Читать книгу Unbreakable: My life with Paul – a story of extraordinary courage and love - Lindsey Hunter - Страница 17

For a few weeks, I was the happiest girl in the world. Paul was very attentive and we went everywhere together, announcing our relationship to the world. I thought about him the whole time and found it difficult to concentrate at work, but he seemed to be thinking about me all the time as well. We were just typical young lovers. We’d jump into bed at every opportunity and we were so compatible it seemed the most natural thing in the world. I was on a high, looking forward to all the wonderful days and nights we would share together and counting the hours until I would see him again. I looked forward to our relationship getting deeper and deeper as we got to know each other better. If I had any slight worry, it was that he wasn’t looking for someone to settle down with at that stage; he wasn’t even looking for a long-term girlfriend, let alone someone to marry – but he didn’t know what I was like once I made up my mind about something. And once my heart had decided it loved Paul, who was I to argue?

The snooker season was starting up again and players were getting their practice in and beginning to rev up for the professional year ahead. Paul was practising in earnest and I would often pop in to The Manor to see him during my lunch break, or even in between appointments. We could meet for lunch and have a quick chat on the phone whenever we liked because he didn’t have a boss leaning over his shoulder. To an outsider, he might have looked like a young waster hanging around the snooker tables all day every day, while his girlfriend slaved away. I worked long hours as a full-time beauty therapist, plus all my evening work teaching at the college and sometimes seeing private clients as well, while Paul had a flexible timetable. Of course, if anybody had stopped for more than a few seconds, they would soon have realized that he was a lot more than that – his talent was incredible, even to a non-snooker aficionado like me.

However, I wasn’t the only person who was hanging around Paul. One day in October, when Paul and I had been together properly for about four weeks, I walked into The Manor to see Gemma sitting in the café having a coffee. My heart gave a bit of a jolt but I told myself it was nothing. When I said to Paul, casually, ‘Oh, I just saw Gemma outside,’ he didn’t seem to bat an eyelid. ‘Did you say hello?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think she saw me,’ I replied, and told myself to forget all about it.

The following week, though, I saw her talking to Paul just outside the room where the snooker tables were. She saw me coming and walked off before I could say anything. ‘What was that about?’ I asked Paul. He seemed a bit flustered but maintained that she was just being friendly.

I didn’t want to become suspicious – it’s not in my nature – but I had a bad feeling about it. He and Gemma seemed to have been in an on-off relationship for so long, and I was worried that I hadn’t seen the last of her.

I wasn’t sure whether Gemma had a job or not – but she did seem to have plenty of time to hang around Paul. She started coming regularly for a coffee or a snack in the café at The Manor, and it seemed she always managed to chat to him on the way there and back. Sometimes she’d catch sight of me coming and she’d leave; other times we might exchange a polite ‘hello’ but it never went any further than that. I never had a conversation with Gemma at any point over the years, and I certainly didn’t intend to have a public fight with her. Paul maintained it was just that they wanted to stay friends, having been together for such a long time, and I found it hard to argue with that.

One night, when Nicky and I had been out for a drink, I plucked up the courage to ask her what was going on as we made our way back to her house. ‘Nicky,’ I said, ‘did I tell you I saw Gemma recently?’ ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Where? In town?’ I knew I was going to have to tell her more, but there was a part of me that was reluctant to open the whole issue up. Maybe I was subconsciously scared of what I might hear. ‘Chatting to Paul at the club,’ I told her. ‘She’s there practically every day hanging round Paul. What’s going on, Nicky?’

It turned out that Nicky was just as much out of the loop as I was. Not only was she spending a lot of time with her new boyfriend Nobby, meaning that she often wasn’t at home when Paul called round, but she was also trying to avoid knowing anything so she wasn’t put in an awkward position. ‘Our Darren did say that Gemma had been making a play for Paul again,’ she confessed, ‘but I’m in a really tricky position here, Lindsey – Paul’s my cousin and I love him to bits, but you’re my best mate and I’d do anything for you.’

