The Woman He Loved Before (29 page)

The computer may be right, the dose may be strong, but it’s
not strong enough: the tablets aren’t working. ‘They’re not working. I need something stronger,’ I tell her. ‘It hurts.’

‘Are you in pain constantly?’ she asks.

‘Not constantly.’

‘What sort of pain is it?’

‘Earlier, it was around my middle, sort of chest area. It was so bad I nearly passed out. It’s a kind of clenching pain.’

‘What were you doing at the time?’

‘Nothing, I was just thinking.’

‘Did the pain get better or worse when you moved?’

‘It stayed the same.’

‘So it’s a new type of pain to the one you had as a result of your injuries?’

‘Yes, no. I don’t know really. I only know that it hurts.’

‘How long have you felt the tablets aren’t working?’ she asks.

‘Just today, when this new pain started. I think I need something else.’

‘I’m concerned that after two weeks on a medication you’re starting to feel it isn’t working.’

‘They aren’t. They used to make me feel better, now they don’t.’

‘Feel better emotionally or physically?’

I knew what she was getting at, and I wasn’t falling for that. ‘Physically, of course.’

‘Painkillers aren’t meant to make you feel physically or emotionally better,’ she says. ‘They are simply meant to stop the pain. If you’re needing them to feel better in either way then there may be something else going on here that needs to be addressed.’

‘I just want the pain to stop,’ I say.

‘You’ve been through an enormously traumatic event—’

‘I know!’ I tell her. ‘I know that. I just need the pain to go away.’

She stares at me and I know what she is thinking: Liberty Britcham is mad. I know because I am thinking it too. This hysteria and panic is not me. I am usually balanced and unflappable but, at this moment, I do not recognise myself.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t have raised my voice.’

‘Do you have a support network?’ she asks kindly.

‘Yes,’ I tell her.
No
, I tell myself. I have people who care, people I can rely on, but they can’t support me because I can’t tell about the dreams I have about Eve, that I have her diaries, that I’ve realised that I have made the biggest mistake of my life. I shouldn’t have got involved with Jack, let alone married him. He wasn’t ready. I was stupid to go along with it because I loved him. Who was it that said love isn’t blind, it’s stupid? They were right. And I’ve been the most stupid person on Earth.

‘Would you like me to refer you for some counselling?’ she asks.

I shake my head, wipe away a tear that has been crawling down my cheek. ‘I’ll sort out a private counsellor,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s not like anyone died.’

‘In a way, they have,’ the doctor says. ‘The person you were before isn’t here any more. You’re probably still in shock and emotional pain because your world has been shaken. It’s not surprising that you seem to be focusing on your physical symptoms rather than face the emotional impact.’

‘OK, thank you, doctor,’ I say, although I don’t know why I am thanking her when she hasn’t done anything; she hasn’t given me anything to take away my pain.

‘Come back if you want that referral. If the pain returns we’ll look again at your prescription.’

I nod at her and leave her room. Walking is difficult with the ton of bricks that are now sitting on my shoulders.

‘Mummy, look! That woman’s got no hair!’ a small child calls out as I walk through the large waiting room to leave. I left my hat in the doctor’s room, having automatically taken it off when I sat down.

I feel the eyes of everyone in the surgery swing towards me, the ones to my left obviously seeing my scar – a thick, black greasy-looking scab sealing the pieces of my skin together. Their eyes probably flick away with disinterest almost straight away, but I can
still feel their collective gaze crawling over my head. I should go back for my hat but that would mean staying here for a second longer than necessary. And anyway, I won’t be needing it again, because after today, I won’t be leaving the house until the day I’m strong enough to leave Jack.

libby

‘I’m glad you’re back,’
Eve says from her place on the document box.
‘I missed you.’

My eyes focus on her for a moment and I can tell she isn’t being snidey. She isn’t the snidey, bitchy type.

‘You were at that bit where I’d just met Elliot in the supermarket and I got a hundred-pound tip? Remember?’

I nod at her. I can do nothing but remember nowadays.

eve

25
^th
June 1990

Have just had the best birthday.

I knew things would get better, and they have. After the last two birthdays being ‘just another day’ x2 without so much as a card or phone call from my mother, I thought that this year I was going to do something different. I wasn’t going to sit at home, waiting and waiting for a card that probably wasn’t going to come.

I’ve written loads to my mother, probably a letter a week, and I get nothing in return. I wish I could stop myself but she’s my mother – she was my mum – how can I just give up on her? She might have given up on me, but I can’t do it to her. I love her. Still.

Yesterday, I did something that I’ve been ashamed to write about. I rang her. I picked up the phone and I rang her. Actually, I’ve been calling a lot but I hang up after the first or second ring because I’m too scared to speak and I wouldn’t know what to say. If I speak to her, I’d probably say I want to come home, but that place isn’t my home any more. I’m not her little Evie any more. And how could I go back when her boyfriend was probably still there? But yesterday I got the courage to stay on the phone after more than two rings. My heart was in my throat and I was shaking as I waited for it to be answered.

‘Hello?’ said a man’s voice.

I started shaking even more – horrified that he was still there, and even more horrified that I hadn’t thrown the phone down rather than speak to him.

‘Hello?’ the man said again.

‘Who is it?’ my mother called from the background and I had to hold back a sob. I hadn’t heard her voice in so long, I hadn’t been connected to my mother in this way in a lifetime.

‘Don’t know, but they’re still there!’ the man called back. Into the phone, he said, ‘This is your last chance: hello?’

Still clutching the handset, I closed my eyes and let the tears fall, holding my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t give myself away.

‘Here, let me have that,’ my mother said and suddenly she was there, as clear as day, speaking into the phone. ‘Hello, this is Iris Quennox, how may I help you?’ she said politely, obviously thinking that his phone manner was putting the person off.

