The Woman He Loved Before by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online Page A

ago didn’t see you turn and run here the second you spotted him coming towards you. When you were doing something like that, everyone looked at you as if you were strange, beautician’s uniform or not.
    I’d seen Jack several times in the past few weeks and I always ducked into a shop or crossed the road to avoid the possibility of having to acknowledge or – worse – speak to him, hoping while I did so that he hadn’t seen me. This was the first time I’d had nowhere to run to, though, so had been forced to do this. Or to put my hands over my eyes like Benji used to do when he was two, because he thought no one could see him if he couldn’t see them.
    ‘I think you probably win the award for the most inventive way to avoid talking to me,’ Jack said.
    I froze, wondering if it was too late to try the hands-over-my-eyes thing. Slowly, I uncurled myself and stood upright. Jack and I sighed at the same time, both of us frustrated but for different reasons.
    ‘Look, Libby, can’t you just talk to me? It doesn’t sit right with me that we don’t speak when we’ve …’ He didn’t need to say it because we both knew what we’d done.
    ‘Doesn’t bother me,’ I fibbed.
    ‘It bothers me, a lot. I’ve seen you cross the street and throw yourself into shops to avoid me. I want to make things right.’
    ‘There’s nothing to make right. We did what we did and we just have to pretend it didn’t happen.’ I chanced a look at him. As I did so, I flashed back to his face in the mirror a moment before he told me he wanted to fuck me and I cringed, and refocused my eyes on wooden slats of the pier floor.
    ‘But it did.’
    ‘And for you it happened with a lot of other people – do you hound every one of them?’
    ‘I have no need to because I still speak to them.’
    ‘You mean, when you’re in need of …’
    ‘No!’ he said sharply. ‘I don’t mean that at all. I mean we exchange conversation if we pass in the street.’
    ‘Why is it so important that I speak to you?’ I asked. ‘What difference does it make to anything?’
    ‘Why is it so important that you don’t speak to me?’ he asked, obviously thinking if he turned it round on me I might change my mind or something.
    ‘I told you why: speaking to you, seeing you reminds me of something I’d rather forget. I’m still ashamed about what I did.’
    He stood in silence for a while. ‘Look, walk with me down to the end of the pier and while we walk, tell me everything that is wrong with what happened between us. I won’t talk, I won’t interrupt or try to justify myself, I’ll simply listen, and you can purge yourself of that night. Hopefully it’ll be cathartic, and ifafterwards you still don’t want to speak to me, I’ll respect that. I’ll walk past you in the street like you’re a stranger. What do you say?’
    ‘Libby, I’m going to be right here, waiting,’ Jack tells me. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You’re going to be fine and I’ll see you afterwards.’
    October, 2008
    ‘I’ve lost my bet. And won my bet as well,’ Jack said to me, as we leaned on the railings halfway along the pier.
    The length of the pier wasn’t long enough to talk about what we were talking about. It was an unusually warm October, even this late in the day, so there was only a slight edge of coolness to the air, which allowed us to stand by the railings, watching the waters swirl below as we talked.
    ‘Bet with who?’
    ‘Myself. I bet myself that I would be able to get through this without doing something to mess it up.’
    ‘You haven’t done anything to mess up.’ He had been impressively attentive while I had tried to explain how bad I’d felt that we’d had great sex that was so impersonal. Once I started talking, I realised that it was difficult to convey what I felt without bringing up the fact we didn’t kiss. Theoretically, I could have kissed him (even though there didn’t seem to be the opportunity) so, logically, it was my own