Before bed last night I’d told him I was going in to work early today; that I had a meeting this afternoon and I was going to need to go in to prepare for it. He’d not even looked concerned, not looked doubting – in fact I think he’d been barely listening. So far, so good.
A quarter to six. I got up, as quietly as I could, desperate not to wake him. I went into the bathroom to dress, my navy blue suit, shoes with just a bit of a heel, the same clothes I’d worn last week. I wanted to eat something for breakfast, but my stomach was churning so much I thought I might actually be sick.
I was going to be sick.
I made it to the downstairs bathroom just in time, watery vomit coming out of my mouth. God, I must be more nervous than I’d thought. I rinsed my mouth in cold water, my hands trembling a little.
My routine, carefully considered to be identical to a normal work day, even though Lee was still fast asleep upstairs. I pinned my hair back in a neat bun. I put on make-up, drank a glass of water, rinsed it out and put it on the drainer. After a moment’s thought, I rinsed out a clean cereal bowl and spoon and put that on the drainer, too.
I collected my bag and my keys, and quietly shut the front door behind me. It was nearly half-past six.
Thursday 28 February 2008
‘That’s it, that’s better – come on. Deep breath. Another. Slower.’
‘I can’t – it’s bad, this – ’
‘It’s fine. I’m here, everything’s alright, Cathy.’
The little scrap of red was lying in the middle of the rug like an open wound. I couldn’t look at it. In the background the television was laughing at my hysteria. I guess it must have looked quite funny to an outsider.
When I was almost calm again he took me with him to the kitchen and made me sit at the kitchen table while he made tea.
‘What happened?’ he said. He was always so unflappable, so bloody composed.
‘It’s that. It was in my pocket.’
Stuart looked across to the rug. ‘What is it?’
I shook my head, side to side, until I started to feel dizzy. ‘It’s – just a button. It’s not that. It’s how did it get into my pocket? I didn’t put it in there. It shouldn’t be in there. It means that he’s been in the flat. He got in and put it in my pocket.’
‘Hey. Come on, deep breaths again. You’re over this, don’t let it get to you again. Here’s your tea, come on, have a bit.’
I had some gulps, burned my throat, felt sick. My hands were shaking. ‘You don’t understand.’
He sat opposite me with his tea, and waited. Always with the unending fucking patience, it got on my nerves. It reminded me of the fucking nurses in that crazy fucked-up excuse for a hospital.
‘Can we just leave it? Please? I’m fine now.’
He didn’t speak.
I drank my tea. Despite myself, I was starting to calm down. I still couldn’t look at it, couldn’t think about it, what it meant. In the end, I managed a whisper. ‘Please could you get rid of it?’
‘I’ll need to leave you on your own for a minute.’
‘Yes. Don’t go far.’
‘I’ll put it in the bin outside. Alright?’
He got up from the table. I put my hands over my face, blocking it out. I kept my eyes screwed shut until I heard the door to the flat shut behind him – he knew better than to leave it open these days – and his footsteps on the stairs. I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream and not stop, but I held it in, counted to ten, told myself that it was gone, it was gone forever, maybe it had never been there in the first place, maybe I’d imagined it.
He came back a few minutes later and sat back down at the kitchen table. I drank my tea and gave him a smile that I hoped was reassuring. ‘See?’ I said. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just your crazy girlfriend flipping again for no reason.’
He just kept up that steady eye contact. ‘I’d like it if you could tell me,’ he said. ‘I think it’ll help.’
I didn’t answer, wondering if I could say no, and if I did whether he would be satisfied with that or whether he would go on and on and on…
‘This is part of my past. I want to get rid of it, forget about it,’ I said.
‘It’s part of your past that’s clearly having a significant impact on your present.’
‘You think I put it in there myself?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
I bit my lip. My tea was only half-drunk, otherwise I would probably have got up and walked out. In any case, I wanted to go downstairs and start checking, try to work out how the hell he got in.
‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘I’m not trying to get inside your head. I just want to know how I can help. Can you try and forget what job I do and just tell me? I’m not your therapist, Cathy. I’m just the poor bastard who’s in love with you.’
I found myself smiling in spite of it all. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve kept all this in for so long, it’s hard to just let it all out, you know?’
‘I know.’
I got up and went to sit on his lap, folding myself into him and tucking my head under his chin. He put his arms round me and held me.
‘I had this red dress. It was what I was wearing when I met him. He got a bit obsessive about it.’
I had a momentary picture of the dress when I’d bought it, how perfectly it fitted, how I’d had to buy shoes to match. I’d loved it, at first. I’d wanted to wear it all the time.
‘And this button reminds you of the ones on that dress?’
‘Yes – no, it’s more than that. It is from the dress, I’m sure it is – oh, I don’t know!’ I had been racking my memory desperately, trying to picture the dress, the exact size of the buttons, whether the backs were metal or plastic. I veered from absolute certainty that it was, back to doubt. Of course, now the button was outside in the bin I couldn’t check. There was one thing that was beyond question, though. ‘It’s the sort of thing he’d do, Stuart. It’s exactly the sort of twisted game he used to play. He put that – thing – in my pocket to let me know he’s come back for me.’
