Page 15 of A Touch of Magic at the Comfort Food Café
‘Luckily, I barely know how to use mine,’ she answers, grimacing. ‘WhatsApp is the outer limit of my ability. But I know what you mean; it’s like your whole brain is downloaded into your phone these days.’
‘Absolutely, and it’s not good,’ I reply firmly. ‘It’s bad enough if you just lose it, never mind have it invaded. Anyway. This dragged on for maybe another month, with me getting more and more paranoid, him getting more and more controlling. Every time I got to the stage where I just wanted to end it, he somehow pulled it back. There would be some grand romantic gesture, a night in a swish hotel, my favourite flowers, whatever. He hadsome kind of sixth sense for when I was about to end it. I felt like I couldn’t end it, like I was trapped. Looking back, I’m so angry with myself.’
‘I don’t see why you should be,’ Cherie replies. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were just being a human. He was being a monster. How did it all work out? Obviously, not well, from the fact that you’ve moved hundreds of miles away.’
‘I didn’t just move because of him, Cherie. I was ready for something new anyway, and I’ve always wanted to live by the sea. But I can’t deny getting away from him was a real bonus– even though I still think about him way too often for my liking. Eventually, I did something totally out of character– I hired a private investigator. The way I saw it, either something was wrong, and I needed to know, or I was indeed just being paranoid and potentially ruining a good relationship with my own insecurities. Like he constantly told me I was.’
I had all kinds of pre-conceived ideas about what a P.I. would be like, most of which turned out to be completely untrue. For a start, mine was a woman in her thirties, fit and healthy and without any apparent tendencies towards alcoholism, depression, or wearing rumpled trench coats. She listened to what I had to say and nodded in a way that seemed to imply she’d heard this kind of story a few times before. She took some details and asked me what I was hoping to get out of this. The truth, I said, no matter how boring or how ugly. Just the truth.
It didn’t actually take very long for it all to unravel. I told her when he’d be at mine, and one morning she followed him when he left. Cheryl, the P.I. is a very ordinary-looking lady, neither too big or too small or too pretty or too fashionable. Not noticeable in any way at all. I’m guessing that must be an asset in her line of work. She certainly seemed to have no problem trailing ‘Martin’ all the way back to a three-bedroomed semi-detached house in Wembley. Once she had that address, she was easily able to discover the rest.
I explain some of this to Cherie, who shakes her head in astonishment. His real name was Scott Jones and he actually worked in HR for an IT firm. He was married, not divorced, and had three children– one of whom played tennis at county level, and who he had to take to matches most Saturdays. He did not own a dog, or in fact even a cat. Everything he had told me was a complete fabrication.
A little more digging by Cheryl revealed that his marriage wasn’t exactly on steady ground, and that the police had been called to the property on several occasions to deal with domestic disputes. He had no criminal record, but her contact in the police force confided that they suspected there was more to him than met the eye.
I was horrified on so many levels. I felt like an idiot, for being taken in so easily. I felt like a gullible, desperate fool, one so keen to find a man that she would fall for a pack of lies. And I felt like a vile, morally bankrupt piece of trash for having slept with another woman’s husband. No matter how many times I told myself that I hadn’t known he was married, I still felt dirty and soiled by it. I would never, ever do that, not in a million years. It’s one of the many things I will never forgive him for: making me break a deeply held rule, something that I was especially sensitive about since my husband was unfaithful to me.
While listening to Cheryl calmly present her report, I managed to hold myself together, at least on the surface. Inside, I was a mass of emotions– bitterness, self-pity, disappointment, fury, and good old-fashioned anxiety.
‘I’d change all your locks, your passwords, your phone number, and get all of your IT devices professionally checked if I were you,’ Cheryl had said, all business. ‘We can’t be sure what his motivation was, and you’ve said that there’s been nofinancial intrusion, but that doesn’t mean we can rule it out. You also need to consider whether to file a police report or not. The issue is, lying to a woman isn’t actually a crime– although personally I think it bloody well should be!’
‘Can you imagine?’ I’d said, momentarily distracted by the idea. ‘They’d have to build new jails! I have… I have no clue why he’s done this. What has he gained?’
‘I can’t answer that. Only he can. Could be he’s playing a long game, and eventually he’d have asked you for something– an investment in his business, a loan, whatever. Could be he genuinely liked you, and like a lot of middle-aged men, was living out a fantasy life because he was bored of his real one. Could be that he’s just a sick, twisted scumbag who gets his kicks by manipulating women. There’s a lot to think about, and you need to make some decisions about how to proceed. I’d obviously suggest ending it immediately, and taking security precautions. Just because he doesn’t have a criminal record doesn’t mean he isn’t potentially dangerous.’
I stayed in a hotel that night, while I tried to process everything I’d learned. I felt like a cliché. I needed to hide away and lick my wounds, and also come up with a plan. Ironically, he called me over twenty times that night. This was not unusual; if I didn’t answer, he didn’t just leave a message and wait for a call back, he just kept ringing. I suppose I’d gotten used to it, persuaded myself it was a sign that he was so keen to speak to me. In reality, it was a sign that he was unhinged and didn’t like to have me out of his control.
