The First Wife (37 page)

‘It’s not that.’

He bent towards me, as if interested, and I looked into his face without meaning to. I looked away quickly. It was too difficult.

‘Is Sarah still there? And Fergus?’

He smiled. ‘Not for long, I don’t think. It’s not as if there was a life insurance claim or anything. Though my misguided brother will, I’m sure, be in the shit back home because he committed an enormous amount of fraud last year. It’s always the damsels in distress with him. I can see you’re unsettled by it all, and who the hell can blame you. God knows what they’ve been telling you. Come on, just a drink. We’ll go to the busiest bar on the Ramblas, so you won’t be on your own with me, if that’s what’s disturbing you.’

To be with Harry, and to be going for a drink, felt so normal, that it was easy to forget that everything had changed. I was not sure that I could say no to him, anyway, because he was bigger and more forceful than I was.

‘OK, then,’ I told him, and he took my arm and we walked together to the corner and stepped into the nearest bar. Harry ordered two beers, and we took a table by the window.

I knew I had to say something before he did. I had to say it before I lost my nerve and everything went back to normal.

‘Harry’ I said quickly, ‘I don’t want to get married. You told me you would break every bone in my body. You said that to me a few hours ago.’

He grimaced, as if it was a trivial error. ‘Oh Lily, I’m so sorry. I was stressed in the extreme. I was just saying anything that I thought would get me to Sarah. Did I really say that? To you? I don’t even recall it.’

‘Why did you follow me? All the way here?’

He sipped his drink without taking his eyes off me. I looked back into his eyes, and I was scared.

‘I did not believe for one moment that you were going to a spa with Mia. Lily, you are a rubbish liar. I’m sorry, but you are. I tried to work out what you might really be doing. There was nothing on the home computer. Nothing anywhere. Then I came across a map of Barcelona tucked away under all your knickers. I still had no idea why you’d want to come out here, of all places, on the sly, but I guessed that was what you were doing and that it had something to do with Sarah.

‘And then, when I looked at that map, it had little circles around things and notes on it, and I could have sworn they were in Sarah’s writing, so I was seriously confused.’

‘I thought she was alive,’ I said, hating myself for courting his approval again. And we were planning our wedding. I didn’t want you to be a bigamist without realising it. I wanted just to see if I could find out, without telling you. So if she was actually dead, you wouldn’t even have to know.’

‘Hmm. I have to say, Lily, I’m a little confused. More than a little. You weren’t as good as you thought you were about covering your tracks. I found your travel documentation on the morning you were leaving.’

I had been so careful. ‘How?’

‘You went to the loo just before we left the house. It only took a second to find it tucked into your book in your bag. I booked myself onto the next flight as soon as I dropped you and Mia off. Caught up with you again as you left your hotel the next morning. You’re not as observant as you ought to be, you know, if you’re going to pull stunts like this. Which you’re not, are you?’

‘Oh,’ I said. I was still reeling. ‘No.’ I grasped at the smallest thing. ‘You lied. You said you and Sarah stayed at the smartest hotel in Barcelona, but you didn’t. You stayed at the three-star one.’

He laughed as if delighted. ‘I didn’t
want
to stay in it. It was a shithole. Why would I want to admit to that? Living like some scummy student? I don’t think so.

‘Look,’ he said, leaning forward so he was in my sight-line, and smiling his old smile at me. I tried hard to resist. ‘The thing is, Lily Button, this is all details. Let’s leave them to it. We can go to the airport now, you and me. We’ll grab a cab, swing by your hotel, you can pick up your stuff and we’ll go and sleep for whatever’s left of the night in a place near the airport, and get ourselves home first thing in the morning. We’re happy at home, aren’t we? You and me?’

‘No,’ I managed to say. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘It does hurt, that you’d do a thing like that to me,’ he mused. ‘But I know that you didn’t mean to hurt me. You were, in your funny little way, trying to do the right thing. At least, that’s what I thought until you were suddenly attached to some scruffy idiot who clearly thought he was in with a chance.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It isn’t like that. Not at all.’

