The Woman He Loved Before Page 11

  ‘You’re not though, are you?’

  ‘I am!’ he insists, with conviction.

  ‘Even if I believed that, and it’s a very big “if”, please tell me how I’m supposed to do this? And what about paying for him?’

  Caleb has the audacity to look around the room, telling me with his eyes that money is no object to me. He’s not the only one who thinks I hit the big time when I married Jack. Paloma, who is still planning her wedding to Devin, actually started headhunting for replacements within hours of me telling her we were getting married. She had been horrified when I told her I was going to carry on working. Most people thought I’d give up my job and stay at home, when in actual fact I could think of nothing worse if I wasn’t staying home to look after our children. I kept my job and went to London every day like I did before I got married. I still put money towards the mortgage and pay my share of the bills.

  ‘The world doesn’t owe you anything,’ I say to Caleb. ‘And neither do Jack or I. If Butch is staying for four weeks, you need to pay me.’

  ‘I’ll sort you out when I get back,’ he says.

  I click my fingers in front of his face. ‘Focus! Focus! Remember who you’re talking to,’ I say. ‘I’m not one of the “bank managers” on the phone, I am your sister. I know you, remember? There’s a cashpoint up the road, you can draw some money out there.’

  ‘I’ve used all my cash limit up for today.’

  ‘OK, then you’ve clearly got it now.’ I hold out my hand.

  ‘I’ve used it all on petrol getting down here,’ he says quickly.

  ‘Do I have to search your pockets?’ I say. ‘Because you know I will.’

  ‘Ah, Sis, man!’ he says, reaching into his inside pocket and pulling out a wodge of notes. Far more than his daily cashpoint limit, that’s for sure. He peels off a couple of twenties and holds them out to me.

  I stare at the purple notes in his right hand, and then at the bundle in his left hand. My hand reaches out and snatches the bundle from him. I take off six notes, as well as the two in his other hand, then give the rest back to him.

  ‘That’s our holiday money!’ he complains, watching anxiously as I roll up the notes and tuck them down my cleavage. I’ve never done that in my life, but I’m pretty certain my brother will not rummage around my bra to get his cash back – even he has standards. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you might have more of a clue if you stop thinking I’m going to spend my life bailing you out.’

  For a moment I think he is going to say ‘It’s not fair!’ and throw himself on the floor like he used to do in the supermarket when he was four. I stare at him as I used to then: with wide-eyed awe that someone that small could cause such a fuss. After seeming to seriously consider whether the floor-based tantrum would work or not, he grudgingly shrugs.

  ‘I’ll go say goodbye to Butch,’ he concedes.

  In the garden, Jack is flat on the ground, covered in grass and dirt, while Benji stands on one side, trying to get Butch to hop over Jack to him. ‘Here, Butch,’ he keeps saying, patting his thighs with his hands. Butch meanwhile is very much engrossed with chasing his little brown tail in ever-more fervent circles.

  I love Benji’s unfailing optimism, I admire Jack’s enthusiasm for these sorts of things with Benji, and I adore Butch for being so clueless. (And for having probably one of the most inappropriate names of all time.)

  ‘OK, mate,’ Caleb says to Benji, ‘we need to hit the road. Say bye to Butch and everyone.’

  Benji abandons the game, leaps over Jack and scoops Butch in his arms. Butch doesn’t protest and is obviously used to Benji’s hugging. ‘Bye, Butch. Please look after Auntie Libby. She’s well cool.’ He squeezes Butch again. ‘And Uncle Jack’s cool, too.’

  Caleb goes to Butch, too, but doesn’t hug him. He rubs the patch of fur between his ears. ‘See ya soon, Butch.’ Then Caleb moves to Jack and slaps his palm into his so they can shake hands in a manly fashion, while Benji throws his arms around me, butting his head in my abdomen and nearly causing me to pass out from the pain. ‘See you soon, Auntie Libby. Butch is nice. He’ll look after you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to him. ‘You have a nice holiday with your dad.’

