The Woman He Loved Before (51 page)

‘
Or maybe her neck was broken and she was thrown down the stairs to hide it
,’ Jack says in my head.

‘Sit down,’ Hector orders.

‘No,’ I reply.

‘Don’t test me,’ he says, tightening his hands around Butch’s neck.

I pull out a chair and take a seat, my eyes fixed on Butch.

‘I want those diaries,’ he tells me.

‘OK,’ I reply.

He blinks at me, suddenly uncertain that it’s been so easy. He is used to people doing as he tells them without question, but he was expecting more of a fight from me, obviously.

‘You have to answer some questions, first.’

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Hector states.

‘Did you kill Eve?’ I ask, ignoring his reply.

He stares at me for a moment, then shakes his head. ‘No. I came here to look for those diaries but she came home and caught me. I must have been close because instead of taunting me that I would never find them, she turned and ran. Then tripped and fell down the stairs; broke her neck on the way down.’

‘And you didn’t think to call an ambulance, to maybe spare Jack the horror of finding her?’

‘She was already dead, what good would me being questioned by the police do? It was her own fault. If she had given me those diaries—’

‘You would have killed her sooner,’ I cut in. ‘And me? Are you going to kill me?’

He fixes me with his eyes, the way he did over the dining table the other week. ‘Or course not,’ he says with his mouth.

Of course I am
, he says with his eyes.

A wide, ice-cold chill runs the length of my spine and I sit
back to distance myself from this man. How could he have made a son like Jack? While Jack is gentle and flawed and intrinsically honest, this man is poison.

‘Liberty,’ he says carefully, ‘there really is no need for all this unpleasantness. Give me the diaries and we’ll say no more about it.’

My mobile starts to ring in my pocket and I automatically reach for it.

‘Please don’t do anything silly,’ Hector says to me with his cold smile.

‘That’s Jack’s ringtone,’ I tell him. ‘If I don’t answer, he’ll come home to see if I’m all right – that’s if he hasn’t called out the emergency services by then. Since the accident, he gets worried if I don’t answer the phone.’

Hector stares at me while the phone keeps ringing.

‘Don’t say anything stupid, remember your precious little Butch and what could happen to him,’ Hector eventually concedes.

I answer the phone and with a heart that is beating out a staccato beat, I say ‘Hello,’ into the receiver. I sound normal, calm. My eyes stay locked on Hector’s so that I can’t see poor Butch’s terrified face.

‘I forgot to ask you what you wanted for dinner, tonight,’ Jack says.

‘Oh, I don’t know, anything. You decide.’

‘Fine,’ he says laughing. ‘But no complaints when it’s not what you want.’

‘I promise, no complaints. By the way, your father’s here. Do you want to speak to him?’

Hector’s face darkens and I brace myself in case my gamble hasn’t paid off and he snaps Butch’s neck. This was the only way I could think to save us both.

‘What’s my father doing there?’ Jack asks.

‘Wanted to check that Butch and I are OK, I suppose. Here, you speak to him.’

I hold out the phone to Hector, who glares at me.

‘Hello?’ Jack’s voice comes out of the mobile. ‘Hello?’

Reluctantly, Hector releases one hand from Butch to take the mobile, Butch immediately wriggles free, jumps onto the table and leaps into my arms.

‘Hello, son,’ Hector says into my mobile, his eyes wide with rage, his face white with anger. He is sweating he is so angry. ‘Yes, yes, fine. Was just seeing a client in the area and thought I’d see how Liberty and the dog were getting on. Yes, yes, she’s fine. Everything’s fine. Yes, will do, will do.’

‘Oh, Jack,’ I call loudly as Hector is about to hang up. ‘Sorry, Hector, I forgot to ask Jack something, can I have the phone, please?’

His anger mounting, Hector starts to take bigger and deeper breaths but hands over the phone anyway.

‘Jack, I forgot to tell you what else Orla Jenkins said,’ I say, my heart a knot of fear, my stomach spinning with terror. ‘Sorry, Hector,’ I say casually, into the phone, ‘do you mind if I show you out? This could take a while, and it’s rather personal. You didn’t want anything else, did you?’

He stands and turns into a Goliath in front of my eyes. I stand too and follow five paces behind him to the front door.

He gives me a murderous look as he opens the door, and I know he isn’t done with me yet. He won’t be done with me until I am dead.

The second I shut the door behind him, I put the bolt and the chain on, then go to the back door to check that it is locked, too. Then I sink to the ground and hold Butch close.

‘Are you OK?’ Jack asks.

‘I’m fine,’ I say, ‘I’m fine. I just needed to get rid of Hector then. He looked like he was settling in for a long chat and I can’t face that right now.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Look, when you come home, I’d like us to have that talk we were meant to have.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I want to talk to you about us, and … there’s lots of things I’d like to explain to you. I’ll see you later.’

‘I’d like that,’ Jack says. ‘I’ll try to get away as soon as possible.’

We both say goodbye and hang up.

I hold Butch close, thinking about Jack and how he has had to deal with Eve’s death – and her life – all these years, all alone. He could never tell anyone the full story, so it wasn’t surprising that he shut down whenever I tried to get inside.

He must have been so lonely, so ripped apart. Maybe telling him the truth will alleviate his guilt about her dying alone? And, maybe knowing that there is someone else out there who knows about her life will make it easier for him to talk about it and start to deal with it. He might hate me for being the person who finally destroys the image he has of his father, and who tells him everything there is to tell about Eve, but at least he’ll be free. At least Jack will be free of his father and free to let Eve go, too.

