The Woman He Loved Before Read online

  I had earned every single penny of the notes in my pocket, all stored up in the freezer so that I wouldn’t have to think about them. Now, that extra cash was about to be used, to buy what I had needed it for. It would seem ludicrous to anyone who didn’t understand – that I would do all that just to buy a dress – but I needed it. There was very little I had in my life that I needed – there was stuff I wanted, there was stuff all of us wanted, but I needed this dress to make myself feel … real, I suppose.

  The world I lived in, the things I did, made me feel unreal. I was so often disgusted with myself and when I stopped being Honey, when I stopped pretending that I didn’t see anything wrong in what I did, I was confronted by the fear that I would disappear. Honey would take over, little by little, and soon I would walk out of the club and would not return to being Eve. I would walk away as Honey, Honey would return to my flat, Honey would take off her clothes, Honey would get in the bath, Honey would scrub herself clean, Honey would sit in a dressing gown with wet hair and smoke cigarettes while staring into space. Honey would eventually climb into bed and go to sleep. Then Honey would wake up in the morning and go about the day as Eve would.

  Every day it got harder and harder to come back to who I was. It would take longer to stop being her and start being me. I needed this dress, this thing that Eve loved to look at. With the dress, with Aunt Mavis’s rosary, Uncle Henry’s kit bag, and the photo of my parents and me when I was two, I was collecting more and more things that meant something to me, to Eve. Things that meant I was real. I had things to ground me here, so I was less likely to disappear.

  The discreet shop bell intoned as I pushed the door open. The bitchy woman who had made me cry looked up from the jumper she was folding on the counter, a smile ready for the valued customer who had stepped into her exclusive haven. She recognised me, it showed on the frowns of her face, but for some reason her lip did not curl into a sneer and her eyes did not narrow. Maybe she wanted to wait until I was right in front of her before she tried to take me apart. But she couldn’t now, could she? I had money, I was as good as her. No matter how much she did not want to, no matter how much better than me she thought she was, she was going to have to sell me that dress.

  I was trembling slightly, but the money in my pocket gave me courage to keep walking.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked when I stopped in front of her, the counter separating us.

  ‘I’d like to try on the dress in the window,’ I said. I sounded polite and confident.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  I couldn’t help but draw back a little in surprise. I had expected to have to get the money out of my pocket, to show her that I wasn’t wasting her time and that she had no reason not to sell me the dress.

  She finished her folding, then moved from around the counter and walked calmly towards the window. She stepped up onto the window display and unzipped the dress, pulling it carefully over the top of the headless mannequin. A burst of a song from the movie Mannequin exploded in my head, ‘Looking in your eyes, I see a paradise …’ I went to see that with Peter on one of our dates. I think it was before we did it for the first time. We sat holding hands in the front row, my heart almost bursting with what I thought was love. I think what love is changes over time, as you grow older, learn more, do more. I remember my love for him changed so much after we had sex. I felt like I was his, he could do no wrong and I could feel no pain. For the time we were together it felt like there was nothing that could hurt us or tear us apart. And then he was gone from my life.

  With the quality of the material, the dress was quite heavy as I lifted it off the small wooden hook in the dressing room at the back of the boutique. I took my time to step into it, and then zipped it up under my arm almost reverentially. It was so soft against my skin, as if it was stroking me, hushing me wherever the material made contact, and once I was secured in, the waves of comfort that it brought were incredible. Tears came rushing to my eyes, and stung my throat. I felt like I was being hugged, being loved and swayed in someone’s gentle arms.

  I braced myself for the saleswoman’s scorn and pulled aside the curtain to step out to see the mirror. She had the phone receiver pressed to her ear and was looking towards the front of the shop as the saleswoman listened to what the person on the other end of the phone had to say. I crept out, my feet bare as I didn’t have the perfect shoes for this dress, and moved to the mirror.

  My hand flew to my mouth and I had to physically hold back a cry as I saw myself properly for the first time. I did not look like the person I thought I was. I did not look like Honey. I did not look like anybody I had been since I had walked out of my mother’s house all those years ago. I looked like a grown up woman, someone who had learned the hard way to stand on her own two feet. But I also looked fragile and delicate and peaceful. The dress made me glow. This was probably how women felt when they got dressed on their wedding day. They felt like the prettiest woman in the world.

  ‘The colour compliments your eyes,’ the saleswoman said. I hadn’t heard her approach and had no idea how long she’d been standing there because for the first time I had been completely focused and absorbed by me. I glanced away from my reflection to look for her snidey expression but it was not there.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘You really deserve to have that dress. It wouldn’t look right on anyone else.’

  I continued to stare at her in the mirror, wondering where the venomous woman was. The woman who had so hated me for merely crossing the threshold.

  ‘I was unkind,’ she said to my silence. ‘And you still came back. This dress must mean a lot to you.’

  I thought of all the things Honey had done to get me enough money to buy this. It meant … it meant enough to come back. I couldn’t really speak to her, because I was scared that she would turn on me.