  Benji then goes to high-five with Jack, while his father comes towards me. Caleb is gentle as he wraps himself around me for a hug. He’s always surprising me with his hugs. Even if I’ve torn a strip off him for being selfish and a bit of an idiot, just before I leave he’ll grab me and hug me and say goodbye.

  ‘All right, Sis,’ he says to me. ‘Take care of my boy Butch, and take care of yourself.’

  ‘I will,’ I say. Butch stops chasing his tail and sits on the grass, watching patiently as Benji and Caleb go. I’m actually more surprised than not that he doesn’t raise his paw and wave at them. As they disappear around the side of the house, Butch turns to me and cocks his head to one side. He’s sizing me up, I realise. He’s seeing if I meet his standards. Eventually he seems to resign himself to the fact that, up to scratch or not, he’s with me for now, and does the doggy equivalent of a shrug by shaking himself once, then he wanders towards Jack. Probably to see if Jack is a better option.

  ‘Well, you aren’t that much of a catch yourself, mate,’ I say to him.

  ‘Are you starting a row with a dog?’ Jack asks, still reclining on the grass.

  ‘No,’ I say petulantly.

  Jack’s face twists up into a smile that is a half-laugh of incredulity and despair, which he gives me whenever he thinks I’m being unreasonable or outrageous.

  I have to look away, my face twisting into a smile too. He’s usually right when he treats me to one of those smiles – I am being unreasonable or outrageous or ridiculous.

  ‘I’m going for a lie-down,’ I tell him, still trying to fight my smile.

  ‘OK,’ Jack replies.

  I shuffle my way into the house knowing that he is never going to let me live this down.

  jack

  Never being able to have children with Eve is one of the things that used to haunt me. Many, many things haunted me, but that is the one that left the deepest furrows of pain in my heart.

  I’ve never told anyone that. It’s not the done thing, is it? Men aren’t supposed to be broody – they’re supposed to want to plant the seed of a son in the bodies of as many women as possible and be satisfied.

  They’re not supposed to feel jealous as they stare at other men who are rolling around on the grass at the local park with their children, or strapping their kids into carseats in the back of big, ugly cars, or watch them struggle to control their offspring in supermarkets. They’re not supposed to feel a gut-wrenching agony as they watch other men do the things they can’t. I didn’t simply want children – I probably could have found someone who would have been willing to do the baby thing – I wanted them with her. I longed to see the sparkle of her eyes in the eyes of a child; to have that infectious laugh of hers coming out of a baby’s mouth as I tickled them; I wanted to hold a child in my arms and look at it and see her and me, our genes combined to make another human being. When it came to me, six months after she died, that that would never happen, I put my fist through the back door. All these little things kept coming to me, all the ‘I’ll nevers’, but that was the worst one after never seeing her again. Then I hated myself for saying we should wait.

  She’d wanted to start trying almost as soon as we got married, but I’d said we deserved to enjoy the time we had together before we settled down properly. ‘What’s the big rush? It’s not like we’re going anywhere. We’ve got the rest of our lives together,’ I said, with the ignorance and the arrogance of someone who thinks death is for other people. I didn’t realise what I meant was, ‘We’re going to live for ever, we can get around to that whenever we like.’

  I grieved for the children we’d never have almost as much as I grieved for Eve.

  Butch’s barking cuts into my thoughts. I’m tak
ing Butch for his first walk along the seafront, just as I thought I would take my child in a pram at some point. Butch likes me to talk to him, to tell him about the buildings we pass, the beach huts, the statute, the things out to sea. Whenever I stop talking and lapse into silence, consumed by my thoughts, he stops walking then sits down to bark at me.

  ‘Look, Butch, I’ve got a lot of thinking to do,’ I say to his upturned face. ‘I don’t have time to give you a guided tour of Hove and Brighton.’

  In response he hangs his head low, as if hurt that I’m telling him I don’t have time for him. Would I have done that to my son or daughter? Would I have been too busy at some point to play with my child and then would have regretted it in years to come?

  ‘OK, OK, enough with the look. I’ll do my best.’

  Butch’s head springs up and he gets to his feet and starts walking.

