Who Loves You Best

by Tess Stimson

  “I’ll deal with Clare,” he says grimly. “She’s my wife, and this is my family. It has nothing to do with you. Stay out of it.” He picks up his briefcase, and turns in the doorway. “And if you ever … ever … speak to me like that again, I’ll make sure you’re thrown out so fast your feet don’t even touch the ground.”

  ———

  “Marc’s been amazing.” Clare sighs. “I’d never have gotten through this without him. He’s been so supportive.”

  The bastard shifts uncomfortably on the sofa. At least he has the grace not to catch my eye.

  I realize I’ve made a permanent and dangerous enemy. The first chance he gets, he’ll find an excuse that forces Clare to fire me.

  Well, screw him. Clare pays me, not him. She’s the one in charge.

  “Such a pity Marc couldn’t go down to the police station with you,” I say sweetly.

  “I was a bit upset at first. But that’s all forgotten now, darling,” she adds, turning to Marc. “As you said, someone had to stay home to organize things. And Davina’s lawyer did a brilliant job. I’m so glad Marc called her. She can be a bit difficult, I know, but she’s marvelous in a crisis.”

  Marc called her? Excuse me, I was the one who picked up the bloody telephone.

  Clare squeezes his hand. “I’m so relieved it’s all over. Honestly, Jenna, they’d got me to the point where I didn’t know which way was up. I was almost ready to believe I had given poor Poppy that salt.” She shudders. “The important thing is, she’s well enough to come home tomorrow. That’s what we have to focus on now.”

  “That’s fantastic news! Oh, Clare, I’m so relieved. What was it?”

  “They don’t actually know yet,” she says awkwardly. “But my lawyer made it clear that unless they can prove I had anything to do with it, they’ve got no reason not to let Poppy come home. I suppose they’re hoping I’ll be too scared of being caught to try anything again.”

  Poor cow. She’s far from a perfect mother, but she doesn’t deserve to be policed like this. In future, every time one of the twins falls out of a tree or off a skateboard, they’ll pull up Poppy’s case notes and treat Clare like a criminal. She’ll never be free of it.

  As it is, she’s lucky they haven’t taken this any further. If she wasn’t Lady Eastmann’s daughter, with a big-shot lawyer and a godfather in the House of Commons, she’d probably be in a jail cell with a bunch of tattooed lesbians right now, and the kids would be in foster care.

  “Jenna, can you come into the kitchen with me a minute?” Clare says. “Marc wants to have a little party on Saturday to celebrate Poppy coming home, and I’ve got a thousand things to organize.”

  She smiles brightly, but the weariness in her eyes tells a different story. This is the last thing she fucking needs. What the hell is he playing at now?

  Moments later, as the front door slams behind him, I discover his game.

  “I was hoping to get into work this afternoon, but I don’t think I’ll have time now,” Clare confides. “It’s very sweet of Marc, but I wish he’d waited until I’d got everything sorted out at the shop. It’s going to be days before I get a chance to go in now and catch up.”

  “Look, just tell me what you need me to do. I can hold the fort for a couple of hours.”

  “Oh, Jenna, that would be wonderful,” she says gratefully. She pulls out an emerald Smythson diary—I’d kill for one of those—and flicks through it. “I’m not sure who’ll be able to make it at such short notice. I know Marc wants to push the boat out, but I was thinking something a little informal would be better; that pretty black-and-white dress you wore to Davina’s would be perfect. Actually, we could make it a black-and-white theme—what do you think?”

  I think Marc would shoot me on sight if I crash his party.

  “It’s really sweet of you, Clare, but I’ll be going home. I baby-sat last weekend and—”

  “We did pay you overtime,” she says, slightly huffily.

  “It’s not that. It’s just … I promised my boyfriend….”

  “I realize Saturday is your day off, but obviously you won’t have to work this time, Jenna, you’ll be our guest.”

  Sure. And you’ll treat me just the same as Lady Horseface.

