Before I Wake (20 page)

I fought back tears but said nothing. If this was James’s punishment for me sleeping with Steve, then so be it. There were worse things than public humiliation, far worse.

“Ever wonder why I stopped sleeping with you, Suzy?” He paused for a reaction then continued anyway. “When this is how you look? Do you have any idea how much of a turn-off men find a body like yours?”

A tear dribbled down my cheek. Fucking bastard. When this was over, when he finally ended my ordeal, I’d run so far away from him, he’d never find me again.

“And to think I felt guilty for going back to prostitutes!” He stifled a laugh and I realized I must have stiffened in surprise. “I just couldn’t bear making love to a fat, lardy lump anymore. And you were never very good at sucking dick.

“Right.” The sofa creaked as he stood up, and the room suddenly dimmed. He must have turned the lamp off. “Enough entertainment. I want to know why you fucked Steve, how many times you fucked Steve, how you fucked him, and whether”—he grabbed hold of my hair and yanked me backward—“you laughed at me the whole fucking time.”

“James, no!” I twisted and fought, hitting him, scratching him, and kicking him as he dragged me across the room and bent me over the glass table in the corner of the room. “Just let me go. Please.”

“Let you go?” I heard the zip of his fly opening and then the weight of his chest on my back as he hissed in my ear. “Suzy, I’m never going to let you go. Never. You’re a filthy whore, but you’re my whore. And besides”—he lifted my head from the glass then smashed it back down again—“I want you to apologize to Mother. She had a heart attack when she saw what I’d done to your room, what you made me do. I want you to spend the rest of your life apologizing, to both of us. Now then”—he kicked my legs apart and pressed his penis against my anus—“did Steve fuck you
here
?”

I stared across at the batik wall hanging and let the wide white eyes hypnotize me. My mind went blank as I slipped into the gaping dark mouth and disappeared.

“Sue, get in.”

I look around, expecting to stare into the cold gray eyes of my ex-boyfriend, but there’s no one behind me.

“Sue Jackson?”

A black Mercedes with tinted windows draws up alongside me, and a man beckons from one of the passenger windows. He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place—

“Steve Torrance.” He flashes me an electric smile and I recognize the dazzling white teeth. Alex Henri’s agent. I saw his picture on the Internet. He disappears back into the car and the door opens. “Get in.”

I glance behind me again, but there’s no one there. The alley is empty too. I can’t have imagined James running behind me. He was there; I saw his face. Where’s he gone? Did Steve’s car startle him into the shadows? Is he waiting for him to leave before he makes his move?

“Look, Sue.” Steve’s face appears next to the open door. “I’m a very busy man. Get in or tell me to fuck off, but just hurry the fuck up.”

I falter. Try and flag a taxi to Victoria and risk James reappearing or get in a car with a man I’ve never met before?

Steve’s smile widens as I open the door. He moves across into the other passenger seat, leaving the one nearest me empty. I look around one last time—the street is still empty—then slip into the car and lock the door behind me. A shadow crosses my window, and I jerk away from the door. “Can we just go now, please? Drive!”

The driver, an older man wearing a peaked cap pulled low over his eyes, twists around. “Who d’you think you are—Robert de Niro? This is the West End, love, not New Bloody York.”

He glances at Steve Torrance, who raises an eyebrow then turns to look at me, the smile still fixed firmly in place. “Where would you like to go, Sue?”

“Victoria.” I pull my handbag close, one eye still on the street. I keep expecting James to yank open the door and pull me into the street.

The driver shrugs, taps his indicator, and we pull away. The road is gridlocked with traffic, and it takes an age to get to the end of the street. It’s only when we hit a pedestrian-free road that I allow myself to relax.

Steve Torrance glances up from his Blackberry. “How much?”

I say nothing, assuming he’s talking to the driver.

“How much?” he says again, briefly catching my eye before he looks back at his phone.

I grip my bag to my chest. “How much what?”

“To keep quiet.”

“Sorry?”

“Look, Sue.” He leans back in his seat and tucks his mobile into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Let’s not mess about. Your big song and dance act in the club got you noticed, congratulations.” He laughs at his own joke. “So come on, how much is it going to take to stop you going to the papers?”

It takes a couple of seconds for what he’s saying to sink in.

“You think that’s why I did it? I confronted Alex because I wanted paying off?”

“You don’t?”

“No, of course not.” I adjust my seat belt so I can look at him face on. He can’t be much taller than me, but his large gut and lack of neck make him look broad, and there’s a sheen at the top of his bald head. “I’m not that kind of woman. My husband is Brian Jackson, MP for Brighton.”

“Great.” He reaches into his inside pocket, pulls out a handkerchief, and presses it to his brow. “That’s all I fucking need, the bloody government getting involved just because Henri can’t keep it in his pants.”

