What? WHAT! Someone else? How could there be someone else? His words made me feel like I’d been punched in the stomach but I kept the smile fixed to my face, the ice queen to the end, frozen in pain.
‘I think you and I should cool it for now,’ he went on. His voice seemed strained – but no wonder, I thought, he was breaking up with me. ‘This – us – it’s been amazing but, Dawn, I need to give this other relationship a chance.’
I nodded and smiled but I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. How could I have got it all so wrong? I didn’t understand. I just didn’t get it.
I stayed ten minutes longer at the party, weirdly detached from the other guests who all seemed to know one another. I recognized a couple of the businessmen from his office but Bryce didn’t introduce me to his friends and family and now I felt foolish and out-of-place. Eventually, I slunk away unnoticed and ran to my car, sobbing all the way home.
That night, I threw caution to the wind. Bryce had seemed so weird when he was telling me it was over, like he wasn’t quite himself. If there was any chance I could change his mind, I had to fight for him. His love was too important to me to just throw it all away. So, I sent him an email, saying he had broken my heart and that I loved him.
He didn’t reply.
Over the next few weeks, I felt increasingly despondent. What did you expect? I told myself. He is now single but you are still married, it is as simple as that. You have no hold on him – of course he wouldn’t be on the market long. A man like that!
But he knew I was unhappy in my marriage too, some part of me piped up. He could have asked me out, but he didn’t. Why? Didn’t he feel the same? I’d always imagined he did and he was just waiting for the right moment to tell me.
Now I fell into a deep depression, one from which I thought I would never fully recover. For the first time in my life I had glimpsed happiness and it had been cruelly snatched away. Had I been wrong about Bryce? I wondered. Had I misread the situation?
I should have guessed at the truth but in that moment, wracked by insecurity and misery, I simply blamed myself.
Chapter 23
Behind the Curtain
Empty, bare, pale, lifeless – the snow-covered fields provided a blank backdrop to our journey as we whizzed along the motorway. It was December 2006, over a year since Bryce had finished with me yet from that night on my life had felt lonely and featureless, just like the landscape around us. Stuart and I were on our way to one of Callum’s tennis tournaments at an indoor arena an hour out of town. Naturally, since my husband had drunk booze at lunchtime, it was up to me to get us there.
Callum had worked hard to build his career and now, at twenty, he was a professional sportsman. I was so proud of him. He was the shining light of my life and seeing him play always made me happy. Above all, I was pleased he had forged his own path and hadn’t been diverted into a life of crime. Of course, I didn’t relish attending these events with Stuart. I had nothing but contempt for my husband these days and we rarely went anywhere together. Now he was staring at me in that creepy way he always did while I tried my best to ignore him.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked after a little while.
‘Nothing,’ I replied automatically.
‘You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?’
‘Who?’
‘That lettings agency bloke – Bryce Loweth. You’re having an affair with him, aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not,’ I sighed. And, sadly, it was the truth.
‘Don’t lie to me. I know you are. You’re fucking him and you’re planning to leave me.’
‘No,’ I said again. It was always the same with him: endless accusations about different men I was screwing from one week to the next. At least this time he’d pinpointed the right one, I noted wryly.
‘You know that if you ever tried to leave me I’d kill you,’ he said.
At that, I lost it. I was so tired of his threats.
‘Oh shut up!’ I snapped. ‘You always say you’re going to kill everyone. This speech you do, it’s boring! Well, you can’t keep me prisoner all my life. I’m not a little girl anymore, Stuart. I can make my own mind up about where I want to be.’
‘If you leave me, so help me I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU. I MADE YOU AND I CAN DESTROY YOU TOO!’ Now Stuart was shouting over me at the top of his voice.
‘Just shut up!’ I repeated.
‘You’re not leaving me. We’ll both die before you leave me . . .’ And with that he grabbed the steering wheel and gave it a hard right spin so that our car swerved into the right-hand lane.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I screamed, terrified. We were doing sixty miles an hour with another car heading straight towards us, beeping and flashing his lights. We were going to collide head on! Stuart, grim-faced and spitting in anger and outrage, gripped the wheel tightly, steering us straight into the car’s path.
