Dirty Diana by January James

Chapter Twenty-One

“You’ve done it again, Di,” said Magda. “I thought I’d never seen a man so angry the time you secured Madison Square Gardens, but this time… He’s going to bust a blood vessel.”

“Let me guess. The meeting with the production companies?”

“The very same. You are playing with fire, Di. You know that, don’t you? If any TV production company signs anything with Phoenix, it will make his job impossible to do.”

“That’s the idea,” I replied, filling my mug with yet more coffee. I hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours and I wasn’t about to succumb to it now. “Where is he?”

“I’ve no idea. He was due back in the office for a meeting with the guys from McAuley Finch, but he hasn’t shown up yet. I’m probably going to have to move a bunch of stuff around in his schedule. He’ll want to know if you’re coming in. What shall I say?”

“Say no. I’m working from home for a couple of days. I need some space. If he has a problem with that, he can email me.”

“Email?” Magda practically choked on the insult. “You know he’ll call you.”

“Well, tell him I’m screening. I have to. I’m exhausted.” It wasn’t a lie. But I wasn’t exhausted with work, as everyone would suspect, I was exhausted by fear.

“You are one hell of a firecracker, Di, I have to hand it to you. Gotta go. He’s on the other line.”

“Thanks, Magda. Good luck!”

If it had been any other time, my stomach would have flipped several times over at the mention of his name, but it was incapable of doing that. My stomach was jelly; petrified. If I wasn’t pacing my apartment, my ears peeled for the slightest sound, I was sitting on the toilet emptying my bowels for the fiftieth time.

Then a knock came at the door and I froze, my pacing feet now glued to the floor. I waited, no longer breathing, and the knock came again.

“Diana, I know you’re in there. Let me in.”

I almost collapsed with relief to hear Jude’s voice.

I didn’t care that he’d left the office all the way up town and made his way to the East Village, no doubt to give me a stripping down for continuing to pursue my plan of securing some sort of TV show for my label. I was just so relieved it was him. I had to stop myself from running to the door to let him in.

After unbolting the fifteen locks and a further two I’d just installed, I opened the door to a face that I loved but had never seen so angry.

“What the fuck are you playing at?” He shouted, storming past me into my apartment.

“If you’re going to speak to me like that, you can bloody well get out,” I snapped back at him.

He took a deep breath and levelled with me.

“You have to stop this, Diana. Don’t you remember what I said? It’s a gigantic waste of time. Nothing is going to stop your label from being closed down. Don’t you get it?”

I looked back at him, blankly. Everyone was telling me the same thing but I refused to relent.

“Why do you care? Why does it matter if I’m wasting my time?”

He tugged his hand through his hair and paced my small living room. Then he stopped, right by the table where all my papers were strewn.

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” he said, in a quiet voice.

“I’m the only who can say whether or not I’m embarrassed, Jude. And I can quite confidently say, I am not. While ever I am fighting for my label, I will not be embarrassed.”

“Ok then,” he said, tearing off his jacket and flinging it over a chair. “I’m embarrassed. You’re embarrassing me.”

“Ah, now we’re getting to the truth,” I said, folding my arms and cocking my head to one side. “Why the hell should you be embarrassed if you’re so sure you’re going to win? Huh? You’ve already said that, whether you want to or not, you’re going to shut me down. So why on earth should you be the one who feels embarrassed?”

“This,” he snapped, dropping the same article Marla had brought me onto my table. My eyes flicked to the letters it had landed on and my belly turned to liquid again. He was close enough that he’d be able to read them if he looked. I had to get him out of my apartment.

“I had nothing to do with it,” I sighed, shrugging my arms in what I hoped appeared to be some sort of truce. “Besides, it’s just gossip. And probably, now, in everyone’s trash.”

I stepped toward the table hoping to take the paper and shove it in the trash to demonstrate my point, while somehow covering up the letters before he could read them. Instead, he blocked me.

“Please, Di,” he whispered, heavily. “Please, stop.”

I looked up into his eyes and noticed they were dark and foreboding. There was something he wasn’t telling me.

“I don’t understand,” I replied. “You were ok with having me put up a fight. What’s changed?”

He stiffened. “Nothing has changed. It’s just… We’re getting close to making the announcement and… I don’t want to see you wasting any more time. It’s futile.”

