‘I’m calling the police,’ I say.
‘No you’re not. Unless this is how you want your husband to find out that you’ve been seeing another man?’ He picks up the bottle and pours two glasses. I try to stay calm, to think, to understand what is happening. ‘You wanted me to come here, that’s why you left your keys at my flat.’ He puts them on the coffee table and I feel a brief moment of relief. I need those keys, not all of them belong to me. And then the penny drops.
‘You took the keys from my bag last night . . .’
‘Now why would I do a thing like that? By the way, it was very rude of you to leave my flat like that without saying goodbye.’
‘You put something… in m-my drink,’ I stammer.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asks. His perfect white smile still fixed on his bronzed face.
‘You must have. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
His smile fades. ‘Don’t play games, Amber. We’re too old for that now. You wanted to come to my flat. You wanted me to take your clothes off. You wanted all of it.’
I feel myself start to crumble.
‘I didn’t.’ My words seem to be coming from someone else, someone small and far away. He stands up and I take a step backwards. His eyes darken before the smile returns to his face.
‘May I?’ Without waiting for an answer, he reaches down and picks my phone up from the coffee table. He unlocks it without needing to ask for the code, then holds the phone up to my face so I can see what he’s looking at. ‘Does it look like I’m making you do something you didn’t want to?’
Everything stops. I want to look away but I can’t.
He scrolls through various pictures of a woman who looks a lot like me, but I’ve never seen myself like this before. My naked body. My open mouth. A look of pure pleasure on my face. I close my eyes.
‘You wanted to go all the way, but I’m too much of a gentleman for that. We must be patient and wait for the right time. I want you to end things with your husband, first – I’m not going to share you with him. We’ve wasted too many years apart but now we’ve got so much to look forward to.’ He takes another step closer, I take another step back.
‘You’re crazy.’ I instantly regret my choice of words as he slams my mobile back down on the table.
‘Don’t worry, there are plenty more pictures on my phone. I have a favourite. I was thinking of sending it to Paul. Such a pathetic sounding name, Paul. Poor Paul, I think it suits him. His email address is on his little author website, but then I thought no, you should be the one to tell him. Wasn’t that considerate of me?’ I turn to face him, my anger only slightly outweighing my fear. ‘You need to tell Paul the truth and ask him to leave. Then I’ll move in and we can start again.’
‘Start again? You’re fucked up, do you know that? You drugged me, you must have, none of this makes sense. I wouldn’t do that.’
His face twists into something sour. ‘You were begging for it,’ Edward says, standing right in front of me now. ‘Begging me to fill up every one of your dirty little holes.’
I have to get out of here, I have to find Paul.
I rush for the door but Edward gets there before me, slamming it shut with one hand and slapping me hard across the face with the other.
He hits me again and I fall to the floor.
‘Why must you always spoil everything? I’ve forgiven you for what you did to me years ago but I won’t let you make a fool of me again.’
I remember the letters that Claire said she wrote about him when we were students. I try to explain but he hits me again, knocking the wind and the words right out of me. I stop hearing what he is saying as his hands tighten around my throat. He lifts me off the floor and it’s almost impossible to breathe. I hit him with my fists and try to kick him but it’s as though he doesn’t feel the blows, like a fly trying to hurt a horse, I’m just an irritation.
I have to do something, anything, he’s going to kill me…
‘I’m pregnant,’ I manage to say. The two little words dance in the air between us. He wasn’t the person I had imagined telling first. I don’t think he hears me; I don’t think he wants to. I can’t think, can’t breathe. The very edges of my vision start to turn black, the darkness slowly spreading like ink spilling on blotting paper.
I hear the back door open.
Edward hears it too and drops me to the floor. I stay perfectly still, scared of what is going to happen next. He steps back and I think he’s going to kick me in the stomach. I wrap my arms around my belly and close my eyes, but there’s no need. Edward calmly walks out through the front door, quietly closing it behind him. I hear Paul fill the kettle in the kitchen and I know that I am safe, for now. He can’t see me like this. I stand up on shaky legs, double lock the front door, grab my phone from the coffee table and hurry upstairs, locking myself in the bathroom. Within moments Paul has followed me up.
‘Is that you?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I manage, struggling to remember how I normally sound and trying to mimic that.
‘How was Claire?’
Lunch with Claire seems so long ago now I’m confused at first as to why he is asking.
‘She’s good. I’m just going to have a quick bath, is that OK?’ I lean against the door. I so badly want to open it and let him hold me. I want to tell him how sorry I am for everything and how much I love him. I wish I could tell him the truth but he’d never forgive the real me. I look down at the phone in my hand and see the frozen image of my naked body on the screen. I feel sick. I delete it and another takes its place.
‘I put the Christmas decorations up,’ he says.
‘I saw that, looks really nice. I’m glad you got a tree.’
‘I found something else in the attic, when I got the decorations down.’ I hold my hand up to the wood. Imagining his hand on the other side, wishing I could hold it.
‘Not another wasps’ nest?’
‘Not this time. I found a box of old notebooks.’
I’m quite sure I stop breathing.
‘They look like diaries.’
We are all just ghosts of the people we hoped that we were and counterfeit replicas of the people we wanted to be.
‘I hope you didn’t read them,’ I say, wishing I could see his eyes, to know what he’s thinking and whether his next response is the truth.
‘Of course not. Well, at least not when I realised what they were. I was intrigued by the 1992 in big letters on the front of one of them though. How old were you then? Ten?’
‘Eleven,’ I reply. ‘You should never read another person’s diary,’ I add, sinking to the floor, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the wall. ‘They’re private.’
Before
Christmas Eve, 1992
Dear Diary,
I have never been awake this late before. It’s 1 a.m. and when the sun comes up it will be Christmas Eve. Taylor came to stay at our house last night and she’s still here, asleep up in my bedroom. Mum and Dad said she could stay one last time before we move; I threatened to cut my hair even shorter if they said no. We’re moving out on 27th December so that Dad can start his new job the next day. I’ll have to start at another new school in a whole new country in January, they don’t even know which one yet, that’s how little they care about me. Mum says Taylor can come and visit us in Wales once we’re settled in. Mum says things will be different this time. Mum is a LIAR.