The Woman He Loved Before (37 page)

I had slept with a lot of men – and I remember them all. I remember their faces, their names and I remember the type of sex we had. I have to: for safety, so that I don’t put myself in a dangerous position if the man had unsettled me before; and for business reasons – men are flattered if you remember things about them, and they show their flattery through their wallets. Like I say, that’s the sort of thing that Eve would never think. That’s why it’s a good thing that Honey is the one who does all this work.

It’s nice, though, to not have sex. It’s healing. He still uses my body to get the comfort and affection he craves, but he isn’t doing anything more than touching my skin. I can live with that for another few weeks.

Me

27
^th
June 1996

Three days to go and everything has changed.

Caesar came over last night, and seemed quiet and troubled.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said with a desolate nod, ‘I am.’

‘Here, let me help you unwind,’ I said, and undid his gold tie and unbuttoned his top button.

‘I’d like to lie on the bed, if that’s acceptable to you,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ I replied. Inside I was feeling a little sad because his mood was starting to rub off on me.

‘I’m aware of what the date is,’ he said. He was pressed close to
me and I could feel his erection beneath his clothes, pushing into my leg. His hand was working its way up the skirt of my summer dress with buttons up the front, and caressing my thigh. ‘I have been fooling myself that the end of this wasn’t going to come. I’m going to miss you, Honey.’

‘I’ll miss you, too,’ I said, automatically, although it was true: I would miss him. It’s been nice, calming, not to be always dressing up to go out and not knowing who I would meet, what they would want from me. It was nice to be in a pseudo-relationship without the emotional entanglements.

It took a moment for me to register that he was undressing me, was rather clumsily undoing the buttons on my dress. I was taken aback, but not horrified – this was, after all, what he’d been paying me for. He found the clasp of my bra – front-fastening – and opened it, and before I could brace myself his mouth was working rather amateurishly on my breasts. Then he rolled me onto my back and was tugging at my knickers. While I lifted my hips to let him get them off, I realised that he wanted to do this himself. He wanted to unwrap me himself.

Soon he was freeing his erection, which I didn’t look at because I was reaching for the bedside table and the condoms. Before I could fully pull the drawer open, he was inside me. His eyes were tightly closed, his face scrunching and releasing in a strange mix of agony and ecstasy in time with his thrusts. In minutes his body was jerking as he came and I had barely moved. Like most of the sex I had as a prostitute, it was barely necessary for me to be there.

‘I’m sorry about the condoms,’ he said as he rolled off me. ‘I needed to feel you completely.’

I said nothing because it was not OK. Thankfully I was on the Pill but I did not know where he had been, or who he had been with. But, after nearly three months of being paid by him and not having sex, it seemed a small thing to get cross about. I’d have to make sure it didn’t happen again and I’d have to go for a HIV test sooner than I usually went.

‘Was, was it OK?’ he asked, sounding nervous. But if he hadn’t
had sex with his wife in years, as he’d told me, then it was understandable for him to be nervous.

I thought about it: the act itself. Was it OK? It was more clumsy than expected. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing, and he didn’t seem very experienced, which surprised me about a man such as himself. His persona gave the impression that he was a man of the world, had bedded quite a few women – some of them probably prostitutes – and had become rather skilled at it. Maybe, I thought, with more than a hint of shame, he was telling the truth. Maybe his wife really was the love of his life and not being able to have sex with her, and her not wanting to hug and cuddle because they both knew it would lead to a failed seduction attempt, were a great source of pain to him. Maybe he was genuinely craving affection and had only crossed the line with me because it would feel like another loss when this came to an end.

‘It was lovely,’ I said to him.

And to my utter horror, he started to cry.

He’s just left. After he cried, we lay curled up together on the bed. Then he got up, got dressed and left.

God knows what that’s all about!

I’m a bit worried that he’s not going to live up to his end of the bargain and let me go in three days. I’m scared that he’s going to tell me he’s in love with me or something and then I’ll be done for. Because I can’t force him to give me the money and, to be honest, I don’t want his love. Whether he gets no affection or not, he is still being unfaithful to his wife. I can’t get involved with someone like that – even if I was capable of loving him. And I couldn’t be a kept woman, either.

Earning my own money, relying on myself, is the only thing that I’ve got going for me.

Urgh! Why has he done this? I could be wrong, but this changes everything and not for the better. Will just have to see how the next few days pan out.

Stupid Me

29
^th
June 1996

He’s offered me another forty-five thousand if we keep the arrangement going for another three months. That, I wasn’t expecting.

Part of me wants to go for it because the last three months haven’t been that bad at all. But part of me doesn’t want to get his hopes up or to hurt him. I said as much when he made the offer.

‘You won’t hurt me, Honey,’ he said, with conviction. ‘The other night I was a bit … upset about my wife. That’s what she said the first time we became intimate. It was the first time for both of us and your words brought back the bittersweet memories of that time. I like your company, Honey, and what you have done for me, how you have brought me back to life, I cannot begin to describe, but I recognise now that anything I think I feel for you is what I feel for my wife. I’m so sad that our relationship is no longer physically intimate. I think that’s why I want to keep this arrangement going – it is like having a little bit of my original relationship with my wife here. If you understand?’

I nodded, and felt a little better. But still …

I don’t know why I’m writing this as if there’s still a decision to be made. We talked and talked and talked and finally I agreed. He’s going to show me the money in his account for me tomorrow, and then we’re going to continue with our arrangement.

I might be mad, but if it’s anything like the last three months, it really won’t be any kind of hardship.

13
^th
July 1996

On my grave, it will probably say Eve Quennox, The Most Stupid Woman on Earth. Or something shorter, snappier, and easier to chisel into stone.

