by Voss, Louise
This flat was only ever meant to be a temporary base for me and Megan after the divorce, and one good thing about this situation is that now I am definitely going to move. I don’t want to spend another night longer than I have to here, and I don’t want Megan back here now that Claudio has sullied it for us with his sweaty hands and crazy delusions.
I wait five minutes and then go and stand by the boarded-up window, take a massive deep breath, and scream as loudly as I can, for as long as I can. I imagine a little huddle of concerned bystanders congregating in someone’s back garden and it helps. They’ll be listening intently: ‘Did you hear that? That’s a woman screaming. Doesn’t sound good to me. Shall we ring the police?’
‘Yes, let’s. Better safe than sorry . . .’
After a few minutes my throat is raw and my ears are ringing. I pause for breath and listen hard for the sound of sirens. But there is nothing. I try screaming ‘FIRE!’—I heard once that this brings people faster than if you just shout for help because there’s more of a potential threat to their own safety and possessions. Still nothing.
‘Richard,’ I scream instead in desperation. ‘Help me! Richard!’
I will him to appear as if by magic in my bedroom. I feel his warm arms around me, and his lips against my ear, whispering soothing words.
‘Oh thank God you’re here! I knew you’d come!’
When I find myself saying the words out loud, I think that perhaps I have gone completely mad.
Richard is the man I loved more deeply than I’ve ever loved anybody else. But not more passionately. There have only been two men in my life I’ve loved with real passion, one of whom was John. That all ended in tears, and no-one else came close to inspiring that intensity of feeling in me, until I met Sean.
Sean is the reason that Richard and I didn’t get back together. Sean is the reason I’m on my own now. Sean is the reason that I can’t believe I will ever love anybody again. I sit down on the bed, exhausted and upset and beyond caring at the bitter, melodramatic turn my thoughts have taken. The vision of Richard has vanished from my mind, and I feel consumed with resentment for Sean. If I’d never met him, I wouldn’t be in this situation now. If he materialised in my room right now I think I’d slap him.
I think of Richard rubbing my back when I was ill, and before I know it I’m crying again.
Even before Claudio weaselled his way onto the scene, this was not how I wanted my life to be.
When I get out of here, I’m going to have to do something to change things. I can’t go on like this. I don’t like this person I have turned into: she is not me. All I want is a family again. Security, stability, a future. I made a mistake and I want to put it right in any way I can, given that going back is not an option. Not too much to ask—is it?
Chapter Ten
Day 2
I met Sean two years ago, soon after Stephanie and I started renting an office together. Steph and I have been friends for years; she used to be my neighbour until she moved in with her glamorous footballer boyfriend. Since we’re both freelance we decided that it would make sense to share an office—tax deductible and fewer distractions than working from home. Once we moved in, we then decided we spent far too much time sitting around eating croissants and gossiping and that we should both join the gym next door. We also thought that it would be a good way for her to meet a new man, since the men in our shared office complex were no great shakes, and she’d recently had another bust-up with the glamorous footballer boyfriend, who unfortunately loved himself as much as she loved him.
She had very exacting standards, being a sports journalist (her half of the office was full of books with titles like Bestie, Foggy, Hizzy, Cloughie and Deano) and thus accustomed to dealing with the more physically perfect of the male species. My first thought on clapping eyes on Sean was, honestly, that he’d be perfect for Steph. After all, I wasn’t looking for anyone. I thought I was happy with Richard.
It’s a bit embarrassing that Sean was my personal trainer. What a cliché. It’s like having an affair with your tennis coach: the fit young man who comes into your life and expertly shows you how to make it better. But two years ago I thought I was only signing up for personal training, for a limited course of physical pain. Stephanie never got a look-in, and I bloody wish now she had. What price a tight arse, eh?
