The Man I Loved Before: A completely gripping and heart-wrenching page turner

by Anna Mansell

  ‘You can’t eat teacakes.’

  ‘I could have. Before the fuckety bollocks. Percy put paid to that.’

  ‘Percy?’ asks Mitch.

  ‘Her stoma.’

  ‘Ah. Yes.’

  ‘I’d pull the currants out if they gave me ten per cent off.’

  I reach out and give Mum’s hand a squeeze just as someone walks past with a teacake and she growls under her breath.

  Mitch interrupts the moment. ‘Hey, I’ve got something for you. Close your eyes.’

  Christopher, the boy I used to play with when I was a kid, he was the first person to ever make me close my eyes like this. I did as asked and he put a spider in my hands. I opened my eyes, screamed, and the spider scarpered up the sleeve of my Angora cardigan. A cardigan knitted by Mum, the one and only time she knitted. Of course, being Angora, you couldn’t get the bloody thing out and I ripped it off so quickly, launching it across the garden, that it landed in their compost bin just as his mum tipped the potato peelings in. I hated wearing it after that and was relieved when I learned what Angora was made out of and could use that as a reason not to keep it.

  ‘Go on. Close ’em.’

  Angora jumper in my mind, I nervously do as instructed.

  ‘Hands out.’

  Oh God.

  He places a box in my hands. It’s cool and rectangular. It has pointy edges and feels expensive. Mum lets out an ‘ooooh’ of appreciation.

  ‘Open.’

  A white box with an Apple symbol sits in my palm. ‘What…?’

  ‘I thought that, since yours is being a bit weird, you could… you know…’

  I open the box to find a brand new, gold iPhone 8. ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘For you. I know you’re worried that your mum will call you and you’ll miss it, so I thought I’d get you a special hotline just for her.’

  Mum lets out an ‘ahhhh’ before clamping her lips shut with thumb and forefinger.

  ‘But this is too much! These are—’

  ‘You’re worth it. Your mum is worth it. Remember, I know what this is like.’ Mum sniffs and pretends her eyes are watering, just because. ‘It’s got a new number. You can just give it to your mum. And me, if you like.’

  ‘Well, of course I’d give it to you.’

  ‘Whatever, it’s fine. The important thing is that you have a phone that works for whenever and however your mum needs you. No missing calls. No missing texts. It’s a new number. A new contract.’

  ‘But I can’t afford a contract.’ Which reminds me I’m late paying this month’s bill.

  ‘I’m paying for it.’

  ‘Mitch, you can’t. That’s too much. It’s too much.’

  ‘It’s not. You need a phone that works. For your mum. If I can help with that, I want to.’

  ‘That really is very lovely of you,’ says Mum, beaming.

  ‘It’s fine. I just want to help.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘But what?’

  I can’t really answer. I don’t know. It feels all wrong, I know he’s trying to help and do the right thing, but it just feels… I feel bad. Of course I’d sort my phone out myself, if I had the money. ‘I’m just a bit overwhelmed.’

  ‘You’re going to have to get used to being looked after, you know, and supported. That’s what people in a relationship do.’

  Mum is smiling from behind her fingers.

  ‘Are we in a relationship?’

  ‘Of course we are! If you’ll have me?’

  An older couple on the table beside us have clearly overheard and smile at us, then each other. I feel a bit embarrassed by how public it all is, but he’s so enthusiastic and Mum’s so happy and—

  ‘Who’s having the pie?’ asks the waitress. I stick my hand up and she pops the plate down just as I whip the phone out of her way. Mitch takes it from me, putting it into my bag with a wink and a smile and I realise how lucky I am. And how unused I am to letting someone care for me this way. Ben tried so often, I rejected it so often. It’s another thing to do differently.

  50

  By the time we get home, Mum just wants to head back up to bed. Mitch hovers on the doorstep. ‘You can come in, you know.’

  ‘I shouldn’t. I can’t trust myself.’

