When I Was Invisible (4 page)

Nothing is going to happen immediately, which is why I am standing here, with my headphones in, listening to Corinne, allowing myself to believe I could be the woman she is singing about. I could walk down towards Birmingham New Street, to Bernie's, the greasy spoon that stays open all night, sit in there and pretend I'm the woman from the song – that I've just had an amazing night in one city, an excellent day in another, and now I'm kicking back with a coffee and a cigarette.

I'm sure Lou (who runs the place for Bernie) would spot me a cigarette, I've enough money in my pocket for a coffee and I've enough energy left to get me there. I can rest for a few hours before I crawl home.

All the while I've been listening and living out my woman-from-the-song fantasy, I've been watching the policeman from earlier, DS Brennan, stare at me from the driver's seat of his blue Volvo. He is sitting next to someone I assume is another police officer, and they have been studying me since I walked out of the station's doors. Now he lowers the driver's window and mouths at me as he leans his head and torso out.

I don't remove my earbuds right away because I don't want to know what he's saying. I'm enjoying being the woman in the song. I'm enjoying being able to forget everything for these precious seconds.

He continues to speak to me, and I can make out a few of the words from the shapes they form on his lips: ‘
Drive
'. ‘
Waiting
'. ‘
Treat
'. I squint at him. ‘
Home
'. Did he say ‘home'?

Reluctantly I take out my earphones and wait for him to repeat himself. ‘Get in, we'll drive you home,' DS Brennan says.

I shake my head. I'm going to come back tomorrow. I've started down this road, there is no way for me to back out now, so it isn't necessary for him to take me home and impress upon me the importance of following through. ‘I'm fine,' I say. ‘I don't need a lift. I just want to sleep. I will come back tomorrow – I've said I would and I will.'

He opens his car door and climbs out. He then opens his back door. ‘We insist,' he says.

‘Right,' I say quietly. ‘Course you do.'

I arrived home to Todd's flat from one of the technical rehearsals at the theatre up in the West End to low lighting and candles flickering from around various points of the room. The blinds were rolled back and the buildings dotted along the opposite riverbank were twinkling at me. There was the glug of champagne filling and foaming in a glass before he handed it to me. It was a familiar romantic scene, one that Todd liked to set for when I'd been out at work till that bit later, but this time it was different.

The music was different from normal. I recognised it straight away, which ballet it was from. Soft and gentle, it flowed through the room, wrapping itself around the scene he had set like a giant bow. I stood immobile in the doorway. I knew how I should be feeling; I knew I should be grinning, and fizzing inside and longing to slip onto the sofa with him, rest my head on his chest, listen as he told me about his day, about his practice, about what the plans for the team were.

I should have been feeling that but inside I was tangled. Snarled up by dread. This was a scene from one of my recurring nightmares, and not only that, any second now, Todd was going to put himself in my past. He wouldn't mean to, he wouldn't even know he was doing it, but that was what he'd do the moment he touched me. There were needles in my veins, pricking holes in the life I'd built for myself away from Chiselwick, the town where I grew up.

‘Do you like it, baby?' Todd asked, handing me the glass of vintage fizz he had poured for me. He'd taught me a lot about life on the finer side in the past year, and now I'd learnt the smell of the expensive stuff. Our fingers brushed as I took my glass and the needles in my veins, under my skin, ignited themselves.

Smile
, I told myself.
Smile for the man you love
. ‘I love it,' I lied. I tried not to lie, but to protect him, I had to. ‘Thank you so much.'

Before I'd even had more than two sips of champagne he was taking it away again, grinning at me in that goofy, playful way he had when I had first met him. His hands were all over me, shedding my coat, removing my T-shirt, unbuttoning my trousers. I let him do it, he preferred it that way. Todd liked to be in complete control at times like this and I didn't know how to tell him I absolutely hated it. That being controlled, especially at times like this, was one of my nightmares. The music seemed to swell, seeping deeper into my skin and fanning the flames of the burning needles.

