“Chloe?” Paul said, turning the light on and the stereo off simultaneously as he entered Chloe’s bedroom.
She looked up from where she was huddled against the headboard, her eyes red and puffy with tears,
“Aww, Clo…” Paul said, sitting down next to her on the bed.
“I want him so much.” She sniffed. “Why can’t things just be like they used to be?”
Paul put his arm round her shoulders and she leant her head on his shoulders.
“You don’t have to be without him, you know. He doesn’t care what’s happened, he just wants you back.”
“He wouldn’t if he knew.” Chloe said.
“He’d be there for you, just like I am.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“No. But I did tell him that it wasn’t his fault. He was being really hard on himself; I didn’t think you’d want that.”
“I don’t. I don’t want to hurt him.”
“I know. But I wish you’d think about what you want. Ben will be fine, honestly.”
“I don’t know what I want.” Chloe confessed.
“Don’t you think it might help to talk to him? Not about… that, but just… talk. I don’t mean to push you; I just want to understand.”
“I know you’re only trying to help. But it’s not that easy. I want to stop feeling like this, I want to try and move on, forget, and I can’t do that if there are things to remind me.”
“So you’re giving up Ben because he’s connected to…”
“To the life I had before.”
“So you’re giving up Christian as well?”
Chloe nodded.
“And… London?”
Chloe nodded again.
“a1.”
“Yeah.”
“How about your other friends?”
Chloe paused before answering. “If they don’t know and I can keep them separate, they’re okay.”
Paul nodded in understanding. It was perfectly logical really, just very sad. But then, everything was at the moment.
“What about me?” he asked. “Do I get left behind?”
Chloe shook her head.
“Not even when you feel better and I go back to everything you’re trying to forget?”
Chloe shook her head again.
Paul smiled. “Well that’s reassuring. And you definitely don’t want to talk to Ben?”
“Has he gone?”
“No, he wouldn’t. He’s still outside.”
“I want to, but I can’t. It’d hurt me, it’d hurt him…” Chloe shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Shall I go and tell him to clear off?”
Chloe looked undecided, but nodded.
“Do you want me to say anything specific to him?”
“Tell him… Tell him I’m sorry, but… it’s over.” She said, looking absolutely destroyed.
“Are you sure?”
Chloe nodded.
Paul got off the bed and went to go before deciding that Chloe and Ben’s relationship was worth one last fight before giving up on it.
“Chloe, do you love Ben?” Paul asked, turning round.
“Yes, but-”
“How much?”
“It’s not-”
“Chloe– how much do you love Ben?”
“He’s the love of my life.” Chloe said miserably.
“I know without a doubt that you’re his, and if you give that up you’re letting Mark win. I know it’s hard, and I know it hurts, but he’s ruined your life enough – don’t let him ruin what you’ve got with Ben. I’m not asking you to make any decisions now, but don’t end it like this. Ben would do anything for you; he can help you though this if you’ll let him, but if you won’t then I know he’ll be waiting for you on the other side. Tell him to move up here, tell him to leave a1 – he’d do it to be with you, I know he would. Please think about it.”
“Mark’s already won.” Chloe said through tears.
“No he hasn’t.” Paul said, sitting back down on the bed. “Only if you let him. But you can get through this, I know you can. And everyone will help you. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Chloe: it wasn’t your fault! I know you’re worried about Ben knowing what happened with Mark before, but it was never serious – nothing really happened – and things are different now; there are other more important things to focus on, it won’t matter.”
“I don’t deserve any sympathy – I’m only reaping what I sowed.”
“No, Chloe, you’re not! I know it seems that way, but nobody’s perfect! Everyone makes mistakes – that’s why sorry is in the dictionary. You’re the victim, not the bad guy. I want to help you, but I can’t let you throw away what you have with Ben, because…” Paul sighed. “Did you know all this is my fault?”
“What?”
“It’s not your fault at all, it’s mine. Do you remember when me and you went for a walk in Manchester after I caught you with Mark, and I told you that he was just using you?”
Chloe nodded, but Paul was having second thoughts.
“You don’t need to hear this.” He said, getting up.
“No, Paul – what?”
Paul paused before answering. “I lied. I made it all up, because I was trying to save your and Ben’s relationship. And if I’d just let you get on with it and not interfered, none of this would have happened and we wouldn’t be sitting here now. I’m so sorry.”
Chloe was quiet while she took it all in.
“A lot of people use sorry too readily – it’s lost its meaning. But too much has happened… From now on, sorry means sorry, okay? It’s alright; it isn’t really your fault.”
“I really am sorry, Chloe.”
“You only need to say it once. Apology accepted. We all make mistakes.”
Really?! Paul felt like exclaiming, but he kept his mouth shut for fear of revoking the pardon he’d just received. Instead he just nodded.
