Invisible (6 page)

‘Thanks for the money,’ she
said suddenly. She put her knife and fork together despite her plate being
still half full, then sat back in her seat and rolled her head back, staring at
the ceiling and I knew that finally the time had come. I shovelled a mouthful of
by-now lukewarm lasagne in, letting the creamy sauce, pasta and mince plug my
mouth up and stop me from saying anything to ruin the moment. As I’d hoped, she
carried on talking, still looking up, as though she couldn’t bring herself to
meet my eye while she told her story.

‘God, last week was a
nightmare. I finished with Sam, just like I said I was going to. He seemed all
right actually, but it was all just a loony act, of course. I didn’t know that,
obviously, but I went out with some mates because I wanted to get out of the
flat anyway, get away from him. I bloody knew he’d kick off and I was dreading
it, so took Henry to his aunt’s and tried to put as much distance between me
and Sam as possible.’

Her head came forward now,
but she still didn’t look at me. Instead she gazed down, apparently fascinated
with some crumbs left by the previous customers at the table. ‘There I am
having a drink and a laugh, when I turn round and…there he is! He’d only gone
and followed me.’

Somehow I managed to stop
myself speaking or gasping in amazement or anything. I forced myself to just
stay quiet and listen. But I couldn’t eat any more either, just sat there, holding
a fork-full of food that was rapidly going cold and would almost certainly
never make it to my mouth.

Kim reached out, slim
fingers moving the crumbs around as she continued.

‘I went mental. I mean, talk
about a stalker! And you know what he said? “God help any bloke who tries to
talk to you tonight.”
The look in his eyes when he said it,
too.
He was crazy. But I didn’t feel scared of him, just
abso
-bloody-
lutely
furious.
Honest to God, I could have killed him there and then.

‘So I stropped off out of
the place and started to walk home, and Sam followed me there too. All the way
home he trailed after me. We were screaming at each other. He just makes me
angrier than any other person in the world. When I’m with him I’m just…ugly.
You know? He makes me an ugly person, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I’m just helpless around him…

‘When we got in he was still
screaming on at me – I’m a bitch, I’m a slut, he loves me, how can I do this to
him, the usual stuff. Then we started pushing each other around. He caught me
right on my eye, gave me this black eye,’ Kim said, waving her hand in front of
her face.

Her voice dropped even
lower, and she leaned forward, still looking down, ashamed. ‘But the really bad
thing is what I did. I-I-I picked up a plate that was on the drainer and
smashed it over his head! I was so angry I didn’t even stop and think, just…just
did it. I could have killed him right then and wouldn’t have been bothered.

‘And then, I felt so guilty
that…,’ she shrugged. Clearly she’d felt so guilty that they’d ended up having
sex and getting back together. Inside I shuddered, scared for her, but I held
every muscle tight so that it wouldn’t show. I mean, hello, he’s a total
psycho! He’s insane and dangerous, and is sending her over the edge too. Why
can’t my lovely mate see that she’s worth so much more than this? Why she can’t
just leave him is beyond me, but then they do say love is blind. Blind, deaf,
and mentally incapacitated in this case, by the sound of it…

‘It’s like I’m addicted to
him,’ she explained, talking more to the crumbs than me. ‘I don’t love him. I
don’t even like him much. But I can’t seem to give him up. He’s bad for me, I’m
bad for him, but the pull towards each other just seems overwhelming. We crave
each other, like crack addicts.

‘Everyone keeps telling me
what a prize shit he is. And they’re right – I mean, I’m not thick, of course I
know that. But it’s as much my fault as his when we get physical; I give as
good
as I get, you know. He slaps me, I smash a plate on him,’
she insisted.

