The Girl I Used to Be(42)

I had no choice. I grabbed an overnight bag from under the bed and crammed some clothes and toiletries in it for the next day, then picked up my handbag and car keys and left the house.





THIRTY


AN HOUR LATER I was in a hotel five miles from home and on the phone to Joe. It was only when I was safely in the room that I remembered I was supposed to be calling to speak to Rory. I’d decided not to tell Joe anything while he was away and still couldn’t figure out whether to tell him, or even what to tell him.

“Is Rory there?”

“I’m so sorry, Gem. He’s flaked out already. I gave him a bath and brushed his teeth and went downstairs for his cup of water and by the time I came back up he was flat out.”

“Can you take a photo of him? I really want to see him.”

“Okay.” I could hear him smiling and my heart just reached out to him. I wanted to be near him, to hold him. Both of them. I shouldn’t have agreed to them going away without me. I could hear Joe walking upstairs, then heard his mother’s voice. He said, “Won’t be long,” and I didn’t know whether he was talking to her or to me, but then a few seconds later my text alert sounded and Rory was on the screen. He was lying in a double bed with his two little cousins, his blond hair tousled, his Spider-Man pajamas pulled up to show his plump belly. All of them were asleep, snuggled up against each other, their faces pink and scrubbed after their bath.

I enlarged the photo so that I could just see Rory’s face. Tears welled in my eyes and I brushed them away. “He’s grown since I saw him,” I said. “He looks more like a boy than a toddler.”

“Oh now, we’ve only been gone a few days!”

“So you’ll be back tomorrow?”

He laughed. “Have you missed me?”

“Put it this way, you’re not going away without me again.”

“What, ever?”

“No,” I said. “I miss you too much. I need you here.”

“I promise. How’s work?”

“I’ve decided to promote Rachel to senior negotiator. She’s going to take over some of my jobs and in a while I’ll take on a junior. It’ll mean I can get some time off in the week.”

There was a silence, and then he said, “That was a very quick decision.” He sounded hurt; we usually talked over staffing issues together. “Won’t it be expensive?”

“Would you prefer me to work every day?”

“No, no, of course not.” He sounded defensive. “Stop putting words into my mouth. You know I didn’t mean that.”

“There’s no alternative.” Anger surged through me. He was on his holidays with his mum looking after him and he wanted me to carry on without any help! “Either I work every single day or I take on someone new. One or the other.”

He was quiet and I guessed he was figuring out whether the business could afford more staff.

“I need to go,” I said, though actually there was nothing I needed to do. I hadn’t brought any work home with me for a change, and I only had my Kindle for company. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Send me a text when the ferry arrives in Holyhead and I’ll make sure I’m home to meet you.”

I sounded subdued, I knew, and he hated that.

“Oh, okay, then, if that’s how it is,” he said. “I’ll give your love to Rory.” He ended the call and I knew that if he could have slammed down his phone, he would have.

I didn’t know what to do then. I couldn’t go home. I could not be in my bed at home at midnight, waiting for something to happen. What if someone came into my house? I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of that. I put the television on and flicked mindlessly through the channels. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t think straight. What on earth was I doing in a hotel on my own? I was being chased out of my own house. I thought of calling the policewoman, Stella, but by now it was eight o’clock and I guessed she wouldn’t be at work. And what could I tell her?

I looked at the e-mail again. What if Stella said that it was just junk mail? I knew it wasn’t, but how could I prove it?

Quickly I sent a reply:

Why are you doing this? What is it you want?

Just typing that message made me feel pathetic. That didn’t stop me from sending it, though. Thirty seconds later it bounced back: There was no such e-mail address. Of course there wasn’t. He’d closed it now.





THIRTY-ONE


AT NINE THAT night my phone beeped with a message. My heart leaped as I thought it was Joe, apologizing for our argument earlier. No such luck. An e-mail had arrived from the voyeur site in response to my query.

We operate under DMCA law, it said. There was a link to Wikipedia’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If someone makes an abuse request we process it and remove the content from the site.

Well, that was a relief. Now all I had to do was to find the photos. I switched my iPad on and started to search the site again, trying desperately to find any photos David had taken of me. I dreaded seeing them, but at least I knew now I could have them taken off the site. As I scrolled through pages and pages of images of women—yes, all women—being photographed in intimate situations, without a clue they were going to end up on a site like that, I started to cry. What kind of person was I dealing with here?