown that she needs me to be strong for her. Not until now. My heart flips. ‘It’s OK, it’s all right,’ I say to her, stroking the soft contours of her head. She is shaking all over, her heart is speeding so forcefully in her chest I can feel it against my body.

‘What’s happened?’ I ask her.

‘I need to get out of here,’ she says, panicked, terrified. ‘Now. Take me away from here, now, please.’

‘You’re barefoot,’ I remind her. ‘Let me get you—’

‘No!’ she insists, her hysteria rising dangerously like a high tide, ready to gush over into something uncontrollable. ‘I need to get out of here, now.’

‘Right,’ I reply. I glance at Butch, who is watching us with wary eyes from his basket, obviously aware that Libby is having some sort of breakdown. I open the front door and she cringes from the full light flooding in from the outside. As I suspected, she hasn’t been leaving the house – not even to go into the garden.

She inhales deeply, stares at the outside world, then casts a look back over her shoulder at the inside world. Tentatively, she takes a step out, flinching at the cold stone underfoot.

‘Do you—’ I ask, reaching for her.

‘No,’ she replies, pushing me firmly away. ‘I can do it.’ She stares at the world ahead. ‘I can do it,’ she repeats, this time a little quieter, a little more uncertain.

Trembling, holding onto the rail with both hands, she navigates herself down the steps. I watch as a parent watches a child walking for the first time: horribly torn between wanting to swoop in and help to spare them any pain from possibly getting it wrong and falling, while knowing I have to let her do this for herself. I don’t know what terror there is in the house that has driven her outside, but I am grateful to it.

At the bottom of the steps, she pauses, still clinging to the
railing, her eyes slowly taking in her surroundings, the sharpness of the sea air, the magnitude of the sky, and the details that make up the world we inhabit. Taking another deep breath, she leaves the railing behind and moves towards the car.

‘Take me somewhere,’ she says, staring at the handle of the car door, her face quivering with fear.

‘Are you sure?’ I say.

She nods, even though I can tell most of her mind is reminding her she doesn’t want to get into a car again. ‘Take me anywhere that’s away from here.’

Her hand reaches out for the handle but can’t seem to connect, can’t seem to get past the barrier. I wait to see if she can do it, if she can leap that final hurdle of fear, but she can’t. Her hand remains frozen in the air, a monument to intention, a testament to failure – the perfect example of mind over matter.

She begins to gulp air as I open the door and she takes a step forwards. I want to stop her, to tell her she doesn’t have to do this, but that is the last thing she needs to hear. If she decides that she can’t then she can’t, I mustn’t be her excuse not to try. Shaking, gulping in air, she tries to move her foot towards the car again, but then she is backing away, shaking her head.

She backs away until she is at the steps, and she sits, staring at the car, trembling. ‘I can’t do it, I can’t get into a car.’

I take a seat beside her.

‘What’s going to become of me, Jack?’ she says, suddenly breaking down into tears, the first I’ve seen since the hospital. ‘I can’t do anything. I can’t leave the house, I can’t stay in the house; I can’t get into a car, I can’t face the world looking like this. I can’t work. I haven’t got anything. One stupid bastard on a mobile phone in a car has ruined my life. It’s not fair. What did I ever do to him?

‘I know I’m not perfect, I know I’ve made some stupid decisions in my life, but what will he care about what he’s done to me? He gets to walk away from his mistake. He gets to look at himself in the mirror every day and not see
this
. And what have
I got at the end of it all? Because I got into a car with my husband one day, everything is gone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her.

‘I wish I was stronger, I wish that I could just look in the mirror and feel fine about all of this. I wish I could turn this into a positive, but I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.’

Every one of those sobs rips through me like a chainsaw through silk.

