The Woman He Loved Before Page 29

  I lay on my back and was devouring the pages of the book in my hand when someone said to me, ‘I don’t often see people reading Noel Coward.’

  Jack Britcham. I knew I was going to look up and see Jack Britcham. And I was going to fall apart or burst into tears, or throw my arms around him as you would a friend you haven’t seen in years.

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and then opened them again just before I lowered the book and turned my head to the side.

  A thousand angels started to sing as I saw him and I did none of the things I thought I was going to do. Instead I stared. I took another gulp of air, then moved the book to look at the cover, as if I didn’t know that in my hands I held my favourite play written by Noel Coward.

  ‘Just Eve,’ he said, when I looked at him again.

  ‘Hello, you,’ I replied, surprised that my mouth could work when it – like the rest of me – was overcome. That was the only word for it. Overcome.

  I inhaled again and noticed that his chest, covered in paint-splattered builder’s overalls, rose quite far as he inhaled and then fell as deeply as mine did. His hands were clean, but his hair and face were splattered with spots of white.

  ‘Blithe Spirit is one of his best works,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit crazy, but also rather compelling and cynical.’

  I sat up, and I saw the way his eyes watched my hair fall into place around my shoulders. I often watched men watch me and he didn’t have that look in his eyes that repulsed me about men. He wasn’t looking at my hair and imagining his hands wrapped around it, pulling it, or hooking his fingers into it while I did something to him. Jack Britcham was watching my hair fall the way a person watches a waterfall – with fascination and awe. Almost reverence.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve read it,’ he said. ‘I know I haven’t read it. I don’t know why I said that.’

  ‘For something to say?’ I replied.

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  We stared at each other for a moment and then both started talking at once. Then we both stopped. And started again. Then stopped. I’d never been in such sync with someone before. We both waited then I raised a hand and pointed to mean, ‘You speak.’

  He smiled and made all the butterflies in my stomach do that special pirouette before they fluttered their wings. ‘I was going to tell you that since we met, I’ve been seeing your doppelgangers everywhere I go. It’s silly, but I keep seeing you and then I realise it’s not you. I actually thought I was going to be explaining myself to a woman who had no idea who I was when I saw you a minute ago.’

  ‘I’ve been doing the same,’ I confessed. ‘Except I haven’t actually approached anyone.’

  ‘Really?’ he asked, his eyes lighting up. Then they clouded over with confusion. ‘So why didn’t you call?’

  Because I’m a whore, I said to myself. Because most nights of the week, men I don’t know and I don’t like penetrate or degrade me for the simple reason that I sold my soul to the devil without realising that was who he was. Because you could never love a woman like me. Because I could probably never love the man you really are, only the man I want you to be in my head.

  ‘Just because,’ I said.

  Jack Britcham smiled and I died a thousand little deaths inside that he seemed so innocent and nice and I was anything but. Having said that, it could all be a front. Jack Britcham might be nothing like that. With Elliot, I overlooked his drug-taking, with Caesar I overlooked the whole visiting prostitutes thing, I wondered what there was to ‘overlook’ with Jack Britcham, what little clues to the darkness in his soul there would be that I would ignore.

  It didn’t matter at that moment in time because he was standing in front of me, smiling. And there was nothing I had wanted more all these long months.

  I smiled back, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then we both started to speak at once again, then stopped, then started, then stopped. I raised my finger and pointed at him again. He killed me all over again with his grin.

  ‘Will you come for a walk with me?’ he asked. ‘Just up the seafront? I came out to clear my head.’ He indicated to his clothes. ‘I’m still working on my house – it’s a big job – and I love to walk to Brighton and back. Will you walk with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You will?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘I was about to say I was heading home because I’ve got an appointment later, and did you fancy a walk for a bit if you didn’t have to rush back to work.’

  ‘Really?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Another smile from him sent shooting stars up my spine. ‘Wow. I could count on one finger the amount of times that’s happened to me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I slipped down off the wall, and he looked for a moment as if he was going to help but was unsure how I would receive his assistance. I liked that; I liked that he respected my personal space.

  We walked slowly, meandering along the seafront, close enough to hold hands and it felt as if we should be holding hands, as if we had been together long enough to want to be clinging onto each other as we made our way through the world.

  ‘I don’t know what to talk about,’ he confessed. ‘All those times I’ve imagined running into you again and I had conversations lined up in my head so I would come across as erudite and witty, and I can’t for the life of me remember a single one of them.’

  ‘Me either,’ I replied.

  ‘We talked for five minutes last time.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But I couldn’t stop thinking about you.’

  ‘Me too.’

  He stopped and turned to me, so I stopped and turned to him too. ‘I feel like we should be kissing right now,’ he said.

  ‘I feel like that, too.’ It was getting spooky how he was constantly saying what I was thinking.

  He swallowed hard, looked as if he was going to step forwards and do it, when reality bashed me over the head. I was a whore who was basically trapped in a no-win situation that I wasn’t sure how to get myself out of. I was not a twenty-five-year-old woman without a care in the world, free to have a relationship with any man who I met.