The next day, when I went back to my flat, he was waiting for me there– outside, as though he didn’t actually have a key at all. I didn’t want him inside with me, and insisted that we went to a nearby café instead. Once we were there, I told him it was over. I told him I knew who he really was and that he’d lied to me. I had no idea how he was going to react. Part of me expectedhim to deny it, or to claim he’d done it because he had genuinely fallen for me and got in too deep. What I didn’t expect was what actually happened.
He listened to my words, which I’d managed to speak with an amazing level of calm, considering the turmoil going on inside me, and then everything changed. His eyes, his face, his voice– it was like he morphed into a completely different human being. Even now, almost a year later, I can still see that transformation. It’s burned into my eyeballs, a dark stain that I can never wash out.
‘You arrogant bitch,’ he’d said, his voice so low that nobody around us could possibly hear him. ‘You don’t get to end things with me! You’re the one who was desperate. You’re the one who started this. Locked in your ivory tower writing your stupid books, you couldn’t wait to find a real man, instead of the ones you made up. And at your age, who the hell is going to want you anyway? I felt sorry for you, that’s all!’
I just stared at him, feeling like he’d slapped me. I went to stand up, to leave before I gave him the satisfaction of seeing me cry, but he grabbed hold of my hand and held it so tight I could feel the little bones in my wrist grinding against each other.
‘You. Don’t. Leave. Me. Understand? This is over when I say it is, and not before.’
I was terrified, but also angry. Angry that this absolute arsehole of a man felt he had the right to treat me like this, to treat his wife like this, to treat anybody like this.
‘You’re wrong about that,Scott.It is over. If you touch me again, contact me again, even so much as mention my name again, I’ll report you to the police. And your wife, now I come to think of it. I’ll tell anyone who will listen what you did to me.’
‘Yeah? And how are you going to prove it? It’s my word against yours. I’ll just tell them the truth– that you were begging for it. Good luck proving I’ve done anything criminally wrong.My wife? Well, she’ll be annoyed for a bit, but she’ll forgive me in the end. She always does.’
He sniggered at that, and my overwhelming feeling in that moment was one of horror– horror that I’d been so thoroughly fooled. Horror that after years of solitary behaviour I’d gone against my instincts and finally let someone into my life only for them to turn out to be this hideous creature sitting across from me. How could I have got it so very wrong?
I ran from that coffee shop, into the rainy London streets, tears in my eyes, my heart pounding. I didn’t go home for another week, not until the locks had been changed, the doorman briefed, and all my devices replaced. Even then, I didn’t feel safe. The place was still filled with memories of him. Of him in my bed, of him drinking wine at my dining table while we ate dinner. Of us sitting together on the sofa watching movies. Of all the normal, day-to-day stuff that I had wanted to believe in, but that in the end had done nothing more than show me I was right all along– I shouldn’t trust anybody. And more to the point, I shouldn’t trust myself.
Cherie takes all of this in, remaining silent as I tell the story, lost in the past and my own regrets. I am surprised to feel tears on my cheeks when I finish, and even more surprised when Cherie reaches out and takes me into her arms. She holds me there, letting me cry for what feels like forever. I don’t even fight it. It feels good. She is big and warm and solid and kind, and those are all wonderful things to have in your life. When I finally pull away, borderline embarrassed at the snot and tears, she says: ‘You poor thing. None of it was your fault, you know that, don’t you? Was that the end of it, then? Did he leave you alone?’
‘No. At least I don’t think so. I’d get anonymous cards through the post– you know, like sympathy cards for when someone has died. Once I got a delivery of flowers, and when I opened the box, every single one of them was dead. Lilies. Hestarted leaving really awful reviews about my books on websites, under the name Martin Clifton, which is what he’d claimed he was called. He did other things, too. And… well, there were times when I thought I was being followed. I know I was probably imagining it, just stressed about it all, but I’d get that feeling, like I was being watched, you know?’
Cherie pats my hand and passes me a tissue from the box next to her. ‘Understandable to feel like that, my darling, but also possibly true. Don’t assume you were being paranoid. He sounds like exactly the kind of creep who’d do something like that. Has it carried on, all this time?’
‘Again, I think so. I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but there are constant small things happening. Maybe with less frequency. Maybe he’s getting bored of torturing me. But only a few weeks ago, someone posted a photo of me on social media, my face attached to a naked woman’s head. It was very obviously fake, but still, this stuff is embarrassing, and the online world can be cruel… I mainly stay off the internet, but my publicist noticed it. That could have been him, I suppose. Or it could have been your bog-standard online weirdo. I really, really don’t like people knowing who I am.’
‘Tough in your line of work,’ she replies sympathetically.
‘Yes. I just want to do the writing. Ideally, I’d be completely anonymous.’
