Exposure (13 page)

I was looking forward to catching up with
Hannah. She had hinted on the phone that there was a lot going on with her, and
she wanted to talk to me. No matter what was happening, Hannah and I always
ended laughing and feeling better when we met up.

We had just found a free table and sat down
with our drinks, and Hannah was filling me in on the latest in her life, when a
tall bald guy with a pot belly came over to our table, swaggering, reeking of
beer.

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” He
lurched in my direction.

“I don’t think so,” I said, my heart
pounding.

“Yes. You’re that bird who sucked cock on
the video, aren’t you. I thought it was you. There are a few of us over there
if you want more action,” and he went back to his friends sniggering, pointing
over in my direction.

I was mortified. We had to go. I grabbed my
bag and knocked over my chair in my haste to get out. As we left, one of the
group made lewd gestures at me, putting his fingers in his mouth and pulling
them out with a loud sucking sound. I was in tears by the time we got outside,
taking big gulps of air.

“Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to go out,”
Hannah said.

“I’m fed up of being stuck a home.”

“What is Nathan doing to help?”

“Nathan is no help at all. He’s really
starting to annoy me with his comments on TV.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Yes, but it’s in one ear and out the other
with him. I know it’s just his way of dealing with the whole situation and I
shouldn’t watch him because it upsets me. But I get to deal with stuff like
that guy tonight and he gets to make huge jokes about the video to make people
laugh.”

Hannah gave me a hug. I didn’t think she
knew what to say to help. Her night out had been ruined too. And she hadn’t
managed to talk to me about what was going on with her, but whatever it was,
she didn’t think the time was right now, and she said she’d see me soon.

That evening after coming back early to an
empty house, humiliated, feeling especially vulnerable and dirty, I poured
myself a glass of wine and wept about how things had turned out. I flicked on
the TV to look for a movie or something to take my mind off what was going on
and caught the tail-end of another clip from Nathan.

The studio audience was laughing.

“You know if you’ve got it, flaunt it, I
always say.” Nathan smiled, his usual charming self.

“Well, you sure walked the walk that
night,” the interviewer said.

“Walked the walk and talked the talk and
thoroughly fu....er ...we can’t say that here can we?” They all laughed.

He went on. “It could have been worse, they
could have taken a video when we…oh I can’t say that either can I?” and they
all laughed again.

I’d had enough. Suddenly I saw red and I
couldn’t take it anymore. With dreadful clarity after living in a fog for
weeks, I knew I had to get out of that Oxford house for my own sanity. I didn’t
know where I would go. I only knew I wasn’t staying around there where people
knew who I was.

I grabbed the thick black framed glasses I
wore only in the house when my eyes needed a rest from my lenses, tied my hair
up in a scarf to disguise myself as best I could and shoved as many clothes and
bits and pieces as I could carry into a case. Then I called a taxi. Trains left
Oxford station every thirty minutes or so until late in the evening. I could be
out of there in no time.

No one bothered me at the station. I bought
a one way ticket to London at the machine.

It was only once I was on the train that I
suspected London might not be the best place to hide. Far from being lost in a
crowd of eight million people, I was going where millions had probably seen my
video and would know me as Nathan’s slut wife. What was I thinking? Clearly I
wasn’t thinking at all. So far I hadn’t been recognized, but it was only a
matter of time if I took off my glasses and scarf.

I had to get out of the country, but where?
I had no idea. I spotted an ad for Eurostar as the train approached Paddington.

Could I go to France? Though I wasn’t
fluent in French I could get by and I could be in Paris in no time. My passport
was still in my handbag from the honeymoon. I hadn’t even had time to change my
name on it.

The train stopped and the passengers
swarmed out. I had to make a decision, go somewhere.

But when I got to the Eurostar terminal, it
was too late to get to Paris that night.

A restless night in the hotel gave me time
to think. Was I out of my mind to run away from everything I cared about even
if my marriage, my career, my life were in tatters? I had to stay and do
something about that. I could go back now. No one would even have to know I had
tried to leave.

