The Woman He Loved Before Page 19

  Going to bed now. Will phone in and say I’ve got my period. No point in getting up tomorrow.

  Love,

  Me

  29th November 1988

  Hadn’t been past the shop in weeks. No point. Still hurt that someone else had the dress – my dress. And I was still smarting from how that stuck-up bitch treated me.

  So, guess how I reacted when I finally had to go past the other day – otherwise I’d be late for work – and it was there again. The dress. My dress. Back in the window on the shiny faceless mannequin like it’d never been taken off and tried on by that woman. The shop was closed, so I couldn’t go in, but I did stop, even though I was late, and stare at it. I stared and stared, then I reached out and touched the glass, imagining I could feel its soft folds through the window, the vibrations of its divinity gently flowing through me.

  This was my second chance. My chance to show that bitch, and my chance to prove to myself I could do better. I could own something perfect.

  I gently took my hand away and then had to run the rest of the way to work. I knew what I had to do. I knew that I had to do anything ANYTHING I could to get the money to buy that dress. ANYTHING.

  chapter twelve

  jack

  Sometimes, being in Brighton feels like being in London, surrounded by lots of people all looking different, all with their busy lives. I’ve stayed a few nights in London, I’ve lived in Oxford and in Brighton (and now I’m settled in Hove) and I’ll never grow tired of the ability to hide in plain sight. It feels even easier to do in Brighton because the best bits aren’t as spread out as they are in London.

  Walking through the cobbled streets of North Laines, I feel anonymous and free, like I am Jack Britcham again. I am a man in my thirties, who has his whole life before him. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to. Nothing can hold me back. Among the crowds I am merely another obstacle in the road to step around, another being who happens to be in the same city at the same time as the people passing by. I am not important. I like not being important. I often crave being no one. In my world, with the people I know, being no one is not an option.

  Set up on the corner of Gardener Street and Church Street, right before the road narrows into a claustrophobic alleyway flanked on both sides by shops, a street-seller’s stand catches my eye. He has a perforated board leaning on an orange plastic milk crate with neat rows of crystal hearts. Some are smooth and clear, others are almost brutally cut with visible facets, others still are smooth but with roughened surfaces. They are striking in their simplicity, the way they catch the light, their myriad colours like droplets of the entire colour spectrum, dripped onto the board. They’re cheap, but incredibly beautiful in a way I rarely see.

  Tucking myself in to avoid disturbing the crowds trying to get past, I stare at them, transfixed. The seller is probably my age, wearing a grubby, mustard-yellow wax jacket with a straggly, fair beard and sunken eyes. His fingers are exposed in green fingerless gloves and his nose is red as if permanently cold. ‘Make them all meself, mate,’ he says with a thick London accent, then loses interest in me and returns to rolling a cigarette. I’ve been hypnotised by these glass gems.

  Libby would love one of these. At least I think she would. I have been wandering around Brighton trying to find the perfect gift. Everything I have seen that I think she would love is too expensive for her to enjoy. Other men, I’m sure, would be envious of me having a wife with modest tastes. She likes beautiful things – she knows instantly the label of something and if it is a fake or real – but she rarely indulges in said items. She cannot bring herself to spend that money – even if she doesn’t say it aloud, I can see she is thinking, That’s nearly a month’s mortgage payment, when confronted with buying non-essential things. If I couldn’t pay my bills because of this, what would happen? She always has to contextualise it to see if it is truly worth what she would have to pay for it.

  When we were first married, I said to Libby I’d pay for her to go back and finish her PhD if she wanted. She’d smiled at me, her face lighting up as it creased with joy. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much for the offer,’ she said. ‘But no, that ship has sailed. I’m a beauty therapist now. I was actually saving to go back but now I don’t really want to.’

  ‘Because you’re scared you won’t be able to catch up?’ I asked.

  She shook her head and said, thoughtfully, ‘No, because I’m a beauty therapist.’