“You’re not doing this because you care,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“You’re right,” he said, bluntly.

I took a step back to process his change in tone.

“If I could behave the way I really feel, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, Diana. I’d be beating those dicks to a pulp. I’d be right there with you, fighting to keep this label going, doing whatever I could to make your dreams come true…”

I gripped the back of a chair for some stability.

“But I can’t behave the way I feel. You know that.”

“Why don’t you quit? I asked, emboldened by his declaration.

“Asking me to do that is like asking you to stop trying to save your label.” He grinned to himself, realizing the irony.

He shook his head. “I don’t know why I came here,” he smiled. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to change your mind. You’re too headstrong. Just like me.”

I smiled too, knowing it was the truth. Despite the completely different paths we were on, we were scarily similar. Maybe that’s why we couldn’t leave each other alone.

“I wonder what the NYT would make of this,” I giggled. “You being in my apartment.”

“Don’t even,” he began. “I have to go. I don’t trust myself—what I’d do—if I stayed.” His smile dropped suddenly, only to be replaced by a film of sadness. Then he paused, as though he’d only just noticed the redness around my eyes.

“Are you ok?” He asked, reaching a hand out to touch my face.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, brushing him away gently. “I’m fine. Just tired, that’s all.”

He looked momentarily dejected, then recovered himself quickly.

“Ok, well, you know where I am,” he sighed. Then he turned to pick up the newspaper and stopped. My blood froze in my veins as his fingers crawled from the New York Times across to the papers just hidden beneath. He tugged gently at one, watching as the words came into view. I held my breath. I couldn’t hide it now. He would ask me what the hell the letters were, I would tell him, and he’d never want to have anything to do with me ever again. I cherished the last few seconds of his company, while he still thought he loved me, while he still thought he knew who I was.

Then his chin lifted and his eyes met mine.

“What are these?” His voice was neither stern nor warm, just questioning.

“Letters from my stalker,” I said, with a small, bitter laugh.

“What?” His frown made it clear he didn’t find it at all funny.

“I have a stalker,” I shrugged. “It started at University. I came to New York to escape him. Everything was ok until that came out.” I nodded to the newspaper still lying on the table. “And now he’s back.”

He looked back at the letters.

“These… these are sick, Diana. How many are there?”

“Ninety-three,” I answered, without even needing to think.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, then looked back at me. I knew what was coming next.

“Have you reported it?”

I pinned my lips shut and shook my head. I couldn’t look at him.

“Why the fuck not, Diana? He’s threatening to kill you. He’s written it all down in great, disgusting detail. What the hell are you thinking?”

I couldn’t look up. I just shook my head again. I felt a tear as it made a track down my cheek.

Suddenly, Jude was standing in front of me, forcing my head up to look at him. I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t see his face when I told him the truth.

“You have to report it, Diana. Someone out there wants you dead. They know where you live, they know where you work. He’s a fucking screwball and he needs to be locked away.”

Still, I said nothing.

“Diana! For fuck’s sake. You have to do something about this. What if he goes and does this to someone else, huh? That will be on you, if you don’t do anything about this…”

“He won’t…” I whispered, opening my eyes.

“What?” Jude said, squinting at me as though he was taking me in for the very first time. “How do you know that?”

With my face still in his grip, I reached out and felt around for the last letter I’d received. The one that had arrived only that morning, addressed to me at my New York apartment, with a Manhattan date stamp, telling me he was in this very city. My fingers found the tell-tale creases where I’d screwed it up in despair, then unfolded it to read and re-read and re-re-read it again, like the abuse victim I was. I held up the letter so he could see plainly exactly why I knew my stalker wouldn’t do this to anyone else. I watched Jude’s eyes move from left to right, left to right as he took in the words that I repeated along with him because they were already etched on my brain.

My Diana.

Finally, I’ve found you. You’ve no need to worry anymore and you’ve no need to be alone. I’m coming to get you and we’re going to live as we were always meant to. Together, as a couple, deeply in love.

I know why you left.

You couldn’t bear the burden of heartache, seeing me every day living under the same roof, hearing me make love to Mum every night through the thin walls of our bedrooms. Even knowing it was always you I saw when I came wasn’t enough for you. I know that now, and I’m sorry. I promise I will make it up to you. You are the only one I want and always will be.