  ‘Places of interest,’ I say to him as he trots along on his skinny Yorkshire Terrier Cross legs, careful not to strain too much on the leash in case he misses something. ‘There, on your right, is the bit of beach where I accidentally proposed to Libby.’

  I proposed to Libby because I wanted to do the baby thing with her. After splashing each other in the sea and laughing and running back to our blanket, I realised as she dried her face off, still gulping with laughter, that how I felt about losing the chance to have babies with Eve would be twice as bad if I didn’t get the chance to do it with Libby. I had been shown how short life was, how quickly it could be ripped away, so what was I waiting for with regards to the sea-soaked woman laughing in front of me? What would I tell myself if I didn’t watch her grow gorgeously ripe with our baby? If we didn’t become sleep-deprived and snappy with each other as we tried to navigate the stormy seas of parenthood together.

  Butch treats me to a growl – of approval or not, I can’t tell.

  I stop walking and he does too. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask him indignantly as he looks at me over his shoulder. ‘I did it because I love her. I would have proposed properly you know with dinner or something inventive, but for some reason it happened there. And, you know, I wanted to spend my life with her, to have kids with her, so it came out in a rush. Admittedly, she didn’t say yes straight away, she sort of argued, but that’s Libby all over.’

  Butch looks at me with his big brown eyes, and realise I’m doing what Libby did earlier – I’m talking to him like he’s a human, behaving as if he can understand and (more importantly) judge me. It’d amused me that this little creature had, within minutes of being around her, brought out the side to Libby I love – that unreasonable wildness that makes being with her a challenge, and never boring. She pushes my boundaries and never allows me to ‘get away’ with being a spoilt, rich boy who’s had too many advantages in life. She tries on so many levels to get me to open up and talk about what troubles me, even if I’m not sure I want to. And, most of all, she trusts me. She didn’t even consider for one moment that DS Morgan’s accusations were true, that I had murdered Eve. I could tell in the way she was confused by the questioning and so outraged that Morgan even suggested it.

  A cupful of shame trickles its way through me. Libby trusts me, and I have lied to her, cheated on her almost. Not with my body: with my heart. I’m not sure how to get back from where I have arrived at because if I tell her, as I know I should, it will be over.

  Butch starts to bark again, obviously unimpressed with the way the walk and its accompanying conversation is going. I watch him, seeing the good he can do Libby. He can help her back to who she was, help her to get over this initial shaky period and return to herself. And if she’s herself, maybe she won’t hate me as much if she finds out the truth. Maybe she’ll be more understanding than she would be at the moment.

  ‘I think I’m going to like having you around, Butch,’ I tell him.

  He doesn’t reply. He’s far more interested in the pitch-black Scottie dog prancing along the promenade towards us. I watch Butch watch the Scottie dog and remind myself that I haven’t ruined my chances of having children, just yet. Not if I’m careful and if I try to keep everything together. Not if I keep the most important parts of what really happened after the crash under wraps.

  libby

  ‘Eve, Eve,’ Jack cries out. ‘Eve!’

  ‘Jack,’ I say gently, shaking him carefully.

  He doesn’t stir, simply continues to writhe in bed, his eyes scrunched shut, his face twisted in whatever agony he is trapped in inside the dream. ‘No, Eve—’

  ‘Jack,’ I say more forcefully, and shake him harder. It’s awful watching him so knotted up and immersed in something so painful.

  ‘Huh?’ he replies, his eyes flying open, his face and body immediately unclenching. He pulls himself upright to sitting, his chest heaving, his heart no doubt racing. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I think you were having a nightmare,’ I reply, easing myself up also.

  His eyes lose focus as he trawls his memory for what he was dreaming about. ‘I think I was dreaming about the crash,’ he eventually says.

  ‘You were calling for Eve,’ I say. He reacts in the same way he always does to me saying her name: he stiffens as though I have cussed him, as if I have used a forbidden word and mortally wounded him in the process. If I was saying, ‘Adam and Eve’ he would not have a problem, I suspect. It is the conjuring, the metaphysical calling of her, that he finds hard to assimilate.

  ‘Was I?’ he asks absently, his body still tense from his reaction to my saying the forbidden word.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, careful to not sound accusatory, ‘several times.’