Stuart’s fingers were stroking the skin on my forearm, but I could feel tension in him, in the way he was holding me. I was waiting for him to say it. It’s just a button. It doesn’t mean anything.
‘You could have picked it up somewhere,’ he said gently.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t just pick things up. Do you? Do you just go around randomly picking up other people’s crap? No? I don’t either.’
‘Maybe it got mixed up in your washing,’ he said, ‘at the launderette. It’s tiny. It could have been left in the washing machine by whoever used it last. It was all twisted, wasn’t it? Perhaps it got caught in the machine or something. Isn’t that a possibility?’
‘Whose side are you on?’
I got up, suddenly suffocated by his arms around me. I crossed the room and changed my mind and came back again, pacing, trying to stop the panic and the anger and the sheer, dreadful hopelessness of it all.
‘I didn’t realise there were sides.’
‘Shut up and stop being such an idiot!’ I shouted.
He shut up. I’d crossed a line and felt bad straight away. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘You should ring the police,’ he said at last.
‘What for? They won’t believe me,’ I said miserably.
‘They might.’
‘You don’t believe me; why should they?’
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. I think you’re severely traumatised by what happened, you’re afraid now and that’s making you ignore the fact that there are potentially rational explanations for how it came to be in your pocket.’
‘That’s just the point, Stuart. It was in my pocket. It wasn’t just tangled up in the washing, it was in my fucking pocket. It didn’t just fall in there of its own accord, and I didn’t put it there, he did. Don’t you get it? He used to do things like this. He’d break into my house when I wasn’t there, leave me me
ssages, move things around. Things you wouldn’t necessarily notice. It’s why I started the checking.’
‘He’d break into your house?’
‘He was – kind of an expert in it. I never worked out how he managed to get in. He could break into just about any house without you knowing how.’
‘Jesus. You mean he was a burglar?’
‘No. He wasn’t a burglar. He was a police officer.’
Friday 11 June 2004
I drove away from the house, not daring to look back.
The sun was bright already, the sky cloudless and blue, the air chilly but not cold. It was going to be a beautiful day, a fantastic day. When I got to the end of my street, indicated right, turned the corner, I felt a scream starting to bubble up inside me, a laugh, a manic laughter of release. All the panic that had built up in me for so long.
I drove to work, let myself in through the rear doors so that I didn’t have to say hello to security, and retrieved my suitcase from its hiding place. In the side pocket were my US dollars, my passport complete with three-month visa, and my travel documents. My office was bare and empty – someone else would be moving into it next week. I dragged my suitcase out to the back door, hoping that security wouldn’t be looking at the CCTV cameras right at that moment, hoping that nobody would see me, ask me how I was doing and wasn’t I supposed to have left already?
Part one of the plan had gone well.
Once I got to the motorway, I was singing. I drove two junctions down the motorway to Preston and negotiated my way through the gradually building rush-hour traffic to the railway station. In the next street was a second-hand car dealership. I parked on the street in front of the crowded forecourt. On the front seat next to me was the car’s log book and MOT certificate. I’d signed the portion of the V5 which stated that I was selling the car, and left the remainder of it blank. Next to it I left a note:
To Whom It May Concern
Please look after this car. I don’t need it any more.
Thank you.
I left the keys in the ignition. Hopefully whoever found it wouldn’t feel the need to report it to the police.
I pulled my suitcase from the boot and wheeled it up to the station entrance. I bought a ticket for London, paying cash, dragged my case down to the platform to wait. The London train was due in five minutes. I wanted to be gone, already, even though I knew Lee was probably still fast asleep in bed; I wanted to be away from him; I wanted to run and never look back.
The train was busy at first, each station bringing new people on and taking old people off. I wanted to relax, to read a book, to look like a normal person. I sat still and gazed out of the window at countryside and towns rushing past, each station we went through taking me further and further away from my old life and closer to freedom.
A week ago, a week to the day, he’d come in late – gone eleven o’clock. I’d thought he was out for the evening, I’d thought I’d be safe until Saturday at least, but he’d turned up and let himself in. I was watching a programme on New York and the sound of the front door opening and closing made me jump, and without thinking I turned it off.
The smell of alcohol preceded him into the living room. It was not going to be pleasant, I knew.
‘What you doing?’ he demanded.
‘I was just going to bed. Would you like me to make you a drink?’
‘Had enough to bloody drink.’
He fell onto the sofa beside me. Still wearing the same jeans and hooded sweatshirt he’d been wearing two days before when he’d left for work. He ran a weary hand over his forehead. ‘I saw you in town last night,’ he said, his tone challenging.
‘Did you?’ I’d seen him, too, but I wasn’t going to admit it. ‘I was out for a drink with Sam. I told you – remember?’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
‘I thought you were working,’ I said, wishing I could just tell him to leave me the fuck alone and stop following me.
‘I was fucking working,’ he said. ‘I just saw you going from the Cheshire to the Druid’s. Looked like you were having a right laugh. Who was that bloke?’
‘What bloke?’
‘Bloke with you. Had his arm round you.’