Panic gave me a strength I didn’t know I had. Somehow, I managed to wrest back control of the wheel and steer us back onto the left-hand side of the road – and just in time. Then I took my foot off the accelerator and pulled off the road, bringing the car to a stop in a farm ditch. I jumped out of the car, shaking and panting from the shock. Stuart frequently made threats, but I had long ago thought him incapable of carrying any of them out. Have I been wrong? I wondered as my heart slammed fearfully in my chest. He could have killed us both!
‘You’re off your fucking head!’ I screamed at him. I was so angry now that I couldn’t hold back any longer. ‘You fucking moron! How would Callum feel if his mother and father were both killed in a car crash? On the way to his tournament?’
I was so mad at him that I didn’t stop there. I had just stared death in the face and it was a hell of a lot scarier than Stuart. ‘You want to know the truth?’ I spat out. ‘Here’s the truth: yes, I do want to leave you. I hate you. I’ve never loved you. I want a fucking divorce and I want to have sex with other men. Because you . . . you make my skin crawl. I have never enjoyed sex with you – you are nothing but a controlling demon who preys on young girls. But I’m not a young girl any more, Stuart. I’m thirty-seven, I’m a woman. And I may have lost my teens and my twenties to you but I am not going to lose my thirties.’
I stood back, still shaking and breathing hard, and waited for the retaliation. I braced myself for the verbal onslaught that I knew would now be unleashed. Despite myself, I couldn’t quite believe I’d been so brave as to tell him the whole and unvarnished truth. What will Stuart do now? I felt tense and tired, trying to anticipate his next deadly move.
But Stuart, who had also got out of the car, took me by surprise. He said nothing. He just leaned against the roof, staring at me with sadness in his eyes, like an old man who had been beaten. His whole body slumped forward, his shoulders sagged. He looked like he’d just gone ten rounds with Tyson. What’s happened? Why isn’t he saying anything?
To my utter shock, Stuart then fell to his knees and started to weep.
‘I’m sorry,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry, Dawn. I’m just so scared of you leaving. I can’t live without you and if you leave me I’ll kill myself.’
It was like the curtain had been pulled back and instead of a wizard there, I had just found a weak, pathetic old man. Now he was exposed and vulnerable and I was the strong one.
‘Fine,’ I seethed. ‘You kill yourself – but you’re not taking me with you!’
I called Hannah from my mobile, who was also due to watch the tournament with us. Of course she was horrified when I told her what Stuart had done.
‘I’m not getting in the car with him again,’ I told her. ‘You’ll have to come and collect me.’
Really, I should have called the police, but I suppose a lifetime of being warned that the police were my enemy had embedded itself into my character. Never invite the authorities, that was Stuart’s mantra, so I simply got into Hannah’s car and refused to let him get in with us.
‘How am I sup
posed to get there?’ he whined.
‘I don’t care. Just stay away from me,’ I spat. ‘He tried to kill us both, Hannah! He’s a madman!’ I wasn’t ashamed of his behaviour anymore. Once upon a time his power to embarrass or scare me had imprisoned me in silence but not anymore. I was bubbling over with rage, and I wanted everyone to know what an utter bastard he was. Let him take the shame. I was done.
As we drove off, Hannah tried her best to calm me down but she could see that the situation had become very serious.
‘He’ll never let you go, you know,’ she said as she drove.
‘So I’ve got to put up with him all my life?’ I raved. ‘Is that what you think I should do, Hannah?’ I was furious at her, too. Of all the people in the world, she knew best how miserable he had made me. Whose side was she on?
‘I’m just saying, Dawn, you’ve got to be careful. I’m trying to look out for you.’
‘Aye, well, the best thing for me would be to stay as far away as possible from that monster!’