I love you, with my heart, my body and my soul,

Dad x

I watchedthe Adam’s apple in Jude’s throat bob up and down as he swallowed. In slow motion, his eyes glided across the paper towards my face.

“Is this for real?” He said, so quietly that if it were not for the fact he was standing a foot in front of me, I wouldn’t have heard him.

I nodded, mute.

“Your father?” The disgust hadn’t quite settled on his face but I could see its tendrils crawling across his brow.

“Stepfather,” I corrected, realizing that might not be quite so awful, as awful as it still was.

Now it was Jude’s turn to squeeze his eyes closed and shake his head.

“Your mother?”

I knew what he was asking and I knew one and two word sentences were no longer appropriate.

“They’re still married, as far as I’m aware,” I said, turning to walk back into the kitchenette. I poured two glasses of water and handed one to him as soon as he opened his eyes.

He drank half the glass then renewed his stare. “Does she know?”

I shook my head. “I can’t do it to her.”

“Diana…”

“Alright, let me explain.”

I rested my hands on the kitchen surface, more for stability than effect, and took a deep breath.

“I met him when I was at college. I was sixteen. We dated for about a year but he became… too protective.”

I paused to steady my breathing. I’d never uttered a word of this to anyone.

“It was weird. He would want to know exactly who I was with, where I was going, how long for. Even if I wasn’t going anywhere—if I was just staying at home with Mum—he would want to know exactly what I was doing, what I was watching on TV, when I was going to bed, that kind of thing.”

Jude listened in silence.

“It came to a head on my seventeenth birthday. I went for dinner with some girlfriends and he barged into the restaurant, screaming all kinds of accusations at me, like I was in a relationship with one of my friends, I was cheating on him. It was mortifying. He dragged me out of the restaurant on my birthday and drove me home. He never came inside the house but I think he stayed out there, watching. I broke it off of course, expecting the obsessive behavior to continue, but it didn’t. It went strangely quiet.”

I took a few sips of water and Jude leaned back against one of the chairs.

“I thought it was over,” I sighed. “I started my final year of college, everything was going great. And then…” I rubbed my face, as though it might erase the memory. “And then my mum came home from work one day, sat me down and announced she’d been seeing someone and wanted me to meet him. We went out for dinner, and he walked in—Aaron.”

“Your stepfather,” Jude clarified. I nodded.

“He’d done it on purpose,” I said, still disbelieving that someone could be so calculated, so obsessed, that they would date someone for that long, just to get back at another person.

“They’d been dating for six months by that point. My mum never told me about her boyfriends unless she thought they were going to work out. Which is what made the whole situation even worse. My mum was smitten. I hadn’t seen her that happy in years. A part of me really hoped what they had was genuine and that even if he’d been a dick to me, he might still be right for my mum.”

“Does she know you two had a thing?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t want her to know, and Aaron agreed. I think he knew that if my mum found out, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him, and he’d be out of both our lives…”

I drank down the rest of the water and took another deep breath. My lungs were burning from the strain of holding it together.

“He moved in soon after that and I did hear them having sex. Every night. And every night I vomited into a trashcan by my bed. Not because I was jealous—God, no. But because I knew he was doing it for my benefit.” The tears began to roll down my cheeks.

Jude didn’t move. It was as though if he did, he would break the spell and I would suddenly shut down. But it was halfway out now; I had nothing left to lose.

“I got accepted to Cambridge University and I started looking for places to live as soon as my college term ended. I think he panicked then; it became real that I was leaving. That was when he proposed to her. He needed me to know he wasn’t going anywhere. I broke then and pleaded with my mum not to marry him. She kept asking me why but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. It was one thing asking her not to commit to him, it was another telling her that the previous eighteen months had been a complete lie. We had a huge argument and I moved out. She went ahead and married him.”

I suddenly felt light-headed and had to rest my elbows on the surface and my head in my hands. Within seconds, Jude was at my side, his hands drawing back the hair that had fallen around my face.

“I had to go to the wedding; my mum begged me to. We were barely speaking but she called, crying hysterically down the phone, pleading with me to go. She wanted me to be a fucking bridesmaid. I drew the line at that but I agreed to go to the wedding. I shouldn’t have. I stayed off the alcohol, thankfully, but my mum got inebriated. As soon as she was incapable of walking, he came after me. Followed me to my room at the hotel and broke his way in.”

