Page 73 of The Women

‘I know, babe,’ Aisha says, squeezing her hand. ‘I know.’

After a moment Jenny asks, ‘And the reason you’re asking about the drugs now is because …?’

Samantha sips her peppermint tea. It is hot and sweet. She feels it trickle down. ‘I found some pills in the glove compartment of his car last night, that’s all. And this morning I found some powder in the bathroom.’ She doesn’t specify where. She doesn’t tell them about the silk scarf or the hair dye or the sodding latex gloves. It already feels like she’s beyond naked, like she’s opened up her very guts for surgery. But at the same time, there is relief in voicing it, as if she has taken a hazy whiff of anaesthetic.

Jenny fixes her with her green eyes. ‘OK, so there’s another reason I finished with Peter.’ She inhales deeply, blows out, making her cheeks round. ‘I think we both found, like you did, that he was more loving at night. And then, like you said, the cold snaps, the indifference. And then I met Aisha and found out he was a cheat, so I thought maybe that was why his moods changed so much. Anyway, the next night, I went up to the house and I told him I’d found out about Aisha. It’s over, I said. You’re a shit, basically, is what I said.’

Samantha feels her eyes widen. ‘Really?’

‘Yep.’

‘What did he say?’

Jenny scoffs. ‘He was all hand-wringing and apologies, told me he loved me, that he’d meant to finish it with Aisha but she was very needy, very anxious, but the good news was he’d found a way to let her down gently. Of course, I knew she’d finished with him the night before. Anyway, he was the soul of compassion, claimed he was worried about her, she’d been through a tough time. All this bullshit. He told me to sit down, that we should talk about it at least, would I let him pour us a glass of wine, said I owed him that much, then if he couldn’t make me stay we could at least part as friends.’ She sighs, rolls her eyes. ‘I didn’t want a scene. I thought I’d drink his wine, hear his BS, then make my exit as gracefully as I could. I was in the living room. And for some reason, I don’t know why, I decided to spy on him. It sounds ridiculous, but I’d had the blow of finding out he’d had a serious girlfriend the whole time we’d been seeing each other, plus, like you said, Sam, there were all these other things I couldn’t put my finger on but that were adding up. I didn’t trust him anymore; I suppose that’s all it was. So I crept out into the hallway and I watched him from the kitchen door.’

‘And?’ Samantha cannot take her eyes from Jenny’s pale, freckled face.

‘I watched him pour two large glasses of red. And I saw him sprinkle his magic powder into both of them. And I knew two things. I knew that one, he was spiking my drink. And two.’ She hits her forefingers together, her eyes not leaving Samantha’s. ‘Two, I knew the bastard had been doing it the whole time.’

Twenty-Nine

‘He was basically medicating both of us,’ Jenny continues, shaking her head with the weary disbelief of a much older woman. ‘My theory is that Peter Bridges is a narcissist who knows he’s a narcissist. He takes E because it manufactures empathy, because there’s no other way he can feel it. So don’t bother trying to work it out or find it, my darling, because it isn’t there. The drugs put it there, end of. That’s why he likes the way they make him feel, the way they make him behave. He’s intelligent enough to know he’s nicer when he’s on them, that he appeals to women when he’s on them. Sick bastard. That’s my amateur theory, and I’m sticking to it. And for the women, myself included, the drugs produced feelings of affection and euphoria.’ She gives a flick of her hand. ‘I thought I was falling for him when in fact I was loved up, as they say.’

Samantha lets Jenny talk. But as she vents her obviously still fresh anger, she leaves the subject of Peter behind and moves on to the entire world and all its ills. Everything is the fault of men, including her lack of career, Brexit and the state of the planet. Jenny hates men. She has put all of them together and has no faith in any of them anymore.

This is what I will become if I don’t get out, Samantha thinks, watching Jenny’s mouth curl itself around its venomous topic: not yet thirty, a lava of hate bubbling always beneath the surface of me, informing almost everything I do.

‘I mean, who does that?’ Jenny is saying, and, ‘I mean, men just think they have the right … objectifying … bullshit … so much porn they can’t even get it up with a normal woman …’

This lava will spill out of every orifice, Samantha thinks. It will cool and calcify into bitter black rock. That’s no future. For herself, for Emily. Therearegood men in the world.

‘And as for equality.’ Jenny throws up her hands. ‘What equality? Look at the fucking pay gap …’

I will be bitter, Samantha thinks.I will be lonely. I will be alone.

‘I don’t care if I never meet another man again. I’m done. I’m fucking done.’ With a shake of her head and an emphatic swig of her latte, which must by now have gone cold, Jenny finally finishes.

Samantha edges her bag onto her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’ She turns to Aisha. ‘I feel terrible for what you’ve both been through.’

And Lottie. Lottie too. And, she knows without a doubt, others, many others, at the hands of Peter Bridges and those like him.

‘Yeah, well.’ Jenny’s voice is still a little shaky. ‘It’s not you who should be sorry. We just thought we should warn you. As I said, women need to stick together. We need to share our stories.’

Samantha stands up. ‘I have to get back. Emily needs her tea and I need to think.’

‘All right, babe.’ Aisha rubs her arm, smiles that wide, warm smile of hers while Jenny calls an Uber, tells Samantha they can settle up next time.

‘What will you do?’ Aisha asks, hugging Samantha outside the café.

Samantha shrugs. ‘I appreciate your honesty, I really do. I think Peter’s behaved appallingly, no doubt about that, but I think it was out of fear. He has a family now and I don’t think he’d do anything to jeopardise that.’ She sounds like a robot. ‘I really am sorry he treated you guys so badly, but it looks like you’ve both found a lovely friendship on the back of it.’

Aisha smiles a little doubtfully. ‘Hey, listen, you’ve got every right to do what you want to do. Jenny and me were just trying to make sure you had the facts.’

Jenny, however, is staring at Samantha, eyes round, jaw slack with incredulity. Samantha averts her gaze.

‘I have Emily to think about.’ Ignoring Aisha’s move to help her, Emily tucked awkwardly under one arm, Samantha folds the buggy with some difficulty and lets the driver throw it into the boot. She ducks into the back seat of the cab, away from the perceptive glare of the two women.

The taxi pulls away. Samantha waves goodbye. Once they turn the corner, she sinks back in her seat and lets out a long, shaky breath. Peter drugs women. She can’t believe it. She doesn’t believe it. But of course, she can. She does. Just as she believes that he will have done, is probably doing, the same to her. It makes complete sense, down in her gut. And of course, since she moved in, she has never seen him open and pour their wine.Go and sit down, he has said. Or,Hey,go and light the fire.Take the weight off, relax, I’ll bring it through…She doesn’t have to spy on him; every word Jenny and Aisha have said is like a dark mirror – she doesn’t need to look into it to know she will see herself and all that she knows. She remembers her mother, immediately after things came out, face streaked with black mascara, balled-up tissue clutched in her fingers.Thing is, Sam, I knew, she said.I knew but I didn’t know, do you know what I mean?Samantha nodded, said she understood. But she didn’t. Not really.

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