When I Was Invisible (36 page)

‘I'm sorry,' I said to Judge. ‘I'm sorry, Judge. Please don't do this. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I'll do anything,
anything
. You want me to work for you? I'll do it, I'll work for you and I'll never complain. You don't even have to pay me, I'll do whatever you want, but please don't do this. Please. Please.'

That was what he wanted. What Todd had wanted. Todd had never been happier than when I was begging him to love me again, saying sorry for upsetting him, trying to appease him by doing whatever unreasonable thing he wanted; all of it showing him that I knew my place and he was in absolute control. That was what Judge wanted, fundamentally. To know that he was in ultimate control, that no one thought they could go against him. If I had to do that – beg, lower myself, sleep with whoever he wanted – to save Reese I would. I absolutely would.

‘It's good to see you finally know your place, Ace,' Judge said. ‘But it's come a little too late. I can't let you get away with this. It'd make others think they can, too.' He nodded at me. ‘Do you see? You've done this. You. You've done this to your friend, here. Not me, you.'

‘Oh please, oh please, oh please,' I begged desperately. ‘Oh plea—' The sound that came from Reese made me clamp my hands over my ears as it ripped though every fibre in my body. It kept coming, the sound, the agony, the sight of what was happening. Over it all were Judge's words: ‘
You've done this. You. You. You. You.
'

There's something pleasant and unpleasant about Tube journeys. I am on my way back from confession at the north-west London church that has started to feel a bit like my parish church and the train is packed with shoppers on their way home, and partygoers on their way out. Between stations, while the train hurtles from one stop to another, I shut my eyes, try to find a state of mind where I won't have the noise and voices of my past constantly screaming at me. I try to find some semblance of silence, try to remember why it was a good idea to leave the convent.

I remember how much fun it was being among the Sisters. Every day was different, we would find so many things to laugh and joke about. At recreation, we would all be doing different things, sewing, knitting, reading, drawing, simply chatting, and it would be like how I imagined boarding school would be. We'd be all together, friends, spending time together, getting to know each other, chatting about our day and what was going on in the outside world. Those of us who actually went out – ministering with the homeless, women's shelters, working in the hospitals attached to convents or, like me, teaching at convent schools – would sometimes share our observations with our Sisters, but we had to be careful not to bring outside burdens and miseries and frivolities with us. If something happened that added to our understanding of Scripture or prayer, or there were people we would like to pray for, we would share it, but nothing else.

Recently, yes, it'd been harder to find the silence in the monastery, even in prayer, and the Great Silence was sometimes the start of the most difficult part of my day, but should I have left? Really?

Yes, I wanted to find Nika, to quell the feeling inside that I am Judas, but really, what was it that stopped me from simply revealing all in confession and then moving on, having been absolved? The priest in the north London church said it the first time I spoke to him: I have been punishing myself all this time. Was it really necessary to do so?

The train lurches to a noisy stop, jerking people forwards then back as it does so. The doors open, announcements fill the air, there is a burst of noise as people enter and exit the carriage. The closer we get to Chiselwick, the more people leave and the fewer people get on to take their places. My carriage is practically empty now, no one is standing, I am alone on this bank of seats and only a couple of people occupy the seats opposite me in this section. The doors bleep then shut firmly together. I am about to close my eyes when I realise the person opposite is studiously staring away along the carriage, obviously trying to avoid being noticed by me.

‘Well, this is awkward,' I say to him.

He grins before he reluctantly looks in my direction. ‘Who for? Me, who has left more than a couple of messages for you, or you, who hasn't returned any of them?'

‘Not sure, really,' I say. Who knew London was so small you'd constantly be running into the same people? I pick up my bag and cross the aisle to sit next to Cliff. ‘I guess awkward kind of covers both of us in that scenario.'

He smiles again. ‘Am I allowed to ask why you haven't returned my calls, apart from the obvious?'

‘What's the obvious?'

‘That you want nothing to do with me.'

‘Oh, no, it's not that.'

‘You do want something to do with me?'

‘I think so.'

‘But you haven't returned any of my calls because …?'

‘Truthfully, because there's something I have to do and I don't want to get distracted by anything while I try to do it.'

‘Ahhh, I see … so you're on a mission from God.'

We both laugh. He's nice when he laughs – he's nice when he doesn't laugh, too. He seems genuine. I have seen so many sides of people over the years. They reveal themselves in so many different and seemingly insignificant ways, and most of the time, they don't even realise they are doing it. Do they double-park? Do they spit in the street? Do they interrupt other people? Do they say thank you to someone who lets them go in their car even if the other person won't hear? All little indicators of the soul of a person. Cliff seems to have a sincere soul, there have been no little tells so far with him that he isn't who he seems to be. ‘No, I'm not a Blues Brother, thank you, Clifford.'

‘Hey, you're the one who made it sound like that's what it was.'

‘I suppose I did.'

The train rolls into the station, slower this time. Maybe because there are longer pauses between stations the further away from central London we move, the driver doesn't feel the need to speed up quickly and then brake as though trying to avoid hitting an animal on the track.

‘What was it like, being a nun?' Cliff asks. ‘Did you have to sit and talk about God all the time?'

‘No, not really. We didn't talk much, we spent a lot of time in silence, but when we weren't in silence we had a lot of fun. We're just normal people, who happen to devote our lives to God and doing His work.'

‘That's just it: do normal people do that?'

‘I like to think I'm normal,' I say. ‘All the nuns and Sisters I ever met were normal. We simply have God at the heart of everything we do. We try to be kind, to show the love and beauty of God to others if we meet them, but also to pray for the love of our Lord to surround and protect the people of the world. Being a nun or a Sister isn't like a job, it's a vocation, it's part of who you are. You don't simply switch it off at the end of the day, you don't ever stop trying to put God at the centre of everything you do, just like you don't switch off being married at the end of the day. You are a normal person when you're married, and you're a normal person when you devote your life to God.'

