The Woman He Loved Before (35 page)

That’s where I am. Back to where I was, but a little bit further down the road. I’m not unhappy, I suppose that’s main thing.

Me

7
^th
December 1995

So, something happened tonight that was unexpected.

I got to a booking at a hotel in Brighton earlier than expected, and I saw there was a private party on. It’s nearly Christmas, and the world seems to be celebrating, but I don’t really have anyone to have a works party with, if you see what I mean. The concierge didn’t look twice at me because I was dressed up, so I decided to slip in and have a look.

The ballroom was spectacular with a dancing area and tables with several chairs around them, and silver stars and fake snow and the biggest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen. Everyone was in their finery and drunk or on their way, dancing, laughing, talking – basically having a good time. I’ve never really been to one of these parties to have a good time, if I’ve gone it’s as someone’s escort and so I’ve been working. I stood at the back, by the door, keeping
out of sight so no one would throw me out until I’d had a chance to experience a little Christmas spirit, no matter how vicarious it might seem.

‘You don’t look like you belong here,’ that was the first thing he said to me.

I immediately stood up straight from leaning against the wall, fearing I was about to be manhandled and thrown out of there. That had happened to me on more than one occasion in the hotels in London. Some concierges were nicer than others at turning a blind eye to your patronage of their bar.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I just heard the party and wanted to see – I’m sorry, I’ll go. I didn’t mean any harm.’ I pushed my clutch bag under my arm and made to leave.

‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I know almost everyone here apart from you.’

‘That’s because I’m a gatecrasher,’ I said, uttering the last word in a stage whisper.

‘I am, too,’ he replied.

I was confused: he was dressed in a tuxedo and looked like he fitted in, but so would I in my knee-length black evening dress and shiny black stilettos. ‘Are you?’ I asked.

‘Not technically, because I was invited and all that. I just don’t really fit in with all these people.’ And he smiled. He smiled and my chest expanded so much it was fit to explode.

‘You look the part,’ I said nonchalantly.

‘Ahhh, looks can be deceiving,’ he said, and smiled again. The second smile made my heart stop its erratic thumping, and allowed it to perform a little pirouette in my chest. Just as it settled down, the butterflies in my stomach did the same happy spin.

‘They certainly can,’ I said. I reached out and touched the spot on his face where his hair curled down from his head around his ear. ‘It
looks
like you’ve been playing with white paint.’ I’d had to touch him, he was far too good looking not to. Just that brief moment of feeling his skin under my fingertips warmed me through. I hadn’t realised how cold I’d felt inside all these years until I touched a person who
was normal. It felt like I hadn’t encountered someone like that – someone who had no idea of what I did – since that waitress in the café the day I bought my dress. His normalness thumped through me, warming every part of me it touched. ‘Someone dressed like you doesn’t usually have white paint on them. So, I can’t help but agree that looks can be deceiving.’

He looked surprised, touched his face. ‘Oh God, did I miss a bit?’ he rubbed at his skin. ‘Is it gone?’

‘It’s gone,’ I confirmed.

‘Gah!’ he said, pulling a face. ‘The pitfalls of renovating a house with your bare hands.’

‘A house? You’ve got an actual house all to yourself?’ I said.

‘Yeah, it’s mostly being held up by the wallpaper and layers of dust, but I love it. Does that sound crass? Saying I love a house?’

‘No, not at all. It’s good to have things that you love. They keep you grounded, make you realise how much you’ve got to lose.’

‘I’ve never thought of it like that before.’

‘It’s good to love people. But if you don’t have anyone you can truly give your heart to, then having something that means the world to you can often act as a good stand-in.’

‘What’s your stand-in?’

‘Why do you assume I have a stand-in?’

‘Because that theory wasn’t formed by someone who has another person they can give their heart to.’ He smiled again. ‘And I’m more hoping than assuming that you not wearing a ring means you haven’t given your heart to anyone else, so I might have a chance.’

In another life, in another reality, the way my stomach flipped and my heart pirouetted again would have been exactly what I wanted. But I couldn’t do it.

‘I guess that’s going to be one of life’s great mysteries,’ I said to him. ‘I think I’d better leave before people start to point at me, shrieking “gatecrasher” or whatever the posh people’s equivalent is.’

His smile dimmed a little and I felt bad. ‘Can I walk you out?’ he asked.

‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ I replied.

At the door of the restaurant he reached into his pocket and pulled out his business card. ‘Call me, if you ever feel like answering my question,’ he said.

I took his card, and looked at his name. ‘Jack Britcham,’ I said carefully.

‘And your name is?’

‘Eve.’ I’d almost said Honey. Almost, then realised I didn’t need to lie to this man. He wasn’t paying me, he wasn’t watching me dance; he was simply being nice.

‘Just Eve?’

‘Just Eve.’

‘OK.’

For a moment I thought he was going to lean in and kiss my cheek, but he obviously changed his mind, probably mindful of entering my personal space. I wanted to touch him again, to be warmed by him, but didn’t dare in case I wouldn’t be able to take my hand away.

I could see Jack Britcham quite easily becoming my drug of choice.

‘Bye, Jack Britcham,’ I said, my heart heavy at the thought of not seeing him again.

‘Goodnight, Eve.’

I walked a way down the road and waited around the corner for a few minutes until I could be sure he would be gone. He was nowhere in sight when I returned to the hotel and I walked quickly across the foyer to the lifts.

The man in room number 301 opened the door then went to sit himself in the armchair by the desk and waited for me to enter.

‘Hi, I’m Honey,’ I said with the smile and the voice.

With a nod of his head he indicated to the white envelope embossed with the hotel’s crest on the bed, and I picked it up, checked it had the money in it then slipped it into my clutchbag.