I cried like this over Eve. I cried like this over myself losing Eve. The realisation that no matter what I did, I couldn’t change what had happened and there didn’t seem to be any point to living, to carrying on. Not when we were so mortal and finite and the whole thing was pointless and cruel. Yes, I actually believed life was cruel for playing this joke on us. We find someone and we fall in love and then that person is ripped away from us. Why did we have to fall in love if it is only going to end? Why did we have hearts for feeling if they are always going to end up broken?

Libby has lost herself; she is grieving for the life she had and the woman she was and the person who she was going to become. I know how she feels, how the terror of having to carve a new self out of the ruins of what you once had can seem insurmountable. But she can do it. I know she can.

Libby allows me to envelope her with my arms, with my body, with the love I have for her. She doesn’t need to hear what I have discovered, what her decision to end our relationship made me examine and realise. She just needs me to be here and to hold her and to listen to her the way a best friend should.

libby

‘I’m glad you came back,’ Orla Jenkins tells me as we sit in her office.

‘I’m not,’ I say quietly.

‘Why not?’ she asks.

‘Because it’s like admitting defeat, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘This is like saying to you and the world that I’m not strong and I am weak and I do need help. I don’t like to feel like that. I don’t like to feel powerless.’

I can relate to so much of what Eve went through. The constant worry about money, feeling trapped, the inability to know what to do when what you want seems so far removed from what you can actually get.

Like this situation with Jack: what I want is him. Especially after the last two days, where he has taken time off work to be with me. To sit and hold me and listen and let me cry. It’s not fair on him since I’m the one who finished our relationship, but I haven’t been able to do anything else. I’ve needed him. And I still want him. I know he probably isn’t capable of loving me, but that doesn’t stop me aching for him. Longing to still be with him. I keep thinking I should ask him if we could try again. If we can start again, now I know why he can’t talk about Eve. But can I do that and not tell him about Hector? Can I do that when I
can’t be sure that Jack has ever completely loved me? I just don’t know what to do. Like Eve, I feel stuck in a no-win situation.

Of course the phone calls have stopped since Jack’s been there all the time, but that has seemed secondary to realising that I haven’t been coping at all.

On many levels I knew I wasn’t, in some ways I did try to ‘move on’, but it was easier to focus on Jack’s obsession with Eve, and then on Eve’s diaries and then on Hector than it was to admit that I needed help. I needed to look at myself inside and out and then start to rebuild my life.

‘Everyone needs help at some point in their lives,’ Orla Jenkins says kindly and calmly.

‘Yeah, I’m sure they do.’

Orla Jenkins sighs. ‘You’re going to be very difficult, aren’t you, Libby?’ she says.

‘Yes, probably,’ I reply.

‘Well, that’s good. It shows that there’s some of the old you still in there, doesn’t it?’

libby

The phone is ringing as I open the door. I don’t run to answer it because I know who it’ll be. I spoke to Jack on the way back from the counsellor’s place and Grace and Angela are coming over after work to see me. They are the only people who would call my house phone first. Them and Hector.

‘Butch?’ I call as I shut the front door behind me. Nothing, not even a bark. ‘Oh God, what have you been up to now?’ I call to him, heading for the kitchen – his favourite hiding place when he’s chewed something or left an extra special pressie in one of our shoes. He’ll lay under the table, giving us the big eyes treatment until we discover what it is that he’s done, by which point he hopes the big eyes and sorrowful look will have won us over. And it usually has.

‘If you’ve pooed in Jack’s trainers again, I don’t think he’s g—’

Hector is sitting at the kitchen table holding Butch very close to him. Unlike Benji’s hugs, Butch doesn’t look like he’s enjoying this hug. He looks stifled and scared, exactly the same things that I am feeling.

‘Hello, Liberty,’ Hector says. ‘You weren’t taking my calls so I thought it best to use the spare key we have for emergencies to check you were OK.’

I want to step away, run back the way I came and escape this
house and this man, but the way Butch’s furry little neck is caught between Hector’s huge, glove-covered hands makes me feel sick and scared. One sudden movement and …