But as I waited for the train back to
Oxford at Paddington station, I caught sight of the front page of the
Daily
Globe.
There was
my photograph along with the headline in the bottom
corner:

SCHOOLTEACHER’S SHAME

I wanted to buy up all the newspapers—there
was a huge pile of them—and destroy every single one so no one could read that
article. I had no idea what the newspaper was saying about me now. I had to
know.

The woman at the cash desk looked bored as
she took my money and handed me the paper. But the woman waiting to pay after
me was more vocal. “Such a slut that woman. It’s a disgrace how they let these
people get into teaching. No wonder there are so many teenagers getting
pregnant with women like that looking after our kids. My Jim saw that video. He
said it made even his hair curl, and he’s been bald for twenty years.”

I took my paper and ran. There was no way I
could go back. In the end I didn’t buy a ticket to Paris, a short hop away from
Britain, but a ticket to Nice on the south coast as far away as I could get in
France.

I sat on the Eurostar train and looked at
the article. Lavinia Taylor had drummed up more gossip from the school, the
wedding, and the guide at Bentley Hall. My blood ran hot and cold as I read and
then I stuffed the newspaper in my bag.

The journey passed in a trance. I vaguely
registered the Kent countryside, inside the Channel tunnel, more countryside in
France whizzing by and other trains rattling by in the opposite direction, but
I took none of it in. Every mile was taking me farther away from home, away
from Nathan. But I needed that distance. I couldn’t stay there. I had no life
at home, no future. Nathan, my parents, my sister didn’t care what was
happening to me. The newspapers wouldn’t leave me alone. I had to get out.

***

I loved Paris, I always had, but arriving
there did nothing for me that day. With a heavy heart, I took a taxi from the
Gare
du Nord
. I had over an hour to wait before the fast train south left at the
Gare de Lyon
.

When I switched on my phone, it beeped,
alive with messages, but I didn’t dare look at them and switched it off again.
I bought a coffee and croissant at the station and forced myself to swallow it
down, but I couldn’t taste anything.

As I sped south away from home, I felt dead
inside, my life collapsing around me. I think the enormity of what I was doing,
what I had done, and losing everything I cared for was only just starting to
sink in.

I showed my tickets, I swapped a few words
in schoolgirl French with fellow passengers, but after that they left me alone.
I dozed off from exhaustion at one point but awoke with a heavy feeling of
dread in my stomach. Everything important was gone.

Nice station was bustling with tourists and
locals, the brakes of the trains squealing, people going places, the sun’s
warmth penetrating the stone of the building. The tourist office
syndicat d’initiative
found me a place to stay, a tiny hotel off the
Boulevard Victor Hugo
.

I sent a message to Suzanne on the way to
the hotel, letting her know I was safe, not to worry, and asking her to tell
Nathan and my parents I was okay. If she could work out that the text was from
France, it didn’t matter. France was a big place.

The owners of the Petit Hotel de Nice,
Claude and Marie, were very welcoming. I didn’t know if they realized there was
something very wrong with the woman who turned up that day, but if not, they
were very kind to me anyway.

The enormity of what I was trying to do hit
me the first morning I woke up in France after a fitful night of exhausted
sleep. I wanted to hear Nathan’s voice telling me everything would be all
right. I wanted to feel his arms around me, comforting me. But I was never
going to have that again.

I wept as I took a shower and dressed, and
I slipped out of the hotel. A cheerful greeting or questions about my plans
from the owners was the last thing I needed right then.

I trudged around, lost in the crowd. Wouldn’t
it be easier to fade clean away, never to have anyone look at me and recognize
me as the woman in that video ever again? If I went swimming, how hard would it
be to get into some kind of trouble out there in the deep blue water and let
the waves wash over me? The idea was comforting rather than frightening.

Ooph! Deep in thought, I banged right into
some guy on the
Promenade des Anglais
as I looked over at the sea. He
mumbled something in French I didn’t catch. I must have looked puzzled.

“
Parlez vous anglais? Espagnol? Swahili?
”
he said.

