The Woman He Loved Before (52 page)

Hector has always relied on me to run his life for him. And that includes filling his prescriptions and putting the tablets into a daily pillbox. The Internet is a wonderful thing. You can buy all sorts of things. Say, for example, the right medication in a substantially lower dose. It would take time to work, but it would work. And it has worked.

‘I don’t ever want to lose you,’ he says. Hector needs me. And I need him to pay for what he did to my children and for how he has humiliated me.

‘Don’t worry, Hector,’ I say to him, curling my hand around his. ‘I am not going anywhere. I am never, ever going to leave you.’

He smiles at me in gratitude and relief, and I smile back at him feeling grateful for my patience all these years and for the invention that is the Internet.

libby

The diaries catch fire quickly, the sparks lapping greedily at the paper until it goes up in blue flames that dance and twist, becoming a myriad of colours along the orange spectrum. I watch them burn with my heart racing in my chest, knowing that I’m doing the right thing. It’s what she wanted.

Eve died so that Jack would never find out what sort of a monster his father is and now I know that I am safe it is not my secret to tell. It’s not for me to stir up the waters of their relationship, to make Jack reassess the love that they shared. The horror of Eve’s Caesar is at an end now – he is so ill he will never hurt another person again. I know that is what Eve really wanted, so she can now rest in peace.

Once the flames have died out, I sit and wait for the barbecue to cool. It’s a bright, clear day with the sun shining down upon me as if there are no cares to be had anywhere in the world. The ashes cool quite quickly, allowing me to scoop them out and scatter them around the garden. I found out how much Eve loved this house, so it seems fitting that what is left of her is placed here to become a part of this house’s history. The garden is quite small for such a large house, so I manage to leave a little of the ash, a little of the essence of Eve, around most of it.

As I wash my hands, I glance out into the garden and there she
is. Standing in the middle of the lawn, almost transparent in the bright, brilliant sunshine. She’s wearing her dress, and she has trainers on her feet, just like she wore the first time she bought it. Her face lifts in a smile, crinkling her beautiful indigo eyes and softening the lines of her face. She raises her hand and waves at me.

Without thinking, I wave back.

She says something, and even though she is there and I am here, and I know it can’t be real, I hear her voice in my head. It is different from the voices I’ve conjured for her before.

It is soft and plain, ordinary – it’s the voice of any woman on the street. ‘Thank you,’ she says to me.

‘Thank you,’ I say back to her.

Behind me I hear the front door slam. ‘Libby, are you ready? If we don’t leave now, Butch will miss his Scottie girlfriend.’

‘I’m coming!’ I call back to Jack, my eyes still fixed on Eve. ‘And you say that like Butch will do anything more than stand and drool in her general direction.’

Eve shoos me away with her hand, telling me to go and get on with my life. Her smile becomes a grin and, as I wave again, she fades away until I can feel with every fibre of my being that she has finally gone to a better place.

Originally, when I came up with the idea for my seventh novel,
The Woman He Loved Before
, I wanted to tell a story about a woman who feels second best in her marriage. She’s fallen deeply in love with the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with, and everything would be perfect if it wasn’t for the spectre of his late wife ‘haunting’ their relationship.

I wanted to explore the idea of what love is from the perspective of not feeling number one in your relationship. The character I had in mind knew on some level that the late wife’s memory would always be around, but it is only when something traumatic happens to her, forcing her to re-evaluate her whole life, that she puts her marriage under deep scrutiny too. And that’s when she starts to acknowledge that the first wife isn’t as far back in her husband’s history as she thought – thus raising the dilemma of what she should do next.

As I planned out the story, thinking through the idea and the emotions and events involved, the idea of telling the first wife’s story, from her viewpoint, grew. She is an unknown figure, a ghost in her husband’s second marriage, the untouchable nemesis of the current wife. Thinking more about this character, Eve, I hit upon her big secret. And in doing so, I hit upon one of the core elements of the book. I find, when I’m writing, as soon as I find one of the core elements, the story pretty much reveals itself to me.

So, I had all the elements of the story, I had the main players and I had a tale to tell. And, once again, I was left personally altered by the telling process. The biggest effect it has had on me is how I approach mirrors and photographs of myself.

Before I began work on the book, I thought I knew what I felt about beauty: that beauty is only skin-deep; that true beauty comes from within; what you do is more important than how you look. I still believe that except now I know that being ‘beautiful’ is about so much more, as well.

While writing Libby’s story, essentially ‘living’ the life of a woman who has been permanently and visibly scarred, I had to constantly examine and re-examine how I felt about my looks. I was quite surprised by what I discovered: I wasn’t as happy with myself as I thought I was. I realised that when I went to a mirror; I wasn’t simply doing so to see what I looked like, I was actually seeking out flaws. My heart would often sink when I saw that my skin wasn’t blemish-free, my features weren’t symmetrical, that I wasn’t ‘perfect’. The same with photographs: I wouldn’t see a record of a moment in my life, I would see the extra pounds on my frame, the out-of-place wisp of hair…again, all the ways I wasn’t ‘perfect’.