The first time I ever saw Sean, I was on the treadmill on a quiet Tuesday lunchtime. Stephanie had gone to interview Frankie Dettori for a feature she was writing, so I didn’t have her to chat and puff to as I usually did. There was some tedious documentary about ants on the wall-mounted TV, so of course my eyes had drifted elsewhere, and there he was. He had the biggest shoulders I’d ever seen outside of a Chippendales calendar, his eyes were cerulean blue, and he even had dimples. He smiled a lot, not in a ‘wow, it makes me happy to be this gorgeous’ way, but in a warm, open way. I couldn’t wait to tell Stephanie. He was so good-looking.
I could tell that his client, an ungainly blonde almost as tall as he was, felt the same as me—she gazed into his eyes every time she straightened up from her squats. I was jealous. I thought, ‘I don’t care how much it costs, I want to gaze into his eyes too.’
I didn’t for a second want to lose Richard. We were still married then—happily, I thought, although the lack of sex and the long hours he worked did bug me—but I had never felt such a physical pull towards someone else. Not since John, anyway, and that had been well over twenty years ago. When I first saw Sean, I couldn’t stop looking at him.
I went straight to reception and signed up for twelve personal training sessions. It cost a fortune, but I didn’t care; we could afford it. There had to be some compensation for Richard working four hundred-hour weeks. The woman on the desk—my age, too much Botox—asked if I had a preference as to which trainer I wanted, and I said, trying to look casual, ‘The one who’s upstairs at the moment? He seems to know what he’s talking about. I’d like him.’
She laughed, in a bitter sort of way, and said, ‘Of course you would. That’s Sean. Everyone would like Sean.’
I was so nervous before our first session. I bought a load of new Nike gear, cleaned my trainers till they sparkled, and just about resisted the temptation to get my hair blow-dried in Sean’s honour. I’d told Stephanie I was having personal training—but when it came down to it, I found that I didn’t want to confess my feelings for the trainer, as I’d assumed I would. That, right there, should have warned me that I ought to proceed with more caution—Steph and I always told each other about our little harmless crushes.
‘Hello,’ he said when I arrived, trembling, at the gym, smiling at me and holding out his large, strong hand for me to shake. ‘Are you ready?’
Boy, was I ever ready. He took my blood pressure—that was nice, his hands slipping the little cuff up my arm, the pump squeezing it tight like an embrace. I wasn’t quite so happy when he made me get on the scales, mind you. Still, I just closed my eyes and thought—
What did I think? That I’d lose my marriage? That Sean and I would be together forever? That I’d ever betray Richard? That heading down this road of insanity would end up with me a captive in my own bedroom? No. None of those. I don’t know what I thought. I guess I wasn’t thinking at all, beyond breathing in his pheromone-y sweet smell, and the sheer bulk of him. The only pain was in my abs, as I groaned and flailed in a pool of sweat on the red mat—and that was made bearable by the proximity of his hand, hovering over my midriff.
‘Just a few more,’ he’d say, in that firm but amused voice, which, coming from anyone else, would have made me want to punch them in the throat. I must have really liked him, to put myself through all that. Gyms are unpleasant enough when you’re just pottering along on the Stairmaster in a big t-shirt, trying to ignore the glamorous petite girls in skin-tight Lycra. But having to lie there, puce and sweating, in front of a row of captive spectators on the treadmills . .
. now there’s dedication.
The hour was over far too quickly. We hadn’t talked much—I tried to quiz him, but it was hard to ask questions when I couldn’t even breathe. I managed to find out roughly where he lived, though, that he was thirty-four, lived alone, did a lot of rowing in his spare time, and was a semi-professional pool player.
After the session, I could barely walk, and I had muscles aching in places I hadn’t even known I had places. But all I remembered was his blue eyes, and the brush of his fingers on my skin whenever he was showing me the correct technique for a move. I floated home, lactic acid and hormones streaming in equal proportions around my body.
Ugh. I don’t think I’m ever going to fancy a man again, ever. I don’t want to think about Sean any more, or Richard . . . Yet somehow I can’t seem to stop myself reading a selection from the first page of Sean’s texts:
– Hello beautiful! Just finished work . . . your gorgeous smile hasn’t left my mind 4 one minute . . . I’m the luckiest man on earth, you are AMAZING! Love you, sexy beast XXX
– You are mine 2 . . . Didn’t ever think I was capable of loving someone as much as this. You’re amazing! X
– Went 2 sleep thinking of you, woke up thinking of you & dreamt of you in the middle . . . am I in love or what?