I paused and took stock of what she had just said. ‘Are you saying that you suspected something was going on, Nicky? Because if you did, I’d have thought you would have told me.’ She took my hand and looked at me with those big, open eyes of hers. ‘It’s not like that, Linz. It’s not about you. It’s Paul. He’s never, ever been faithful to any girl before – it just doesn’t seem to be something he’s capable of. There’s no malice in him; he just can’t help himself. And, although I don’t know anything, it’s just his past record that bothers me.’ This was sounding worse and worse. ‘Nicky,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to find out what’s going on. I won’t be messed about again. I need to know.’

I couldn’t settle after that, and eventually got a taxi home rather than stay over. Nicky called me the next morning. ‘Lindsey, I’ve raked our Darren over the coals about this and it’s not good news, babes. Paul’s back with Gemma again.’

I thanked her for letting me know and put the phone down. I didn’t want to discuss this with anyone; I just wanted to work it out myself. It was only a month since we’d started sleeping together. I felt like a complete idiot for falling for his charms and jumping into bed with him. Now he had thrown everything back in my face. I’d told him how much of a big deal it was for me to have sex with him; he knew that meeting my parents properly was important to me. Did none of that matter to him? Didn’t I matter to him? I went to my bedroom and had a good cry – from shock, surprise, fury, hurt and real, bitter sadness at having to let go of my beautiful dreams for our future. Once I’d cried it all out, I went into practical mode and tried to work out what was behind it all.

It was as if Paul couldn’t get Gemma out of his system. They were one of those couples who seem to be attached by a piece of elastic, pinging back and forwards to each other, breaking up and making up. Perhaps it was the drama that made it addictive.

I had to take a stand, though; nobody gets to have two girlfriends, especially if one of them is me! I called him but he didn’t take the call. I assumed that after Nicky had quizzed Darren, he had warned Paul that I knew. I left a message on his phone saying to call me, and that I didn’t intend to keep phoning him all day. I told him I knew what was going on and I wanted a word. It was a couple of hours before he called back. Paul always hated confrontation and avoided it whenever possible, but this time he had no choice.

‘Lindsey,’ he said straight away, ‘I know how this probably looks to you, but hear me out. You’ve only heard this from Nicky who heard it from Darren – give me a chance to say my piece. Please?’

‘Absolutely, Paul,’ I answered. ‘You go for it, babes. You tell me how, when Darren told Nicky that you were with Gemma again, that he got it all wrong. Did Darren mishear it? Did Nicky not understand what he was saying? Have you not been phoning Gemma, not seeing her, not sleeping with her again?’ Of course, I didn’t know for sure they were having sex again, but I assumed they were.

‘Oh, Lindsey,’ he pleaded. ‘You make it sound so bad, but it wasn’t deliberate. She just kept hanging around me.’

‘And that was it? You just had to give in because she was pestering you? That, Paul Hunter, is a pathetic excuse for being unfaithful to me but it doesn’t matter anyway. We’re finished,’ I told him.

‘Now, babes,’ he said, ‘I know you don’t mean that. I’m really sorry, really sorry. I’ll finish with Gemma then we’ll be fine.’ His voice faltered. He knew I wasn’t going to take this well.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! ‘You’ll finish with her?’ I said. ‘You’ll finish with her? For how long, Paul? A day? A week? You’ve “finished” with her so many times, and gone back to her so many times, that I don’t think you even understand what the word means. Let me show you how it’s done. We, you and me, Lindsey and Paul, are finished. Now watch and see how it really works.’ With that, I put the phone down and switched it off for the rest of the day.

That evening I went round to Nicky’s and her family were all really supportive. Nicky’s mum – who was Paul’s auntie, after all – even went so far as to say that she thought Paul was making a huge mistake, and they all thought I was perfect for him. It was ironic; everyone seemed to think that but Paul.