  Jack shakes his head, scrunches his lips. ‘I don’t know what that’s about. I could have sworn I was dreaming about the crash.’

  I notice he hasn’t looked at me, but that might mean nothing. Or it might mean something. Just like it might mean something that he almost fell apart when the policewoman talked about Eve’s past. It’s sometimes difficult to know with him what is significant and what isn’t. So mostly, I just let it go. ‘Right,’ I reply. ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s still dark out,’ Jack says, looking at the night surrounding the shaded window.

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘We’ve only been asleep about an hour.’ I haven’t had my nightmare about the crash, yet; the night still has that joy to unfold. ‘Were you having these dreams when I was in hospital?’ I ask him.

  ‘Not that I remember,’ he says.

  ‘OK.’ There’s no point pushing anything that might become an ‘Eve conversation’, there never is. It always ends the same way: Jack, quiet and withdrawn, curled up tight in his shell; me, floundering, not sure if I should stop talking or should keep going to get to the bottom of it all. I snuggle down under the covers, and turn on my side towards the window, away from Jack.

  Sometimes, living with him is like being told to hold my breath as a matter of life and death – but never being told when to let that breath out. So I don’t know what to do for the best. To let out that breath and suffer the consequences or to keep holding on no matter what it does to me.

  Sometimes, I am scared to breathe around Jack because it may be the death of our marriage.

  ‘Goodnight.’ I haven’t got the energy to decide what to do, to pick my words, to try to draw it out of him. We’ve both been hurt and shaken and damaged by the crash, and then again by that policewoman’s visit – if this is how it’s manifesting itself in Jack, all I can do is not add to his pain and confusion by not pushing him to talk. All I can do is withdraw and leave him to sort it out on his own.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispers suddenly, unexpectedly, curling himself around me. He’s gentle, careful, trying not to put too much pressure on my bruised body.

  ‘Love you, too,’ I whisper, shaken. He never does this after an ‘Eve’ moment.

  He presses a kiss on the nape of my neck and whispers it again against my skin, as if trying to brand the words on my body. For the first time ever, after an ‘Eve’ moment,
we are bound together instead of miles apart in the same place.

  February, 2010

  From the doorway of the living room, I stood in my pyjamas and watched a black and white version of Rex Harrison speaking to Margaret Rutherford. There was no sound to the old movie that was playing in the lounge. The lights were off so the images from the screen cast dancing, bouncing shafts of light all around the room.

  Jack sat perfectly still on the sofa with his back to the door, to me. He must have heard me come down to find him, but he did not move. I went to the sofa, where he continued to sit stock still, clutching the remote control in one hand, his gaze fixed on the television screen.

  ‘Jack?’ I whispered, lowering myself onto the sofa beside him. ‘It’s the middle of the night, come to bed. You’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

  The light suddenly illuminated his face, showing me the tracks of his tears, tears that were still drizzling out of his eyes. My heart grew still and cold, terrified of what had done this to him.

  ‘Jack? Are you OK? What’s the matter?’

  ‘This was her favourite Noel Coward story,’ he said, his voice a series of low, barely controlled sobs.

  I turned to the screen, I liked Blithe Spirit, too. It was witty and clever and absolutely silly.

  ‘She thought it was Coward’s best work,’ he continued, his voice trembling under the strain of his hurt and tears. ‘God, I miss her. I miss her so much.’

  This was the first time he had given away a little piece of who Eve was as a person rather than as simply the woman he was married to. The first time he had revealed she had likes and dislikes just as most humans did. ‘Oh, sweetheart, of course you do,’ I said, moving to put my arms around him, to hold and love him through this.

  He recoiled from me, as if I meant him harm. ‘I need to be alone,’ he said, still staring at the television screen, obviously willing me to go away. ‘Please.’

  I stared at him, horrified. Why didn’t he want me to help him? To hold him? I didn’t know her, but I loved and cared about him. I’d do anything to help him through this pain. I thought I’d made that clear, I’d thought that was what he wanted, why we’d got married. I thought the whole point of marriage was that we were in it together – any problem we had, we could face it together.