Hardly
the point.
But I made myself just nod. Everyone is
telling Kim the same thing about how she should leave Sam and she isn’t
listening. So clearly a different approach is needed. My theory is, if I join
in and tell her exactly what I think, I’ll wind up being consigned to the
friend scrapheap, she’ll stop confiding in me, and then where will she be? At
some point though, she’s going to realise she is in an abusive relationship, no
matter how much she tries to justify it to herself by claiming she is as much
at fault as him – and then she’s going to need someone to turn to, someone who
won’t say ‘I told you so.’ Hopefully she’ll know that person is me.

With a sigh she scooped the
crumbs into a little pile with one hand,
then
swiped
them into the other hand that was outstretched just below the table. Then she
wiped her hands together, slap, slap, slap, cleaning away the crumbs and the
subject with the movement. Our hour was up, time to go back to work.

I kept thinking about her
for the rest of the afternoon.
The rest of the day.
I
really hope she’s all right.
Bad enough to be in a bit of a
sticky situation money-wise, but fella-wise too?
It makes me realise how
lucky I am to have Daryl. If I were in a relationship with someone as dodgy as Sam
I’d scarper pretty damn
quick
.

Mon 25

Hmm, well, how best to
describe my weekend with Daryl? Not sure if there is one word to sum it up.
Maybe if I write it down and commit it to memory forever that will
help.

He came over on Friday and I
got all packed up and we got on the road. I haven’t had a look round his rig
for a very long time. When we first got together I’d go with him all over the
country but, well, life gets in the way and enthusiasm drains away for trips in
a noisy truck, especially after we bought our house together. Fact is, I wanted
to be in my comfy home, sitting on my big cream leather sofa and watching telly
rather than going glorified camping in my bloke’s workplace. But Daryl has
seriously pimped up the cab of his truck – it’s really cool!

He’s got his laptop in the
centre console so he can listen to music on it as well as keep in touch with me
and work. There’s a mini fridge stuffed with food and drinks, the bed tucks
away so neatly behind a curtain that runs behind the two seats – oh yeah, and
how comfy are those seats?! They’re incredible, in fact they almost rival our
sofa, and because they are fully sprung they move with the cab, absorbing any
bumps in the road so that I didn’t feel a thing.
A totally
smooth ride.

We were going along merrily,
countryside whizzing past us, when Daryl glanced over at me and smiled, his
blue eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Hey, in one of the glove compartments
there’s a CD I think you’ll want to hear,’ he said.

Bemused, I reached up to the
locker that ran all the way across the top of the windscreen. ‘Not there!’ shouted
Daryl, his voice sharp and angry. I pulled my hand back as though from fire.
‘They’re always locked,’ he explained. ‘It’s
safer,
otherwise they might burst open if I brake suddenly. With stuff tumbling out it
might make me swerve and hit something, it could cause a crash. Last thing I
want is to get hit in the face by half a dozen spare rolls for the
tacho
.’

Okay, okay. Lecture over, I popped
open the glove compartment right in front of me. Inside were some CDs and the
one on top had me grinning immediately. ‘Barry White!’ I laughed.
‘No way!
Let’s put it on!’

Seconds later, the opening
beat of our song,
You’re
My First, My Last, My Everything
, was pumping out of the impressive
surround sound speakers. Daryl started shuffling round in his seat as if he had
ants in his pants, head moving back and forth like a demented pigeon.

‘Nice groove face,’ I
snorted, closing my eyes, biting my bottom lip and scrunching up my face in
mimicry. We bobbed and weaved in time to the music, singing along at the tops
of our voices. Daryl doing Barry’s bits, and me joining in as a backing singer,
‘
Ooooh
,
ooo-oooh
,
ooo-ooooh
,
oooo
-ooooooooh
!’

What a laugh! Even Daryl’s
‘ironic’ collection of nodding dogs of various sizes seemed to join in our
seated dancing.
As soon as it ended…
‘Again!’
I begged.

‘Again,’ nodded Daryl,
pressing the button. I couldn’t hear enough of our
song,
it was just exactly what we needed to get this trip off to the right start.
We’d been on our very first date when I’d initially heard it.