‘Like I said, it’s all details. Let’s go. If you don’t want to go home, we can head to the coast, or go to France, or anywhere you like. Who cares about the rest of them? I’m glad Sarah’s alive. It’s always better for people one has loved to be alive than dead.’

The trouble was, it was incredibly difficult to say no to him. I was scared of him, and because I was scared, I tried to convince myself that I loved him. It would be so much easier to be his adoring girlfriend, to do what he wanted to do. I was used to him. He had never threatened me (until a few hours ago), had never raised his voice, or given, as far as I could tell, any indication that he might harm me.

I still felt that I could be the one to change him.

I thought of Sarah’s livid scar. I thought of Fergus. Fergus could not have spun me a web of lies. Everything he said had made sense. I trusted Fergus more than I could ever trust Harry.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think we’re over, Harry.’

He laughed at this, a genuine laugh, not a nasty one. It was as if he thought I had made a brilliant joke.

‘Lily,’ he said. ‘You silly thing. You don’t get to do that. I can see your head’s been messed up by all this rubbish, and I don’t blame you. Really, I don’t. Lily, have I ever done anything in our relationship that has made you feel uncomfortable? Anything?’ I opened my mouth and he quickly added: ‘Before today?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Not before today.’

‘When I met you, you were so sweet and naïve. You didn’t know how to order a cocktail or eat a prawn. You didn’t know that there were radio stations other than BBC Radio Four, and you had no idea who Beyoncé or Justin Bieber or Simon Cowell were. And I took you from that, from a shitty little life that was never going to amount to anything, and I gave you the world. I gave you the world on a fucking plate. Lily – you don’t get to throw it back at me.’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘Oh no? You do owe me a bit, you know. Whose money did you spend when you came out here to double-cross me? Whose cash took you to the arms of that backpacker?’

‘Harry,’ I said. I drew in a lungful of air and tried to say the right thing. There must be something, some formulation of air through vocal cords, tempered by tongue and teeth, that would get me away from here.

Everything was melting like wax and reforming into new, sinister shapes. It was true. I had been nothing. My life had been shitty. He had given me everything. I did owe him.

‘I did know who Simon Cowell was,’ was all I could manage. ‘And Beyoncé.’

I looked him in the eye and tried again. ‘But Harry,’ I said, trying hard to keep my voice straight. We were the only people left in the bar. A man was sweeping the floor. We were going to have to leave in a minute.

‘Yes, my darling?’ His voice was utterly controlled.

‘You hurt Sarah. You made her lose her babies.’

He laughed, and he looked perfectly at ease. ‘She told you that, did she? Is that what she’s saying?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you believe her? A woman you know for certain has told enormous, unforgivable lies to all of us, destroyed all our lives? You believe her, rather than me, the man you profess to love?’

I shook my head. ‘But I do believe her, because—’

‘Yes, she’s convincing, I know. Of course she is. But Lily, I’m so deeply hurt that you can think that of me. I know I can be, possibly, a bit of a control freak. I don’t want to be. I know I said something pretty nasty to you earlier this evening, but I was desperate. My whole life was upside down. Come on, darling. It’s about us. You and me. All the rest is detail. As I keep telling you.’

The man finished sweeping, and looked at his watch. I stood up.

‘Sorry,’ I said quickly. I tried to keep my voice level, like his, so that he would see that I meant it. ‘I’ll pay you back all of your money that I ever spent, one day I did love you. I was madly in love. I would have done anything for you – or I thought I would. But it wasn’t you, it turns out. It was the person you were pretending to be. The person I imagined. I’m on Sarah’s side. I believe her. I believe Fergus. I’m with them. I’m not with you any more, Harry.’

Tears were pouring down my cheeks. I could not stop loving him, just like that. All the same, I knew it was over, for ever.

My legs wobbled as I made my way to the door, but I stumbled out, his laughter following me. The crowds had thinned. It was nearly morning. I set off down the street, trembling, then I started to walk tall.

He did not realise it, but I had done it. I started to smile. All I needed to do was to get back to the hotel, as soon as I could. I began to run. I would run all the way through the dark streets of Barcelona, my feet pounding the pavements, the cold air reinvigorating me. I would run past apartment blocks with wrought-iron balconies and past blank windows, past closed shutters and turned-off Christmas lights. I would run and run, and I would reach the hotel and find my friends. I was euphoric.