That is what they call gallows humour.

But there was nothing humorous about last night. I just have to put it into context so that I do not go into the kitchen and take a knife and
plunge it into my chest. Or start to scrape away at the top layer of my skin until the filth that is my body is changed for ever.

Last night, Caesar came over with a friend of his that I had met a few times on those business meetings I attended. We had barely spoken and he seemed a nice enough man, a little bumbling, a little foolish but not unpleasant. I was a little surprised because he hadn’t mentioned on the phone that he was bringing anyone with him, but I led the way to the living room and they both sat on the sofa while I played the perfect hostess and made drinks, asked them if they would like to eat, sat in the armchair waiting for instructions from Caesar as to what to do next.

Like the men do when I go to their meetings, they mostly ignored me as they sat and talked and smoked cigars and drank the whisky I kept for Caesar. Then Arnold got up, asked for directions to the bathroom and then left us to it. Caesar sat in his armchair, holding his cigar in one hand and his short whisky glass in the other, ignoring me. This was not the man I had got to know over the last few months and it was unsettling.

‘Come and sit on the sofa, there’s a good girl,’ he said suddenly, not looking at me, but at the table in the middle of the room.

I did as I was told, the uneasy feeling growing inside. He had sounded so cold and removed when he said that, I did not understand why. I did not understand what I had done wrong. Hadn’t I been welcoming enough, had I somehow offended him?

When Arnold returned from the bathroom, he came back to the sofa and sat so close to me that our thighs were pressed up against each other. I instantly looked to Caesar, to see his reaction, if he had noticed what had happened. He was sitting watching me, watching us. He was still watching as Arnold reached out and put his hand on my knee, resting it there as though it was a piece of furniture he had just happened to lay his hand upon, not the knee of a person.

I looked at Arnold’s hand: chubby and short, the tips of his fingers stained yellow. The palm of his hand was moist against my skin. My eyes flew up to Caesar again, expecting some sort of reaction from
him now. Nothing except to lean back in the seat, raise his glass to his lips and stare down his nose at me.

Arnold’s hand left a damp trail as he moved it under my dress, then he forced it between my thighs. I had a flashback to the way my mother’s boyfriend would try and touch me, the way his hand had been unwelcome and disgusting on my skin back then. Arnold’s hand was just as unwelcome, even though I had been touched there by so many men in the last few years.

Arnold clumsily moved his thumb up and down in his pathetic attempt at a caress. He leaned in close to me. ‘I’ve been waiting to get close to you ever since you walked into that restaurant that night,’ he said, his breath rancid and slurred with alcohol, as well as the whisky, and the cigar he had smoked. I locked gazes with Caesar, his eyes hard and unyielding, cold and expressionless. He was telling me, by his lack of reaction, what was expected of me.

I had not said this was out of the question in the agreement, had I? I had not said he couldn’t invite anyone over whenever he felt like it and let them have a go. ‘You wanted it, too, didn’t you?’ Arnold said, his grip on my thigh tightening, his thumb rubbing hard enough to leave friction marks.

Swallowing in one go the bile pool in my mouth and the disgust shivering through my body, I forced myself to focus on the man in front of me. I compelled my hand to reach out for the second button on his shirt; I made my face become a smile; I willed my body to unclench enough to do this; I forced my heart to stop crying.

‘You want me to give it to you, don’t you?’ Arnold said not far enough under his breath for it to sound seductive. It sounded pathetic. Like he was. Like I was for going through with this.

Stop thinking
, I told myself,
stop feeling, start being
her
again. Start being Honey, start being the woman who can do this
.

‘I think we’ll be a lot more comfortable in the bedroom,’ I said, in Honey’s voice. I had her make-up on, I had her clothes on, I had just forgotten to switch her persona on. I felt the smile deepen on my face. I stood up, taking my time, stretching my body so he could see.
I took Arnold’s hand and I ignored the man who stood also to follow us out of the room, down the corridor and to the bedroom door. Still holding his whisky and his cigar, Caesar stood in the bedroom doorway, as if watching something on television.

‘Take off your clothes,’ I said in Honey’s husky, sexy voice, ‘and lie on the bed. I’ll be with you in just a minute.’

Drunk and overtly desperate, Arnold was tearing at his clothes in seconds. I knew his sort well: he talked a good game about the young women who’d been begging him to fuck them, but he had clearly never been with anyone apart from his wife. Either that, or he was the type who had got away with sexually harassing a few secretaries in his time and thought that counted as being a ‘ladies’ man’.

I turned my back on him for a second, put my hand on the doorhandle and stared right at the man in the doorway. He was nothing to do with this.

I shut the door with a determined click, and then turned the key in the lock.

Then I spun back to Arnold, lying naked on the bed, his chubby, flabby-looking body pale and pasty, but strangely solid and unmoving, his face a picture of eagerness, his penis erect and ready.

He still wore his black socks and, from the way they were up to his shins, had probably pulled them up just before he lay on the bed.

Honey would find this one so easy.

But Eve was the one who was here. She was using Honey’s voice, and she was using Honey’s smile, but it was Eve who walked over to the bed and began to undress for work.

14
^th
July 1996

Had to stop writing yesterday because I was reliving it all over again and I got scared that I would actually harm myself.

Caesar left two hours ago, and he came to tell me that I would do that with whoever he wanted me to, whenever he wanted me to.
Or there would be no money, and he would not pay next month’s rent and he would hunt me down wherever I went and kill me. ‘At the end of the six months – and yes, it is now six months – I will review the situation, see if I want to release you from your contract or not.’