“So he did have sex with my daughter?” I ask the question as evenly as I can even though my heart is twisting in my chest.

He stops mopping to look at me. “Hang on one fucking second. It sounded to me—and every other twat with ears—that you were accusing my client of having sex with a minor. Are you saying now that he didn’t?”

“I didn’t accuse him of anything. I asked him to talk to me.”

“Stop the car!” He leans forward in his seat and holds up a hand. “Stop the fucking car right now!”

There’s a squeal of brakes, a horn honks, and then the car jerks to a stop. To our left is a park, an enormous iron fence wrapped around it, and to the right there’s a row of B&B-style hotels. The street lamps either side cast accusing pools of light on the beer cans, cigarette ends, and dog poo that litter the pavement. If we’re in Victoria, we’re not in the nice bit.

“Out.” Steve reaches across me and opens my door. “Get out of my car!”

“No.” I pull the door shut.

“What do you fucking mean, no?” His face is inches from mine. I can see the open pores and broken veins around his nose and smell the champagne and curry on his breath.

“I’m not getting out until you tell me what happened.”

“When?”

“When Charlotte and Alex Henri went to the toilets together.”

“You’re asking the wrong man, darling, because I wasn’t there.”

“Then I suggest you find out.”

“I should, should I?” His top lip curls into a sneer. “You’re not going to the press; you’ve already admitted as much.”

“No, but I could go to the police.” The sneer instantly disappears. “My fifteen-year-old daughter is in a coma and I have every reason to believe that what happened with your client may have put her there.”

“Whoa!” He raises his hands, palms out. “Who said anything about a coma?”

“I did, just now.”

“What the fuck?” He catches the driver looking at him and waves a hand for him to start the engine. A few seconds later, we pull away.

Steve leans toward me and lowers his voice. “If you’re accusing my client of harming your daughter, you’d better have bloody good evidence because—”

“I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I just want to know what happened when they met.”

He sits back in his seat. “I told you, I wasn’t there. I was in New York on business.”

The car turns a corner and there’s a sign for Victoria station. I glance at my watch. Fifteen minutes until the last train leaves.

I look back at Steve. “Can you arrange for me to speak to Alex to ask him what happened?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”

“Actually I do—”

“Here.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out his mobile. He hands it to me. “Put your number in. I’ll speak to Alex. I’ll give you a ring afterward.”

I key in my mobile number even though I have no idea whether I can trust him or not. He makes his living from painting his clients in the most flattering light, so if Alex does reveal something unsavory, he’s unlikely to share it with me. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he rang to say that he’d denied all knowledge of meeting Charlotte. If he even calls at all.

“All good?” He glances at the entry then tucks the mobile back in his jacket.

The car swings around a corner and then slows to a stop.

“Victoria,” the driver says.

Steve leans across the divide between us and holds out a hand. “I’ll be in touch,” he says as I shake it. The tiniest of frowns crosses his brow, then he sits back in his seat and pulls out his Blackberry. I open the car door.

Friday, October 23, 1992

James kept me captive for six weeks, only leaving to visit his mother in the hospital. Before he’d leave he’d disconnect the phone and make sure that every door and window was locked. After a week, Val, my supervisor at Tesco, called, asking to speak to me. I listened from the sofa as James told her I’d moved back to York because Mum’s health had taken a turn for the worse. No one else called.

I realized then that James could kill me any time he wanted and no one would miss me. It became my aim each morning just to make it through the day alive. Not that James touched me again. Well, apart from the time he caught me waving from the spare bedroom window, trying to catch the attention of an old lady hobbling along the street below. He beat me black and blue for that. Instead he ordered me about—telling me to sit here, stand there, get out of his way, cook his food—or else he completely ignored me. He wouldn’t let me read a book, watch a film, or tidy my sewing room. I was only allowed to do household chores or sit silently in the middle of the hallway where he could see me from the sofa in the lounge.

Three weeks after James raped me, I told him I needed to go to the pharmacy. He laughed in my face and said I should have worried about the clap before I slept with Steve.

“No,” I said. “My period’s a week late. I need a pregnancy test.”

I was terrified as I sat on the closed toilet seat, the pot of my urine and the small white stick on the lip of the bath beside me. Two years ago, I would have been over the moon if James had gotten me pregnant, but now I was shaking with fear. I was still clinging desperately to the hope that the memory of my “infidelity” with Steve would fade and James would get bored of having me around and let me go. But not if I was pregnant. If I was carrying his child, he’d keep me prisoner for at least nine months.

“Well?” He burst into the bathroom. I hadn’t shut the door; there was no point.

I held the paddle up to him and said nothing.

“Two blue lines?” He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I’m pregnant.”

