was a cup of tea.
“Mind if I have a look?” he called.
I brought the mugs of tea through a few minutes later and he’d turned the lights on. My organizer was open in his lap and he was turning the pages.
“What are you doing?”
“I was curious. Who are all these people?”
The back of my organizer was full of business cards in a clear wallet. “Just people I’ve met at conferences, things like that,” I said. “You shouldn’t be looking in there.”
“Why not?” he asked, but he closed it and handed it back to me.
“I’m a personnel manager, Lee. There’s stuff in there about members of staff. Disciplinary meetings, things like that.”
He grinned.
“Okay. Are those fries still hot? I’m starving.”
Monday 24 December 2007
I came around slowly, my face against the carpet, the smell of vomit in my nose.
Almost immediately I started to panic again. Stuart tried to get me to breathe slowly. He held me, stroked my face, talked to me calmly, but at first it didn’t work. I couldn’t even hear him. I threw up again. Fortunately I was breathing enough not to pass out again, but in a way oblivion would have been kinder.
Eventually I heard him say, “Come back to me. Breathe with me, Cathy, come on. I don’t want to have to call for help. Breathe with me. You can do this, come on.”
It took a long time before I was calm enough to listen to him properly and understand what he was saying. He got me some clean clothes, some sweatpants and a T-shirt, because he didn’t want to leave me in the flat alone, and I wasn’t about to go downstairs. I was so weak I could barely stand, so he helped me to the bathroom and left me to get myself undressed and into the bath he’d run for me. He waited just outside the door, half open, and talked to me while I sat there, shaking, trying not to look at myself, trying not to look at the scars and what they meant.
It felt as if he was back in my head again. Or, not yet: but waiting. The images of him, the ones I’d fought to control, were still there. They had lost some of their sting. But now . . .
I used Stuart’s shower gel, my hand shaking so much that it spilled across my wrist and into the bathwater, but I got enough of it to soap my hands and try to get rid of the smell of sick from my hair and my body. The smell of the shower gel, curiously familiar, made me feel a bit better. I splashed water on my face and rinsed my mouth out with soapy bathwater.
“I was thinking about that first time I saw you,” he was saying, his voice so close as if he was sitting right next to me, but coming through the open door. He was sitting on the floor, outside in the hallway. I could see his legs stretched out in front of him. “That rental agent just barged in through the door; you must have been in the middle of checking. You gave me such a filthy look.”
“I don’t remember—did I?” My teeth were chattering. My throat was sore. Had I been screaming? I felt as if I had.
“You did.”
“The door was open—they’d left it unlocked.”
He laughed. “You poor old thing, how did you ever manage with them leaving the door open? Jesus.” The tone of his voice changed, then. “You were looking at me with this sort of horror that someone had crossed the threshold when you were in the middle of checking the door. I thought you were the most beautiful ball of fury I’d ever seen.”
I pulled at the plug with numb fingers. Listening to the sound of the water pouring away. I’d listened to that noise from my bed, in the flat below, the swish and gurgle, wondering what he was doing having a bath at three in the morning.
“I’m not beautiful,” I said, quietly, looking at the scars on my left arm, the deeper ones at the tops of my legs. The worst ones were still red, the skin still tight and itchy.
“I’m afraid that’s my call. Are you done?”
I managed to get up and put a towel around me. It was still a little bit damp from when he’d showered this morning. I felt completely tired, drained of all energy, and sat on the bath, waiting for my skin to dry on