The Woman He Loved Before Page 4

  If he wasn’t being economical with the truth, and he had bought this as a shell, then he had lavished a lot of care and attention upon it to get it back to its current glory, and to remain faithful to the period – from the cornicing and the ceiling rose to the dado rail and the cast-iron radiators.

  I stood in front the mirror, waiting for Jack to let me know I could go ahead into the house. Instead of moving forwards, he turned, a mischievous grin taking over his face before stepping closer to me.

  ‘May I smell you?’ he asked, his green eyes dancing as he slowly manoeuvred me backwards until I was against the wall and he stood in front of me but wasn’t touching me.

  ‘Smell me?’ I asked, taken aback.

  ‘Yes. Smell you. Just your neck, if that’s all right?’

  I didn’t see what harm it could do – I had thought he was going to kiss me, but if he wanted to smell me first then … ‘If you must,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve just …’ He buried his face in the nape of my neck, and suddenly, unexpectedly, I was overcome by the scent of him; his skin, slightly damp and salty, yet arid, with hints of something I couldn’t place, swirled notes of a sensation up through my nose and directly into my blood stream. All at once, I was on fire. My body was aching and longing, bubbling and effervescing with the smell of … of him.

  ‘This scent has been driving me crazy all night,’ he said, oblivious to what he had ignited in me. ‘I’ve been having a mix of these incredible feelings because of that smell and I was wondering if it was you. And it is.’ He pressed his nose closer into my neck, his body now touching mine. ‘It definitely is.’ The last three words moved his lips over my skin and I gasped as if in pain, pushing against the wall to steady myself. In response he came closer, his lips still on my neck. I gasped again.

  He stood upright and stared down at me for a moment. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered. He lowered his head, his lips aiming for mine and I closed my eyes, waiting for contact. When his lips did not touch mine, I opened my eyes again. ‘So beautiful,’ he repeated, then kissed the other side of my neck. Each kiss – soft and measured – injected more of him into me. I did not know this feeling, it was so … raw. His hands moved down to my shoulders, under the lapels of my coat, pushing it backwards off onto the ground along with my bag. I was still intoxicated by his smell, the closeness of him, and didn’t resist in any way. His hands skimmed down my body, over my ankle-length blue dress.

  ‘Is this OK?’ he whispered against my ear, his breath hot and laboured.

  ‘Yes,’ I managed to push out between my own laboured breaths.

  ‘Do you want me to stop?’ he asked.

  Yes, I said in my head. Yes, yes, yes, stop. Please stop. I hardly knew the man. But he seemed to know me intimately: he knew where to touch, where to kiss, how to fill up my senses. I knew I shouldn’t be doing this but … ‘No. Don’t stop,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t stop.’

  ‘I have to taste you,’ he said, pulling away. His dark emerald eyes searched mine for a few seconds, looking for protest. ‘I have to taste you,’ he repeated, then he was on his knees, lifting my dress, tugging down my black knickers until they were around my ankles. Automatically, I stepped out of them and he immediately pushed my legs further apart. First it was his fingers – finding, feeling, filling; then his tongue – touching, tasting, teasing.

  Within seconds I was whimpering; my knees trembling, about to give way; my body quivering, arching towards him as I craved more and more and more until liquid dynamite was exploding in my veins and I was clutching onto the wall, head thrown back, as moan after moan after moan of pleasure gushed out of me.

  My mind still reeling, as he came to full height again, he took my hand, led me across the short gap to the mirror opposite then stepped behind me. ‘See how beautiful you are?’ he whispered in my ear. ‘See?’

  I glanced in the mirror, not paying attention to me, instead concentrating on him, how he had been transformed from the relaxed man I’d had dinner with to the man with this intensity and determination in his eyes.

  ‘I want to fuck you,’ he said into my hair. ‘Can I fuck you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Yes.’