I can't do this
, I thought as he pushed me gently onto the sofa.
I can't do this, to this music, in this way
. ‘I hate you working and coming back so late,' Todd said as he slowly took his clothes off. ‘I miss you when you're not here.'

I tried to focus on him, on being in the moment, on not noticing the music morph into the ‘Danse des Petits Cygnes' from
Swan Lake
. I used to love this type of music, it would thrill through me, move my body as though it had been written for me, was floating through every cell in me. Slowly, slowly, this type of music stopped being about freedom, and instead, I began to search for ways to curl up inside the notes and hide.

‘I wish you were here all the time, waiting for me,' Todd said as he finally climbed on top of me. ‘Instead of the other way around.'

I love him, I love him, I love him, I love him, I love him, I love him, IlovehimIlovehimIlovehimIlovehimIlovehim
. The words ran together. A ticker tape of intention and a spur to carry on with this. I'd done this, had sex, like this, so many times over the last year. Even when I didn't particularly enjoy it, didn't particularly want to, I'd done it because the look on his face, the hurt in his eyes when I said no, was far too upsetting.
IlovehimIlovehimIlovehimIlovehimIlovehim.

The memories the music dragged up fought and foamed, desperate to come out of my throat, spew themselves out into the open.
IlovehimIlovehimIlovehimIlovehim. IlovehimIlovehimIlovehim. IlovehimIlovehimIlovehim. IlovehimIlovehimIlovehimIlovehimIlovehim.

The bouncy, jolly opening of the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' from
The Nutcracker
began and I couldn't pretend any more. I couldn't go elsewhere and let my body carry on as I usually did. ‘Stop,' I heard myself say. ‘Stop, please, stop.'

‘Not right now, baby,' Todd murmured with his eyes closed and carried on, pushing himself inside me, starting to move. ‘Not right now.'

‘Please, stop,' I said again, a little louder.

‘Shhh,' Todd hushed, covering my mouth with a kiss. ‘Shhhhhh.' He kept moving, taking his time, being gentle, trying hard not to hurt me, but I wanted him to stop. In my ears the music was so loud, so present, it had set fire to my skin, was burning me up from the inside out.

‘Todd,' I said loudly, even though my throat felt closed over and closed up. ‘Please! I need you to stop. I need you to stop.'

Todd pulled himself up on to his hands, away from me. I'd had my eyes closed and now they were open, staring up at him. His face was full of upset. He used to look like that when I would say I wasn't in the mood, and that look would break my heart. I'd feel so horribly guilty I'd pretend to be in the mood, would go through with it, so his expression would go away.

‘I'm sorry, sorry,' he said quickly. ‘I didn't realise you were serious. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' He climbed off me, sat back and stared at me. ‘I love you, I'd never want to hurt you.' I was in his arms, but this time he was holding me, not trying to have sex with me. ‘Baby, tell me what the matter is. Tell me and I'll make it all better.'

You can't make it better
, I almost whispered. ‘I just need to tell you something. Something about me and why I need you to stop when I ask you to,' I confessed instead.

‘What is it?' he asked.

I looked into his eyes for a second or two, then had to glance away. I couldn't look at him and tell him. I couldn't see his face as I tore apart the ideas he had about me. With my gaze firmly fixed on the wall of glass opposite, the night cityscape beyond, I told Todd as much as I could.

I couldn't tell him the whole tale, not even half of it could come tumbling out, but some of it. A bit of it.
Enough
of it. Todd listened and listened, and at the end of it, he thanked me for doing him the honour of telling him. He assured me he understood every single word. And he promised he would never ignore my wishes again.

‘You don't need to drop me right at my door,' I say to DS Brennan from the back seat as we get closer to home. I know they have my address, could turn up at any time, but I have to be careful. Yes, I am doing this thing but that doesn't mean being reckless. ‘A couple of streets away should be fine … Anywhere from here, actually. I can walk the rest.'