I stepped up my attempt to escape the next time he left the house. The first thing I did was rip out the number for an abortion clinic from the Yellow Pages and stash it in the one thing that hadn’t been destroyed when James trashed my sewing room—the secret drawer in my table. I tucked it away with my diary and my savings and then searched the house for a way out, going through every drawer, every tin, every cupboard, and every wardrobe looking for something, anything, to help me. It took five days before I discovered the mink coat stashed at the back of Margaret’s wardrobe. I could barely breathe as my fingers stroked something small, cold, and metallic in one of the pockets. A key. A door key. She hadn’t been out of the house alone for years, but maybe someone somewhere was smiling down on me and it would fit the front door. I didn’t have a chance to find out, because the front door slammed open as I closed my hands around the key. Panicking, I shut myself in the wardrobe and hid, best I could, behind the mink coat. James’s footsteps reverberated throughout the house as he climbed the stairs.

“Suzy?” he shouted. “Suzy, where are you? I can’t smell dinner cooking. Have you been watching TV all day, you lazy bitch?

“Suzy?” The landing floorboards creaked as he crossed toward the sewing room, then again as he made his way back. “Suzy?”

The footsteps grew louder. He was in the same room as me. I held my breath, sure my thudding heart would give me away. Then “Suzy?” James’s cry was quieter; he’d gone back down the stairs.

I crept silently out of the wardrobe, pushing the key deep into my sock before I left, and hurried down the stairs.

James looked up in surprise as I burst in the living room. “Where the fuck have you been? I looked for you upstairs. You weren’t there.”

“Attic.” I gestured at the dust on my cheek (swiped from the top of one of the shoe boxes in Margaret’s wardrobe). “I remembered your mum saying she’d stored your baby clothes up there and went to have a look.”

“You did what?”

“I’m sorry.” I pressed my hand to my nonexistent bump. “I just wanted to make things nice for the baby. I thought we could turn my sewing, I mean, the spare room into a nursery. I thought it was a nice thing to do.”

“But…” James’s face returned to its normal color and his jaw softened, ever so slightly. “I didn’t see the step ladder. The hatch was shut.”

“I closed it,” I said, my hand still on my belly. “I didn’t want to risk tripping and falling through it. I didn’t want anything to happen to the little one.”

It made me feel sick, talking like that, like we were all going to play happy families and waltz off into our perfect primrose-colored future, but the “baby” was the only Achilles heel James had.

He looked at me for a second, his eyes flicking from my face to my belly and back again. He knew I was lying, but he so desperately wanted to believe.

“Don’t do it again.” He waved a hand for me to leave the room. “What’s in the attic doesn’t concern you. If the baby needs anything, I’ll be the one that provides for it.”

“Okay.” I felt the key press into my ankle, hard and reassuring, as I turned to go. “I’ll go and get tea on then, shall I? It’s turkey stir-fry tonight.”

I left the next day. I watched from the spare room window, the curtains open a millimeter, as James left for work, crossed the road, and stood at the bus stop. Terror ripped through me as he glanced up at the house, but then he looked away again, down the road. Thirty seconds later, he stepped onto the number 13 bus and was gone.

I flew through the house, jamming clothes, toiletries, a nightie, a towel, and food into a bag. I had no idea how long a private abortion would take or how long I’d have to be in the clinic. I didn’t know anyone who’d had an abortion so had no idea what it would cost, never mind entail, but I didn’t want to think too much about the latter. I already hated myself for what I was planning on doing. As for the cost, I just had to hope that £600 would be enough to cover it and get me a cheap flight abroad because, if James ever found out what I’d done, I needed to be as far away as possible.

I was standing in the sewing room, the diary and ad in one hand, a pile of notes in the other, when I heard it—the sound of a fist thumping on glass. I threw my secret spoils at my bag, tossed a paint-stained sheet over it, crept onto the landing, and pressed myself up against the banister. The noise was coming from the front door. Had James come home early? I dropped to my stomach and inched my way across the landing. If I could just get to the top of the stairs, I’d be able to see.

I shuffled forward slowly, freezing each time there was another knock. I was almost there when the metallic clatter of the letter box made me jump. I peered down the stairs. A white card lay on the front mat. A “sorry you were out” card from the gas man.

Thirty seconds later, I was on my feet again, this time with my bag in one hand, the key in the other, and speeding down the stairs.

“Please,” I prayed as the tip of the key jiggled against the lock. “Please fit, please fit, please—”

The door swung open.

I ran down the pathway and along the street and didn’t look back once. Not when I sensed the evil white eyes of the batik wall hanging burning into the back of my head as I fled. Not as the front door slammed shut in protest at my escape. And not when the vague memory of a yellow piece of paper fluttering to the floor of my sewing room as I tossed my diary at my bag flashed across my mind and then disappeared.