″Kate.″
I heard a commotion. When I opened my eyes, Elfie was scrambling to escape from the room again and Jonathan was bending over me; cupping my face with his hands; whispering urgently in my ear.
″Please. Please, love,″ he said, bending down with one knee on the floor. ″I wish more than the world that I could erase what happened. I know it′s impossible to ask you to forgive me. But please don′t ever think I don′t love you. Because I do. More than you can even know right now.″
He lowered his head onto my lap and rested it there.
With his voice muffled against my stomach, he continued, ″All I want to do is make it up to you. I want to make things right. Please, Kate. Let me make things right.″
Gently, I rested my hand on top of his hair. The hair felt soft, but my wrist was locked tight. I felt an eerie sense of detachment from what was happening.
Something about Jonathan′s head in my lap and his being down on one knee made it feel like we were acting out a tawdry scene from the life of Queen Elizabeth. Jonathan was playing the straying Sir Walter Raleigh, a supplicant waiting for the royal nod of forgiveness for the sin of bedding down a comely maiden he′d tripped across in a scullery. That made me the Virgin Queen, I guessed. My fingers went icy.
I couldn′t manage to connect any emotion to what was happening between us. I especially couldn′t connect to what was happening with Jonathan.
The man kneeling in front of me didn′t seem at all like the man I knew. This man wasn′t the emotionally reserved homicide cop I′d fallen in love with. This man was acting like someone who was veering on the edge of an emotional meltdown. What the hell had happened to him since he′d left the United States on his vacation? Had Gi cast some kind of bizarre sex spell over him? Clearly I was going to have to get to know my boyfriend all over again if we were going to put things back together. If I was willing to put things back together, that is.
Once before a boyfriend had cheated on me. At the time it hadn′t seemed like a difficult situation. Enraging and humiliating, yes, but not difficult. When that guy had confessed his betrayal to me over lunch, I′d blessed him and his new tramp with an Irish curse and never spoken to him again. I never even looked back. But I hadn′t been in love with him.
Jonathan was a completely different story. What was I going to do?
Jonathan says he loves me. Jonathan says he′s sorry. Jonathan is down on his knees. Jonathan is begging me to forgive him.
The phrases ran together in my head in an endless loop. It was a manic parrot song of love and remorse, sung in a British accent.
Forgive him. Was it ever going to be possible for me to do that?
It was much too soon to tell.
Chapter 26
V-necks for Large Busts
If you have a large chest, usually the most flattering neckline is a V-neck. Don′t be afraid to show a little cleavage. Hold the line at one and a half inches, though-an excessive cleavage line is matronly. And besides, you don′t want the girls to look like they′re going to fall onto the table.That′s just cheap.
– From The Little Book of Beauty Secrets by Mimi Morgan
An hour later Jonathan and I were lying on top of the duvet that covered my bed. Fully clothed and not touching, we were stretched out like two dolls that had been placed next to each other.
In halting sentences Jonathan began to reveal the story of how he′d met Gi. They′d met eight years earlier during a trip he′d made to China. She was working as a bar girl in Beijing. She′d escaped from North Korea, but she was being abused by the smugglers who′d brought her in. They were forcing her to work as a prostitute, Jonathan told me.
″For all practical purposes, Gi was working as a sex slave when I met her,″ Jonathan explained.
Staring up at the popcorn ceiling of my bedroom, he continued. ″What she was doing back then wasn′t by her choice. She was being threatened by the smugglers who got her over the border. I felt I had to get her out of there. I made arrangements to bring her home to England with me.″
″What arrangements?″
″We got married. I paid to have her paperwork doctored. It′s the only time in my life I′ve ever committed a crime.″
He closed his eyes. ″I was studying criminology back in the UK at the time,″ he said. ″I could have gone to jail for what I did. I′m not proud of that.″
″You must have loved her very much.″
″Yes, but what I felt for Gi back then was more than love. And less in a strange way. I can only describe it as a burning thing… as an obsession. For a while I think I really lost my mind over her. I was capable of doing anything for her back then.″
Each word that Jonathan was saying was dripping onto my brain like burning oil, causing incredible agony. But I was determined to keep listening. I had a ludicrous, sudden urge to grab a tape recorder to record our conversation because my brain was in too much shock to fully absorb everything he was saying. It was unbearable to hear more.
Gi had turned out to be dangerously unstable, Jonathan told me. ″She was-is-extremely insecure about money,″ he said. ″She kept incessantly looking for ways for us to become rich overnight. She thought we had to have pots of money, or else she′d wind up back on the streets, back in North Korea. That made no sense. I′m a cop.
″Gi couldn′t stand the thought that I′d never earn big money. In the end she found some bloke she thought could give her all the material things she wanted. I came home early one afternoon and found them in bed together.″
″What did you do?″
″I walked out and never saw her again.″
″Until this week.″
″Until eight months ago.″
″You saw her eight months ago?″
″Briefly, when I went home for the Christmas holidays. Remember? You couldn′t come because you had to work.″
″Don′t you dare try to blame this situation on my work, Jonathan. You slept with Gi eight months ago? And you haven′t told me anything in all this time?″
″I didn′t know what to say at the time, Kate.″
Right. What could he have said? Our relationship would have been over eight months ago. Curling my hands into fists, I pressed them into my stomach. At some stronger time in the future I′d have to rewrite our emotional history as a couple. So many huge things had gone unsaid between us. How could I not have felt that something was desperately wrong on some level? For the past eight months, the only negative emotion I′d felt was insecurity about my body. Probably that insecurity had masked deeper worries running beneath the surface. A psychologist would have a field day with me.
After a painful silence, Jonathan resumed speaking. ″Gi has stayed close to my mum all these years,″ he said. ″Gi took care of Mum, and I guess she used her as a sort of refuge whenever she got in trouble. Last Christmas I told Gi to stay away while I was there, but one night she came over with some woolly socks and teas for Mum. I got drunk and-″
″And the rest I can figure out. And fuck you, by the way. Unless you care to describe how much you enjoyed your little Gi fling. Was she nice and tight, Jonathan? Is that what you′ve been missing all this time?″
″Please don′t, Kate. I hate to hear you talk like that. That′s not like you at all.″
″Spare me the language lecture, Jonathan. And don′t tell me what I′m like. Whatever I′m like, it obviously isn′t sufficient for you. You were in bed with Gi this week, right? When I called and she grabbed the phone?″