The Woman Next Door(17)

Images from last night keep racing through my mind: talking to that woman at the start who kept laughing like I was the funniest woman ever. Saying ‘Pimm’s o’clock!’ to someone and finding it almost unbearably funny. Someone (Tilly?) speaking to me gently and telling me a ‘nice lie-down’ would ‘sort me out’.

My mind drifts to that man on the landing this morning. Who on earth was that? He didn’t look at all like one of Mark’s friends. Come to think of it, where was Mark?

He had tattoos. I keep picturing the coarse black hair on his chest and arms. Some men are like monkeys under their clothes. And the sight of … that. Mocking me with his lack of modesty.

I close my eyes in disgust.

My head still aches, despite the aspirin I forced down with my cup of tea when I got back. So much for taking my punishment. But it did hurt so very much.

It really is odd that I should have had quite such a strong reaction to the alcohol. I’ve never been a drinker but I’m sure I didn’t have that much Pimm’s. Maybe it is just more potent than I ever realized? The memory of its cloying taste makes my stomach churn again, and I close my eyes then sink under the surface of the water, allowing it to close over my head like a baptism.

When I emerge I am crying in great gulps. I keep picturing Terry laughing at me being in this state. Oh yes, he would have found this very amusing, I’m sure. He was always trying to encourage me to ‘have a drink and let go a little’.

I was always the butt of his jokes. Always the ‘funny old thing’ who took things too seriously and didn’t seem to know how to enjoy herself. Funny old, silly old Hester.

This is another reason to avoid alcohol. It causes all sorts of unwanted memories to surface. The dirty silt at the bottom of my mind has been stirred up.

‘Leave me alone, Terry,’ I gulp into the steamy air.

He once suggested we take a bath in here together, in the early days. I was quite unable to think of an excuse. My parents were gone by then and the house was all mine, but it still felt wrong.

But I agreed. It was the early days, as I said.

We met at Bentley’s, the engineering works that has long been closed down. I was an Office Manager, having started as an assistant straight from secretarial college and working my way up. He worked on the shop floor.

It took a year of him asking before I gave in and went out with him for a drink. At 35, I was seeing colleague after colleague leave to have babies and time was beginning to pinch.

I went for the drink, then we had some country walks together. He told me he was ‘really falling for me’, after a couple of months. He’d been married before, but she died quite young. As for me, well, I’d never really met the right person.

He had all sorts of ideas and he was quite unlike anyone else I’d ever met. He liked to invent things in his spare time and was always saying he would come up with a gadget that would make our fortune.

It all turned out to be rubbish, of course, from the remote control that was also a holder for a cup of tea (for goodness’ sake) to the teddy bear that contained a ‘nappy pouch’. Rubbish, all of it. No one wanted to invest in any of his ideas, and in the end he had to set up a painting and decorating business. He couldn’t get a job anywhere else after Bentley’s closed down. I didn’t know about how weak and useless he was in the early days. He behaved like a gentleman and seemed to have something about him, so I suppose I was fooled.

When he proposed, after a rather lovely evening in an Italian restaurant, he went down on one knee, and I think I was genuinely happy in that moment. The future seemed so rich and full of possibility.

In those early days, I still thought that the ‘other’ side of things would start to be more enjoyable with a little practice.

When he made the bath suggestion, I’d tried to laugh it off, saying it was far too small. Then he’d caught me up in his arms and whispered into my hair that it would only be nice and snug. So we tried it and it was every bit as uncomfortable and unpleasant as I’d imagined. He insisted that I lay between his legs, facing away from him, and I could feel bits digging into my lower back straight away.

I closed my eyes and pictured the wonderful prize that was waiting for me after all this: a smiling, pink-cheeked baby.

I had so much love to pour into a child. I would have been the very best mother. It had always been my goal, ever since I was small. I had a baby doll called Susie-Sue that I loved until she was merely a torso with staring eyes and a grubby grey patina to her once-pink flesh.

I even thought I might call my own daughter Susie, although I also loved the name Rachel. For a boy, I had William and Daniel picked out long before there was any chance of a conception.

I waited so long. So very long.

‘Damn you, Terry,’ I say loudly, shocking myself when the words bounce back at me. I realize I have been digging my fingers into my arm again, the old habit resurfacing today. It is almost as though I have been outside myself, and I blink, a little shocked to see I am still in the bath and that the water is now quite cool.

I’m only aware now of an insistent sharp ringing and realize with a start that it is the front doorbell. I can’t possibly answer. Whoever it is has to go away.

But what if it’s Melissa? I don’t want her to think I wasn’t going to apologize.

I quickly climb out of the bath and pull on my robe, which clings unpleasantly to my damp, mottled skin. Stuffing my feet into slippers, I hurry out of the bathroom, calling out, ‘Hang on!’ in a voice that sounds shrill even to my own ears.