“
Anglais.
”

“
Anglais?
Ah. English. I wish I do
better at the school. You drink coffee with me?”

“No thank you.”

“Ah you are busy. I understand.
Excusez-moi,
madame
.”

He went off, presumably to look for some
other woman to have coffee with but it struck me that he hadn’t recognized me.
He hadn’t recognized me at all. No one in France had looked at me with any idea
who I was so far.

Nathan wasn’t as famous here as he was back
home. France had its own movie industry and its own stars. Perhaps I could make
a new life here—a pale shadow of a life without Nathan, but still a life.

I felt ashamed and shuddered now as I
looked at the sea. I could never have done what I was contemplating, could I?
Surely, I was tougher than that? But it had seemed such an easy way out for a
moment. I had to pull myself together. I just had to.

Even so in the following days I veered
between wishing my life was over and knowing I could not give up. I wandered
around Nice and ate very little.

It was only days later, once the agony of
loss dulled into a perpetual ache that I started to think more seriously about
my life in France.

There was one thing I had to do to feel
safer. I went to a salon and had them cut my hair into a short pixie style and
darken it. It was so different from my usual long wavy hair that I hardly
recognized myself. With that haircut and sunglasses, no one would know me as
long as Nathan was not by my side. It took a weight off my mind.

And I asked Marie about the possibility of
working in the hotel. With a word here and a smile there, she and her husband
Claude seemed to have taken me under their wing—probably because not many of
their guests stayed as long as I had at the hotel or were alone. I thought she
wouldn’t mind me asking anyway, and I was draining my bank account. I feared
Nathan would be able to trace me if I used the joint account. I needed a job.

Marie said, “We don’t have anything to
offer you here, but do you want to work in a hotel? An English friend of mine
runs a language school here in Nice. I know you said you were a teacher. Maybe
they’ll have something for you.”

Marie’s contact was delighted to hear from
me. The school was always looking for qualified teachers, and they were happy
to put me through their week long training course in their methods. I had a
job, a teaching job!

And I loved teaching at the language school
almost right from the beginning. The students were an exuberant bunch who
raised my spirits. They were from all around the world, there to improve their
French and enjoy the South of France while they learned English.

An apartment was next on the list. I’d have
to pay a hefty deposit, and rents were high, but an apartment would cost less
than staying at the hotel in the long run. It wasn’t easy but finally after a
couple of weeks, I found a place I liked and could afford on my salary.

“We’ll be sorry to see you go, Melissa,”
Claude said, when I told him and Marie the news, “but please come and visit
us.”

“I’ll be here for a while yet,” I said.
“The apartment won’t be available for another two weeks.”

***

Despite the relief that I had a job and an
apartment, I hadn’t felt great for a week or two, but there were plenty of
reasons for that. I still wasn’t eating or sleeping well. I had a broken heart and
a new life to contend with. But the night I signed the rental contract for the
apartment, I had the most awful pains in my stomach that came in waves and even
the small amount I tried to eat I couldn’t keep down.

I asked Marie whether the local pharmacy
would be open, but as I doubled over once more with pain, she said “I think you
need more than a pharmacy. You need a doctor, Melissa.”

Claude drove me to the hospital where they
took one look at me and whisked me away for emergency treatment. As the anesthetic
mask was put on my face, I remember thinking,
Nathan would have to come now
.

I was unaware of anything that went on
after that for over a day, but they told me later that my appendix had burst,
and I nearly died. A doctor asked Claude about my next of kin, but he didn’t
know. My passport was in my handbag though, and they found my parents’ address
in that.

When I finally regained consciousness, I
was told how touch and go it had been. I drifted in and out of sleep, and one
time when I opened my eyes, my sister, Suzanne, was there, weeping. She held my
hand, and I clung to it. She was still there when I woke again.

“I was so worried, Mel,” she said. “They
told me they didn’t know if you’d make it. I kept thinking how we’d quarreled.
I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” I squeezed her hand. “You’re
here now. I’m pleased you came.”