Funnily enough, I soon got over my initial anger with him. I know he’d cheated on me, but it wasn’t about me. He had a self-destructive streak that sometimes made him spoil the things he cared about the most. In many ways he was just so young and immature, but there was still something about him that made him loveable. He was like a naughty puppy stealing a biscuit from the coffee table; you can’t stay mad at them for long because they’re just doing what’s in their nature. However, I was determined not to back down. I wasn’t a masochist, after all.

Over the following days and weeks, it got harder for me rather than easier. The problem was that I was so close to his cousin Nicky and sister Leanne that I couldn’t avoid hearing about Paul, and it pickled my brain. I always knew what was happening with him and Gemma and I didn’t want to know. I just needed to get over him but I didn’t get the chance. Sometimes I would see them in the distance when we came out of different clubs at the same time, or I would hear from someone that they had been spotted somewhere. I’m not a jealous person but it was really painful seeing Paul with his arm round her and imagining him going home to bed with her. I tried not to torture myself with images of them together but at weak moments I couldn’t help it.

And Paul? He tried to phone me a few times but I never took his calls. There was nothing to say. He’d had his chance to prove that I meant something to him and he’d treated me as though I was little more than a fling.

In the weeks after we split up, two things happened to Paul – he turned 19 and he won the Regal Welsh Open, a tournament that was being televised. He beat lots of well-known players like Steve Davis, and he even beat John Higgins in the final. I watched it at my parents’ house and felt very distant from the person on the screen. The commentator said that Paul was the third youngest winner of a major professional snooker tournament of all time, after Ronnie O’Sullivan and Stephen Hendry. He was on the road to fame now, I thought. There were camera flashbulbs going off everywhere and people clapping him forever. At the end of the presentation, he was interviewed and he got the microphone and said, ‘I’d really like to thank everyone for supporting me, especially my girlfriend back in Leeds.’

I nearly jumped off the sofa, my heart in my mouth! Could he possibly mean me, or was he talking about Gemma? My dad asked, ‘Is he talking about you?’ because I hadn’t told my parents the whole story about what was going on. At that moment, I had to admit to myself that I was still in love with him. Paul had got to me; I’d loved him before, and I still loved him. The fact that he had cheated on me meant that I knew I could never trust him around Gemma again, but I still clung to the hope that he would grow up a bit and figure out what was in his best interests. Me.

Paul was in the papers a lot after he won that tournament. He’d got prize money of £60,000 and found that he had a lot of new friends hanging around, wanting to share his good fortune. He was something of a local hero in Leeds and I saw his face smiling out at me practically every time I walked past a newsstand. One night in November 1997 when I was out on the town with friends, we saw each other in a club and I managed to say ‘hello’, which was very hard. Most of the time he wasn’t around because he was away playing, but I began to hear rumours that he was going off the rails a bit, drinking lots and not practising enough.

Meanwhile, I pulled myself together and decided to try and move on with the rest of my life. I’d always fancied buying a house of my own and this seemed like a good time, so I started viewing properties. In the back of my mind, I admit that even in this I was daydreaming that if Paul and I did get back together, we’d have somewhere we could be alone. Immediately after we split up I’d been so hurt that I was determined never to get back with him, but over time it was almost as if I had forgotten how bad it had been. I know it’s crazy but I just couldn’t get over him.

That Christmas, I needed some sort of project in my life to stop me from missing him, so when I saw a house I liked I moved fast. By February I had moved in. Mum and Dad helped me with the deposit and I still had my savings to buy furniture and do the place up. I started to teach full-time, while treating private clients in the evenings. The wages were good, and I felt quite steady.

From time to time I would ask Nicky and Leanne if Paul was still with Gemma. Half of the time they didn’t know; they would only be able to work it out if she had been round recently. I had spent the last few months trying to get him out of my head and it had only had the opposite effect. I felt as though I was thinking about him all the time. I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to get him out of my system so quickly. He’d got a hold on me in the first place without me having any say in it, and now he was under my skin. Turned out I wasn’t as sensible as I’d always thought – I was certainly a complete fool for Paul Hunter.