The Woman He Loved Before (49 page)

‘OK,’ I say with a nod.

‘Are you sleeping with Hector?’

I stop moving, close my eyes so I can hear what she said again without any other distractions. When I open my eyes my face is
creased in disgust and disbelief. ‘No,’ I reply. ‘Emphatically, absolutely, NO! Why would you even ask such a thing?’ I shudder, trying to shake off the very idea from clinging to me and contaminating me.

‘You wouldn’t be the first of Jack’s wives to do so, would you now?’

A stillness surrounds us as I stare into Harriet’s eyes and she, unabashed, stares back at me.

‘You know about that?’ I ask.

‘Of course, that’s why you think I killed Eve, isn’t it?’

‘I … I …’

‘It’s perfectly fine,’ Harriet says. ‘If I were in your position, let’s just say it would occur to me.’

‘How do you know?’

She smiles a bitter smile. ‘We’re not stupid or blind, you know, the wives of the men like Hector. We are not oblivious to the failings and indiscretions of our husbands, we simply have to weigh them up against what we have to lose.’

I could not reply because I could not see myself staying with a man I knew to be cheating on me. I was struggling as it was with the fact that Jack was still in love with a dead woman; if I thought he’d had sex with a woman in the here and now . . . I would not be able to stand it.

‘I see you don’t understand. Let me tell you a little about my life,’ Harriet says. ‘Years ago, I would attend many more functions with Hector than I do now. We would also go out for meals with friends or just as a couple. When you have two independent, grown children, it’s easier to do things together. I noticed, though, that more often than not, there would be a woman at these things who would almost petrify at the sight of Hector. She would look first at him, then at me. Sometimes she would look at him with fear, then she would look at me in bewilderment. Other times, these young women, whoever they were, would look at Hector with such compassion in their eyes and at me with disdain and disgust.

‘I grew tired of their looks, wondering what they were whispering to their friends when out of earshot, until I had the opportunity to run into one of those girls – a waitress – in the corridor of a restaurant. I took her to one side and asked her how she knew my husband. She tried to deny it, but I threatened to have her sacked if she did not tell me.’

Bitch
! I think.
Over-privileged, monied bitch! Threatening someone who probably needs that job to get what you want, is … bitch!

Harriet sees the look on my face and replies, ‘I’m not proud of myself for doing that, but you must understand I could feel the whispers about Hector and myself and I had to understand why. In many ways, I wished I had put up with the looks and the whispers. She eventually told me that she had worked in a brothel and that’s where she knew him from.’

I stare at Harriet, thinking at the back of my mind I should feign surprise, but I don’t because I can’t be bothered.

‘I see that this isn’t news to you,’ Harriet says sadly. ‘She told me that at first he was very nice and spoke about how his wife –
I
– had rejected him, had put an end prematurely to intimate relations, and how he wanted affection more than anything. She said the first few times they simply talked, and sometimes she held him. Then she told me how he started to cry one night about his failed relationship with his wife and, as she comforted him, he overpowered her and took her …’ Harriet’s matter-of-fact tone falters, but then she finds her voice and continues, ‘without any form of protection.’ Her eyes fill with glossy tears as she stares at the plain teacup on the table in front of her.

How could I have thought her a murderer? I must have been insane.

‘We were still being intimate at that time, so he could have put me at risk of catching something, but it didn’t seem to matter to Hector. She also told me that he regularly came back and changed his name every time so he could see her again. With every visit he became worse, more violent, more depraved. And although he left a bigger tip each time, by the fifth visit she was terrified of him. The people who ran the brothel didn’t care that
she was being brutalised by him because he was paying them over the odds to be let in to see her. After his tenth time, she had to leave because the stress of not knowing if and when he would return became too much for her.’

Her eyes still focused on that no man’s land between then and now, the space where we all go to think things over, Harriet brusquely brushes away a tear that is sliding down her face.

‘I knew she wasn’t lying. And I knew my husband was a monster.’

‘So why didn’t you leave him?’ I ask.

‘Leave for what?’ she replies. ‘Do you think for one minute Hector is the type of man who will allow someone to leave him? I was a housewife and mother for most of my adult life. I haven’t worked outside the home for years. Hector decides when things are over; he would never let me leave unscathed, and he would do his best to keep me tied up in legal knots and to distance me from my children. I did all I could – which was to leave his bed, and to make plans. I have been putting aside money for a long time. I should have enough soon to be able to leave and weather any legal battle without suffering too much.’

‘But you could leave him tomorrow and come and live here. We have plenty of room.’

Firmly, Harriet shakes her head. ‘No. I have two sons, remember, and while I fear Jack may know more about Hector than I’d like, I do not know what Jeffrey knows and I cannot risk alienating him until I have properly left and properly talked to him.’

I can’t understand why she would stay with a man who so clearly revolts her, who has humiliated her over the years, and who she doesn’t respect. To save face? I don’t think I could do that, not even for my child because my fear of damaging them, of unintentionally showing them by example that such behaviour is acceptable, would outstrip everything else.

‘Why did you think I was sleeping with Hector?’ I ask.

Harriet is sipping at her tea and I can tell by the way her
jewel-like eyes stare into the mid-distance that she is choosing her words carefully.

‘After I understood why those young women – and they almost always were young – were looking at me like that, I had to cut down on the amount of socialising I took part in with my husband. Encountering those looks was intolerable. Instead, I spent more time with the wives of his friends and I watched them, all of them looking at each other knowingly while we all battled to contend in our own ways with the knowledge of our husband’s infidelities. I wasn’t alone, I discovered, far from it. Other wives put up with these things too. That made me more confident in my decision to sit and wait.