  I lowered my gaze from the mirror to the box of tissues on the table in front of me, listening to the jingle of his belt, the undoing of his top button, the opening of his zip, the lowering of his trousers, the crackling of a condom packet. Then his hand was gently urging me forwards until I was leaning on the table, and he was hitching my dress up, opening my legs, moving close … And suddenly he was a part of me. His body followed where his scent had been. He curled his body against mine, his groans muted against my neck.

  My eyes went up to the mirror again, to see his face, to see if it was for him what it was for me, but my gaze snagged on my reflection.

  I was another person.

  My hair was out of place and unruly, my body was bending forwards to allow a man to plough into me, my face was contorted with pleasure, my eyes were filled with an animalistic look. I was wild, wonton, uncontrolled. This person in the mirror was not Libby Rabvena. She was little more than an untamed beast. Sex had not done this to me. He had done this to me. And I had let him. I had wanted him to.

  I immediately closed my eyes, scared to keep on staring in case that was the only reflection I would see of myself every time I looked in any mirror.

  His movements became harder and he pulled away, standing up to grab tightly onto my hips as his urgency increased, his moans mixing with mine, both of us growing louder and louder until he cried out, a second or two before my cry, and we both became frozen as our pleasure rippled through ourselves and into each other.

  Jack didn’t withdraw straight away, he stayed with me for a few seconds, taking time to control his breathing, then leaning forwards to tenderly kiss the nape of my neck.

  ‘That was incredible,’ he said as he broke apart from me. I heard him grab several tissues from the box on the table and waited with my eyes closed and head bowed until I heard him stop moving. I stood upright, lowered my dress and turned away from the mirror before opening my eyes.

  ‘That was incredible,’ he repeated, then leant in and kissed my forehead. Before, the merest touch was a trip to an unsettling, almost feral pleasure, now it was a small, stinging blow of shame and guilt.

  I managed a smile, then a slight nod. I did not know how to speak to him after what we had done. Words seemed inadequate.

  ‘If you don’t mind waiting here for a few minutes, I’ll just get rid of this,’ he indicated to the ball of tissue in his hand, ‘and then get some clean towels and a dressing gown so you can have a shower. OK?’

  I nodded again. Inside, I was horrified – he expected me to stay? To talk to him? To act as if it was perfectly natural to have done that with a virtual stranger?

  He looked at my mouth as if he was going to kiss me, or as if he needed me to remind him that I could speak, then smiled and kissed my forehead again. ‘Really incredible,’ he said. He stooped to pick up the condom wrapper. ‘Two minutes,’ he said, then disappeared up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  As soon as he was out of sight, I moved across the corridor, snatched up my knickers, then my coat and then my handbag. I stuffed the knickers into my bag, shrugged on my coat, and almost ran through the porch to the door. The lock was not like anything I had seen before, and I stared at it trying to work out what to pull or push or twist to release the catch, to set me free.

  I heard the toilet flush.

  I need to get out of here. I need to go, I thought desperately and began pawing at the gold latch, until something happened and the door clicked open. Closing the door quietly behind me, I ran down the steps as fast as I could in heels, then at the bottom turned towards the seafront.

  I could hopefully hail a taxi on Kingsway. If not, I’d go up the road parallel to his to the taxi rank by Hove Town Hall.

  As if sent from the gods, a yellow-orange taxi light came on right in front
of me. I raised my arm and ran for it, praying he’d seen me. My heart skipped gratefully when he stopped and waited for me to get in.

  ‘Devonshire Avenue, Kemptown, please,’ I told the driver as I slipped onto the cracked black leather of the back seat and clipped on my seatbelt.

  We didn’t even kiss, I realised as the taxi driver pulled away. We had sex but at no point did we kiss.

  That played on my mind the whole way home: I’d had sex, and I’d come away from that encounter with my mouth unkissed.