  ‘Do you have to trust yourself? I mean… we could…’

  ‘No. No. Not today. Not like this. Not here. Let me take us away.’ I go to protest but he cuts me off. ‘Not far. I know you don’t want to be away from your mum. Look, let me book us into a hotel somewhere. Hathersage. That’s nice. And we can be back in half an hour if she needs you.’

  ‘I do love Hathersage. Some of the pubs have B&B rooms, I think…’

  ‘Leave it with me. Keep your weekend free.’ He leans in slowly; his lips graze mine as he cups my cheek. We kiss gently, softly, like we’re scared to really go for it, yet if he’s anything like me right now, we could both totally go for it. This time it’s his turn to groan. ‘I should go. Before I change my mind.’

  ‘You can change it at any time.’

  ‘You are terrible. But I love you.’

  We both pull back, aware of what he’s just said.

  ‘Sorry. Ignore me. That was… that was my groin talking. I didn’t mean it… well, I mean…’

  ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry.’

  ‘No, really. That wasn’t fair. I mean, you’ve enough on your plate. You don’t need doorstep declarations to add to your emotional mix.’

  ‘It was quite a nice doorstep declaration.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he says, running his hands through his hair.

  ‘Yeah.’ I nod, pulling him towards me and kissing him hard.

  ‘I’m going. Before I do any more damage. Get your phone set up. Text me when it’s done. Make sure it’s turned up loud.’

  He winks at me, turns on the top step and jogs down to his car and I am left with that dizzy feeling you get when someone new makes you feel like a kid and a woman all in one go. When you want to jump someone’s bones but also run away a bit because it’s all going really fast, even though you’re supposed to have put the brakes on. I can hear Leanne in my head, telling me to be careful but open. Telling me to go for it so long as I’m steady, because nothing good ever came from running away. And I bite down on my bottom lip until it hurts a little so the butterflies go away.

  * * *

  I tap on Mum’s door, carefully opening it to see if she’s okay.

  ‘Hey, love, come in.’ She’s got her headphones in, her old CD player rests on the bed sheets. ‘I was just listening to Queen. My first boyfriend, a good while before I met your dad, he took me to see them, ooh, when would it have been, nineteen seventy-four-ish, I guess. I must have been about sixteen, seventeen? He was older than me. A journalist for a Sheffield paper. He had backstage tickets and I stood in the wings at Sheffield City Hall, they were incredible!’

  ‘Wow. That’s pretty cool. How did I not know about this?’

  ‘God, I bet there’s loads of things like that.’

  ‘What was he called?’ Mum looks blank. ‘The boyfriend, what was his name?’

  ‘Oh.’ She smiles. ‘Terry. He was called Terry Booth and I loved him.’

  ‘You loved him?’

  ‘I did. And he loved me.’

  ‘Wow, Terry Booth. So if you loved him and he loved you, what happened?’

  Mum moves the CD player to her bedside table. ‘Oh you know, life got in the way. I got frightened. Your dad came along eventually. I was stupid.’

  ‘Stupid? That’s harsh.’

  ‘I suspect life would have been very different if I’d married Terry Booth.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had me, for starters.’

  ‘Oh, you’d have still been here. You’d have just looked like him, and he’d probably still be around. We wouldn’t have had to fight to survive on our own for all those years.’

  I shift to sit cross-legged before her. ‘You know, it didn’t feel like a fight, Mum.’ />
  ‘No?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Some of it was a fight, for me. The bills, the shame I felt, the need for you to be okay and I wasn’t always able to be certain you were. Maybe that would have happened anyway; as you grow, you distance yourself from your parents, that’s natural but…’ She pauses to think. ‘We didn’t need him,’ she says, eventually. ‘I think that’s what I always wanted you to know. He might not have wanted us, he might have left, rejected us, but we had to come to realise we didn’t want him either. Not on his terms, not the way he’d have us live.’

  I think back to the rows, the passive aggression, the constantly being made to feel like I couldn’t say anything in case I got it wrong, in case I said something stupid, or triggering. I guess that he wasn’t violent made us lucky, but so much fear could stem from a look he gave, or a stern talking-to. His choice of words. His subtle pushing down of our spirits. His dominance so often just snuffed us out.