  I stepped forwards. And so did he.

  People walked around us, not even tutting or noticing like they would in London. Here, on the wide promenade, anything went. Our bodies touched and there was no spark, no ignition, no sudden burst of passion; it was far more beautiful than that. Touching him like that felt like he had reached into my being and put loving arms around my soul. I knew without doubt that I had met my soulmate.

  The kiss, as lovely as it was, was pretty much inconsequential.

  Eve

  15th August 1996

  God, my last entry was gushing, wasn’t it?

  I’m not surprised, though, I just wanted to get down something nice that had happened to me. And kissing Jack Britcham on the seafront was pretty much one of the nicest things that has EVER happened to me.

  The kiss, which was lovely, only lasted a minute or two before we both broke away, then stood staring at our feet, giggling quietly and shyly. It was all so silly and embarrassing – for both of us.

  ‘What on Earth has come over us?’ he said, still smiling at his shoes.

  ‘Midsummer madness?’ I replied.

  ‘Would you like to come to dinner with me?’ he asked. ‘Do things properly.’

  I had been to most of the best restaurants in Brighton, Hove, Worthing, Shoreham, probably most of Sussex, and to London, with some of the vilest men in the world. In the last two months, particularly, every time I sat down to dinner, there were at least two men at the table who had taken pleasure in hurting me while they fucked me and I’d had to pretend to find them scintillating company. The last thing I wanted to do was go to dinner with someone I liked. ‘No, thanks,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, dejectedly. ‘Oh, right, right. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not you. Going
out to dinner just isn’t something I like doing.’

  ‘Oh, OK. How about a drink, then?’

  ‘How about you show me around this house of yours that you’re still working on?’

  ‘You’d really like to see it?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Fantastic.’ He was genuinely pleased. ‘How about tomorrow night since you’ve got an appointment this evening?’

  ‘Make it tomorrow afternoon and I’m in,’ I replied.

  He raised his eyes to the sky, thinking things over. ‘I think I can move a few meetings around, how does three-thirty sound?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Can I have your number, in case I can’t change the meeting?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘If you can’t change the meeting then Fate is trying to tell us something. So, give me your address and I’ll hopefully see you tomorrow.’

  I’m on my way there soon.

  I’m so excited, I can’t tell you. Haven’t been this excited since my first date with Peter.

  Thinking about it, I was a bit dismissive of the kiss, wasn’t I? Considering I haven’t kissed anyone in years – actual years – I can’t believe I didn’t dwell on it more. It was lovely, and it was different from how I remember kissing. Maybe because, after a while, when I got to know him properly I didn’t enjoy kissing Elliot all that much. With Jack, it was so different. So beautiful and pure, and gentle and giving.

  I’d forgotten how much I loved kissing until Jack kissed me. It was better than I had fantasised it would be. Hope there’ll be more kisses this afternoon.

  Just kissing. I really don’t want anything else.

  Eve

  15th August 1996

  Caesar is buzzing at the door and I’m sitting on the floor of the small bedroom where I sleep writing this because there’s a sufficient glow from the orangey streetlight in here to allow me not to put the lights on. I’m on the floor in case you can see my outline from the street if I sit on the bed. I don’t think you can, but I’m not taking that chance.

  I’ll suffer for it tomorrow, because when I got back there was a message from him on my answer machine saying that he was coming over. ‘Coming over’ might have meant just him, but I couldn’t be sure. But either way, after the afternoon I’ve had, I’m not willing to service anyone. How can I when I have the scent of the man I love on me and I do not want to wash it off?

  Caesar can do what he wants tomorrow, and I won’t care. Being alone tonight with my memories of Jack Britcham is all I care about. I keep touching my lips to find them tender and little painful from all the kissing. All that delicious, scrumptious kissing. There aren’t enough words, I don’t think, in any of the world’s languages to describe what the kissing was like. I wish I could write it down, capture it on this page so that I can relive the sensations over and over.

  The buzzing’s stopped. I don’t know if Caesar’s given up or if he’s trying to find a way into the building. Either way, I don’t care. He’ll have to break the door down to get in.

  Jack Britcham’s house was incredible to look at from the outside, a huge, detached building on one of those ultra-expensive roads that leads down to the seafront. The façade was faded by the salty air and the Sun, but it was still clinging onto its wonderful buttery-cream colour. The windows were beautiful old sashes with chipped paint and split woodwork, and the stone steps leading up to the front door were worn away with the footsteps of all the people who had come and gone over the years.

  I wondered, as I walked up the steps to the front door, which was obviously new, how many people had been like me over the years: going up the steps to meet someone they were convinced they were in love with? How many times had love trod those weary stones and stayed?

  He answered the door within seconds, and we grinned as we saw each other in that way we had on the promenade – I couldn’t help myself and I don’t think he could either. Jack Britcham just made me smile.

