Never Forget You, page 30
While the photographer took a couple of shots where Alice wasn’t needed, she took the opportunity to check for new messages. There was just one: Only four hours now.
I can’t wait, she texted back, grinning, but then had to quickly put her phone back in her pocket because she was being called back for more formal group shots, but as she stood beside Lo and Isaac, different groups of family and friends coming and going, she let her mind drift.
Lo had mentioned that she’d had her own wedding here, in this very castle. She wondered if she’d stood in this very spot, if she’d been the one wearing the wedding dress, smiling blissfully at her groom.
No, not here.
The information arrived in her head silently and easily, as if it had always been there rather than locked away and missing for the past week.
It had rained that day, making the skies dark and gloomy. She and Justin had posed for their photographs in front of the ornate fireplace in the banqueting hall inside the castle, surrounded by extravagant flowers and a million candles.
She grabbed onto the sleeve of the person next to her.
‘You okay, hun?’ her cousin Kerry asked. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’
No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t okay in the slightest because that one concrete memory had started a chain reaction. On the outside, she was perfectly still, but on the inside, everything was churning.
Her current memories were new and fresh, like writing in wet sand, and the tide of her old ones surged in like a tsunami. And when the giant wave of knowledge retreated, the shore beneath was smooth and flat, scrubbed clean of anything that had been there before.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
One year after the separation.
EVEN WITH THE bass beat thudding through my body, I could feel the buzz of my phone in my pocket. A missed call. I’d already had more than twenty this evening. I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, tried to move my body to the music on the nightclub dance floor. I was there with Lo and a gaggle of her friends, celebrating her last night of freedom.
Marriage doesn’t mean freedom. I thought sourly. Anything but. And that doesn’t even change when the marriage is over. I had the buzzing of my phone in the back pocket of my jeans to remind me of that.
I knew it was Justin without even checking. Our divorce had been made final only a few short weeks ago, and I’d hoped that would mean he’d give up, stop contacting me, stop either trying to win me back or berating me for being an ungrateful, back-stabbing bitch. For a few blessed weeks, everything had gone silent. But this morning someone had sent me a link to an online news article about Justin – about his Arts Foundation funding being withdrawn – and I knew, just knew, I wasn’t going to be that lucky.
The reason for tonight’s barrage of phone calls had its seeds back last summer. I’d been seeing a therapist since I’d left Justin, but after an initial burst of progress, I felt as if I’d got stuck, circling round and round the same issues. She’d suggested a journal, a way to process what I was feeling and thinking. I’d gone out and bought myself a nice notebook for the purpose, but it still lay unmarked in the top drawer of my bedside table. For some reason, it felt more natural to say these things out loud than to write them down, so I’d picked up my phone and had begun to record, keeping the camera turned away from myself, not ready yet to see in my own eyes all I’d allowed Justin to do to me.
After a while, I’d begun to post short videos on social media, always keeping the camera trained on a bookcase or a pot plant, always using a filter to alter my voice. The anonymity had been freeing. And it turned out my posts resonated with other women too, many who didn’t know – as I hadn’t – that they were being emotionally abused. Hadn’t I laughed when Lo had suggested it after my own hen night? I’d been so deluded. And if I could highlight some of the red flags, save just one woman from being sucked deeper in by a man like Justin, it was worth the discomfort of sharing what I’d been through.
But it turned out I hadn’t been able to keep my identity completely hidden.
Just before Christmas, Justin’s first ex-wife had found my account, put two and two together and slid into my DMs. For years I’d believed she was the evil witch who’d broken Justin’s heart, made him who he was today, but when I met up with Paulina, I’d discovered he’d treated her exactly the same way he’d treated me. It had been cathartic to talk with her, to share stories and realise that I wasn’t crazy or overdramatic. That had done more for me than months of journaling could have accomplished. I’d begun to feel as if I was at least starting to move on.
Unfortunately, instead of finding peace from digging through our shared experiences, Paulina had found rage – perfectly understandable, justifiable rage, in my opinion – but it had consequences. For both of us.
She’d sold her story to the papers and the article had gained more traction in the slow news period after Christmas than it might have done at another time of year. Then more women had added their voices, either in interviews or on social media – dancers who Justin had bullied in the rehearsal room, ex-girlfriends he’d terrified and controlled. The dance world’s golden boy had begun to look a little tarnished, to say the least.
That’s when the phone calls had started again. Never texts, never voicemails. Never anything I could save as concrete evidence – because it would always be my word against his as to what had been said, and he wasn’t the one who’d had to see a therapist for emotional instability, for anxiety and ‘spacing out’, was he? And even if I changed my number, he always seemed to be able to find the new one, probably by charming someone in my wider family who didn’t know what he was really like – I hadn’t really wanted to share the details of our marriage with anyone but my immediate family. I was too ashamed.
I’d logged it all as my therapist advised me to and then had refused to answer any more of his calls. They’d doubled in frequency after that, and I’d started jumping every time my phone made a noise, even if I had it on silent. Then, two weeks ago, I’d seen his car parked in the road where my new studio flat was. And then again the next day. It had freaked me out. I knew what he was doing. We might be divorced now, I could hear him whispering smoothly in my ear, but I’m in your life still. You’ll never truly get rid of me.