‘I love you,’ I mouthed into the phone, speaking without words, wanting to be heard but too frightened of the consequences.

‘Hello?’ she repeated.

‘I think about you every day,’ I continued without speaking.

‘Eve?’ she said.

‘And I miss you. I miss you so much it hurts.’

‘Eve?’ the man said. ‘You think that’s Eve?’

‘No,’ my mother said, ‘but I can’t think of anyone else who would call without speaking.’

‘Bye,’ I said. ‘Bye, Mum.’ Then I hung up and spent the rest of the night crying.

I’m ashamed because I should have spoken to her properly, I should have said something. Letters are easy, aren’t they? But at least now I know she’s well, she’s all right and that if he’s around still then she’s probably happy in her own way. And, maybe, one day she’ll want me back.

Anyway, to avoid moping today, I decided to go to the seaside. I mean, how crazy is it that since I was young I’ve never once been to the seaside? On the way to the Tube station to get the train to
Victoria, I bumped into Elliot again. Remember him? He worked at that company I should have got that job at all those years ago and I bumped into him in the supermarket a while back. He looked older and a bit more worn by life, but he seemed cuter than I remembered. Maybe because in those days I was so focused on getting a new job and didn’t really notice much of anything else. Or maybe it’s because I’ve seen the ugly side of human nature and anyone who is removed from that – who isn’t a bitch trying to harm me on the dancefloor or a man who is trying to get me to fuck him for free because he is
that
special – seems to be unique and rather lovely.

‘Gosh, Eve,’ he said, looking genuinely pleased to see me. ‘Can’t believe I haven’t seen you in all this time.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ I replied. ‘Are you still at Hanch & Gliff?’

‘Yeah, for my sins. And you?’ he asked. ‘Did you find a job?’

‘Yup. I’m not sure it’s what I want to do for ever, but it’s a job.’ I shrugged. ‘It pays the bills, keeps a roof over my head.’

‘I know what you mean. I still haven’t worked out when exactly I decided that being an accountant was a good idea.’

I, of course, knew exactly when I decided it’d be a good idea to become a lap dancer. That’s what I am, by the way. Looking back over these pages, I never had the guts to name what I do, but I am a lap dancer. Saying I’m a stripper implies that all I do is take my clothes off to titillate men, or that I take some pride in what I do, when in reality I get as close as I can to simulating sex because some man has handed over a couple of notes. Yes, some of the girls I work with still say they are in control because they get to turn a man on, they get to turn him down if he is repulsive or if he is rude to them. ‘True control,’ I always want to say, ‘is in being able to be proud of your job and not have to make excuses for how you’re seen.’ And, of course, what’s the point of thinking you’re in control when the man on the other end of the cash thinks he is?

‘Look, sorry, Elliot, but I’ve got a train to catch. It was nice seeing you.’

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘To Brighton. I fancy visiting the seaside.’

‘Could I come with you?’ he asked. ‘It’s my birthday and I’d love to have a reason to bunk off work.’

I thought about it. It seemed to be Fate because we have the same birthday so I said yes, and we went. And we had the best day ever.

We ate fish and chips, we walked on the beach, we put coins into the slot machines, we bought sticks of rock, we drank beer outside on the Pier and then at the end of the day we kissed each other’s faces off on the train platform.

On the train, I fell asleep on his shoulder while he stroked his hand through my hair. That was the best part of the day, I think. I got to experience the touch of another human being and it was gentle and kind and loving without demanding anything I wasn’t willing to give.

That’s where love starts, isn’t it?

17
^th
December 1990

I’ve been seeing Elliot for almost six months now.

My whole life has changed the most in the last three months. He’s moved in and he’s begged me to stop lap dancing. His job is good enough to support us both, so I don’t have to work. To be honest, while I’ve wanted nothing more than to give it all up, I didn’t feel right about it. I don’t like not being in command of my own destiny.

But it was nice to have someone love me so much he didn’t want me doing those things, didn’t want other men staring at my body and salivating over it night after night. He didn’t condemn me and the choices I’d been forced to make, but it horrified him that I’d done it for so long. ‘But you’re so clever, how can you do that?’ he kept asking.

And I had to keep telling him that taking your clothes off for money did not mean you were stupid or unintelligent. In some ways it was a sign that you were pretty shrewd because you knew that no matter how deep a recession the country was in, sex would always sell.
Always.

In the end, I could see the pain in his eyes, the sorrow that just the thought of what I did brought him and I knew I couldn’t do it to him any longer. I wished, actually, that I hadn’t told him. That I’d just said I served drinks behind the bar instead of doing that stupid Eve thing of being honest.

So I gave it up and picked up bits and pieces of temping and cleaning – I was now more employable because I had massive holes in my CV that proved I had no aspirations that would tempt me away from a low-paid job. Every day, I see more and more that dancing for money is exactly like every other menial job, except with these other jobs I don’t have to take my clothes off. And that made cleaning and photocopying and answering phones and entering data far superior occupations. I just hated the loss of power, by which I mean, of course, the loss of money. The whole thing with my dress taught me that once you have money, you have power and people respect you. It might not be ideal, it might not be how it should be in a perfect world, but it is how it is in the world I live in.

When I agreed to stop dancing, I asked, in return, that Elliot give up smoking weed and occasionally taking coke. But he replied that it wasn’t very often that he did it, especially the coke, and it’s better for him than going out and getting bladdered every night. Which is true, I suppose. I don’t like drugs, though. After what they did to Dawn, I don’t like being around them and I don’t like the idea of Elliot taking them. But he seems to have it under control and I have to trust him to know what he’s doing.