– I’ve only ever wanted 2 love & be loved by one special person . . . so lucky 2 have found someone as amazing as you! (sorry 4 soppiness!) XX
– You are the best and I love you so much . . . XXX
– SO lovely 2 be close 2 you again, you are so beautiful . . . will be thinking of you in my dreams angel! XXX
– I am completely loved up with you. What have you done 2 me!! I love being in love with you. Marry me someday angel! XXX
The document makes interesting reading: the history of a relationship in bite-sized chunks, from infatuation to passion to desperation to frustration to . . . well, weary politeness, by the end, I suppose.
When he dumped me, I printed out two copies. It took thirty-five sheets of A4 to print each one—there were hundreds and hundreds of texts. Then I posted one of the copies to him. I wanted him to read them, to remember how he’d felt about me. I didn’t know whether I wanted him to feel bad about it, or whether I hoped that they would somehow change his mind and rekindle the depth of passion we’d had.
Sean and I broke up six months ago, but I sent him a text just the other day. It’s funny, but whenever I miss Richard, I text Sean instead. I suppose it’s because in my head Sean is the reason I lost Richard, and I can’t quite believe that here I am, alone, with neither of them. I can’t have Richard, but perhaps, just perhaps, I could get Sean back again and then it would all have been worthwhile.
‘Remember the tower?’ my text said. ‘Remember how cold it was? We kept each other warm. No need to reply.’
But Sean, being a contrary bastard, replied almost immediately: ‘Of course I remember. That was the best time in my entire life. XXX’
We’d gone away for a long weekend, about three months after I left Richard, when Sean and I had recently become an official couple. It was the first time we’d been away together. Sean arranged it all on the internet—he had rented this odd little tower on the south coast, kind of like a windmill without sails, or a lighthouse without a light. It had a round kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor, stairs up to a round living room, more stairs up to a round bedroom, then more stairs to a tiny roof terrace. It was October and freezing cold. The tower had no central heating and our breath puffed out in clouds both inside and out.
The entire weekend was a blissful, romantic cliché. We spent the whole time walking on deserted beaches, through leaf-blown bleak woods, or huddled under the duvet with the rain lashing against the tower windows. It was utterly, utterly magical. We had sex in as many different places and at as many different times as we could: up trees, in sand dunes, on the kitchen counter, in the bath, on the roof terrace of the tower; dawn, midnight, lunchtime . . . I see it now like a scene in a movie, a wordless montage of togetherness. He told me he loved me a hundred times a day. He cried because he loved me so much, and couldn’t believe that we were finally together; that he’d finally found the woman he was going to marry.
This is what I’ve been missing all these years, I’d thought, drunk on love and lust. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Sean would just have to stretch out a hand to me and before we could say a word we’d both be naked, and I’d be on him or him in me, gazing into each other’s eyes, moving together . . . it was magical.
But I suppose that’s not what love is all about. You can’t spend your entire lives locked up in towers, ivory or otherwise, walking on beaches, having fabulous sex. You can’t. Because there are children to look after, bins to put out, direct debits to sort, livings to be made. There is baggage: so much baggage! Guilt and regret and recriminations.
Obvious, really—but when you’re in your tower, none of that matters. You think that because you feel that strongly then and there, you will always feel that strongly. You are invincible, because you have discovered what love really is.
Except that you are wrong.
I loved Sean, still love Sean, perhaps will always love Sean. But I want Richard back. Richard loved me more, and I pushed him away. I made an enormous mistake, and it’s too late to change it now. It might be too late to change anything now.