I thought, forced myself to remember. ‘I don’t remember him having his arm round me, but the bloke that was with us was Sam’s boyfriend.’
‘Come here.’ His arms were held open, swaying slightly, and I gritted my teeth and snuggled up to his chest. He gave me a crushing hug, pressing my face into his sweatshirt. He smelt of pubs, tarmac, takeaway food and alcohol. His hand pushed the hair out of my face, and then he pulled my face up to his for a kiss. He was clumsy about it.
After a minute he said, ‘Your time of the month?’
I thought briefly about nodding, but it wouldn’t do me any good. ‘No.’
‘Why you being so unfriendly, then?’
‘I’m not being unfriendly,’ I said, trying to keep my voice bright. ‘Just tired, that’s all.’ To prove my point, I hid a delicate yawn behind my hand.
‘You’re always fucking tired.’
I was at that crossroads again, the one where I could either be brave and let him have what he wanted, or try to fight it and risk getting another serious beating. When he was drunk like this, he wasn’t going to let me get away with saying no, and I didn’t want to risk starting my new job in New York with yellowing bruises on my face.
‘I’m not too tired, though,’ I said, with a smile. My hand in the crotch of his jeans, giving him a rub. Undoing his belt.
In the end, he beat me anyway. He fucked me and I tried hard to make sure it didn’t hurt too much, trying to make it last as though I was enjoying it. I knew the way it was going when he started slapping my backside while he was fucking me, just a slap at first, but carrying on getting harder and harder until I had to cry out. That was what seemed to turn him on these days. He could fuck for hours, especially if he’d had a drink, his erection coming and going, until he found some way of hurting me – biting me, or pulling my hair until I cried out, and as soon as he heard that genuine note of pain in my voice, he’d go at it harder until he’d hurt me enough to tip him over the edge and he’d orgasm.
He pulled out of me abruptly and turned me over onto my back, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his eyes glinting with pleasure. The skin on my behind stung as it came into contact with the carpet underneath.
I wondered what he was going to do. I thought by now it wasn’t possible to still be afraid of him. He’d hurt me so many times that this was now almost a regular event. He was getting ever more inventive, finding new ways to humiliate me.
‘Don’t hit my face,’ I said quietly.
‘What?’
‘Anything – just not my face. They ask too many questions at work.’
He grinned, an ugly leer, and for a moment I thought he was going to do just that, hit me again and again across the face until my skin split. I felt tears start, although I hated letting him see me cry.
‘That so?’
I nodded, not able to look at him any more. Then he deliberately put one hand under my chin, choosing his place, thumb on one side, fingers the other.
‘No,’ I said, ‘please, Lee…’
‘Fucking shut up,’ he said, ‘it’s good like this, you’re going to love it.’
While he fucked me, he took away the air from my lungs, my fingers at my throat, trying to relieve the pressure, the air burning my lungs, the roaring in my ears signalling that I was going to lose consciousness in just a matter of moments.
Then, still fucking me hard, he’d ease the pressure and I’d cough and gasp, dragging air into my lungs. The only way to stop him was to give in. I screamed, as loud and as hard as I could, tears racing down my cheeks. I’d almost seen death. I was utterly terrified and screaming was almost involuntary – so I screamed.
He didn’t try to stop me, didn’t put his hand over my mouth again, and just let me scream. It did the trick. A few seconds later h
e pulled out of me and jerked off over my face.
On the train now, the Midlands rushing by in a blur of green and sunshine, I closed my eyes against the nausea.
Afterwards, he’d picked himself up off the carpet, staggered to the downstairs toilet to wash in the sink, and then he’d gone upstairs and fallen into bed. I’d waited until I could hear him snoring, then I got myself to my hands and knees, still crying, and went to have a shower. At least the only bruises I had that time were around my throat. I wore a neck scarf to work every day this week. They all thought I’d gone and got myself a love bite, at the grand old age of twenty-four.
At nine o’clock, the train pulled in to Crewe. I heard the station announcer run through the list of stations that remained on the journey, all the way to Euston, and then, ‘Due to a signalling failure at Nuneaton, this train will be delayed for half an hour.’
Half an hour? I checked my watch, although I knew what the time was. It was fine. I’d allowed an extra two hours in addition to the three-hour check-in time at Heathrow. As long as there were no further delays, there wouldn’t be a problem getting there on time.
I wanted to sleep, but I was too wound-up, too fraught. When would I be able to relax? Would I relax when I was on the plane? When I got to New York? When I heard that he’d moved away from Lancaster, or when a year had passed and I hadn’t heard from him?
Would I ever, ever be able to relax again?
Sunday 9 March 2008
In the end I phoned DS Hollands, in the Domestic Abuse Liaison Office at Camden Police Station, just to bring an end to the argument. When I eventually got through to her, she had completely forgotten who I was. I explained about the curtains and the button, and – stumbling over my words – how this had been typical of Lee’s actions when we’d been together. Even as I said it, it sounded stupid even to me. It sounded like something someone would say just to get attention. I was half-expecting her to tell me off for wasting police time, but in fact she said very little. She said she would phone her contact in Lancashire and would get back to me if there were any concerns.