  ‘Well, we could finance you opening your own salon down here in Brighton or Hove,’ I suggested.

  Again, she smiled that smile of pure delight, her joy dancing in her eyes as she looked at me. ‘That’s a brilliant offer, Jack. Thank you, but no.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m just not that ambitious.’

  ‘You’re incredibly ambitious and motivated, you have passion and drive.’

  ‘I think what I mean is, I don’t have the type of ambition that will make me do anything at any cost to get what I want. I couldn’t finish my PhD because I didn’t want to be beholden to the people who would finance my research. I don’t want to open a salon with your money because I don’t want to be indebted to you.’

  ‘I’m your husband; it’s our money.’

  ‘Morally, legally, maybe yes, but in here,’ she put her hand to her head, ‘and here,’ she lay the flat of her hand over her heart, ‘it’s your money. You earned it or were given it way before you met me.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ I told her.

  ‘Maybe, and I’m sure I’d feel differently if we had children. But right now, when it’s just you and me, I still think of that as your money. Now we’re together, anything we earn is our money.’

  ‘Still crazy.’

  ‘I’ve been poor, Jack. I’ve seen what the need for money, the desperation for it, can do to people. You have very few choices when you’re desperate for money, and so far I’ve managed to avoid being forced into making those choices.

  ‘And, yes, if I’m honest, there was something else I wanted to do when I went into beauty therapy, and that was to start my own line of beauty products. But it’s something to work towards, not something that should be handed to me on a plate. What’s the point of doing something if you know that you’ve got someone to rescue you if you fail? I like to work hard at something and then to reap the rewards. I take pride in what I do. What’s the point if I know my rich husband will bail me out if I mess up?’

  That made me think of my complicated relationship with my father. Hector was always trying to get me to rely on him. He didn’t like that I did things without consulting him first – he liked (needed) to be in control. He was always giving Jeff and me money, telling us we could come to him if we had problems, never letting us stand on our own two feet – which meant our successes and our failures were nothing but reflections on him. I’m always having to temper and hide my battles to be out of my father’s control because my mother is so keen for us to be a close family. I often fear it would break her heart if she knew how much I hated him most of the time, and just why he thought so little of me. I often look at my father and see everything I hate about being a man, and then I look at my mother and remember I would never want to hurt her.

  Eve was very much against my father’s attempts at control. She kept saying we shouldn’t accept financial gifts from my parents but I found it hard to say no because I knew how much it meant to my mother to be able to help Jeff and me. Eve found a way to get the point across by donating the ninety thousand pounds he gave us from the sale of one of his properties to a women’s refuge and a homeless charity. I would never have had the ability to do that but afterwards, when I told him where the money had gone, my father had stopped giving us money.

  I want to buy Libby a glass heart. They are not too expensive, they are beautiful, but I am not sure if it is the sort of thing she would truly like. Eve would have loved one, I think. I’m not sure. The pair of them become mixed up in my mind sometimes, to the point where I
do not know which one likes what, and which one doesn’t. They were/are both unimpressed by money. They both liked/like beautiful things. They both make my heart beat in triple time. But they are not the same. They are different in many, many ways, but at times like this I forget which is which. Who is who. The subtleties that make a person who they are, that make a woman the person I fell in love with, are sometimes so blurred I am scared to speak to the woman who I am married to.

  I am scared that I will credit Libby with something that Eve said or did or liked, and she will never forgive me.

  My eyes are drawn to the cloudy clear heart at the centre of the board.

  My fingers close around it, unhooking it from the board and encasing it in the palm of my hand. The blood pumping through my body seems to focus on this hand and it feels as if the heart is beating in my palm. It is alive and well and beating.