“I’ll go and tell Ben to go away.” He said, making towards the door.
“No, Paul-” Chloe stopped him.
She looked at him with worried eyes.
“Do you promise he’ll understand?”
“If he’s worth anything at all.”
Chloe nodded. “Will you bring him up?”
“You’re gonna talk to him?”
“Will you stay with me?”
“If you want me to.” Paul smiled. “I’ll go and get Ben.”
He was almost out the door when Chloe called out again.
“Paul?”
Paul turned around. “Yep?”
“Will he believe me?” Chloe asked quietly.
“About the…”
“I’m worried that he’ll think I’m making it up to make him feel sorry for me.”
“Are you going to tell him everything?”
Chloe shrugged. “If I’m going to tell him anything, I might as well tell him everything. I won’t get a second chance.”
“He will believe you.” Paul reassured her. “And you’re doing the right thing.”
“I hope so.”
“I won’t be a minute.” Paul said, leaving the room, leaving the flat, leaving the building and walking across the grass towards the car Ben was leaning against looking thoroughly depressed.
“Ben, I need a word.” Paul said.
Ben stood up straight in anticipation of what Paul was going to say.
“Sorry about having a go before, mate,” he apologised.
“That’s okay. I need to talk to you seriously, though.”
Ben nodded.
“Chloe wants to talk to you-”
Ben’s eyes lit up. “She does?!”
“Yeah, but it’s not going to be an easy conversation for either of you.” Paul warned.
“How do you mean?”
“Chloe’s been through a very difficult time this last week, so you’re gonna have to take it easy with her and listen to what she’s got to say. You probably won’t like most of it, and it’ll probably shock you a good deal, but it’s gonna take a lot for Chloe to talk to you about this, so bear in mind how hard it is for her and try to understand what she’s saying. Remember that she’s trusting you with this. She really needs your support at the moment.”
Ben looked very confused – who could blame him – but nodded nonetheless.
The two of them walked in silence up the stairs to Chloe’s flat. Before he opened the door, Paul turned to Ben.
“She’s very fragile at the moment. The important thing is that you don’t judge her by what she says.”
“Okay.”
Paul led Ben through the kitchen and into the sitting room where Chloe was sitting on the far side of the two-seater sofa. Ben smiled when he saw her but, clearly concerned by Paul’s warning words, held back any strong emotion.
“Hi.” He said.
“Hi.”
“Do you want me to stay, Chloe?” Paul asked as he hovered by the door.
“Please.”
Paul sat down next to Chloe, almost immediately feeling her hand in his, while Ben sat opposite them in the matching armchair.
“I don’t know where to start.” Chloe confessed after a trepiduous pause. “I’m not gonna pull any punches, I just want to be honest with you, so please hear me out. I’m sorry if what I say hurts you.” she took a deep breath and began right at the beginning. “It all started a while ago now, I can’t remember exactly when. I’d been worried for a while about the reasons behind Mark acting so cold towards me, and when Paul and Mark had a fight I was convinced it was because I was getting in the way, causing divisions within the band and annoying people. So, I decided that I’d try and sort things out by having a quiet word with Mark and try to find out what his problem was with me, but we started to argue and suddenly Mark blurted out that he was in love with me. He said that the reason he’d been so distant with me was because he was trying to stop himself from doing something he’d regret, and then he kissed me. I got angry and told him to leave, but I couldn’t work out whether I was angry with him for betraying you, or angry with myself for not reacting quicker and for letting it happen.
“I spent days after that agonising over how I felt about Mark and the kiss, but I decided that I was just being, I dunno, hormonal, or something, and that I loved you far too much to go messing around with Mark. I didn’t want anything to do with him and his silly little fantasises, end of story. Except he wouldn’t leave me alone; he kept following me round, constantly trying to tell me how he felt and convince me that I felt the same. He kept saying he wanted to talk to me where no-one would interrupt us, and he blackmailed me into going round to his house, threatening to tell you that I’d been cheating on you, saying he’d make me look bad. I agreed to go round just to keep him quiet – the original plan was to sit down with him and sort it all out and make him see sense – but there was something niggling at the back of my mind that maybe I wasn’t being totally honest with myself. It was nice having someone different pay me a lot of attention, sorta nice to be wanted by someone other than you after having been “off the shelf” for so long, and I knew that, even though you were the only one that I really wanted, these… feelings that I was starting to have about Mark could be really damaging to our relationship, so I figured out that I had two choices: try to suppress the feelings and risk them building up to an unbearable level, or try to get them out of my system by proving that I was only wanting what I couldn’t have. And I made the wrong decision.