That was all I was thinking of, when I heard the footsteps coming up behind me.

At first, stupidly, I thought it was a mugger. You had to watch out for thieves in Barcelona. I held my handbag tightly to my body; and then he grabbed me and pulled me into a dark doorway and I saw his face. He finally believed me.

‘You’re not doing this,’ he said. ‘Like a fucking Nancy Drew, coming out here to mess it all up. You don’t get to walk away. You’re wearing my ring.’

My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it through my entire body. This was danger, real danger. I tried to tug the ring off my finger, but he grabbed my wrists and pulled them back. Then he glanced up and down the alley we were on, and on seeing there was no one there, he started to hit me. I opened my mouth and screamed as loudly as I could. He punched me in the mouth to shut me up. His strength was terrifying. I felt my face throbbing. I screamed again, and he hit me again.

‘I didn’t want to do this, Lily,’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever have to do this. You should not have pushed me. I thought better of you. You are being stupid.’

I fought him back. A part of me was detached from everything that was happening, observing from somewhere above my head, and noting with interest the vicious way I kicked him and kneed him in the groin. I had never had a physical fight with anyone, ever. Yet, in this moment of danger, I defended myself with every atom of strength I had.

All the same, my strength was not enough. He was bigger and stronger, and he had had a lot more practice. He pounded at me, and I was Sarah. I was all the women he had attacked in the past. There were women in London whose names I would never know. I wondered who I was, to him. Someone he hated. His mother, perhaps, or the opposite of his mother? I wondered whether he had always wanted to do this to me, whether he had been biding his time, waiting for this moment.

Even as he pushed me to the ground so he could kick me in the ribs, I thought he had loved me, in his way.

Then I was numb, and I stopped fighting back because I could no longer move. Then I closed my eyes. It did not stop.

Later, much later, I woke up. He had gone. I was lying in a doorway, frozen, and everything hurt. I knew I was alive because my heart was beating: I heard it. I could only open one eye, and when I spat the blood out of my mouth, something clinked onto the stone doorstep.

It was cold. So, so cold. There was nobody about. I closed my eye again and waited.

It was light, and someone was trying to make me sit up. I shook them off. This was a strange state; I was not properly in the world, nor far enough out of it. Everything I thought I had was gone. He had hurt me as badly as he possibly could, without actually killing me; had left me in a European alley all night in the middle of winter.

There was something around my shoulders. It was a thick overcoat. With my single working eye, I tried to focus. I was in the centre of a little group of people, and though I could not see their faces, I sensed that they were kind. They felt sorry for me. I probably looked like a monster. I leaned back on whatever was behind me, listened to the hissing rush in my head that might have been my own blood, or that might have been the sound of everything I thought I knew evaporating.

He had done this to me. He had done it to Sarah. He must have done it to others, too. This was what he did. There was nothing in the world, at that moment, that I cared about, apart from this:
I was going to bring him down.
I was going to do everything I possibly could to make him pay for the things he had done to us, and to Darren Mann. Although everything hurt, I felt almost good. I knew exactly what I had to do.

Two days later

All I could think about was going back to the police, and telling them the truth – to forget everything I had previously said to them. It was not only my life that had been irrevocably changed. The very least I could do was to help Darren Mann’s parents find out the truth.

‘You,’ said Jack, ‘are like a different person.’

I tried to smile, but winced. We were walking in the sunshine, and it was hard work being resolutely oblivious to all the staring.

‘Like a person with a fucked-up face?’ I had never said the f-word before. I was experimenting.

‘Like a relieved person with a fucked-up face. You know, I think it’s fading already? You’ll be back to normal before you know it.’

I touched my cheek and winced. ‘You think?’ I had been checked over at the hospital and, somehow, there was nothing seriously wrong. It was all bruising. But I was bruised all over, like a windfallen apple. I was missing two teeth, which would be a reminder of my former fiancé for the rest of my life, and I could not wait to get home and get them replaced, however that worked.