  Even if Eve would have loved this, I’m sure Libby will like it, too. And what else can I give her after everything she has been through except this: my imperfect heart.

  eve

  1st December 1988

  I spoke to Connie today, asked her about how to make more money so I could buy that dress. I didn’t tell her what is was for, I doubt anyone would understand why I needed a dress – I just told her I needed more money as soon as possible. She stopped leaning forwards to see herself more clearly in the light-bulb surrounded mirror in the dingy backroom laughably known as the dressing room as she applied make-up. Connie turned on her swivel chair to me. Connie’s the only person at work who I trust, really.

  She’s been dancing for a while, and is so sanguine with it. She isn’t as bitchy, and snidey and bitter like the rest. She’s got an incredible body with long, smooth bronzed muscles. She’s Amazonian in stature anyway, but in her heels and with her hair all teased and clipped back, she looks like a goddess. The men flock to her, almost as if they long to be crushed under the spikes of her heels, to be tamed by her. She seems so oblivious, immune to it. She doesn’t become someone else to go out there. She is Connie out there in front of the dribbling men, and she is Connie in here in the dressing room, and she is Connie outside of work. I am Honey in here, I am Honey in front of the men, I am Eve out of work.

  ‘What do you need money for, sweetie? If that’s not too personal a question,’ she asked, her head on one side, her dark, sultry eyes examining me. She kept her voice low so that no one around could hear.

  I shrugged. ‘I just need it.’ Someone as immune to the effects of dancing as she was would not understand what I needed the dress for; how it would help me.

  ‘Not for a man, I hope?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing like that. I’d never do this sort of thing for a man.’

  ‘Never say never,’ she said ruefully, wisely. ‘So you need to make more money? Well you can start doing private dances, you know, in the VIP rooms. Tell Adrian and the others that you’ll do them and they’ll start to push the men who’re into that to choose you for a dance.’

  ‘Do I do a normal dance in there? Just a bit longer, maybe do it naked?’ I asked.

  Connie stared at me long and hard, as if asking herself if I was really that naïve. I’d never done VIP dancing before and I’d never been that curious about it. I usually made enough to pay the club fee and to cover my rent, food, bills, etc. I came, I did, I went. No need to get involved in the other stuff.

  She sighed. ‘Honey, in the private rooms the rules that they pretend to stick to out front don’t really apply. You know out front we make them think that if we let them touch us it’s something we do just for them? In the back, they get to touch you. They get to wank off while watching you dance, they get to finger you, they get to touch your tits, they get to make you play with yourself, you have to wank them off if they ask for it, some girls suck them off and—’ She stopped talking, stared at me with dismay, obviously halted by the horror on my face. ‘I really don’t think private dancing is for you.’

  ‘But I need the money,’ I insisted.

  Connie began to chew on her lower lip, smudging lipstick on her teeth – it was the first time I’d ever seen her unsure of herself. ‘OK, but you have got to toughen up. If you show any type of weakness in there, they’ll eat you alive. I mean that literally. Some of the scum that come in here will force you to finish them off with your mouth if they think they can get away with it. One girl was raped in one of those rooms with the bouncers stood outside, because she was too scared to scream. Then the wankers who run the joint put pressure on her not to report it cos they could lose their licence. They slipped her a wad of cash then basically told her to fuck off. And the bastard who did it? He actually tried to come back a couple of times until all us girls refused to dance for him and the managers barred him.’ She shrugged. ‘Probably doing it somewhere else.’

  I put my hand over my mouth. ‘Why do you still work here?’ I asked her, knowing I couldn’t work somewhere knowing a friend had been raped while I was there.

  Connie’s rueful, wise smile returned to her lips and she turned again to the mirror, picked up her blusher brush and started on her cheeks. ‘I need the money.’

  I spun on my chair to the mirror, too. Looked at myself. My hair backcombed to stand on end, my eyes heavily made up in black, brown and blue to stand out, artificial eyelashes, blood-red mouth, and glowing cheeks. Around my throat a gold, sparkly dog collar. I needed the money, too. I needed the money to be Eve again.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ Connie said, still applying her make-up. ‘I know you’re going to anyway, but I wish you wouldn’t do it. I remember the first time I saw you and I knew then you shouldn’t be here. You’re not meant for this type of place, Honey. You’re not hard enough. In years to come, you’ll look back and start to hate yourself for this.’

