by Anthony Burn
I knew she was right, but it was good to hear her put it into words. I told her about my dad and how I was pissed off at him.
‘You heartless bitch,’ she said.
I hadn’t expected that reaction. I was astounded she could say such a thing. It must have showed in my voice when I asked what she meant.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘You just haven’t noticed the change in your family dynamic.’
I told her I didn’t understand.
‘From the time you were born, your parents have provided for you,’ she said. ‘They’ve fed you, clothed you and bought you all the things you needed. So like every other family, you’ve all got used to the idea that it’s the parents who pay.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I said. I still couldn’t quite work out what point she was making.
‘Now you’re earning maybe four or five times more than your dad, but you still let them do Christmas dinner because that’s the way it has always been. Did you wonder if they might have struggled to pay for it all?’
I remembered all the extra food and drink my parents had got in. I hadn’t given it a thought. I felt really guilty. I’d rubbed it in by telling them about us jetting off all over the place. They couldn’t even dream of doing that. I told Amy I felt awful about it.
‘You don’t need to,’ she said. ‘Make it up to them when you get back from Thailand. Take them out and buy them dinner.’
‘I will,’ I said, ‘but it’s going to feel weird not letting Dad pay.’
‘Only the first time,’ Amy said. ‘It will feel unnatural for them too, but only until you all get used to the change in your circumstances. I promise, you’re not really heartless.’
‘No, just thoughtless,’ I said.
After our holiday in Thailand, we didn’t see Drew and Amy again for nearly eight months. When we did, it was an exciting time. Amy had finally found a publisher for her book. After dozens of rejections, I’d got used to commiserating with her. When she Skyped me with the good news, I could tell from her face what it was before she spoke. I was so thrilled for her. I promised her the biggest hug ever when I next saw her.
She came back to London for a series of meetings with her agent, the publishing house and her lawyers. They were spread over several days, so she was going to be in town for a week. Drew had come with her for the first couple of days. But then he had another tournament so he left her with us.
It was brilliant to have her staying at the apartment. I’d missed her company so much. This was going to go a long way towards making up for it. I took a few days off from work so we could spend as much time as possible together. I met her after each of her meetings and we went either for a coffee or lunch together. I had no idea there was so much to do, or the length of time it was all going to take. Amy didn’t seem to mind. She was halfway through writing her second novel. Her publisher had taken an option on that one too.
She came back from negotiating her deal and she was wearing a really low-cut top. When I mentioned it, she pouted. ‘Typical! I get my cleavage out, and it was a woman,’ she said.
‘Serves you right. That’s shameless,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘There’s no point in having it if you don’t use what you’ve got.’
I was scandalised. ‘You don’t need to do that. Your novel is brilliant.’
‘Thanks, hun,’ she said.
We spent the rest of the days either shopping or sightseeing and just enjoying each other’s company. On her last day I took her to Maju for lunch. I pointed out the table where Kee and I had sat the first time he brought me here. It was hard to believe it had only been just over a year ago. I told Amy how intimidated I’d felt by the people and the surroundings. As I looked around, I thought about all the things that had happened since I accepted Kee’s consultancy offer.
I was in love with the most wonderful man I had ever met. I had the job of my dreams. I worked with a woman who I had always admired. Our gallery was amazing. We lived in a fabulous apartment. We travelled all over the world by private jet. My family and I had all become millionaires. I had the best friend I could ever hope for. She was about to become a bestselling author.
Ever since I’d met Kee, my life kept getting better and better. Was it really possible that one girl could get so lucky?
I asked Amy if she thought we deserved to be so happy.
‘Hell, yeah,’ she said.
Three weeks later, my whole world fell apart.
Thirty-one
Within the space of a few days, I went from the happiest I’d ever been to the depths of desolation. My dreams were shattered beyond any hope of repair. My life became a living nightmare.
The unravelling process started the week after Amy had been with us. I started itching, and there was a slight burning when I went to pee. I put up with it for a couple of days but it didn’t go away. I guessed I’d got thrush, so I went to the chemist for the usual treatment. After a week it wasn’t better.
I still wasn’t concerned, but I went to the doctor on the Monday afternoon. She was reassuring. She said it probably wasn’t anything serious. She took a swab for testing. She told me she would phone me with the results the next morning. I left her office without any clue that her call was going to end my life as I knew it. I was too busy congratulating myself for being able to go private. I would have had to wait seven to ten days for the results on the NHS.
Kee went into the gallery the next morning. He was going to be there all day. I’d got appointments with clients and two of our artists. My first meeting wasn’t until eleven. I took my time over breakfast, and had a nice long bath. I was more annoyed than concerned about my continuing soreness. I didn’t know what it could be. But I was sure it would be sorted out soon enough. Kee had been understanding about not having full sex. I’d given him plenty of oral to make up for it.
The doctor called at nine forty-five. She got straight to the point.
‘It’s not good news I’m afraid, Lauren. You’ve got chlamydia.’