  Where’s that woman who wanted me to guess who she was? I haven’t heard her voice since I came round in the ambulance. The way she said Jack’s name, it was as if she knew him – intimately. Was she one of the women he’d been with before me? There was something familiar about her, though. And she spoke like she knew me. She said I knew her. Where is she? I want her to tell me who she is, because she can’t be—

  August, 2008

  His car was parked outside my house.

  I’d struggled up the hill with two bags from the supermarket, and turned into my street, and spotted a car like his sitting outside my building. ‘Please don’t let it be his, please don’t let it be his,’ I repeated in my head as I got nearer and nearer to home. I hadn’t answered his calls last night, nor this morning. I wanted him to forget about it. To pretend it had never happened. Because that was what I had decided to do. It was all too unsettling that I’d managed to be like that, do that with someone I hardly knew, someone I hadn’t even kissed. I always thought that sort of sex came from knowing someone properly, trusting them, being willing to explore your boundaries regarding sex and push them outwards together. I always thought that sort of sex came from being able to completely relax with a person, knowing they would still have feelings for you afterwards. I did not want reminding that our encounter probably meant nothing to him.

  He was sitting on the steps outside my flat, legs wide open, elbows resting on his knees, sunglasses on his face. He’d morphed back into the man I first met, not the man who’d brought me coffee and croissants, who played footie in the park and who I’d had dinner with.

  I stopped at the bottom of the stone steps and had to drop my heavy bags. Now that I had my car, I often drove to a bigger supermarket at the Marina or Homebush to do my weekly shopping, but I couldn’t face the drive today. And there was no point in going the short distance down the hill in the car so I’d walked. Doing something physically punishing had been good for the body and refreshing for the mind after the confusion I’d been in since last night, but it was hurting now. I wiggled my fingers to get some feeling back and then turned them palm-side up and stared with interest as the blood returned to them and they went from an anaemic yellow to browny-pink again.

  Staring at my fingers stopped me from having to face him.

  ‘Well, I should probably tell you that I thought you were playing hide and seek,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t until I actually looked behind the door in the dining room that I realised how ridiculous I was being.’

  I stretched my fingers, clenched and unclenched my hands, watching as the ligaments and muscles moved in them.

  ‘Was it really that bad?’ he asked so softly I barely heard him above the sound of the seagulls and the voices, chaos and lives from the main road, St James Street, around the corner. ‘I thought you’d—’

  ‘I did,’ I cut in before he said the word, but I still could not raise my gaze. ‘I did, you know I did. And you know it wasn’t bad at all.’

  ‘Then why did you leave? I was expecting to wake up with you this morning.’

  ‘I—I was ashamed of myself.’

  ‘What on Earth for?’

  ‘For doing that, enjoying it, when in the whole thing, I could have been anybody.’ I managed to look up, to finally look at the man I’d had sex with the night before. He had taken his sunglasses off and his eyes were focused intently on me. ‘It wasn’t about me or us or a special connection we had, was it? I was simply another body to fuck, another hole to fill.’

  It was his turn to look down, to confirm my suspicions that he’d done that, in that exact same way, a significant number of times. I quailed inside, thinking of how many women had put their hands where I had put my hands and had opened their legs for him as I had done. I tried not to wonder how many of them had stayed, had used the towels and dressing gown he had gone to get for me, had been secure enough in what they had done to go back for seconds.

  ‘Haven’t you ever had one-night stands before?’ he eventually asked, still with his eyes lowered.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, looking down again. ‘And with some of them I didn’t realise they were going to be one-night stands until the person didn’t call. But none of them have ever felt as … calculated and soulless as last night.’ I undid then redid the blue jumper tied around my waist, which had been slowly working its way down my body. ‘We’d had such a nice night, I thought I’d been proved wrong about you, then we did that. I couldn’t stay and pretend it was OK with me because it wasn’t. I . . . I was ashamed of myself.’

  We both continued to stare at the ground, unable to say anything that would heal the situation.