  ‘You came,’ he said.

  ‘You were here,’ I replied.

  He was dressed as if for work – I guessed he worked in an office – and looked like he’d just arrived back from the way his briefcase sat by the door, and his suit jacket was hung on the banister. ‘Did you just come home?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, glancing at his black leather briefcase. ‘I couldn’t really move the meeting, so I had to feign an emergency to get out of it.’

  ‘Do you think they believed you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll find out tomorrow when I get in. Either I’ll have my P45 or a cup of tea on my desk. I’ll live with whichever one.’

  He took me around the house, and each room was its own little world, its own little story. Some rooms were stripped bare – floorboards exposed, walls removed of everything except greying plaster and new red-brown plaster, freshly patched ceilings, single light fittings hanging crookedly from a ceiling that awaited its new intricate ceiling rosette and light. Other rooms were even more devastated, with huge holes and lines in the walls where the electric cables had been pulled out and replaced, parts of the floors were unearthed where pipe work was being re-laid, the walls still had parts of ancient wallpaper that had yet to be scraped away, skirting boards that were mostly removed, newly fitted radiators sticking out from where they had been placed, fireplaces that were dark gaping holes that threatened to suck you in. Yet other rooms were awaiting paint: they were perfectly put back together with the skirting replaced, the radiator in place, the ceiling rose and ornate period light fittings fixed, the floors clean and ready for carpeting after the painting, the walls all smooth with dry plaster, the fireplaces filled with their black iron surrounds and just waiting for winter so they could house a fire.

  A few rooms – his bedroom, the main bathroom and the huge kitchen – were finished. They were obviously done so that he could live there while the rest of the work was being carried out. I walked around every room that I could go into, running my hands along the walls, revelling in the ability to touch history in such an intimate way. The flat I lived in was an old Victorian house that had been carved up into apartments, but the heart had been ripped out of it and, along with it, the traces of history that it held. It was blank and white and beige.

  This place, being so gently and carefully restored by Jack Britcham, was still teeming with history, with the lives that once dwelled there, the many, many stories that once played themselves out there. Under my fingers, the heart of the house seemed to beat and I so wanted to rest my head against the walls and listen to the heart, listen to any snatches of the past, taking it all in, so that those who had gone before would not be forgotten, they would be remembered.

  That’s silly, I know, but Jack Britcham didn’t look at me as if I was mad – he simply took me from room to room, letting me touch the walls and stand for a while allowing myself to become a part of it.

  ‘It’s a beautiful place,’ I said to him when we finally returned to the kitchen, where he went to put the kettle on.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied.

  ‘Although, beautiful doesn’t seem a good enough word. It doesn’t seem adequate.’

  ‘That’s what I think when I think about you. When I come to describe you in my head, I know you’re beautiful but the word doesn’t seem enough.’

  I stared at him, startled. No one had ever said anything like that to me. It was so beyond a normal compliment and I was so stunned I didn’t even have time to be flattered or embarrassed. ‘Are you always so honest?’ I eventually asked him when he simply stared back at me as though willing me to challenge him.

  ‘Almost never,’ he replied. ‘I wasn’t brought up that way. I come from a family where things are swept under the carpet and never talked about. I just can’t help it with you.’

  I continued to stare at him, again startled – but this time at my reaction. I wasn’t as embarrassed as I thought I would be, I wasn’t flattered, I was … it was the most natural thing in the world because from out of his mouth was com
ing most of the things I felt. In another person, one I did not have this attachment to, it would have been gushing, clingy and embarrassing, from him it was like having a mirror held up to my soul.

  ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ I said to him. ‘Isn’t that weird? And yet, I didn’t think twice about coming to your house – when you could have been an axe murderer for all I knew.’

  ‘You drink espresso-strong black coffee with three sugars,’ he said.

  ‘Four sugars.’

  ‘You used to smoke a packet of mild cigarettes a day but gave up, but not for health reasons.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You live alone in a two-bedroom flat because you lived in a one-bedroom place for so long that you need the extra space now you feel you can afford it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re from Yorkshire originally.’

  ‘Have you been following me?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘I just guessed all that stuff, apart from the Yorkshire bit because you’ve still got the hint of an accent. Those things just came into my head and I said them. Lots of other things came into my head as well, just in case you’re wondering. Like, you’re unhappily married to a man who is the deposed president of a small country. That you’re an heiress coming into a huge pot of money someday soon. You’re also a double agent on the run from people all over the world. That I can’t believe you’ve been in my house for more than twenty minutes and I haven’t even attempted to kiss you.’

  ‘All those things are true, too,’ I said with a laugh. ‘Every word. And you … I think you went into your profession because your dad made you. You took a huge gamble buying this house and you’re still unsure if you did the right thing. You prefer football to rugby even though you played rugby at school and college. And you’re probably the youngest person to have ever reached your current position in your company.’

  ‘Have you been following me?’ he replied.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.