The only way I could think to counteract the gathering sense of panic and helplessness was to collect the evidence I’d been keeping on him ever since we’d separated and file an application for a non-molestation order. Justin had been served with notice of it yesterday, so he could prepare for the court hearing that would decide if it was granted or not.
Which would make it stupid of him to phone me once, of course, let alone twenty-four times. At least, it would have been stupid if he hadn’t thought to get himself a burner phone. I’d been distracted getting ready for Lo’s hen night when I’d picked up the first call, even though I was usually wary of numbers I didn’t recognise. The screaming at the other end of the line had made my eardrums ache: how I’d better not ‘tell tales’ as all the other lying bitches had done. How he’d make me sorry if I did. My stomach had rolled as my shaky fingers had fought to end the call, to make him go away.
Because I had ‘told tales’ already, hadn’t I? Only Justin didn’t know I had. Not yet. But I was kidding myself if I didn’t think that moment was just over the edge of the horizon. Every time I thought of what he might do if he found out, I felt sick.
A hand fell heavily on my shoulder and I almost jumped out of my skin. A moment later, I felt Lo’s tequila-soaked breath on my neck. ‘You okay, sis? You’re looking a bit queasy.’
I stretched my lips into the widest smile I could manage. ‘I’m fine – probably shouldn’t have had that last cocktail.’
Lo pressed a wet kiss to my cheek and grabbed my hands to pull me into the circle of dancing women nearby. I played along, bumping hips with Lo, waving my arms in the air along with everyone else. Even though I’d turned my phone off before putting it back in my pocket, I could feel the heat of all the missed calls. I wouldn’t tell her about it tonight. Maybe after she came back from honeymoon. She’d put her own life aside too much for me since I’d left Justin, letting me live with her and Isaac for a few months until I found a job and a place of my own. I wasn’t about to ruin her hen night – or her wedding. She was so happy with Isaac, and I was so pleased for her, even though it had been hard to watch their relationship bloom as my marriage had deteriorated into something dark and toxic.
But playing the part of the upbeat maid of honour was exhausting. All I wanted to do was go home, crash into my bed and pretend this night had never existed. I managed to dance my way out of the centre of the circle, letting Lo’s friend Annie take my place, and hovered on the fringes of the group, turning my phone back on so I could check the time. Surely it couldn’t be too much longer until they all got tired and started making noises about ordering cabs?
What I saw on my phone screen stopped me in my tracks. I opened the picture message up without thinking, my fingers tapping on the screen before my brain could shout ‘No!’ at me.
It was a picture of me, slightly blurry, taken from a distance. In it, I was wearing the sparkly (and rather revealing) top Lo had lent me for this evening. My stomach turned to cold, hard stone. It had come from Justin’s burner phone.
Where had this been taken? When? I forced myself to scour the background of the photo for more information and realised it had been taken outside the restaurant we’d had dinner at earlier on. He’d been there? Watching me?
I spun around, trying to see into the shadowy corners of the club, my heart clenching hard with each rapid beat. I couldn’t see him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
Lo waved from the back seat of the cab as it pulled away, blowing me drunken kisses. I stood at the garden gate of a large Victorian house split into six small flats, smiling and waving. Once the car had disappeared around the corner, my arm fell heavy by my side and I turned and walked swiftly up the path, feeling all the while as if unseen eyes were watching me from the bushes. I wasn’t going to feel safe until my flat door was bolted and triple-locked behind me.
Because Justin clearly wasn’t done with me yet. Not by a long shot. Punishment for filing the injunction against him, I guessed.
Another picture message had arrived twenty minutes after the first, a snap of the entrance of the club we’d been in. I’d almost lost it at that point. I’d had to go to the ladies’ and lock myself in a cubicle until I’d stopped hyperventilating. I hadn’t stopped shaking since. It was just as well my sister was too squiffy to notice I was behaving oddly.
While the building my flat was in was old, it had a very modern entry system, and I held the electronic key fob in my hand as I walked down the path, and I’d just begun to lift my arm, ready to wave it against the sensor beside the hefty black front door, when there was a shift in the shadows of the porch. A figure stepped out of the darkness and blocked my way to safety. I froze.
‘Ju-Justin,’ I stammered, trying to sound calm and in control and failing completely. ‘What … What are you doing there?’
‘Waiting for you, Angel,’ he said in that silky voice that made my skin crawl. ‘Nice night out?’
My attempt at composure crumbled at that point. I tried to dodge past him, waving my key fob madly in the direction of the lock, and I caught the side of his face with the back of my hand. Almost instantly, his fingers closed around my wrist and he pulled both my hand and the key out of reach of the door.
‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on me,’ he barked at me, any pretence of civility slipping quickly away. ‘Not after what you did. It’s all your fault!’
I held my breath. Did he know? Because it kind of was my fault. My videos had been the catalyst for everything that had happened since.