“To start with Mark was so sweet and so romantic, and it was really exciting – sneaking out of the house at night, fleeting exchanges in the hallway, the secret look from across the room… Of course I felt guilty, but I was still fooling myself with the belief that I was doing it for us. For a while it was like I was playing a game – when you were nice to me or bought me presents, you were in the lead in the race for my affections, and vice versa with Mark. I was telling myself that I was weighing up the evidence ready to make a decision about who to “keep”, but really I was just enjoying the thrill of being with two people at once. But then things started to get a bit up and down with me and Mark: I started to get jealous of girls he talked to and paranoid that everyone knew what was going on. The guilt about cheating on you was horrible, really horrible, but Mark was like a drug and I couldn’t stop. Things got more complicated and Mark started to apply the pressure for me to make a decision about who I wanted. I got more and more confused about what I really wanted, and me and Mark almost slept together in Manchester. The next day I decided that things had gone far enough with Mark: I had you and knew how lucky I was, and I didn’t want to mess it up. And then when you confronted me about things not being right between us, I knew that I’d made a huge mistake with Mark and decided that from then on I was all yours.
“Except I didn’t tell Mark it was over because I knew that if I saw him I’d change my mind, and I didn’t want to do that, so I started to ignore him. Over the next couple of days I tried really hard to devote myself entirely to you, and I became deeply resentful of Mark for forcing a reason to break up with you on me. I thought I’d get my revenge by way of a bit of harmless rubbing his nose in it: overt displays of affection with you and flirting with Paul and Christian. Couple that with totally blanking Mark and snubbing all his advances and I guess that made him very angry. I wanted him out of my system, but my actions seemed to be having the opposite effect and Mark started to really hassle me. He phoned and texted me constantly, telling me that he loved me and wanted to talk, and when I did bump into him he was acting really weird, creepy almost.
“On Saturday morning when you were out he rang me nine times in half an hour. I’d had enough by that time and so I went round to his house to finish things with him once and for all. I was planning to stay calm and just talk to him, but by the time I got to his house I was so angry with him that I dived straight in and started shouting at him. We had a big argument and Mark started to act really strangely, like he wasn’t himself. I got scared and said I was going home, but he wouldn’t let me leave. He just kept going on about how he knew I loved him, despite what I was saying, and every time I said something he didn’t like he’d push me against the wall and shout at me. I tried to reason with him, told him that I couldn’t say I loved him if it wasn’t true, and I thought I’d got through to him, but then he said something about showing me that I loved him and he pushed me, really hard. I fell back onto the bed, and before I could get up he’d got on top of me. I screamed at him to get off me, but it was like I wasn’t even there. H-he pinned me down so I couldn’t move and he…” Chloe faltered and swallowed hard. “He raped me. I was so scared – I didn’t know what to do, so I just let him do it. And all I could think about was you, and I was crying but he didn’t care. When he’d… finished, I managed to push him off me and I just ran and ran as far away from there as I could.
“I was so shocked, and so ashamed, and even though I wanted you more than anyone I knew I couldn’t tell you what had happened without having to explain about the affair, so I just left. I didn’t mean for you to be worried – I thought I was doing the right thing – and I’m so sorry. I know you won’t want anything to do with me now that you know everything, and I know I should have told you before, but I didn’t want you to hate me. I don’t want you to hate me, but I understand if you do. I never meant for this to happen…” Chloe trailed off, looking away from Ben.
It was amazing how calm she’d stayed throughout all that, Paul thought. She’d only got tearful towards the end. He was grateful that she’d left out any mention of his name and the fact that he knew rather a lot of things that he didn’t tell Ben about, but it didn’t seem right that Chloe took all the blame. Paul looked at Ben. He looked stunned, and Paul couldn’t blame him but he was just hoping that he was going to react in the right way.
There was a long agonising pause before Ben spoke.
“I knew you were having an affair.” He said, slowly and calmly. “Or at least, I suspected something was going on. I didn’t know who with, though; actually, I thought it was you, Paul. You knew, didn’t you?”
Paul nodded. “Yeah.”
“And Christian?”
“Only towards the end.”
“I convinced myself that it was only a matter of time before you broke up with me and there was nothing I could do about it, so I might as well just enjoy it while it lasted. Felt a bit like I was on borrowed time, y’know? And of course I wanted to fight for you, for us, but I didn’t know who I was fighting against and it seemed pointless if I wasn’t what you wanted. I only ever wanted you to be happy,” Ben looked at Chloe. “Did you ever think about leaving me for him?”
“Not once.” Chloe whispered, trying to wipe away her tears as they fell.
“I can’t believe what he did to you. I wanna kill him.” Ben said angrily. “But more than that, I just wanna hold you.”
He stood up hesitantly, and as Chloe did the same he moved towards her and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
Paul smiled and silently left the room. Maybe this grim fairytale would have a happy ending after all.