  “The thing is, Jamie hasn’t been well recently, and—”

  “I’m sure he’ll understand, after everything that’s happened. And it’ll give you a chance to meet our friends and get to know everyone. We haven’t had a party for ages.” She smiles persuasively. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  Fun? I know exactly what it’ll be like, and “fun” isn’t the word I’d choose. The women will patronize me or not speak to me at all; the men will talk to my cleavage and pinch my bum. Halfway through the evening, Clare will forget I’m a “guest” and ask me to pass around a tray of hors d’oeuvres. One of the twins will start wailing upstairs, and I’ll spend my precious Saturday night pacing the hallway and changing shitty nappies. Sometime around midnight, after everyone’s left, she’ll decide it’ll be much better if “we” clean up now rather than wait till morning, and I’ll be on my hands and knees getting red wine stains out of her Persian carpet at three A.M. Oh, yes. It really sounds like a riot.

  “You can tell me all about it on Monday,” I say firmly.

  Not that my weekend at home is likely to be a barrel of laughs either, I think wearily on Friday. I get the Tube home and walk back from the station, my feet dragging slower with every step. I’m exhausted from organizing Clare’s party; all I really want to do is sleep. And I still haven’t figured out what to say to Jamie. Easing out of this relationship gently is proving harder than I thought. He keeps guilting me into promising things I don’t mean. I’m going to end up walking down the bloody aisle still wondering how to dump him.

  I let myself into our flat. Every light is blazing, as usual, but I can’t hear the television, which means Jamie’s out. I hope he’s not down at the pub. He can get really violent when he drinks.

  The door jams on a heap of mail. I skim it quickly for anything interesting. Oh, joy: A magazine from Jehovah’s Witnesses and a special offer for a Stannah stair lift. All the others are credit card bills and ominous brown envelopes.

  I shove them in a kitchen drawer already overflowing with unopened mail, and dump my overnight bag in the living room. The room is a fucking mess. The floor is carpeted with pizza boxes, balled-up dirty socks, beer cans, and empty take-away containers. Newspapers are strewn across the couch. A copy of Playboy is open on the coffee table, surrounded by stiff wads of used tissues. Marc may be a loser, but at least Clare’s got him house-trained.

  I kick a pair of stinky trainers out of the way and unhook a brand-new Wii system that wasn’t here last time I came home—God knows how much that cost—before I trip over the trailing cables and break my neck. There isn’t room to swing a cat in here. You could fit our entire flat into Clare’s dining room.

  I turn off the lights and go upstairs, trying not to notice the mold in the bathroom and the black pubes stuck to the cheap supermarket soap. Funny how none of it bothered me before I moved in with Clare. I hate this shower. You could spit faster. My power shower at home—I mean, at Clare’s—is amazing. It has jets from the side, as well as the ceiling, and a sauna setting, so you can steam yourself clean if you feel like it. The toilet flushes first time, too, and there are no turds floating in the bowl. God, men are pigs.

  I’m toweling my hair in the cold bedroom when I hear a strange mewing coming from the hall closet.

  I wrap the thin, bleach-stained towel around me and storm onto the landing. Don’t tell me he’s got a bloody cat. I love animals, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have time for this right now. Jamie will get bored with looking after it in a few weeks, and I’ll be the one left with the vet bills.

  Where is he, anyway? It’s nearly eleven. There’s not much point in me making the effort to come home if he’s not even going to be here.

  I wrench open the closet, and
scream.

  “But I need you,” Clare protests. “It’s really important that I go in to work today. Please, Jenna. I’m sure your boyfriend can’t be that sick—”

  “Clare, he is. I’m sorry, but there’s no one else to look after him.”

  “Can’t you just dose him up with something and put him to bed? I’ll send a taxi to come and get you. You don’t have to stay overnight, I’ll be home by six—”

  “I’m sorry, Clare, I really can’t.”

  “There must be something you can do,” she insists.

  Oh, God. I need a break: from Clare and Jamie.

  “There’s really nothing—”

  “You don’t understand. You can’t let me down like this. I have to get to work. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Look, I’m not doing this on purpose,” I say tightly. “I didn’t ask him to get sick.”

  She sighs. “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Will you be back tomorrow? You are coming back, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m coming back,” I mutter.