‘One day, Jack, my beloved boy, brought home the woman he wanted to marry. I was so pleased that he had finally decided to settle down, but imagine my horror to see that look of fear in her eyes, and to know that she had been brutalised by Hector, too. During the lunch I came to the conclusion that it had been worse for her, something far more intense and personal had happened. I knew at the time that Jack had no idea so I had to keep my peace, but it was a terrible thing to have to live with. It was one of the hardest things I had to do, but I chose to avoid seeing my son to prevent her going through that again.

‘I cried for two days when my suspicions were confirmed by them choosing to get married in secret. I couldn’t be there for my son’s wedding because of what Hector had done.’

And yet you put up their wedding picture in your living room
, I think.

‘I still don’t see what any of this has to do with you thinking that of me and Hector.’

‘You have the same look in your eyes, Libby. It wasn’t there the first time I met you, and it hasn’t been all these years, but the last two times we have seen you that fear and loathing was in your eyes … I’ve been terrified that he has taken advantage of you since your accident. Used your vulnerability against you.’

My gaze drifts to the phone on the sofa beside me, its screen
black. Underneath the blackness is 999, my chance to ring for help. Help is what I need right now. How much do I tell her of what I know? On the one hand, if she knows then maybe I won’t be in as much danger from Hector. On the other hand, how do I know I can trust her? How could she have not removed herself from the vicinity of a man like Hector the second she knew the truth? How do I know she hasn’t got a form of Stockholm Syndrome? She may well have killed Eve at his bidding; she could be here fishing for information to take back to him.

‘I found out that he went with prostitutes and it’s made me lose respect for him,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, but it makes me nauseous thinking about what he’s done.’

‘And Eve?’ she asks. ‘How did you know about Eve?’

‘I kind of worked it out. Once you know a bit about Eve’s background and the poverty she was living in, coupled with how Jack is about his father sometimes it’s not difficult to put two and two together.’

‘Jack knows about Eve and his father?’

‘I think so,’ I say. ‘I’ve never asked him directly.’

Pain, raw and frightening, claws through Harriet’s eyes and across her features. I want to go to her, hold her, let her know she can cry on me and I will understand. That would be intolerable for her, though. It would be a loss of dignity she could not stand on top of everything else.

‘I will leave you in peace,’ she says. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time and your good will.’

I can’t let her leave like this. I would never forgive myself if something happened to her on the way home. ‘No, Harriet, please, stay,’ I say to her. ‘Please stay the night.’

She is confused, probably only slightly more than I am because I hadn’t intended to ask her to stay when I opened my mouth.

I smile at her and shrug. ‘Stay. Go back tomorrow. A night away from Hector will do you good, and I would love the human company.’

She still does not say anything.

‘We won’t talk about all that stuff again, we’ll just enjoy being here together, watching television, reading, having a couple of drinks.’
Like you never got to do with Eve.

‘That would be lovely, Liberty,’ she says and through her agony she manages a smile. I can’t begin to imagine the loneliness she has felt all these years, how she has withstood it.

I smile at her and get up to go and put the kettle on again. Her eyes alight on my mobile phone, sitting next to me on the sofa and then they turn to me. We both know why it’s there, but it’s fine now. It really is. Because I know in my heart of hearts that Harriet isn’t capable of murder.

‘Let me help you,’ she says, picking up the tray, and I feel for the first time that I could really get to know this woman I’ve always liked.

libby

I’m resting in bed, thinking about Eve, of course, when the phone starts ringing. It’s three o’clock, the time that Jack usually rings to tell me what time he’ll be home and ask what I would like for dinner.

The phone calls stopped the day that Harriet came to visit. She’d picked it up without thinking and said hello into the receiver and the person hung up a lot quicker than they usually do.

I told myself that it was a coincidence, and that I had nothing to worry about.

Jack has been trying to engineer a conversation between us since the night his parents came to dinner and I have been avoiding him. I don’t want him to know that I know, and I’m scared every time we speak or see each other that something might slip out.

Moving stiffly, because some days it feels like I’ve only just had the accident, I move across the bed and pick up the receiver.

‘Hello?’ I say.

Silence.

‘Hello?’ I repeat.

Silence.

‘Hello,’ I say cautiously. There is someone there, I know it. They are there and they are not speaking.

‘Last chance,’ I say brightly because I do not want them to know they have unsettled me. ‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘OK, have it your way. Goodbye.’

I replace the receiver with a hand shaking so badly it takes a few seconds to get it correctly into its cradle.

Pulling my knees up to my chest, I stare at the phone, willing it to ring. Willing the person to do it again to prove to me that I have something to worry about, not that my imagination is running wild because of Eve’s diaries.

The phone stares belligerently back at me, unwilling to be goaded into anything it doesn’t want to do. Wrong number; long distance call that did not connect; person who realised too late they had misdialled are all plausible reasons for that call. It wasn’t because of Eve or Hector. It was my imagination.

Ring ring,
the phone replies.

I stare at it.

Ring ring,
it repeats.

My heart is galloping and a pulsating ache begins where my rib was fractured, hurting in time with the phone’s ring.

Ring ring,
the phone insists.

I snatch up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ I say firmly.

Silence.

‘Hello.’

Silence.

‘Hello.’