His fingers dug into the skin of my wrist, burning with friction. ‘If you hadn’t left me, things would be different. I’d have had someone by my side when Paulina made all those wild allegations, someone to tell the world it wasn’t true. But instead of helping me, the way a wife is supposed to do, you left me to struggle with it all on my own, and then this …’ He pulled a crumpled wad of paper from his pocket. ‘A non-molestation order? I never laid a hand on you, you know that! You’ve got to drop this, tell them it’s all lies!’ He threw the papers on the ground, and they lay in the flower bed, soaking up the beginnings of a hefty dew.
I knew I should tell him calmly that it wasn’t lies, that he needed to let me go and leave, but my heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to faint and I could feel a giant wave of terror hovering over me, threatening to obliterate me in its wake.
That’s when the floaty feeling began. The sense that reality was too much, that I needed to slide through a secret door and protect myself from it.
No. I’m staying here this time. I’m staying in this moment. I’m not letting him have that power over me any more.
Of course, this kind of thing had been easy to recite in a therapy session, but it was a lot harder when Justin’s fingers burned on my wrist, when his breath was sour and angry in my face.
He was still ranting, I realised, about his funding and how the company was probably going to close, but then he started on a subject that caused me to go still and invisible, to try and make him believe I wasn’t standing right next to him.
‘If I find out who that vicious bitch is, I’ll make her life a living hell,’ he was saying. ‘I combed through Paulina’s account for days, seeing what she liked and commented on, and it was this lying tart’s videos that started her off …’
The sound began to blur again then. It was like watching the television with the volume down. I could see his mouth moving, even make sense of the words, but all I could hear was a violent rushing in my own ears. I knew it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, but his face began to seem like a mask, twisting into more and more grotesque shapes. It was all I could pay attention to, even though I knew I needed to do something, that this wasn’t going to end well if I stood there like a rabbit frozen in the headlights.
But then the mask froze; his eyes became glassy, widening in realisation. For a moment, we were suspended in time, and then his eyeballs swivelled and he looked at me, seemingly into my soul. ‘It was you …’ he whispered, too shocked in that second even to be angry.
It probably should have been an insult that he hadn’t considered me capable of making those videos before, but I was too scared to be offended. I don’t know how he’d worked it out but he had. Probably because he’d had this weird sixth sense when it came to me, as if I was made of glass and he could see straight inside me, no matter how hard I tried to hide what I was thinking and feeling. Probably what made me such an attractive target in the first place.
I had a millisecond of shocked stillness to act, and I made the most of it, wrenching my hand out of his grasp, just catching a glimpse of his expression as it changed from astonishment to something darker and much more murderous. I thought I’d seen the worst Justin had to offer – but I’d never seen him like this. He was right; he’d never laid a finger on me while we’d been married, but now every nerve and muscle in his body seemed primed to strike.
Somehow I put some distance between us, heard the beep of the lock as my fob waved over it, and I managed to slide inside and throw my weight against the door. Justin did the same from the other side and for a horrifying second I thought all was lost, but I’d started pushing first, and the momentum was enough to hear the lock click into place. I saw Justin’s face through the glass as he shouted obscenities at me, and then I turned and ran, taking two stairs at a time as I fled for my first-floor flat.
I didn’t stop at locking and triple-bolting the door, especially as I could still hear the enraged banging from downstairs. I dropped my bag, kicked off my heels, and sprinted for my bathroom. Once inside, I locked the door then sat huddled, my knees pulled into my chest, against the bath. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block out the noise coming from the garden below.
I knew I needed to call the police, that I needed to get myself somewhere safe, but my phone was in my bag, sitting by the front door. Stupid, stupid, stupid … So I just sat there, shivering.
I don’t know how much time passed. I heard other noises in the building. Voices shouting, both male and female. And then, eventually, everything went quiet.
Still, I didn’t move.
Justin was clever. It was how he’d got away with what he had for so long. And he knew how to be patient. Just because it was quiet, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still there somewhere in the shadows, watching … waiting …
In that moment, I wished I could float outside myself again, that I could drift above the garden, waiting for the dawn, checking every bush and shadowy corner. I could make sure Justin really had gone away.
And then, somehow, I was doing it.
I was standing by the bathroom door, staring at the pathetic creature curled up against the bath, somehow outside and inside myself at once.
No. I know I said I wanted this, but I don’t, I really don’t. Not again. Not after all this time …
It’s the only way to keep you safe. The thought travelled from the version of myself standing at the bathroom door to the other me sitting on the floor. You know that, don’t you?
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her to stay, to fight Justin, not to run away yet again, but I couldn’t. For a long time, I didn’t say anything, but finally I nodded. ‘Go …’ I whispered, and then I closed my eyes and let the blessed blackness envelop me.
Chapter Sixty
Now.
LILI SAT ON the flapped-down toilet lid, shaking, her head in her hands. She’d come in here to have some time alone because Lo was hovering when she should be enjoying her wedding day, and neither of her parents wanted to let her out of their sight. Hardly surprising, given that she’d caused a bit of a scene when the wedding photos were being taken.