We’d met at a house party –
wow, I haven’t been to one of those in a few years, but back when I was 22
everyone had them.
 
Me
and Hannah had been checking out the place, walking from room to room. Hannah
had walked into the lounge and I’d been right behind her but spotted someone I
hadn’t seen for ages so took a step back, hanging onto the doorjamb as I leaned
in and shouted ‘hi’ over the music.

I was only a second but by
the time I
turned,
Hannah had already reached the
other side of the room and was stepping through the patio doors. Right behind
her were two blokes, leaning against the frame and totally checking her out,
smirks on their faces as they nodded appreciatively. I’d grinned and rolled my
eyes at them as I’d hurried by – never guessing that I’d end up married to one
of them.

Of course, as soon as I’d
caught up with Hannah I’d asked her who the men were. In the darkness of the
room, under the flashing disco lights standing on the mantelpiece, she hadn’t
even noticed the way they were looking at her, their tongues virtually hanging
out of their mouths!
 
Turned out she
vaguely knew one of them though, Andy, and he was best mates with Daryl.

I’d spent the rest of the
night alternating between taking the mickey out of them for standing with their
tongues hanging out over Hannah, and staring at this gorgeous, tall,
mesmerising bloke in front of me who had the coolest, steely-bright blue eyes
I’d ever seen. Back then he’d had a head full of dark brown wavy hair that made
my fingers just itch to touch it, although now I think of it, even then he had a
high forehead.

‘I’ve got wavy hair; it’s
waving goodbye,’ that was the joke he’d always said back then.

Neither of us could believe
how we knew all the same people and went to the same places yet had never
bumped into one another before. I’m the kind of person who tends to take a long
time to get to know someone but with him for some reason the attraction was instant.
A
lightening
bolt from the blue.

Did I ask for his number or
did he ask for mine? To be honest I can’t remember – I was a bit worse for wear
by the end of the night. But by the time Hannah and I had left together in a
taxi, I’d had a big grin plastered on my face and the oddest feeling that this
man was going to change my life forever. It wasn’t necessarily
love
at first sight, but it was definitely something big.

It’d taken a month to
arrange a date though. Daryl had hurt his foot at five-a-side or something, so
was resting it for ages, basically stuck at home alone – I’d been so impressed
that he was only 25 and already owned his own flat.
An older
man with a mortgage, a bod to die for, and who was a laugh?
He’d seemed
too good to be true. I hadn’t been able to believe my luck, so holding out for
a month had been a pain but worth it.

Still, that first date
couldn’t have come fast enough as far as I’d been concerned. We’d talked on the
phone though, bonding over telly programmes we watched – as far as I can
remember we were both addicted to an amazing new American forensics show, CSI. Ha,
that programme’s ancient now, but at the time it seemed so ground-breaking. But
then, everything that’s exhilarating at first feels ordinary eventually. Maybe
that’s what has happened to me and Daryl too…

I’d had such a time deciding
what to wear for that first date though because, typical Daryl, he’d been really
vague about what we would be doing; maybe eating, maybe go to a pub, maybe even
the cinema, he hadn’t decided at that point. My entire wardrobe had been tried
on, discarded onto the bed,
then
dug out from the
bottom of the ever-growing pile, tried on again with different shoes, different
jewellery, different attitude…discarded again. After all that, I think I ended
up playing it safe and wearing jeans and a
spangly
top, plus a leather jacket, reckoning that would cover every sartorial
eventuality a date could throw at me.

When I’d heard the beep of
his car horn I’d almost jumped out of my skin. I can still vividly remember
peering through the net curtains of the small side window in my old bedroom at
my parent’s house, and seeing him standing there. He’d got out of the car and
was leaning on the open door, waiting for me, watching me as I walked towards
him, a big smile on his face as he took me in. His look had set my heart
racing. I’d been a
gonner
from then, really.