Having written Libby’s story, I’ve realised that I’ve got a lot to be grateful for, and that while I may never be a ‘model’, I can make the most of what I’ve got, I can stop judging my looks by other people’s standards and, most importantly, appreciate myself for being one of a kind. That is what beauty is really about – appreciating who you are, no matter what you look like. It is about allowing yourself to be happy in yourself, even if you’ll never have model scouts beating a path to your door. It is about looking at yourself and seeing someone who is in fact perfect and unique.

As Libby says of her job as a beauty therapist, ‘I also loved seeing the results on people’s faces when they looked in the mirror and saw what I saw when I worked on them – not the imperfections, but all the perfections that made up who they were.’

Why don’t you give it a try? Why don’t you try looking in the mirror or at a picture of yourself and, instead of focusing on all the things ‘wrong’ with you, see every unique and beautiful thing that makes you who you are.

Dorothy Koomson, 2011

These questions might help start a reading group discussion on
The Woman He Loved Before
. Warning: contains possible spoilers!

1. Who was the character with whom you most identified in the book? Why?

2. Who was the character you disliked the most? Why?

3. Why do you think Libby decided to give Jack a chance after he made such a bad first impression on her? Would you have given him the same chance?

4. Do you think it was romantic or reckless of Libby to agree to marry Jack when she knew so little about him?

5. Why do you think Jack behaved the way he did after the crash?

6. If you had found Eve’s diaries, do you think you would have read them first or given them straight to Jack?

7. Which woman do you think Jack loved more: Eve or Libby? Why?

8. Do you think Libby was right to end her marriage to Jack?

9. How do you think Eve manages to remain a sweet person despite all the things she endures?

10. What do you think Eve could have done differently to save herself from the choices she was forced to make?

11. How does finding out Eve’s secret impact on Jack?

12. How does finding out Eve’s secret impact on Libby?

13. How do Libby and Jack change as people during the course of the book?

14. Do you think justice was done at the end? If so, why? If not, why not?

15. What are the main themes of
The Woman He Loved Before
?

I wrote some questions to help start a reading group discussion on
The Woman He Loved Before
and below are the answers.

Warning: contains possible spoilers if you haven’t read the book!

I think I identified most with Libby and Eve. I know that’s cheating, but there are parts of both characters that resonated with me. With Libby, it was the idea of people thinking you’re not very bright because of your job – I have temped a lot and was often treated like an idiot even though I had a degree and was studying for a masters; with Eve it was the poverty. There have been times in my life when I’ve had to make the choice between eating and being able to get to work the next day. Thankfully, I’ve never been so poor I’ve had to make the choices that Eve made.

To be honest, I didn’t like Jack that much at the start. I know that sounds silly, when I created him, but when I’m writing, it truly does seem as if the characters are writing themselves. Jack’s arrogance really put me off him, but when I was writing about his relationship with Eve, I felt myself backtracking. He was very obviously damaged, but he did redeem himself with me when he realised that Libby wasn’t going to bend to his will so he made the choice to become a better, more thoughtful person. I also disliked Caesar, but who wouldn’t?!

When I was younger, I think I might have been tempted to give Jack a chance, even after the initial impression he made upon Libby, without a second thought but now I’m older, and with what I learnt about abuse when I was researching
The Ice Cream Girls
, I would have proceeded with a great deal of caution, as Libby does. Some people say women are supposed to want a ‘bit of a bastard’ in a man, but I think women are selling themselves short when they put up with terrible behaviour because they’re attracted to/think they’re in love with a man. You deserve to be treated with respect, full stop. I don’t want a ‘perfect man’. I think being with someone who is human and flawed like we all are, is so different to being with someone who is a ‘bit of a bastard’. That’s what Jack is, flawed, so I think that would have eventually won me round. I think the fact that Jack made such an effort with Libby to show who he really was would have cinched it for me.

Completely reckless! But a lot of romance is, isn’t it? I think she made the right choice, don’t get me wrong, but it was pretty darn reckless. Jack, though, made her feel so wonderful, I don’t think I could blame her for doing something so out of character.

He was feeling guilty because he knew that he’d not only called Libby ‘Eve’ he’d deliberately distanced himself from Libby at a time of great need because he didn’t remember saying ‘I love you’ to Eve on the day she died. That made him feel even more guilty when Libby didn’t die because she might remember that he didn’t react with extreme concern when he realised she wasn’t Eve.

I’d like to think I’d give them to Jack, but the reality is I soooo would have read them. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. Writers are – necessarily – very nosey!

I think he loved them equally, just at different points in his life and in different ways. He fell for Eve when he was young, idealistic and naïve; he fell for Libby when he’d lived a bit more and was more hardened, damaged by life. I’m not sure younger Jack would have loved Libby – she was the person the more arrogant Jack needed to make him examine who he truly is; and I’m not sure older, more cynical Jack would have loved Eve – he wouldn’t have been accepting of her secrets, I don’t think. Jack loved the women he loved because they came into his life at the right times for the type of love he was able to feel.