  ‘I’ll wrap your clothes up if you’d like, because I think you should wear it home.’ She knew that I had nowhere to wear it, that this would probably be the first and last time I got to feel like this. I smoothed my hands and fingers over the skirts of the dress, a thrill running through me every time my skin made contact. It was not warm outside but she was right: I did not want to take my dress off.

  The saleswoman went to the dressing room cubicle and returned with my clothes, handing me my jacket and trainers, then taking my jumper and jeans and socks to the counter. I slipped my trainers onto my feet, and then pushed my arms into my jacket. Even these ordinary items did not dull the beauty of the dress or diminish how I felt in it.

  ‘That’s £225,’ she said when I finally went over to the counter.

  My fingers paused in reaching for the bundle of notes in my pocket. ‘You told me it was £400,’ I said.

  The woman coloured up, her eyes full of shame. ‘I was extremely unkind,’ she replied.

  Bile swelled inside. I would not have had to do so many stints in the VIP room if … No, don’t think I about it, I told myself. I had the dress, that was all that mattered. I handed over the money and tried to push everything else out of my mind.

  Outside the shop, I paused for a moment, enjoying the rush of being a woman in an inappropriate dress with the whole world at her feet. I could do anything I wanted to: this dress had given me super powers; I could go out and save the world.

  Instead, I went to a café and bought a coffee. I sat in the window and stared out as I waited for my drink to be brought over. This was the life that Eve, the one I saw in the mirror, had thought she’d have. It wouldn’t matter if she was alone, she’d just find peace in the craziness of the world.

  ‘I love your dress,’ the waitress said as she placed the white cup with froth on top in front of me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied.

  ‘Is it from the shop round the corner?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘I used to drool over it,’ she said. ‘But I could never afford it, not in a million years. It looks so good on you, I doubt it wo
uld have suited me anyway.’

  She smiled at me, and a bubble of tears gathered together in my throat – she was being nice to me. In London, most people didn’t have time to be nice unless they wanted something from you. In my job, most people didn’t bother being nice to me because they were paying me to make them feel good.

  ‘Thanks,’ I replied.

  Her smile deepened and she put her head to one side as she looked me over. ‘It gets easier you know,’ she said.

  ‘What does?’ I asked.

  ‘Life.’ She shrugged. ‘It gets easier and simpler, I promise.’

  I thought about that statement for a long time after she had left, why she had said it to me and if it was true. My life had not gone like that. It had got more complicated and more difficult the longer I lived in this world. What if she was right, though? I must be due a big dose of simplicity and ease. I must be about to come into a bit of luck that would have me living the life of a normal seventeen-year-old sometime soon.

  She waved to me on my way out and, as soon as I was clear of the window, I ran all the way home. I did not want her to come after me, to ask me questions, to maybe force me to take back the tip of one hundred and seventy-five pounds I’d left for her. I couldn’t keep that money. I’d had enough of trying to forget it existed. I had done what I needed to do to get my dress, and I wanted the rest of that money gone. And I wanted it to go to someone who would appreciate it for being cold hard cash, who wouldn’t know it was the symbol of men using my seemingly willing body to get their kicks.

  I’m still wearing my dress. I don’t want to take it off. If I take it off, I know that I’ll be stripping my body of Eve, too. In my mind, I can see myself as the woman in the mirror. I’m going to hang onto that image and feeling for just that little bit longer.

  It’s not like I’m hurting anyone, is it?

  Me

  17th March 1989

  Something nice happened today.

  I was in the supermarket, picking up a few bits, and worrying on how I was meant to fill in a tax return – because I’m self-employed apparently and I have to do that and work out how to pay the tax people what I owe if I owe them anything – when I bumped into someone.

  A man. I looked up at him briefly then went bright red because I recognised him from the club. I put my head down but he said, ‘It’s Eve, isn’t it?’ And I breathed a sigh of relief because, you know, if he had been at the club then he’d think my name was Honey.

  ‘Do I know you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ah, shame! I thought you’d remember me. I’m Elliot. I work at the company that bought out the place you worked for. I was a junior accountant then, well, still am.’

  He was a bit taller than me, but not much. He had wavy brown hair and nice brown eyes. He was in a navy blue suit but the top button of his white shirt was open and the tie was a little undone.

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I replied, not really knowing what to say. But I was getting a butterfly feeling in my stomach – the longer I stood here, the better looking he got.

  ‘I was gutted for you that you didn’t get the job. You were much better than the girl they employed. Joke was on them in the end because she ended up getting sacked for stealing.’

  ‘Really? Is there a job going then?’ That would have been fantastic.

  ‘No, this was a while back. They’ve got someone new now.’

  ‘Why didn’t they call me? I did apply for job,’ I said, feeling slighted. I worked really hard for them.

  ‘It’s all a bit different there now. Ophelia got pushed out within a couple of months. But lots of people said it served her right after what she did to you and especially to Maggie. You know her and Maggie had been friends since school?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yeah. My company just wanted Ophelia’s high-profile clients and not her. They basically made her life a misery until she left. Dominic wasn’t far behind, he could see which way the wind was blowing and left too. They’ve both started their own businesses from scratch with no real clients and rumours about how badly they behaved.’

