Into the Darkest Corner

  I nodded.

  He turned and left the room, but before I was even fully aware that he was gone, he was back again, something in his hand, something red. He threw it at me, and it slid across my naked skin like a kiss, so soft.

  ‘Put it on.’

  My red dress. I found the opening, slid it over my head, biting back the tears, pulling it down over myself.

  I looked up at him and tried to smile. Tried to look beguiling.

  Again the back of his hand this time, across my mouth. I fell to the floor and the pain was so intense, so complete, that I felt myself laugh. I was going to die here, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

  He was on top of me, then, forcing my legs apart, grunting with the effort, pulling the fabric of my dress up to my waist. I heard it tear, and that seemed to turn him on even more.

  What made it worse was that he didn’t smell of alcohol. He wasn’t even drunk this time, he didn’t have that excuse.

  I lay there and smiled to myself, whilst he grunted and thrust at me, ramming himself into me again and again, thinking that the pain, the pain all over from the weeping grazes around my wrists, my broken fingers, my nose, my head, my right eye, the split to the corner of my mouth that let the blood seep in – I was drinking it, tasting it, almost wishing there was more – it was all just so fucking funny. So ironic! I’d nearly been on a plane to New York, and I needn’t have bothered, the whole time. I could have just stayed here, locked myself in my own spare room and waited for the inevitable.

  The pain of him fucking me hard, every way he could, somehow wasn’t even worse than everything else. I’d been here before, after all. Whilst he was raping me he wasn’t doing anything else. He wasn’t killing me.

  Friday 28 March 2008

  ‘How’s it been going?’ Alistair said, when I got into his room.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said. I handed over the sheet of paper I’d been diligently filling out all week.

  On the left, a list of my checking compulsions in order of importance, followed by a list of my avoidance compulsions, similarly ordered. We were starting with the easy ones. I’d scored each one by how much I imagined not performing each ritual would distress me, out of 100. The worst one, not checking the flat door, scored 95. The lowest, not checking the bathroom window, scored 40. The avoidance compulsions – crowded places scored 65, the police scored 50 and the colour red, of course, after the incident the other day, was the worst – 80. Below that, my ordering compulsions – not shopping on particular days, eating on certain days, neither of which seemed to be as bad as they had been in the past, and scored just 20 each. The main ordering compulsion, having cups of tea at set times – I’d given that one a 75.

  I’d been set the task of challenging myself with exposures to my lowest fears, as often as possible. Next to the original scores, I’d written in how much distress I’d felt after performing these exposures, once the anxiety had lessened.

  Alistair was reading my list and nodding, occasionally raising his eyebrows. I felt like a pupil showing my homework to the head teacher. ‘Good, very good,’ he said.

  ‘It reminds me of that bit in Harry Potter, you know, where they confront the thing that most scares them by magicking it into something funny.’

  ‘Absolutely. Or, indeed, Hamlet.’

  ‘Hamlet?’

  ‘“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Anyway, tell me about some of the things you tried.’

  I took a deep breath in. ‘Well, I managed to watch some police programmes on the television. I started off with a drama, then I managed to watch one of those true life shows where they film from the back of a police car.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was okay. I wanted to turn it off, but I didn’t. I kept up the deep breathing while I was doing it, and in the end it was quite interesting. I kept telling myself it wasn’t real. I thought I was going to have nightmares after it, but I didn’t.’

  ‘That sounds excellent. You need to be careful about telling yourself it isn’t real, though, or telling yourself anything at all, for that matter. Internal dialogue can be just another safety behaviour. Try it again but see if you can just watch it, and enjoy it. Just accept it as a television programme like any other.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘And the checking?’

  ‘I left the bathroom alone. I skipped it out of the checking ritual when I got home.’

  ‘And how was that?’

  ‘Surprisingly easy.’

  ‘You’ve got the distress levels here as just five – excellent.’

  It was true. I’d gone straight past the bathroom. I’d had to tell myself that there was no way on earth it could be unsafe – after all, the stupid window doesn’t even open – but even so, I did it. It wasn’t very nice at first. When I’d finished checking everything else it still felt odd, and for a long time afterwards I was sitting staring at the bathroom door, thinking all the time about the window being fine, not open, picturing it. Eventually it subsided and I didn’t feel so bad.

  Seeing progress with it already was a real motivator. I wanted to go home and try some more, try some harder things.

  Our hour together was nearly up when Alistair picked up my list again. ‘I think you should consider that there are a few elements missing from the list,’ he said.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Have a think. What’s your biggest fear? The real biggie.’

  I thought, not knowing what he meant at first, and then suddenly knowing and not wanting to say. I felt the anxiety responses we’d just been discussing – my heart rate speeding up, my hands starting to tremble.