From that day onwards, Stuart and I lived entirely separate lives in the same house, though strangely Stuart now decided to try and win me back. He surprised me with flowers, bought me gifts and even tried to take me away on a romantic weekend to Brussels.
‘Are you crazy?’ I asked when he presented me with the flight tickets.
‘No, I’m just trying to do something nice for you,’ he offered lamely.
‘Forget it,’ I scoffed. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you. Never again.’
Stuart, now playing the part of the spurned husband, even enlisted Hannah and my mother to his lost cause.
‘Darling, it’s your marriage,’ Mum implored. ‘You can’t just throw it all away like it doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Mum, why don’t you mind your own business? I don’t see how this has got anything to do with you.’
‘It’s got everything to do with me.’ She frowned. ‘You’re my daughter, he’s my son-in-law and you are both parents of my grandson. When you commit to marriage, that’s it, for life. Whatever he may have done to upset you, you have to stay with your husband. God knows, your father wasn’t the easiest man to live with but I put up with all his drinking and . . .’
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard your opinion. Now please just keep it to yourself. You are not welcome to interfere in this matter.’
‘Well, if you don’t care to listen to me, perhaps I’ll go back to the flat then . . .’ Mum loved to play the wounded martyr and of course I refused to rise to her theatrics.
‘Aye, you do that, Mum,’ I said flippantly. ‘See ya!’
But Hannah, too, was keen to maintain the status quo, offering Stuart advice on how to win me back while at the same time telling me how much he wanted to try and fix our marriage.
‘There’s nothing left to fix,’ I snapped at her one day. ‘Can’t you understand, Hannah? It’s over and it has been over for a very long time. He has to get used to the idea. He has to let me go.’
‘Honestly, Dawn, I think he’s changed. He’s really trying hard, he loves you! I mean, isn’t it worth giving him a second chance? It’s not like there’s anyone else around. You had your fling with Bryce. That’s over now.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ I said quietly. ‘But you know what? I would rather be alone for the rest of my life than with Stuart for another day. The man is poison.’
My words weren’t strictly true. In fact, I was devastated about losing Bryce and still, a year after our split, it hurt me to think about him and my heart yearned to be with him. The worst part of our break-up was that I realized I’d never been truly honest with him: I’d never shown him the real me. It was all tight dresses, pink champagne, sexy underwear and secret trysts. He must have thought I was a high-maintenance, hard-nosed businesswoman who strutted around in heels all day, but it wasn’t true. I was far happier in my onesie and Uggs with a cup of tea, watching EastEnders. No wonder, I thought, he chose to be with another woman; someone I imagined to be more down-to-earth. I had pretended to be an ice queen and he’d found that terrifying.
Well, I didn’t blame him. I’d found it exhausting too, playing the part of the heartless seductress. I had been so obsessed with being a sex goddess that I had presented a completely false image of myself and that broke me up inside. To my horror, I had the worst of all worlds: a desperate pensioner trying to rekindle a romance that never existed and an absent lover who didn’t want to know.
It was a few months later, in March 2007 on my way to a session with my personal trainer, that I saw Bryce in town, parking his car. At first, I pretended not to see him, still ashamed at the false woman I’d professed to be and still hurt by his leaving me, but the moment he caught sight of me, he called out my name. I put up my hoodie and took out a pair of sunglasses to hide my eyes. I really didn’t want to bump into my ex!
‘Dawn!’ he called out again as he got out of his car. I kept walking, ignoring him.
‘Dawn!’ He was now running across the road to meet me so finally I looked up and acknowledged him.
‘Oh, hi Bryce.’
‘Hi. Dawn. You look really good.’ He smiled down at me. Oh, it was so painful to hear that smooth, deep voice once again. ‘Hey, do you want to go for a coffee?’ he went on.
‘No, I don’t. I’m in a hurry.’ What does he want? I thought impatiently. Does he think we can be friends? Does he want to tell me how well it’s all going with his new woman? I just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible – before my emotions got the better of me.
‘That’s a shame,’ he said, his eyes searching mine. ‘I . . . er . . . I’ve really missed you, Dawn.’