Chapter Eleven
Day 2
If I can manage to convince myself that I’m here to help Claudio, I can just about keep the panic under control. I tell myself that he is a disturbed, lonely individual who is desperate for company and who I’m helping by talking to him. All I have to do is be able to fool him into thinking I love him. I’ve pretended to love people before—and in Richard’s case, the pretence became reality. Claudio’s not going to hurt me, if I can pull it off. He’s not showing any signs of violence. He can’t keep me here forever. He wouldn’t really kill me.
Would he?
I’m still kind of annoyed that Claudio wasn’t an internet date. It would be so much more . . . what? Credible? Interesting? Horrific? I could become the poster child for anti-internet dates. I could set up my own website and helpline. Whereas in fact the worst thing that ever happened to me on an internet date was Gerald screaming at me (which was, admittedly, quite bad).
Oh, and there was Dirk. That was pretty disastrous, but in a ‘makes a good dinner party story’ way rather than a ‘life in danger’ sort of way. Dirk and I had got along like a house on fire by email and on the phone. I’d seen photos and he didn’t appear too hideous, but it was his astounding intellect that had really impressed me. The brain is the body’s biggest erogenous zone, I kept telling myself, feeling a nascent tickle of sexual excitement after the first long telephone call. Here was a man who could teach me things I didn’t know. He used words in conversation that I had to look up in the dictionary—‘palimpsest’, ‘sublunary’, ‘nosocomial’—and I was far more impressed than I ought to have been. Particularly since anybody who actually manages to shoehorn those sorts of words into a casual sentence has got to be a total prat. But when I met him, my heart instantly plummeted. He looked like Elton John, short and podgy, with lots of teeth all clamouring for attention. Over insanely expensive cocktails at the Groucho, he was, within the hour, telling me about the night—not that long ago—he spent fifteen hundred quid on prostitutes and cocaine. Four prostitutes, all at the same time. I was shocked.
‘Are you shocked?’ he asked, perhaps hopefully, perhaps shamefacedly. I couldn’t quite tell which.
‘No, not at all,’ I lied, trying to stop my eyes bugging out. Then he told me a story about when he got caught short whilst driving along the M62 and had to pull over onto the hard shoulder and do a poo over a fence. Not quite sure how he got onto that subject after the coke and hookers, but never mind.
‘No kidding, Jo, it was the size of a wine bott
le,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I do have this big self-destruct streak,’ he added miserably.
I didn’t say anything, but I mentally agreed that he probably did. See, I knew lots of people had one; it wasn’t just me. I ditched him the next day, declining his offer of a second date. He sent me a sad little text: YOU’D BE AMAZED AT HOW GOOD I LOOK WHEN I’VE DROPPED A STONE. Personally, I don’t think I’d have been all that amazed. Plus, it made me think of the wine bottle again. Poor Dirk.
Anyway, Dirk and his wine-bottle-sized al fresco faeces fade into insignificance next to the horrors of Gerald and Claudio. Surely probability would indicate that my chances of meeting a decent man ought to be increased, not decreased, by the number of dates I’ve been on? I must have been on twenty dates in the last six months. It had become like a drug, a dependency. With the anticipation of every single date came the hope that maybe, if this one worked out, it’d prove that leaving Richard was the right thing to do after all, and not just another crashingly obvious example of my utterly crap instincts.
Like going out for that meal with Claudio when I’d already realised I didn’t fancy him anymore.
I swear that if I ever get out of here, I am going to pretend that I met Claudio on a dating website, and then write an article about it for The Daily Mail. Medical writing can be so dry—I’d like to get into journalism. Try to get something positive out of all this. And I’m never going on another date ever again.
It’s five o’clock in the afternoon and he’s back in my room. He came in when he got back from Sainsbury’s, carefully locked the door behind him, and put on some testosterone-y thriller movie that I don’t recognise and couldn’t be less interested in. Unbelievable! He sidled over and sat on my bed, almost as if he was hoping I’d snuggle into his side with a smile. When I shrank away to the most distant corner of the mattress, he sat uncomfortably upright to watch the TV, stubbornly gazing at the screen. He’s mad. I wish there was a chair in here so he didn’t have to keep sitting on the bed.