Jude’s hands began to rub my back.

“I screamed bloody murder, I swear. The man never stood a chance. It didn’t take long for the people in the room next door to call security. I never did find out who they were but I’ll be forever grateful to them. He was capable of anything in that moment; I could see it in his eyes.”

I lifted my head and saw Jude beside me in my peripheral vision, and tears on the kitchen surface.

“I left that night and went straight to Cambridge. I stayed in a cheap hotel until I found somewhere more permanent. At that point, I had no reason to hide my address from my mum. I was so naïve; I should have known he would follow me there. That’s when the letters began. I moved onto the campus which was much more secure but he still tried to reach me. I had to move a few times. He always vowed he’d try and win me back once I left Cambridge. So I came here.”

I was still staring straight ahead, waiting for Jude’s reaction, waiting for him to turn on his heel and leave. Because what sick fuck gets involved with their stepfather and lets their mother go along blithely unaware? I felt his hands on my shoulders, turning me, straightening me, until I was facing him. He seemed taller, or perhaps I’d shrunk a few inches with the weight of shame.

“Come here,” he said, softly, and pulled me towards him. He wrapped his arms around me while I stayed still, frozen, unable to believe he was genuinely trying to comfort me. He drew those same circles along my spine and breathed into my hair while I continued to re-process everything I’d just said. I couldn’t believe it was my life. I’d managed to block it all out for the last four years; I’d managed to trick myself into believing it had never happened. Apart from the fact I was completely estranged from my mum, and she never knew why, there was nothing to remind me of just how much I’d fucked our family up.

I pulled back, uncomfortable with the sympathy, knowing I didn’t deserve it.

“Where’s your real father?” Jude asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “No idea. He left when I was two.”

It was then I noticed the muscles in his jaw clicking up and down as though he was trying to suppress something.

“So, plenty of daddy issues over here,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. Jude didn’t smile. Instead, he pulled me back towards him and stroked my hair. It felt nice, but it felt alien. I’d just bared my rotten, damaged soul to him, and he was still here.

“Get your stuff,” he whispered through my hair into my ear. “You’re moving in with me.”

I pulled back again and stared at him, wide-eyed. “Have you gone mad?”

“What do you mean?” For once, Jude looked positively confused.

“I can’t move in with you,” I said, wriggling free of his arms. “What do you think the fucking New York Times would have to say about that?”

Jude closed his eyes and shook his head as though he’d misheard.

“You really care about that? This psychopath is looking to kill you, Di…”

“He won’t kill me…” I started.

“You don’t know that. He’s flown all the way here to track you down, the second your photo hit the newsstands. Di…” he stepped towards me again. “He’s obsessed. Four years have passed since you last saw him. You said it yourself, you don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“But I can’t move in with you!” I repeated. “With everything that’s going on. I can’t be seen to be sleeping with the enemy, for God’s sake.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” he said. “We don’t have to be together…”

“It doesn’t matter. That’s how it will look.”

He sighed and pulled at his hair—a sure sign he was frustrated. “I just want you to be safe, Diana. Is that so bad?”

“I’ll go to a hotel for a few weeks,” I said, trying to appease him. I couldn’t afford a hotel, but he didn’t need to know that. I would confess everything to Sheridan and hope she’d let me sleep on her couch.

“I can’t believe you’re still fighting me, Diana. This is your life. It meant enough for you to decline an interview with Rolling Stone. I don’t understand why you won’t let me help. After that article…” he nodded towards the NYT, “my place is the last place he’ll look.”

“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head, punctuating the conversation. “I still have a label to save, and that won’t happen if I’m living under your roof.”

Jude sighed heavily and looked around my apartment, as though he might only ever see it this once. I was pretty sure that was accurate. Despite having just offered me sanctuary in his home, I was certain he would never want anything to do with me sexually, ever again. There’s nothing like a wayward tiff with an ex-boyfriend-come-stepfather to turn someone off.

“Fine,” he said, not looking at me. “Can you at least let me know when you’re in a hotel?”

“Sure,” I said. He was just being polite.

I watched his shoulders drop as he grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, took one last look at the incriminating letters on the table and walked towards the door. He stopped, taking in the ridiculous number of bolts I’d attached, and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t. He wrenched the door open and walked away without looking back.