Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [72]
‘I’ll be the judge of what’s fair. Just tell me what he said.’
‘Okay, but you didn’t hear it from me.’ He paused and looked at me lovingly. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’
‘Just tell me.’
‘Okay, he says you’re the local bike. You have been since you were fourteen.’
‘That’s a lie!’
‘I know, pet, I know. I told him that. I said, “If I hear you say that again there’ll be trouble.”’
There were plenty of conversations like that. At the time, I’d be ready to march down to the pub and declare open season. But then I’d usually think, Sod them. The upshot was, I wouldn’t see anyone – which is, of course, what Peter had wanted all along.
So why, I bet you’re asking, did I listen to him?
It’s a good question and it has a very simple answer: because I honestly thought I’d got the better deal in this relationship! I’d seen the women flocking round Peter at the Hungry Years. Girls always came over to him when we were out; I’d seen it with my own eyes. And, from what I could tell, they all had a lot more to offer than I did. They were older, more mature; they knew how to treat a man.
I had so much to learn, I knew that. When I came back to the flat one day and found Peter having coffee with a woman I’d never seen before, I was angry. That quickly became jealousy – Why is she here, in my home, with my man? But then, when Peter explained this Lucy woman was just a friend, no different to John, I just felt stupid. I was so young. I’d had no parents to show me the ways of the world.
That’s obviously how proper grown-up relationships work.
There were times when I considered myself literally honoured to have been chosen by Peter. So that’s why, whenever he suggested something, I listened. I hung on his every word. Even when he tried to change me.
The things about me that he’d said turned him on – my short skirts, stilettos, bright-red lipstick – were the first things to go. I don’t know how he did it. Those were the things I most associated with my own identity. I’d cultivated that look over years of posing and preening and shopping and experimenting. Yet somehow they all gradually disappeared from my fashion repertoire.
The heels went first. I suppose he felt more comfortable without me looming over him, but he never admitted that. He was clever. He said, ‘I’ve got you a present,’ and handed over a shoe box. More excited than you could imagine, I ripped it open – and found the ugliest pair of flat shoes I’d ever seen.
The me of a few months earlier would have laughed in his face and thrown them back at him. The new me, the one so desperate to be mature enough for this worldly man, didn’t want to disappoint. And so I took the shoes and put them on and didn’t look back.
When you’re young and you think you’re in love, you want to please your partner, don’t you? It’s natural. If you don’t, then you’re in the wrong relationship. So when he mentioned how much he liked longer skirts, I found myself digging around for something a bit more respectable. I hadn’t worn anything below the knee for years, but I did it for Peter. Making him happy made me happy, just as it had done with Mum.
A couple of other changes happened for different reasons. Without regular work, I had no income. Peter gave me money for shopping, but made it clear that times were tight. He never actually said, ‘Don’t waste your money on lipsticks and mascaras,’ but I would have felt a selfish cow if I had. So, gradually, as the staples of my make-up bag were depleted, the colour vanished from my face. As for maintaining the highlights in my immaculately coiffed hair – forget it. I couldn’t justify that, not when he was being so kind to me in the first place.
If you’d asked me at the time, I would have sworn there was never any pressure on me to dress down. Even when he would pore over every till receipt, scrutinizing where every penny of his cash had gone, I chalked it up to a generational thing or maybe even a Scottish habit. He was checking the shops hadn’t ripped him off, I assumed. It would