I check the calendar on my phone and realise filming starts soon for theHelp! I’m In The House From Hell!series. My jaw tightens at the prospect, but the money will give me more financial independence from my husband.
My company is late. I don’t care that it’s only by five minutes. I despise tardiness. Unless I’m the one who’s running behind. I’d have checked my watch if I’d been able to find the damn thing when I searched for it earlier. I’m misplacing more and more things lately,which I’m reluctant to admit is becoming less of an irritation and more of a worry. I pass the time by using my phone to go online and search for the symptoms of early-onset dementia. I stop reading when I find symptoms I share with victims of that disease. But what if ... no, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I’d rather be dead. I put the device face down on the bar.
Another seven minutes pass and a handful of diners are being shown to their seats by a waitress. One of the customers catches my eye. Large, hooped gold earrings, hand and neck tattoos, stripper stilettos, and a midi dress that’s a size too small for someone with the arms of a mariner. Somewhere out there is a street corner waiting patiently for its hooker to return. She has the same gaudy dress sense as Nicu’s ex-partner. I whisper the name, ‘Ioana.’
If there has ever been a person put on this earth for me to despise more than Ioana, I have yet to find them. Later this month it’ll be the eleventh anniversary of her fifteen-storey plunge from her apartment balcony.
And all these years later, I remain the only person in the world who knows I was there that night.
I’d taken my cue from the movies and waited in the street outside her building until someone else exited the key-coded doors. Then I slipped in unnoticed before they shut, and in my large coat, hair tied up and tucked into a baseball cap with the brim lowered, I made my way into the lobby, sure my face wouldn’t be caught by CCTV. The last thing I needed was Ioana selling stills to a newspaper alongside a made-up story of how I turned up at her flat uninvited and threatened her. Because that wasn’t what I planned to do. Quite the opposite, in fact.
‘What the hell do you want?’ she snapped as she opened her door to me.
Her Romanian accent was stronger than Nicu’s. His was more melodic, but hers was always sharper, the words exiting her mouth like rapid-fire bullets being spat out from a machine gun.
She flicked ash from the cigarette in her hand on to the bare wood floor. Behind her, the room was thick with smoke, which explained why Nicu changed their kids into fresh clothing every time he picked them up from there.
‘I’d like to talk to you,’ I replied nervously.
‘Haven’t you got better things to do, like stealing husbands from their wives?’
‘You and Nicu were never married.’
‘We were as good as.’
‘Look Ioana, I’d rather not do this in the corridor. Can I come in?’
‘What for?’
‘I want to listen to you.’
Her surprise was evident by her short, sharp snort. Then she turned and made her way inside, leaving the door open for me to follow. I closed it behind me.
The rental apartment she’d once shared with Nicu was in disarray. Empty food wrappers, dirty clothes and children’s toys were strewn across the floor or piled on to two sofas. One bedroom door was open, and the other, where I assumed a toddler Frankie and baby Tommy were sleeping, was closed.
Ioana and I were standing opposite one another like boxers eyeing each other up and down at a press conference. Only I wasn’t there to fight.
‘Whether you like it or not, Nicu and I are getting married tomorrow,’ I began calmly. ‘And I am genuinely sorry for the hurt it’s caused you.’
‘Oh please. You are only marrying him for public rehabilitation.’
It wasn’t far from the truth. But I was also in love with Nicu.
‘We’re getting married because I want to spend the rest of my life with him,’ I said. ‘And that means you and I are going to be in one another’s lives for a long time to come. So I need you to tell me what I can do to make things easier for us all to coexist. Doesn’t this negative energy exhaust you? Because I know it’s draining me.’
‘It’s fuelling me,’ she snorted.
I balled my fists. What had Nicu ever seen in this witch? She must have been an Olympic champion in the bedroom.
‘It can’t fuel you forever,’ I replied. ‘Can’t we find a compromise?’
‘Like what? We share him? I have him weekdays, you have him weekends? Here’s a better idea: why don’t I drive up to your little party tomorrow and we can both marry him?’
‘You know what it would mean to him to have his kids at the wedding. Would you be willing to reconsider?’
She threw her head back and laughed.
‘So that’s why you’re here. To beg me to let his kids watch him promise to throw his life away on acurva.’