‘I suppose I have issues with the awful things that people do in God's name,' Cliff replies.

‘Me, too,' I admit. ‘I also have issues with the atrocities committed by elected officials in my name, your name, and the names of everyone who did and didn't vote for them.'

Cliff looks me over like he is impressed by me, his gaze lingering on my lips. He's attracted to me but he also seems quite taken by who I am as a person as well.

‘Why did you stop being a nun?' he asks and eventually draws his gaze up from my mouth to my eyes.

‘I told you, I have something to do and I couldn't do it while being a nun. I couldn't do it and put God at the heart of everything I do. At the heart of most of it, but not everything.'

‘It's not because you missed things, like, say, physical contact?' Cliff is trying hard not to look at my mouth; I think he's trying hard not to imagine what it'd be like to kiss me.

I am finding it hard not to think about what it'd be like to kiss him. I can't remember the last time I kissed someone, or someone kissed me. During my wild time there wasn't very much kissing at all. The last person I can remember kissing with any clarity is Big T when I was fifteen, just before Nika asked me to go to the police with her. That was over twenty years ago. After that, it is hazy because I stopped going out as much. And the men from the clubs rarely wanted to kiss when they realised that they didn't need to. When they gathered by how drunk and compliant I was that simply getting me alone was enough to get what they wanted, they rarely bothered with much of anything except the stuff that got them to orgasm.

‘I sometimes missed physical contact,' I say. Sometimes I would have liked to have curled up in someone's arms, been held by them, felt safe and protected. Emotionally, I felt like that with God, but not physically. Sometimes I missed the physicality of sex, the closeness it brought between two people. Only sometimes, though. Mostly sex had been complicated and muddled and sullied by what else had been going on at the same time, so I didn't miss it, I simply missed what it represented, how close it brought me sometimes to the silence and how far away it took me from the screeching inside my head. ‘I really missed being hugged.'

‘Right,' Cliff says. ‘Being hugged.'

He stares into my eyes, his gaze unwavering.

‘Is there something you'd like to ask me, Cliff?' I query.

He's wondering if he'd dare. The train pulls into the next station – I must be nearly there at West Chiselwick, the closest Tube station to my parents' house. I don't want to look away, though, to check, to break eye contact when Cliff and I have got to this point.

‘Yes,' he replies, still gazing directly into my eyes.

‘Ask away.'

‘Can I kiss you?' His voice is barely above a whisper, even though we are the only ones in this part of the carriage. There are only three other people at the far end of the carriage, too. We are practically alone, but he is still whispering.

I shake my head. ‘Not until you ask me that question you've been dying to ask since we first met,' I respond in the same low voice.

From the corner of my eye I spot the station we are pulling into: West Chiselwick.

‘This is my stop, Cliff, sorry.' I gather my bag and stand up. ‘I'll see you.' I make for the door and he sits, stunned that he's been thwarted at such a crucial moment.

‘I'll call you,' he shouts after me as I step out of the doors.

I stand on the platform while the doors beep shut. I raise my hand and wave. He makes the ‘call me' sign in between waving at me. I'm not going to call him. I want to, I'd love to, but I can't. Not until I've done this thing that I need to do.

Most of the time, we don't make it to the bedroom. I barely make it through Marshall's front door and he is all over me, I am all over him: we're tugging at each other's clothes; kissing each other's lips, necks, faces, any bare skin; we're touching each other, pulling each other near, he's entering me, I'm holding him as close as I can; we're orgasming; and then we're laughing at ourselves for being so needy and craven and desperate.

This evening has been intense: he was loud as he orgasmed with his face against my neck; I had to close my eyes tight to stop myself dissolving into uncontrollable tears as the waves of what felt like ecstasy flowed through my body. We did it again on the sofa, screwing instead of him cooking me noodle stir-fry like he'd promised. Now it's late and a lazy fug has settled over us. We sit on the sofa, me in my vest top and knickers, him topless with his jeans undone. This is what it was meant to feel like with Todd, but it never did. Whenever we cuddled up, there was always the sense that it was fake, forced; I was always on edge, waiting for that moment when he'd let me know I'd upset him, that I'd cracked one of those eggshells I constantly walked on and I would need to spend the evening apologising and trying to make things right.

‘These are good noodles,' I say to Marshall.

‘I have to agree with you that they are indeed fine noodles.'

I dig my toe in his bare side and he laughs while twisting away. ‘Nothing like a spot of modesty to keep you on an even keel, eh, Mr Marshall?'

‘What? Why deny it if you're good at something?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Come on then, Ms Nika, we really should at least attempt to get to know each other. If only so we've got something to talk about between sessions.'

‘I suppose you're right. How long have you been divorced?'

‘Three years, four months and … um … five days.'

‘You know the exact amount of time?'

‘Yeah. Not really my choice – she didn't love me any more and wanted out. So, I moved over here from Worthing way and we worked hard not to get bitter about splitting up and we're sort of friends now and we are almost always on the same page when it comes to parenting our child.'

‘How old's your son?'

‘Nine. Nearly nine. I miss him, a lot. That's the hardest bit about being divorced; everything else I can deal with, but being away from him is not easy. I see him every other weekend, and sometimes during the week if he wants to because he has all these after-school activities I'd never get in the way of. He calls me when he wants to come over. He's got his room here and sometimes he comes to stay for a couple of weeks. But it's hard. And, don't get offended, but I don't ever involve anyone in my relationship with him. It has to be a long-term thing before I think about introducing him to anyone.'