  It’d be nice if, just once, she spared a thought for me. She hasn’t acknowledged how stressful the last few days have been for me, too. For God’s sake, Poppy nearly died, and then my employer was arrested! Obviously it was far worse for Clare, but she still managed to throw a cocktail party for fifty on Saturday. I’m sure she can deal with looking after her own children for a day or two. Her flowers will still be there when I get back.

  I promise to call her in the morning, and shut my phone. I wasn’t snowing her. If I had any choice at all, I’d much rather be looking after the twins.

  Jamie’s still sitting in the armchair nearest the television, dressed in the same filthy blue sweats he’s been wearing since I found him crouched in the hall closet on Friday. I was on the verge of calling an ambulance for the second time in a week, until I managed to persuade him to crawl out and get into bed. He’s been like a bloody zombie all weekend. How can I leave him like this? I’m tempted to call his shrink, but once people get in the system, it’s a bitch to get out of it again. If he’s sent to the loony bin, it’ll be on his medical records every time he goes for a job, or applies for a mortgage, for the rest of his life. Even after everything he’s done to me, I can’t do that to him.

  The scars on my inner forearms itch, and I run my fingers down the ladder of crisscrossing fine lines. I understand exactly what Jamie’s going through.

  In the months after my accident, I wanted to crawl into a dark cupboard and hide, too. One stupid woman fiddling with the car radio when she should have been concentrating on driving, a split-second swerve into the bicycle lane, and at eighteen years old, my whole life was screwed. I only started coaching at the Club because I couldn’t think what else to do. I couldn’t bear to give up the swimming life entirely; but then I found myself resenting everyone who still had what I’d lost. I hated the woman who’d ruined my life, hated the poor girl who’d taken my place on the team, hated everyone who dared to feel sorry for me; and most of all, I hated myself for turning into such a bitch.

  Cutting was my way of making it feel better. I still don’t know why I started, really. I’d seen this movie: Girl, Interrupted. Only Angelina Jolie could make being psychotic seem sexy. I don’t suppose the filmmakers meant to inspire me, but I was curious. And when I drew the paring knife across my arm and watched lovely scarlet ribbons appear, somehow it did make the knot of pain and misery inside me dissolve, for a while.

  Anna Martindale, the mother of the youngest swimmer on the team, found me one evening. I’d forgotten to lock the changing-room door and didn’t cover my arms in time. She didn’t say anything at first; she just sat down on the bench next to me.

  “I have leukemia,” she said quietly. She waited while I took that in. “Cancer of the blood,” she added.

  I think she meant to make me feel guilty for being so careless with mine.

  “Anna—”

  “I’m only telling you because I need someone to look after Maeve,” she said. “She’s only eight. The chemo is going to be pretty tough, and I’m not going to be able to give her the care and attention she needs.”

  I couldn’t say anything. I just stared at my feet.

  She squeezed my fingers. “Maeve loves you. You’d be perfect. And I think you need a change of scene,” she added gently, “till you feel yourself again.”

  If Anna hadn’t rescued me, I don’t know where I’d have ended up. She didn’t have to take a chance on me, especially with her own life thrown into chaos: Literally hanging in the balance. But she cast me a lifeline. Maeve needed me, and I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. It just takes one person.

  I reach out and touch Jamie’s shoulder. “Please. Come upstairs. You can have a shower, put on some clean clothes. We’ll spend the day together, just you and me—”

  He shakes me off, burying his head in his chest with a sullen growl.

  I sigh. I don’t want this responsibility, but there’s no one else. If only he had some family in this country. His father’s dead, and God only knows where his mother is. He does have an older brother in New Zealand, but—

  The phone rings, and without thinking, I answer it.

  “Jenna Kemeny?”

  “Yes—”

  “Ms. Kemeny, we act for GE Capital Credit. We’d like to talk to you about an outstanding debt of seven thousand four hundred and—”

  “You want my mother,” I fib quickly.

  “This is Jenna Kemeny?”

  “We, um, have the same name.”

  “I see. Well, do you happen to know when Mrs. Kemeny will be back?”

  “She’s gone on holiday,” I gabble. “To Argentina. She won’t be back for three months.”