  ‘Is that what you do?’ I asked her.

  ‘I hated myself long before I came here. This place just gives me another reason to justify the hatred.’

  ‘I need the money,’ I said again to myself as much as to her.

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  I need the money, I need the money, I need the money. I kept repeating that to myself after my shift when I asked Adrian to let me do some private room stuff.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, obviously surprised. In the time I’d been there I hadn’t shown any interest in anything other than doing my shifts, collecting my cash and going home.

  I nodded. I need the money, I need the money, I need the money.

  ‘The punters will love it: a bit of new flesh in the back. You’ll get a bigger cut, too. Just let them know what you will and won’t do before you get down to it. You’re going to love it,’ he said patting me on the bum. ‘The way men will be gagging for you, you’re going to love it.’

  I need the money, I need the money, I need the money.

  8th December 1988

  I did a private dance for the first time today.

  He wasn’t repulsive or drunk. He wore a suit and he seemed pleasant enough. He also had on a wedding ring. For some reason, that upset me. I had to avoid looking at his hands.

  I had to sit astride him naked, moving to the music, while he put his hand, the one with the shiny gold wedding ring on my lower back, the other hand he used to get himself off.

  I’ve had three baths since I’ve come in but I can still feel his right hand rubbing against me as he moved it up and down, and I can still feel the gold band of his lifelong commitment and fidelity to someone else against the skin of my lower back, almost burning where it made contact.

  I’ve put the notes from tonight’s wages into the virtually frosted-over icebox of the fridge because I can forget about them there. I cannot bear to think about them right now. In fact, right now, I’m going to have another bath.

  19th February 1989

  I walked into the dress shop today with a bundle of money burning a hole in my pocket. I had earned every single one of those notes. A ‘new girl’ for the VIP room is, apparently, a very popular
thing for the regulars and for those who often do it elsewhere. They think that it will be easy to get me to do ‘extras’ for very little, that I can be swayed to ‘go all the way’ for the price of a dance, or that they can convince me that they can be helpful and show me the ropes in return for a discount or a freebie.

  ‘You have got to toughen up,’ Connie had said and so that’s what I did. While at first I was a little nervous and found myself having to dig deep to go through with it, I found the thought of being ripped off by these men – especially the ones with shiny gold wedding bands – even more terrifying. The first time I danced for them, they always tried it on. ‘Desire does that for twenty quid less,’ they’d say. And at first I didn’t know what to say so I would tell them I couldn’t do it for that amount, but would allow them to bargain me down a little. Then I got wise. I’d say, ‘Oh baby, that’s such a shame, I was looking forward to dancing for you. But if you want Desire at her prices you wait here, I’ll get her for you.’ Their egos always had them paying me what I asked.

  I never did anything purely sexual – no blowjobs, no handjobs, no sex – and in a way I was able to not feel as bad about that. I did charge a few of them the price of five dances to let them touch me down there for a few seconds at the end of a song, pretending that I liked it and that I wished it could continue for free after the last bars faded out.

  It was so odd that they believed it. That they genuinely thought that I would look twice at them, let alone get naked with them, if I wasn’t being paid. A part of me did feel sorry for these men, wondering what their story was that made them so deluded that they thought I liked it. That I could possibly even consider fancying them when they had walked into a place to pay to be turned on. Most of the time I stopped myself from feeling. I let a man run his hands over my breasts before he began fiddling with the zip on his trousers to start finishing himself off while I gyrated in front of him but the wall I had been building up since I started in this job just thickened around me. I hated being a part of it, but always I kept the words, ‘I need the money’ in my mind. My feelings were walled off, my thoughts were focused.