  ‘Do you want a hand with your shopping?’ he asked.

  I shook my head, still staring at the ground, scared to look up in case he saw the tears that were building up behind my face, and were already sealing up my throat.

  I heard him get up and pause for a moment, probably to put his sunglasses back on. He came down to the bottom step, stopped beside for me for a second. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

  I nodded. I knew he was and turning up here was a brave thing to do. If it hadn’t all been so painful, I would have told him so. Instead, I stood still, my head bowed until I heard his car start up and drive away.

  Tears slid slowly and continuously down my face as I picked up my shopping bags, ready to slip back into my life as if last night had never happened.

  *

  ‘We’re going to have to go to theatre now, that bleed in her spleen seems to be getting worse and we need to get in there now if we’re going to save her.’

  Are you sure it’s my spleen that’s bleeding? I think. Because I’ve always thought that it’s my heart that’s too soft and easily damaged. I’ve always thought that maybe I was born with a bleeding heart.

  October, 2008

  I became a beauty therapist because I couldn’t be a biochemist any more. Well, I could, if I decided that not eating or living with my parents were viable lifestyle choices.

  I had emerged from university ready to save the world, hoping to find a way to make a difference. The research I had chosen to do wasn’t anywhere near the ‘hot topic’ it had become now; at the time no one cared if the move towards using biofuels (things like soya and corn in place of petrol) would adversely affect the world’s food resources and what we could do about it. And those who did care were not the people you financially got into bed with. So after a year of struggling to do what I wanted, I decided to stop. I didn’t want to find a job that was nearly but not quite in that area because what was the point? I wasn’t the sort of person who settled for second best, so I decided if I couldn’t do what was my real passion, I’d find a new passion. And that lay at the other end of the scale for my qualifications – beauty. It still involved chemistry and biology, indulged my love of make-up and lotions and potions, but I could train to do it in under a year, could continually train in new specialities and I would get paid in the here and now.

  The surprising thing was that I loved it. I mean, really loved it. I loved the chemical analysis of finding the right products for a person’s skin, the science-like methodology of any treatment or process. 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.

  Being a beauty therapist had many perks – being taken seriously by the world was not one of them. I saw the ‘idiot’ labe
l flash up on people’s faces when they spotted the beautician’s coat. They thought I didn’t have more than two brain cells to rub together, and that I sat around filing my nails and thinking about make-up all day. Who was I to shatter their illusions?

  Who was I to point out that to be a successful qualified, certified beauty therapist you needed to understand the human body, understand chemistry and know how to successfully communicate with people? Who was I to explain to them that when you were faced with poverty or wearing a beautician’s uniform, the uniform would win every time? Anyone who said they would rather starve than do a job like mine, hadn’t been poor enough, hadn’t had to make – more than once – the choice between food and heat. Choices like that focused the mind and hardened the heart to any sneers you might get from people who didn’t know you.

  Except possibly when you were crouched behind the life-sized wooden cutout of a female lifeguard holding a male swimmer at the entrance to Brighton Pier, clutching your bag to your chest and praying against hope that the man you had a one-night stand with nearly three months ago didn’t see you turn and run here the second you spotted him coming towards you. When you were doing something like that, everyone looked at you as if you were strange, beautician’s uniform or not.

  I’d seen Jack several times in the past few weeks and I always ducked into a shop or crossed the road to avoid the possibility of having to acknowledge or – worse – speak to him, hoping while I did so that he hadn’t seen me. This was the first time I’d had nowhere to run to, though, so had been forced to do this. Or to put my hands over my eyes like Benji used to do when he was two, because he thought no one could see him if he couldn’t see them.

  ‘I think you probably win the award for the most inventive way to avoid talking to me,’ Jack said.

  I froze, wondering if it was too late to try the hands-over-my-eyes thing. Slowly, I uncurled myself and stood upright. Jack and I sighed at the same time, both of us frustrated but for different reasons.