  I say a quick prayer that my eminently prudent and sensible mother, who has never been in debt in her life and is happily running a wine bar with my father in Barnes, never finds out about this conversation, and hang up.

  Shit. Seven grand! How did that happen? I had no idea it was so much. Mind you, I haven’t actually opened a statement for months. It’s too depressing. Seven hundred, seven thousand: I haven’t got a hope in hell of paying it either way. If they can’t get hold of me, they’ll just give up in the end, won’t they? I mean, seven thousand is nothing to Visa. They’ll just write it off.

  Still. It’s not very nice, having people chasing you for money. Clare never has debt collectors ringing her. Marc could embezzle millions from her company, and she’d never even—

  I scream as a dead weight slams into me, knocking me to the floor. An iron band tightens round my throat. Within seconds, I’m struggling for breath. I claw at my neck, gasping and choking.

  “Who is he?” Jamie hisses in my ear.

  I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. My vision blurs.

  “Who was on the phone?”

  He’s twisting the phone cord around my neck like a garrotte. Should have got the hands-free, Jenna.

  “No … one,” I pant. “Just the … bank …”

  His grip relaxes slightly. I suck in oxygen, spluttering like a landed fish. Jamie kneels astride me, crushing me, the cord still wrapped around my windpipe. “You love me,” he repeats. “Say it.”

  “I love … you.”

  “Promise you’ll never leave me.”

  “Promise.”

  Suddenly, the pressure’s gone. Jamie slumps down against the wall, pulling me into his arms and stroking my hair. Tears stream down my cheeks and snot bubbles from my nose. “I can’t cope without you, you know that,” he murmurs into my hair. “Why do you make me do these things to you? Why do you make me so jealous?”

  “Didn’t mean—”

  “Show me how much you love me,” he whispers.

  I twist around. Jamie pulls down his filthy blue sweats and boxers, and looks proudly down at his erection. Violence always turns him on. My stomach lurches. Oh, God, I don’t think I can do this.

  His eyes narrow. “Come on, then.”

 
“Let’s just … take our time,” I prevaricate. “Why don’t we go upstairs, and you can have a shower and—”

  “I thought you said you loved me?”

  “I do, but—”

  He grabs my hair, and shoves my head down between his legs. He smells rank and sour. I gag as he thrusts his cock in my mouth. If I throw up, I think he’ll actually kill me. He’s gone way too far this time. He hasn’t just crossed the line: It’s a little dot receding into the distance.

  I give him what he wants, trying not to inhale his stench. I know it’s not all his fault. He’s sick. He doesn’t mean it.

  Clare wouldn’t put up with this, I think suddenly. Marc would never dare treat her this way. She has his respect, albeit grudging, because she demands it.

  What kind of fucking masochistic idiot am I? Instead of feeling sorry for Jamie and making endless excuses for him, I should have walked out the first time he hit me, and never looked back.

  Abruptly, Jamie stiffens, then pulls out at the last moment and deliberately squirts his cum into my face and hair. I wipe it out of my eyes, feeling dirty and humiliated. He laughs nastily, then gets to his feet, lazily tucking his spent dick into his pants.

  My scars tingle. I’m not sure who I hate most: Jamie for doing this, or me for letting him.

  ———

  “Everybody, this is Jenna,” Clare announces.

  “Hello, Jenna,” everyone choruses.

  Half a dozen groomed, no-makeup made-up faces smile politely at me. Pearl earrings, Chanel suits, Patrick Cox driving shoes, and the obligatory discreet Tiffany bling, almost to a woman. Clare’s International Crises Charity Committee. What do they do, distribute designer handbags to the unfortunates of Darfur?

  Clare takes my arm. “Come on, I want to introduce you properly—”

  “I really should see to the twins’ lunch,” I hedge.

  “It’s OK, Jenna, they’re still asleep, and the intercom’s on. Now, Fran you already know, but this is Olivia, Poppy—”

  “The original.” Poppy laughs.

  “Candida, Georgiana—you want to be very nice to her, Jenna, she has a gorgeous younger half brother, Fergus, and his father’s an earl,” Clare teases. “Play your cards right, and you could be Countess Jenna one day.”