DS Brennan's gaze flicks briefly towards me in the rear-view mirror and then he slows down as though he is about to stop. But doesn't. He drives on, excruciatingly slowly, this time as though deliberately trying to make sure everyone who is on the streets at this time will see me in the back of a police car. Will start to wonder if I've done something completely stupid and dangerous, especially after what had happened less than a week ago.

I lower my gaze to my lap, wondering why he is determined to get me killed.

‘Baby, I just need you to do this one thing for me.'

Pale and shaking, Todd was on his knees in front of me. After a night out like last night (a new nightclub opening), dark, hollowed-out shadows would be scored under Todd's eyes, his skin would be a mottled beige that would periodically fill up with red, his hair would stand on end from where he'd constantly run his fingers through it. The morning after a night before, he would be sullen and snappy, prickly and pale, and I would do well to keep out of his way. Normally there'd be no way on Earth that he'd be on his knees in front of me asking for help.

He'd been up half the night, pacing the living room floor, keeping me awake with his banging about, snarling at me to go back to sleep if I asked what was wrong. All morning he'd been on the phone, with Murray, I assumed, swinging wildly between snarling and shouting, then weeping and begging. I knew I'd cop the end of it, that he'd hurl his phone at some point and I would be the next target for his upset.

I'd sat on the corner seat of his new sofa, reading as quietly as I could (when he was stressed even reading would be too noisy and would cause him to scream at me), waiting for my share of the rage.

Truly, I hadn't expected to have him prostrate in front of me, trembling, close to tears. This must have been to do with how quickly Todd had bundled me out of the club last night. As always on these nights out, Todd had ‘worked the room', talking to all the important people – celebrities and business people – while hissing at me to keep drinking rather than standing there not saying anything. At some point, which was usually when I was too drunk to do much but sit in a corner by myself, he would disappear off as usual, returning some time later with a cigar, a grin and a fuzzy look in his eye. Last night, he'd been gone less than five minutes before he came thundering through the crowd, virtually scooped me out of my seat and practically dragged me out. I was drunk, tired, my feet hurt from the new designer shoes he'd bought me for that night out, so I didn't really understand what was going on. Usually when he acted like this, he'd accuse me of flirting with another man, but I hadn't been, I'd been on my own, nursing a double vodka and cola. I'd stumbled on the way out of the club on those shoes, had grabbed his forearm to steady myself on the way out. The sudden flare of camera bulbs had stunned me for a moment and I'd stumbled again, igniting his temper – his hand was painfully tight around mine as he dragged me towards the black car we'd arrived in and then virtually threw me into the back.

The whole way home I'd felt sick. Not only from too much booze, but knowing I would be in for it, for being too drunk, and for showing him up in front of the cameras. But nothing. We'd got in, the door had slammed loudly behind us, and he hadn't even looked in my direction. I'd waited by the door, expecting him to say something, to sneer his derision at what I had done wrong that night, decide which room to go into while we ‘talked' out the night. Instead, with barely a look in my direction, he'd pressed a few buttons on his phone and headed off in the direction of the bathroom. I'd stood waiting. This was new. Scary. What was he going to do? Ignore me this time? Punish me with silence? I'd waited and waited and waited until it was clear he wasn't coming back. I'd listened to his voice in the bathroom, loud and wild.
Something huge must have happened
, I'd decided. Something so big he didn't want to talk about it in front of me.

Now he was about to tell me what had happened, and how I could help him by doing this one thing for him. He held on to my hands, gently rubbing his thumbs over their veiny backs. ‘Nikky, I need you right now, more than I've ever needed anyone in my life,' he said. ‘Thing is, baby, I did something really stupid last night. It was a one-off, but it could ruin everything. We could lose all this.' He moved his head around to encompass the room. ‘I was about to do a couple of lines of charlie at the club last night,' he continued, ‘but as it was an opening night, there were lots of reporters and photographers there. Before I knew it, someone had snapped me getting it out of my pocket. Baby, I can't be caught with that stuff.'

‘Oh, God, that's awful,' I said. What he wanted me to do about it, I had no idea.