  Wow, what goes around really does come around. I actually shivered a little to think that Ophelia was in a similar situation to me. Couldn’t see her getting up and dancing around a metal pole though.

  ‘Do you fancy a drink sometime?’ he asked, out of the blue.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’ I crossed my fingers in my head as I said that, obviously because I don’t like to lie. But I couldn’t go out with him when I was still a dancer.

  ‘Of course you have. Girls like you aren’t single for long.’

  ‘Girls like me?’ I asked, suddenly defensive. Just because I took my clothes off didn’t mean I slept around.

  ‘Pretty girls.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Look, here’s my card. If you and your boyfriend split up, call me. And call me if you need any help with any accountancy stuff. I may not be able to help, but it’ll be a great excuse to see you again.’

  ‘Do you have a pen?’ I asked him.

  He produced a blue Bic biro from his inner pocket. I turned his card over, and wrote my number on the back. ‘If you hear of any jobs going, please can you give me a call?’ I handed him back his card. ‘I remember the work number, so I know I can call you there.’

  He nodded and smiled. ‘Great, it’s a deal.’

  I walked home on cloud nine. He was going to bring me good luck, I could tell. And he did. Earlier, a regular gave me a hundred-pound tip.

  Yes, one hundred pounds! I mean that NEVER happens. All the other girls were dead jealous but I didn’t care. I didn’t flash it around or brag about it, but it made the rest of the night fly by because I knew I’d made enough to pay the house and I didn’t have to go flat out to earn as much.

  I actually came home with a smile on my face. See? If you wait long enough and try hard enough, something good is bound to turn up.

  Night, night.

  Love,

  Me

  libby

  On my pillow is a small package of pink tissue paper, tied up in an ivory ribbon with a card slipped between the lines of the ribbon.

  That’s probably why after dinner Jack did nothing more than ask me if I needed a hand to get my tablets from the bedroom before he took Butch out for a final walk.

  I sit heavily on the bed, and stare at the package. Jack likes to give me things, presents, tokens of his love. They’re always beautiful, sometimes expensive, but most of the time, I’d rather have him. I’d rather have him talk to me, share with me, rely on me. I’d rather our relationship moved below the surface when it comes to the almighty Eve.

  Except, it’s becoming harder and harder to keep thinking of her negatively. The more I learn about Eve, the more I start to feel for her, and if I start to feel for her then I start to understand why Jack is still so obsessed with her.

  I desperately need for her to be a bitch. I need for her to have had some sort of nefarious hold over Jack so that I would be able to look into the future and see that once the hold is broken, he’ll completely give himself to me. But learning what she had to do for money, to pay the rent, to feel connected to the world … it tears me up inside. Almost as if I knew her. That could have been me. I could have slept with someone to get funding, I could have done what I heard a couple of the other women doing their masters and PhDs did and become a stripper to make ends meet. I walked away but that could have been me. It was Eve.

  I reach out for the package and it is deceptively heavy for an item so small. Pulling apart the ribbon and then the paper, I find at the centre a heart. About two centimetres from top to bottom, it is clear crystal with swirls like waves of a pure white mist trapped and frozen in time at its centre. A tiny hook attached at the V of the heart has a black leather thread looped through it.

  It’s like nothing he has ever bought me before.

  Curious, I pick up the card and remove it from its envelope.

  I
love you. J x

  I gather the heart to me again, hold it gently in my fist and place it against my chest as I lie back against the pillows.

  I’m going to stop reading the diaries. It’s intrusive and now I know a little more about her, I don’t want to intrude on her space any longer. And what I am doing is betraying Jack, too. I should ask him, talk to him, make him tell me about her. I know that’s possible now he’s given me the gift of his heart. I’ve never felt I’ve completely had it before.

  chapter thirteen

  libby

  We’re at the traffic lights at the bottom of Eleventh Avenue on the seafront, and a car pulls up beside us. He’s in a red Ferrari and has ‘cock’ written all over his face. He revs his engine to get Jack’s attention, obviously keen for Jack to feel intimidated in his ‘little’ Z4.

  I roll my eyes and immediately say, ‘Don’t, Jack.’ I place my hand on his forearm to calm him. It’s the sort of thing that winds Jack up enough to burn the idiot at the traffic lights, except he wouldn’t be able to and he’ll become frustrated and angry.

  ‘He’s a wanker,’ Jack says almost without moving his lips or ungritting his teeth.

  ‘Out of the three of us sitting at these traffic lights, I think we all know that. But you’d be the bigger wanker if you do something like race him. Is your ego really that fragile? And imagine if someone decided to run out across the road just before our traffic lights changed to green and you hit them? How would you feel in hurting someone because you let that twat over there wind you up?’

  The Ferrari engine revs again and I can almost see the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stand up in animosity.