And for my own safety I have to tell Jack and show him Eve’s diaries. I do not want to hurt Jack, or to be the reason that he reexamines every moment of every second of his life with Eve, but I do not want to end up murdered, either. Hector will be back and he will keep on coming back until he gets what he wants. And what he wants is to get away with murder.

Two hours later, Jack calls me again. His voice is shaky and thin as he wrestles with his fear and anxiety to tell me he won’t be home straight after work. ‘It’s my father,’ Jack says. ‘He’s had a massive heart attack, and they don’t think he’s going to last the night.’

jack

When I was fifteen, my father took me to a brothel and tried to make me choose a woman to lose my virginity to. After I refused, he decided to treat me as a failure. When I was twenty-nine, I found out my wife had once slept with my father when she was a prostitute. When I was thirty-three, I wondered for a second, for the briefest of seconds, if my father had killed my wife. It was ludicrous, a thought that came from nowhere and went nowhere, but I had always thought that my father was capable of murder. Especially the murder of someone he saw as less than human – someone like an ex-prostitute, for example. But it was a transitory thought, one that had no basis in fact nor ever led anywhere. Because thinking someone might be capable of murder doesn’t mean they would
actually
do it.

Now I am sitting outside his hospital room, wondering if I will soon be thinking when I was thirty-eight my father died and I felt the loss more for my mother than I did for myself. I saw on a daily basis how devastated Eve was by her mother’s death, I don’t think I will feel the same. My mother is in the room with them now, and I am waiting here for Jeff, my brother, to arrive from Scotland.

I sit on the chairs and rest my head back against the wall. It seems like minutes ago that I was doing this, waiting for news on
Libby. It seems like minutes ago that I was too scared to pray in case God answered me the same way he did last time. Praying hasn’t even occurred to me with my father.

‘How are you doing?’ Libby asks.

I open my eyes and clamber to my feet; is she really here?

‘Libby? What are you doing here?’

‘You sounded so scared on the phone, I had to make sure you were OK.’

‘How did you get here?’ I ask.

‘In a taxi.’

‘You got in a car?’

‘Yeah, I got in a car. And I clung onto the handle with my eyes closed and I prayed and hyperventilated, and nearly screamed a few times, but I got here, eventually.’

‘You did that for me?’

She nods. ‘Is there any news?’ she says, trying to dismiss the enormity of what she has done. I remember Eve once said that when you love someone, them being hurt is worse than any pain that you could suffer. Libby got in a car for me when two days ago she’d had a breakdown at the very thought.

‘Nothing, yet,’ I reply.

We sit down side-by-side on the seats, staring at the door in front of us.

‘She was never my friend,’ I say to Libby and she turns her beautiful face and her shaved head with its light covering of newly growing hair towards me to listen. ‘Eve was never my friend. I loved her, passionately, I can’t deny that. But I can’t deny that I love you passionately, too. And that I also love you rationally, completely, as a friend, as someone I can rely upon one hundred per cent.’

She takes my hand, links us together by sliding her fingers between mine.

‘And after the crash, when I was begging her not to die because I thought you were her, I did that because I never had the chance with her. When I came around properly and I realised
that it was you and not her, I felt so guilty all over again that I couldn’t remember if I’d told her that I loved her the day she died, so I stopped myself from telling you, either. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for lying to you. I was being selfish. I didn’t want to lose you. I was trying to be fair when fairness doesn’t come into it in that kind of situation.

‘You’ve helped me to grow up, to become a better person, and I haven’t been completely honest or open with you. There are a lot of things about Eve that I find hard to talk about. She had so many secrets that I’ve spent so many years trying to forget. But I’ll share them with you. I don’t think she’d mind, and I want you to know everything so we can move on from there.’

‘You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you to say that,’ Libby replies. ‘But, no. I don’t need to know anything. If you want to talk about her then do, I will willingly listen; but if you don’t, then we never have to talk about her again.’

‘Are you sure?’

Libby nods.

‘I’ve put Eve’s things into storage because I’m not ready to get rid of them yet, but I removed them because I want the house to feel like our home. All of it.’

Her smile deepens and without saying anything else, she rests her head against my arm – Libby’s way of telling me we’re going to try again.

harriet

The Internet is a wonderful thing.

Women like me can find the things they need, buy the things they want and not have to worry too much about people seeing them. They can also find out what they need to do to achieve certain things.

I think it’s fitting that a man who has shown over the years to have very little heart but is very focused on the face he presents to the outside world, has once again been attacked by the organ he has most neglected in his life, and as a result he looks weak to the outside world. He may well survive this but his life will always be limited because his heart is irrevocably damaged. He will always need someone to take care of him, and of course that task will come down to me. What else would a loving, devoted wife do?

‘How are you?’ I ask him. He is pale and visibly shaken as he reclines against his nest of pillows. He is diminished. This man who was always so powerful is stripped of his dignity and strength; he now lays in this hospital bed, trying to make sense of it.

‘Better,’ he says.

‘Good, good. I’m glad.’

He reaches out to me and I take his hand. It is wrinkled, more
wrinkled than mine; weathered, aged. He is an old man. He should really have eased off on his activities years ago.

‘I love you, Harriet,’ he says. I know he does, in his own way. In the only way a man like him can love – selfishly. He needs to say this now because he is weak and vulnerable. He needs to ensure that I will not leave him now he needs me to give more than just respectability to his outward façade.

I will not leave him. I do not love him, but I will not leave him. Leaving was originally my plan, but, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I should be the one to go. That was my house, my home, my life. Why should I walk away when I had done nothing wrong?

When I found out from eavesdropping on a conversation between Jack and Grace that he had taken Jack, and Jeffrey before him, to a brothel, trying to make them into reincarnations of himself, trying to instill in them his sick vices, I knew I could not leave. I would not leave when I could do this instead.