‘Really?’ Suddenly my heart leapt.
‘Yeah . . . I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he confessed.
I wanted to cry. I’d dreamt of this moment but never thought it would come true.
‘Do you want to kiss me?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘Of course I want to kiss you . . .’ he laughed. And then he pushed me into a doorway and for a moment our lips locked in a long and deeply passionate kiss. Oh, how I’ve missed his kiss! I’d forgotten how good this felt. For a moment, I felt like I was floating away . . . but then I snapped back to reality.
‘No, not here. Not like this.’ I pulled away. I looked at Bryce, sizing him up. He hadn’t mentioned the other woman, and that kiss had not been the kiss of a man who was into someone else. What’s going on? I wondered. I felt horribly confused – but I also knew my love for Bryce was as strong and sure as it had ever been. ‘Look,’ I continued, ‘Stuart’s away this weekend. Why don’t you come over tonight? I’ll cook you a meal. I think . . . I think we better talk.’
I was so excited that night, I could barely contain myself, but I was also wary. There was so much I needed to tell him and I had no idea how he would react. After my gym session I’d changed into a pair of combats, trainers and a loose-fitting T-shirt – my usual weekend gear. No more ice goddess for me: Bryce was going to meet the real Dawn McConnell for a change.
Now I opened the oven door and took out the slow-cooked Moroccan lamb that had been roasting most of the afternoon. Carefully, I turned the meat over and basted it with the gravy. The smell was so rich and aromatic, and I hoped Bryce would love this dish as much as I did.
After a year apart, I had done a lot of thinking and I knew that if I wanted Bryce in my future, he needed to know about my past. I felt nervous about revealing the real me to him, but at the same time I was done playing games. Honesty had to be the best policy.
Bang on 7 p.m. the doorbell rang. I met Bryce at the door in my baggy combats, apron and no make-up.
‘Hello you,’ he said with a smile. ‘Long time no see!’
I was awkward at first, being so open with Bryce, but this time I had nothing to lose. We kissed then I told him dinner would be ready in half an hour.
‘You cooked for me?’ he asked, eyes wide with amazement.
‘Don’t look s
o surprised,’ I laughed. ‘I’m quite domesticated, you know. I enjoy cooking.’
‘Smells great,’ he said appreciatively. We opened a bottle of wine and at first we made small talk, mostly about the house. Then, over dinner, we talked about the past year and I admitted that I had been very miserable without him. I also told him that my marriage to Stuart was over and I wanted to leave him, I just didn’t know how.
‘He says he’ll kill me if I leave,’ I said. ‘And I believe him.’ After my husband’s stunt in the car, I knew he was quite prepared to make good on the threats he’d delivered through the decades.
There was a moment’s silence and then Bryce said quietly: ‘I believe him too. That’s why I stopped seeing you.’
‘What?’ I was confused. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘There was no other woman,’ Bryce sighed. ‘It was Stuart. He paid me a little visit and threatened to kill us both.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ I whispered. ‘I should have known . . .’
‘It was the week before my fiftieth. I got into the office one morning and he was just there, sat in my chair, behind my desk. My secretary said she had asked him to leave but he’d refused, claiming I was expecting him. I knew it was him, of course; I’d seen him before, following me.
‘When I walked in he asked me if I knew who he was. I said yes. Then he said I had no real idea who he was or what he was capable of because if I did know I wouldn’t be doing what I was doing.
‘He said he knew I had feelings for you and he told me to stay away or he’d kill you. He’d kill us both. The way he said it, I was absolutely convinced he was telling the truth.
‘So that’s when I decided to end things. At that point I didn’t really understand where we were going or what my feelings were for you. I had so much going on at home, trying to sort things out with my wife and the kids . . . I just felt this was one thing I could do without. So I told him: “Look, I’m with someone else. Your wife needs to find herself something to do.”’
I sat there, thunderstruck by what he’d just told me. ‘You mean, you didn’t have another woman?’
I Own You Page 26