  ‘You know what it felt like, after he’d gone?’ I say, realising. ‘It felt like we were a team. It felt like we could do anything as long as we had each other. It felt like you were free, and I could be free too because nothing and nobody was going to control us or shame us or make us feel like we weren’t worthy any more. It made me feel like I learned who the real you was.’

  ‘I think it was the first time in a long time that I could be the real me.’

  ‘And I loved that. I mean, obviously Dad going was horrendous. And I don’t know how long it took for us to truly get over it.’ Or if I ever did. ‘But I do remember you telling me we didn’t need him. I remember I didn’t believe it. But I also remember that you seemed relaxed. You felt warmer, somehow. And despite all that was going on, and how much I hurt at the time, we’d laugh, do you remember that? Whatever his leaving did to me, however much it shaped some of the choices I went on to make, I remember watching telly with our dinners on our laps, because we could. I remember going out and doing those workshops together, making rubbish pieces of artwork but we didn’t care because it was fun, and we were together and when we got home we knew we could get takeout from the Happy Garden and nobody would complain about the smell.’

  Mum smiles, her eyes glassy. ‘I do remember. I remember it all. I could murder a Chinese.’

  I check my watch. ‘They’re shut.’

  ‘I know. Don’t think Percy would like it anyway. And I’m knackered.’

  I shift, getting off the bed. ‘Come on, move down a bit. Let me plump up your pillows and tuck you in like you used to do for me.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be this way round.’

  ‘’Course it should. You did your bit, now I’m doing mine. That’s how this works, it’s the natural order.’

  ‘It’s a bit early for the natural order though, isn’t it.’ It’s not a question, because she knows I agree. I shift her bedside table about so she can reach her water and tablets and the menthol lozenges. ‘Mitch seems good. Kind. He thinks about you.’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Ben used to think about you too though.’

  I go to fiddle with her curtains, make sure no light can come in before she’s ready to wake. ‘He did, and I couldn’t cope with it.’

  ‘I always wondered what your dad leaving would do to you. I wondered how you would cope, I wondered about the lasting damage. And I know, Jem, I know it was hard. And I know you shut off to the pain. I know you missed him, even though he wasn’t particularly nice to be around.’

  ‘Funny how that goes, eh?’

  ‘It is. But it’s understandable. He was your father. You loved him, no matter what. You were a kid.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘And that’s why I’ve always told you—’

  ‘To never be afraid to love.’

  ‘He took so much away from us, Jem. Don’t let him have that too…’

  I turn to face her. Her eyes are closed, she’s washed out. Thin. The last few weeks have definitely shifted things. And I can see now, that I’m caring for her. That she relies on me. And however much it hurts, I am so grateful that I’ve found the strength to, at the very least, do that. I got that from her. Dad couldn’t have taken that away.

  ‘I don’t know what happened with Ben,’ she says, her voice almost as small as she is. ‘I don’t know what you wrote in that letter, but, whatever you did or think you did, whatever it is you’ve been seeking forgiveness for, you can’t get that from anyone but yourself,’ she adds, turning over. ‘You have to forgive yourself, Jem. And you should because you’re brilliant. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, least of all yourself.’

  51

  I pull her door closed, quietly letting it click shut, trying not to wake her. I’ve sat for the last half an hour, just watching her. Her breath is shallow. I kept watching her chest to make sure she was still breathing. I’ve studied her face, the woman I know better than anyone else in the world, the woman who’s taught me so much, the woman who knows time is running out. There’s a weakness I’ve never seen before, something in that feels wrong, it’s anti-her and I don’t know what to do with the taste it leaves. And the very worst part of it all is that I want this to be over. I want the pain to go. I want the bad stuff to finish, yet the only way that can happen is if she was no longer here and I don’t want that either. I really don’t want that. How can it be fair? Whilst Dad presumably still struts around wherever he may be, she is here, failing. There are people all over the world who deserve death more than she does and yet that’s not how it goes.