My head reeled. The word sank in and I went into denial. I’d just got out of the bath and I was walking into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel. I collapsed onto the sofa at the foot of the bed. My eyes were already welling up. I stared at the phone as if it were somehow lying to me.
‘That can’t be right,’ I said. ‘There must have been a mistake.’
She told me the test was conclusive, and a load of other stuff that I barely took in. She said she would courier over some antibiotics. Then she told me I should notify any sexual partners I’d had in the last six months. She said she was very sorry, and disconnected.
I dropped the phone and sobbed. All sorts of questions raced through my head. How could I have chlamydia? How was that even possible? What had she meant by sexual partners – plural? What kind of a slut did she think I was? Where the fuck else could I have got it from? How could I possibly have an STI?
I’d only been with Kee. I’d been tested soon after I started sleeping with him. After all, that’s what responsible people did, right? I’d had my annual test just a few months ago. That was clear. How could this have happened?
Then the penny dropped. It wasn’t me, it was Kee. He was seeing someone else. That didn’t make any sense. I thought we had something special. I loved him with all my heart. He said he loved me more than he could say. He said I meant the world to him. Everyone told me how much he loved me.
I cried for ages. Then I got angry. What a pile of shit! If he really loved me, why was he screwing around? If he could do that, had he ever really loved me? Had he been taking me for a fool all this time? Was I really that gullible? He must have thought I was so stupid. He must have thought it was hilarious. Here was brainless little Lauren, being the dutiful girlfriend, while he went off and had fun with… who?
Who was the dirty little skank with the filthy diseased vagina? He’d been dipping in and out of the slag, and then bringing her disgusting infection home to me. The thought that I’d had his revolt
ing pox-ridden cock in my mouth made me want to throw up. Why would he want someone like that instead of me? What had I done that was so wrong? Didn’t he love me? Did he love her? Oh my God, did he love her more than me?
I started to get to my feet, when another thought hit me like a punch to the stomach. I dropped back down, and fought to catch my breath. Oh my God, was it Amy? Just the idea that it might be made me weep again. I couldn’t bear it if it was her. Not after Izzy. Not my best friend again. I could not, would not, believe it of Amy.
But the thought wouldn’t go away. I’d left her and Kee alone together a couple of times when I’d had meetings I couldn’t change. Had they been at it while I was out? Surely I would have noticed a difference in them. Furtive little glances or guilty looks in my direction. I would have seen it, wouldn’t I? I thought about calling her and asking her outright. I would know for sure if she tried to lie to me.
I picked up the phone, but quickly put it down again. If it wasn’t Amy, I would kill our friendship by accusing her. I told myself to calm down. I had to think this through carefully. If it was Amy, then she was infected too. Why would she sleep with Kee if she had chlamydia? Maybe she didn’t know. The doctor’s words came back to me – seventy percent of women have no symptoms. Even if she didn’t know, I couldn’t work out how she had got it. Had she been sleeping around while Drew was off playing golf? Surely she would have let something slip to me, with all the time we’d been together. Maybe it was Drew. Had he been playing more than golf?
He could have passed it to Amy, who passed it to Kee, who gave it to me. That was ridiculous. The more I thought about it, the more far-fetched it was getting. I didn’t want to believe that Drew and Amy were involved. I was almost certain that Amy was innocent. She had to be. I was about to need her more than ever.
If I was going to confront Kee, I needed some proof. I groaned to myself at the thought. Like having chlamydia wasn’t proof enough! I needed to know who she was. What I was up against. If he’d been seeing another woman, he must have contacted her to arrange to meet. Where had they been doing it? Oh my God, had they been screwing in our bed? I looked at the rumpled covers and burst into tears again.
The doorbell brought me back to my senses. It was the courier with my pills. He must have thought I was a real sight, standing there in a towel with my tear-streaked face. Sniffing like a child, I signed for the package. He asked if I was okay, but I shook my head and closed the door on him.
I ran to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked even worse than I imagined. My face and neck were flushed and blotchy. My eyes were red and sore. My cheeks were wet with tears. I ran some cold water and washed my face. I pulled myself together. I took the antibiotics, put the pack in my handbag and threw on some clothes.
Then I set about finding some evidence. The obvious place to start would have been his phone, but he had that with him. I knew he rarely sent texts. He said he preferred emails because he always had an automatic copy. If he lost his phone he wouldn’t have lost any important messages. I guessed he wouldn’t want copies if he was sending messages to his whore. Surely he would text her instead.
I thought about whether I could make up some pretext to check his mobile when he got in. That would mean pretending to be civil to him. I wasn’t sure I could do that. All I could think about was screaming at him. I wondered if I could wait until he was asleep. That would mean getting into bed with him. I would have to let him kiss and cuddle me as if nothing was wrong. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if I could ever get into bed with him again. That set me off once more.
I was still sobbing when the cleaner arrived. I couldn’t have her in the place while I was like this. I told her it could all wait until Thursday. She looked reluctant to go. I couldn’t tell whether it was concern for my state or fear of not getting paid. I reassured her that she wouldn’t lose out and she nodded quietly. She asked if there was anything she could do for me. I thanked her and shook my head. Then I watched as she let herself out.