“I couldn’t even get hold of Mom and Dad,”
she said. “They’re off on a cruise. I came as soon as I could.”

“What about Nathan?” I managed to ask,
scared what she might say. He hadn’t come even when he knew I was dying. Didn’t
he care anymore?

“I couldn’t get hold of him,” she said. “He
usually contacts us to find out if we’ve heard anything. I left a message to
ask him to call me. I didn’t say why. I just said it was important. Maybe he
doesn’t pick up his own messages and his assistants are getting things like
that from people all the time. I wasn’t thinking straight, and then I rushed
off here. I was so worried, Melissa.”

“Don’t tell him if he contacts you now,” I
said. “I don’t want him to know where I am.”

“Why not? You two are right for each other.
You always were.”

“It’s easier this way. I couldn’t stand the
life I had with him after that video. I had no life. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t
go out without people staring. I was stuck in the house, and Nathan was always
away. If he comes here, the newspapers will track me down, and I’ll have to go
somewhere else. I’ve got a job, a new apartment. I like it here. It’s better
than being a virtual prisoner.”

“You like your life better without Nathan?”

“Not that part, but I can’t have that
anymore, not if I want to stay sane.”

***

I left the hospital after a few days. My
sister stayed with me at the hotel for a week, acting like a mother hen. It
wasn’t like her at all, but it was nice to have her with me. We hadn’t spent
any time together for years, not since I left home to go to college and she was
stuck there. When I was well enough to stop thinking about how awful I felt, I
started wondering how she was getting on at home.

“How are you anyway? How are you getting on
with Kyle? Is he still travelling the world?”

Suzanne turned pale then.

“I’m sorry, Mel,” she said. “You were right
about him. It turned out Paula, Nathan’s agent, paid Kyle to take pictures at
your wedding. She introduced us at one of those parties, and he dated me so you
would invite him.”

“Oh, Suze. I’m sorry he turned out to be a
user.”

“Well, I’m sorry he pulled the wool over my
eyes.”

“It’s not your fault. We were all taken in.
I liked him. I thought he was good for you, before I started wondering if he
was the one responsible for that picture. It’s not like we banned cameras or
anything. I guess Paula wanted something more intimate than the photos she
thought she would get from me. She got them all right—probably more than she
expected. You know, I never liked her.”

“She’s still at it, getting Nathan in the
press. He’s never out of it these days.”

“I’m pleased I’m not there.”

“I’m not. I wish you would come home.”

“What I don’t understand is the video. I
mean, Paula is bad, but that video could have spoiled things for Nathan. I can’t
see her releasing something like that. She didn’t care what it did to me, but
there was a huge risk it would destroy his career like the picture did mine. I
remember her discussing it with the publicity people. She wasn’t happy at all.”

“It might not have been Kyle and Paula who
did that,” Suzanne said. “Kyle only came clean because he said he’d grown fond
of me over the weeks we’d dated, and he wanted to be honest with me. He said he
hoped I’d forgive him. I told him to go fuck himself. There was no way I could
forgive him for selling the picture and fucking you around with that video. He
said he was responsible for the picture, but he wasn’t the one who took the
video.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I didn’t give him the chance to explain. I
just kicked him out. I didn’t care what he said. I was livid.”

“Didn’t you see him take the picture
though? You were with him, weren’t you?”

“When I saw you, yes. But as we were
nearing the trees, he said he’d heard something over where you were, and he
said he’d check it out. He must have taken the picture as he got there, in the
seconds before we followed him into the trees. So thinking about it, there was
no way he could have taken the video. I still hate him though for using me and
selling that picture.”

“Oh Suze. I’m sorry it didn’t work out with
him.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. For all
of it. For everything that happened. For everything still happening.”

We cried and clung to each other. At least
we were friends again. I was sorry to see her go at the end of the week, but
she had to get back to work.

“Remember, make some story up if Nathan
ever contacts you about why you left the message.”

She looked like she wasn’t taking my
request seriously.

“Promise me,” I said.

“Okay. I promise.”