  And how bitter must I be to even think that in the first place.

  That night I climb into bed, wired but tired. Conflicted again. A day that started out with the Macmillan nurse visiting, that moved on to lunch and loveliness, is drawing to an overwhelmingly sad close.

  The Apple box sits on the side, beside a bottle of Chianti I found in the kitchen. I pour a glass, then reach for the phone, switching it on, getting set up. I tap out a text,

  Hey you, phone set up, this is my new number. Thank you for this, for caring. I feel so much better to know that I won’t miss a call or message from Mum.

  I half expect him to call like he normally would but am sort of relieved to just get a message back.

  You’re welcome. Glad I can help. X

  I drop the phone back on the side, look disdainfully at my old one, then snuggle down into my bed, head just raised enough to sip at my wine as I let the day’s events wash over my heart. I catch sight of the Moomin envelope on the bedside table. If I had a lighter, I’d burn it now. Here. In my room. I’d watch the flame swallow the words and I’d blow the smoke as it twisted. I reach for it, staring at my handwriting. It feels like such a long time ago that I wrote it. I feel different from the person who emptied her regrets onto the page. Was I honest? I feel like I was, it felt cathartic at the time. I just wrote and wrote. Everything I could remember I wanted to say sorry for flowed onto the page. But was it enough? Is it enough to leave the past behind me?

  I turn the envelope over, peeking inside just enough to expose the paper. I see the blue curl of my letters and reach inside, pulling the letter out. It feels alien.

  Then I read.

  * * *

  Dear Ben,

  There are some things I have to tell you. Things I need to own so I can move forward with my life. But they’re things that you may not want to know. After all, you left, as well you should have. I neither deserved nor appreciated you – at least, not the way you wanted me to. Not the way you had every right for me to. I wish I knew why I behaved the way I did, I wish I could put it all right, but sometimes, it’s just too late.

  I’ve often wondered how much you knew and chose to ignore, versus how much I’d got away with lying about. Like the time I kissed George Newman at his house-warming party after you and I had a row. I justified it by telling myself I thought we were over. Or that George came on to me. I was lying to myself as much as you. I was so hurt by our row, I was so frightened that it meant the end fo
r us, and where most people would fight, something in me couldn’t. I pretty much rolled over, accepted my fate.

  Except it wasn’t my fate, was it. You came back. We talked. It was just a silly row. I’d been so frightened of losing you I made the worst choice. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after that but there were more lies.

  Like the time an old work colleague knocked on my door at two in the morning. I guess I must have mentioned that you were away, working. He’d been out drinking with rugby mates and was hammered. He pushed his way into my house and I didn’t resist because I knew him even though I felt uncomfortable. He asked if we could have sex and I said no but he didn’t let up. He kept telling me how much he fancied me, how he’d always fancied me. He reached for my hand and placed it on him, he was hard. He told me it was a gift for me and I didn’t know how to get him to leave. I told him all about you, I reminded him I wasn’t single, he said neither was he and then pushed himself on top of me and though I consented, in as much as I didn’t push him off me, I didn’t really want to do it. I just felt like I had no choice. We didn’t have sex, that much I managed to avoid. But we did other stuff, and I felt cheap and ashamed and dirty. And I felt like I’d let you down. I did let you down. I should never have let him in. I should never have let him talk me into anything. You asked me if I was okay the next day, when you got back. I was in the shower for the third time that day. You must have sensed something. I lied. I said I was fine because, as ever, I’m weak. Always weak…

  * * *

  The memory of that night makes me feel nauseous. I knock back the rest of my glass of wine to take away the taste I can still taste whenever I think about that night. Putrid. The shame in my belly when I saw Ben the next day and he pulled me in for a hug and I froze. I wanted to run away. But it was Ben. I should never have felt that about Ben. But I couldn’t tell him either. I’d done it. I’d consented. I hadn’t screamed and shouted and fought the guy off. I just went along with it because it felt easier than the alternative, and that’s me all over. Never enough fight. Never enough strength.