I sat down at Kee’s computer. There were several emails waiting for him. That wasn’t a surprise because he rarely opened them until the evening. He said answering them during the day distracted him from his work. If anyone wanted him urgently they could always call him. I checked through all the new messages, and then marked them as unread. Then I went back through three weeks of emails but there was nothing incriminating. I told myself that would have been too easy.
I tried his Skype history but most of his calls were to me or Drew. Any others were all to people I knew about. I looked at his Facebook account without much hope. He wasn’t a big fan of social media and only used it for work. There were no secret messages or suspicious friend requests. I drew a blank with Twitter and Instagram too. A search of his browsing history revealed he hadn’t been on any other IM site either.
I started to get angry again. If he wasn’t using social media or instant messaging, how was he communicating? Why couldn’t he have done something stupid, to make it easy for me? It wasn’t fair. I was about to give up on the computer when I had another idea. Maybe he was sharing a document with her. I checked his online storage. There were a few files I didn’t recognise from their titles. I opened each one in turn but they were all harmless. Then I opened file explorer and looked at the list of recent files.
I started opening some of them with the same result. After a while I came to a document labelled ‘GT’. I tried to open it but it was password protected. I stared at the dialogue box in shock. Nothing else had been protected. Why was this one? Had I found it? Maybe GT were the skank’s initials. I tried to put names to them, but couldn’t come up with anyone I knew. I could only find out by opening it.
That left the problem of the password. The likelihood of me guessing it was slim. But there was a small chance I could work it out. When we had first got together, Kee had laughed at me for using my family’s names for passwords. He told me they were the easiest to hack. He showed me a system for creating strong passwords that were easy to remember. I’d done it that way ever since. If he’d used his system for this one, there was a chance I might get it.
I tried more than twenty times and kept getting an error message. I was beginning to lose track of the combinations I’d tried. In the end I was just putting in random pieces of shared information but nothing worked. I thumped the desk and cried out in frustration. I stared into space in despair. I was never going to get it. My eyes fell on the first piece of art Kee had bought from me. I loved the piece but I stared at it bitterly – there were probably more password combinations than lines on the picture. I might as well give up. I got to my feet but quickly sat down as I looked at the picture again. Could it be that? I typed in the most likely passwords using 1593 as the variable. On the second attempt it opened. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t really expected to crack it. But I was staring at a title page that read Given Time.
We’d talked about him writing ever since we read Amy’s novel. At any other time I would have been pleased. I’d tried to encourage him, but I never knew he’d started. This was the worst time to find out. I was already pissed off at him. Now it was one more secret he was keeping from me.
I scrolled through a couple of pages without any real interest. But I stopped abruptly. From the first few lines it had looked like some kind of sci-fi novel. But then he had moved on to writing about his family. There were details I knew because he had told me about them. What was he doing putting them into a novel? I was confused. Maybe it was an autobiography. If that was the case why had he started off by writing about some weird device?
I went back and read the first few lines again. It definitely read like fiction. This didn’t make any sense. I scrolled to about halfway through the document. When I stopped, I gasped as I noticed my name on the page. It was all about me. I read a few paragraphs and I remembered everything pretty much as he’d written it. Then I read about him having turned back time. And that he’d punched me! I was irritated and b
ewildered. If it was an autobiography, why was he mixing it with science fiction? Why was he saying he’d hit me? He may have been a cheating son-of-a-bitch, but he’d never laid a finger on me.
I sighed. The only way I was going to make sense of this was to start from the beginning. I checked the time on my phone and realised I was going to be late for my first appointment. I sent a text to cancel, and then did the same for the rest of them. I was in no mood for them anyway. My life was falling apart. The only thing I could focus on was finding out why. I scrolled back to the start and began reading.
Halfway through the afternoon, I realised I wasn’t going to finish it before Kee got home. He’d called a couple of times, but I’d rejected his calls with a message saying I was in a meeting. The second time I’d added that I’d talk to him after work. I’d snorted as I sent it. There was no way I could act as if nothing had happened. Yet I wasn’t ready to confront him. I had to finish reading his story first.
I copied the text into an unencrypted file and moved it into my Dropbox. I checked to make sure I could open it on my phone, and closed the file on the computer. I got myself properly dressed and made up, and left the apartment before he came home.
If I’d thought I could finish it in one day, I was wrong. By eight-thirty I’d been sitting in a coffee shop for hours and I’d still got a long way to go. The more I’d read, the more worried and appalled I’d become. There was so much to confront him about. After seven coffees, I was fired up enough to blast him through the walls. Yet I knew I had to read the rest before I did that. I had to know everything.
If I left it any later to go home he’d be getting worried. I thought that it would totally serve him right. Except I needed him to think everything was fine for one more night. I sent him a text to say I was on my way. He would probably wonder why I hadn’t called. But I didn’t want to talk to him.