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“Jess?”
With a long sigh, she spins from the sink, levelling me with a frown. “Truth or lie?”
“Truth?”
“Okay…” Jess hands me another wad of loo roll before she sits on the edge of the bath. “From the way he looked at you, I’d say yes. But men are strange creatures, Eve. What you see in front of you is only a fraction of what they are beneath all of that.”
“I know Henry. I know he’s not the sunniest of people, but he’s not a liar or someone that treats people more or less than how he feels about them.”
“How did he make you feel?” she asks with a sorry shrug.
Tears start trickling down my face again as my lungs threaten to pulverise my heart with their suffocating viselike grip on my insides. “Like—” A sob pushes from my lips. I can’t control it. I can’t silence it because he’s slowly breaking my heart piece by piece, again and again. “Like I could’ve been his everything.”
“Eve…sweetie…” Jess gives my knee a squeeze as I get up and start washing my face in the sink.
I’m dressed for work already, and I refuse to show up looking anything less than fine. Even if underneath my pretty dress and make-up, I feel broken. Abandoned.
I haven’t seen him in over a week. But on our days, he texts me in the morning. A reminder for me to be at the club. Idiot that I am, I text back and wait for him to reply. He doesn’t, though. The three dots appear, and the three dots disappear. Over and again until they stop, and I know that nothing but silence is coming.
When I look up into the mirror, Jess gives me a soft smile as she puts my backpack on the vanity.
“Go on, get yourself sorted. I’ll make you a cuppa before you leave.” I start fixing myself up again as she picks up the mat on the floor that’s spattered with my blood and starts for the door. Pausing, she turns to look at me again. “How is he making you feel now?”
“Lost.” The word rolls from my tongue voluntarily. “Alone and broken. Like I might never be able to breathe again.” I’m confused. So lonely. Angry. “I don’t know what I’ve done, Jess. Everything was fine…great, and then poof.”
“Poof?”
“He just flipped.”
“Do you think that something happened? Maybe he’s trying to protect you.”
I watch while she walks away in the mirror reflection. As I go back to doing my make-up, a dry laugh escapes me.
“Protect me?” Staring into my eyes, I try to find something, anything that might give me hope. Or maybe help numb the endless ache and longing for him. “From what?”
None of it makes sense. You can’t be all into a person one minute and not give a flying fuck the next. Henry’s gone from not wanting any of his privileged members looking at me to making me their entertainment. I lost count of the times I asked him to let me play in the lounge, and now I have my way, I want to be locked away with him again.
When I finish my make-up, I use Jess’ tongs to curl my hair into loose waves before I gather it into a half-updo. I think I’ve gone too heavy on the eyeliner, but with the voluminous cascade of waves at my crown, it looks good. Better than my blotchy face and tangled tresses.
Quickly, I clean the blood that dripped down my breasts and button up the front of my dress. The sweetheart neckline always flatters my cleavage, and the puffy sleeves make my arms look longer and skinnier. Even though I don’t feel good, at least I’ll look good enough that every man in that club will look at me. And then we’ll see how able Henry is to keep his distance.
“That’s better,” Jess chuckles as I sit at her kitchen table and take a sip of my tea. “Are you sure you don’t want to have dinner with us before you leave?”
“No, I—” Holy shit! I stop as the news comes on the telly in the corner, and the face of the woman that was on Henry’s screen a couple of weeks ago appears. “Can you turn it up, please?”
“The hunt for the serial killer being dubbed as the Ripper is still on. Police are considering enforcing a curfew in East London, specifically the Spitalfields and Whitechapel area.”
My heart is running a hundred miles a second as I finally realise that the woman on the TV is Alfie’s aunt. I still have the order of service from her funeral on my dining table. I keep meaning to drop it in to Clara, but my head has been all over the place.
“At this time, the Met are refusing to comment on suspects, however, the police commissioner, Sir Richard Warren, has put out a statement requesting women be extra vigilant and to avoid walking the London streets alone.”
“Christ, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jess says as I watch the footage from the commissioner’s press conference this afternoon.
My blood chills in my veins at the sight of the man Mary calls her regular. He looks different on TV in his official Scotland Yard garbs. Like a respectable family man.
“Three of the victims have been linked to the Coster Kings, an East End criminal organisation rumoured to be involved in drug and sex trafficking.” A video of Alfie’s dad and another man that looks familiar appears on the screen. They’re leaving a church, and behind them, Alfie’s holding his sister’s hand in the same black attire that they were wearing the other day when I bumped into them.
“At this time, no arrests have been made.”