I turned back to him and smiled again – even though his face was mainly in the shadows of the room – the only light coming from the desk lamp and the open bathroom door – I could tell he was older,
distinguished; most of the men who could afford the agency’s rates were.

‘Take off your clothes except your shoes then sit on the bed with your legs open,’ he said huskily.

‘Of course,’ I said, still smiling.

‘I want to talk to you first.’

‘As you wish,’ I said. I – Eve – had already tuned out and Honey was in control.

In the bath later, when I allowed myself to slip back into being Eve again, I thought about Jack Britcham. I argued with myself, actually, about Jack Britcham. I wanted to call him. But how could I call him when as well as being Eve, the woman he met, I was Honey the hooker, too? How could I tell him that and expect him to want to go out with me?

Some of the other girls I had met along the way who did this job had boyfriends, and some of them weren’t even their pimps. Some of them said their boyfriends didn’t really mind the job they did – they loved them despite the fact they did it with other men for money. Others said their boyfriends didn’t know, and that it wasn’t their business. Neither of those options appeal to me. I didn’t exactly respect Elliot for not minding what I had to do to keep a roof over our heads, and how could I lie to someone I was in love with and not tell them about this thing I had to do to so I wouldn’t have to live on the streets?

But, God, it’s hard to think about Jack, with that smile of his and the shape of his face, and the look he had in his eyes
without
wanting to call him. I’ve kept his card, but only because it’s a little like the dress, the rosary, the kitbag and the picture I took from my mother’s house. It’s another thing in this world that Eve has, another thing to keep me grounded. Another reminder that no matter what I do to earn money, I am still a real person.

Eve (in honour of Jack Britcham who reminded me of that)

14
^th
February 1996

It’s silly, I know, but I keep thinking I see Jack Britcham wherever I go.

Logically I know it can’t be him, and that he can’t be everywhere – on the bus, in the back of a taxi, outside a café, walking along the seafront, in the faces of the clients I ‘service’ – but every time I get a flash of honey-blond hair, or that curve of his nose, or his height, or his build, my heart skips happily in my chest, and does that little pirouette it did when I first spoke to him. It’s a good feeling. Probably the best feeling I have at the moment. It’s like having stardust sprinkled on you every day of your life. I always smile when I think of him and, when I see his doppelgangers I rubberneck to get a look, then allow myself to dissolve into a serene, secret little smile as that feeling takes over.

Is it possible to fall in love with someone you’ve only met for five minutes?

He seems to have become a part of my life and I’m disappointed if I don’t see him. If I get to the end of the day without seeing someone who reminds me of him, I feel as if a dull shadow has fallen over me and the only way to remedy it is to get his card out and stare at it. Read his name and his number, commit them both to memory and wonder if it would ever be possible to become Eve Britcham?

Yeah, I know, get a life, huh? That’s what people say nowadays to saddos like me. It’s hard though. Cos thinking about Jack Britcham, playing that game where I see him or a bit of him every day, is kind of liberating. It helps me get through the day. And it reminds me that I’m twenty-four.

I would love to kiss him. I’ve only kissed two people in my life – Peter and Elliot. I would love to snog him as well. Peter and I would snog: we’d kiss and snog and hold each other. Even after we slept together, sometimes we’d just snog. Elliot and I were more sort of ‘adult’ about it all. We’d kiss hello and goodbye and we’d kiss as part of foreplay, but we wouldn’t kiss just for the sake of it. Not when we got together properly.

I would love to snog Jack Britcham. I would love to inhale the smell
of him, feast on the scent of him, become intoxicated by him. And of course there is nothing wrong with looking at him. I would love to run my fingers over the lines of his body, touch him and see if I could absorb him through the pads of my fingers, have him enter my bloodstream and race through my veins. I would love to taste him. See if he tastes as good as he looks.

I don’t know why he’s got so far under my skin, but he has. And that’s not a bad thing, I don’t think. It gives me something to look forward to, I suppose.

Loved-up Saddo

15
^th
March 1996

Went out tonight with one my regulars, a man called Caesar – that’s really his name: I’ve seen the credit card he pays with and it has ‘Caesar Holdings’ on it, and the agency have that as his name.

That’s not remarkable, noteworthy or unusual in itself, except what happened during dinner is.

I’ve been seeing him for three or four months now and he’s always been a talker. The most we’ve done is me strip down to my underwear and us lie on the bed, hugging. He’s one of those with a wife who doesn’t want sex, so is craving affection and the touch of another person more than anything else. I don’t mind men like him. It’s nice to talk and be talked to as though I have interests and opinions, and it’s nice to earn money without having to get naked. The downside, of course, is that I have to be careful not to let the lines between Honey and Eve become blurred. It would be so easy to let my guard down, and be Eve when I don’t have to have sex, but the whole point, of course, is that clothed or not, fucking or not, I am still being paid to be somewhere I would not otherwise be; it is still a business transaction.

We were at a lovely restaurant out in Seaford, which was very near the water and so peaceful and calm at night. We’d eaten there a few
times before and this time I’d decided on the duck confit, even though Caesar said it was odd to have fowl in a fish restaurant. During the main course he sat back, and relaxed a little. Caesar is a lot older than me with brown hair and a healthy looking face, one that’s not pale, but not artificially tanned. He has lines around his eyes and on his forehead, in the hollows of his cheeks, but they aren’t, you know, proper lines. His face would look odd, unfinished, without them. He’s what they call distinguished, because not only does he look good and dress smartly, he also holds himself well. He would sit upright and seemed to know the proper way to do everything – from testing wine to the right cutlery to what to tip even if the service hadn’t been especially good.

‘Do you have any ambitions, Honey?’ he asked me, studying me very carefully.