  ‘You’re quite safe here. Just try and say it.’

  My voice came from a long way off. ‘Lee.’

  ‘That’s right. And you’re going to need to tackle that fear too, otherwise tackling all the others is going to be a bit pointless. I think the sooner we deal with that one, the better. All the other fears have their source in that main one, don’t they? So if we tackle how you feel about Lee, then the others should all come toppling down too. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Of course it made sense. If I wasn’t scared of Lee any more, there was no point checking the door or doing any of the other stupid pointless tasks I filled my whole day with, was there? It all sounded so bloody obvious. ‘It’s not a meaningless fear, though, is it? I mean, I can just about comprehend that checking the cutlery drawer six times is silly, it’s a waste of time. But being afraid of Lee is about self-preservation.’

  Alistair was nodding. ‘Yes, but you need to consider that we’re talking at cross purposes. There is Lee himself, and then there is the thought of Lee. Lee himself is presumably pottering about his daily life up in the north somewhere. The thought of Lee is disturbing your daily life. You think you see him when you’re out and about. You imagine that he’s going to try and break into your house. So it’s the thought of him, this picture you’ve created in your mind of this omnipresent figure, this source of all bad things, which we need to deal with.’

  I was starting to get a headache.

  ‘So I’m not saying you need to go and find the real Lee and confront him and wait for your anxiety to subside. I think you need to tackle your perception of him, and do it in the same way that you’re tackling your compulsions, with exposure and response prevention.’

  ‘How? How can I do that?’

  ‘By just letting the thoughts come, and letting them go. Let yourself remember. Let the anxiety come, wait for it to subside, and then, before it’s gone completely, think about him again. When you’re at home, imagine him coming into the room. Picture him. Think about standing in front of him, facing him. And then wait for the anxiety to subside. These are just thoughts, Cathy. Let them come, and let them go.’

  He made it sound so easy.

  ‘Will you give it a try?’

  ‘What – now?’

  ‘We can try now. But especially when you’re at home. At
first you can get Stuart to sit with you, if you like. But don’t use him for reassurance. You need to be able to do this by yourself.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can do it.’

  ‘It’s up to you, of course. But think about the implications of being unafraid of Lee. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? And if we try now, it might be easier to give it a go than when you’re at home. At least here you won’t be tempted to go and start checking the door. What do you think?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Have a think about how much thinking about Lee would distress you first. Let’s use our scoring system. On a score of zero to one hundred, how bad do you think it would be?’

  ‘Just to think about him? Ninety.’

  ‘Alright. Let’s try – yes?’

  I closed my eyes, not sure what I was doing and if it was all going to go horribly wrong. Lee wasn’t hard to imagine. He was in my thoughts all the time anyway, even if I did fight against it. This time, I let it come. I pictured my flat. I was sitting on the sofa, looking back towards the door. Waiting. I pictured the door opening, and Lee standing there.

  I felt the fear coming like a wave, my heart racing, tears starting in my eyes.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Alistair. ‘Just let it come, don’t try to stop it.’

  I pictured him walking towards me. Lee, as he always was, handsome, short blond hair, complexion that always seemed to be slightly tanned even in midwinter. Those eyes, bluer than the summer sky. And the size of him, too, the bulk, the muscles in his arms and across his chest. He came and stood next to the sofa and looked down at me. He even smiled.

  I waited. Already I could feel the anxiety was less than when I’d started thinking. I’d expected this to end in a full-blown panic attack, but it wasn’t that bad at all.

  ‘Tell me about what you’re imagining,’ Alistair said.

  ‘Lee in my flat,’ I said. ‘Just standing there.’

  ‘Alright, good. Now I want you to picture him leaving again. Put him into a car and have him drive off.’

  I did it. He turned, gave me a wink – where that came from I had no idea – and shut the door behind him. I went to the front windows, saw him getting into a car, a silver car, shutting the door and driving away. I pictured myself going back to the sofa and turning on the TV.

  I opened my eyes.

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘I did it,’ I said.

  ‘And think about your anxiety. How bad is it now, thinking about him?’

  ‘About – about seventy. Eighty maybe.’

  ‘Good. See? You can do it. It’s a good start.’

  Saturday 12 June 2004

  It took a long time and, in the end, I was almost sorry it was over. He pulled out, pulled himself away from me, over to the wall, sitting there, his head in his hands. I saw my own blood on his hands, his face. Then I heard him sob. I pulled myself gingerly up to a sitting position.

  ‘What am I doing?’ he said, his voice broken. ‘Oh, my God. What the hell…?’

  I looked at him and he was actually crying.

  I inched my way over to him, every bit of me sore. As he cried, I found myself sitting next to him, the wall for support, and I slipped my arm around his shoulders. He put his head against my neck, the tears from his face sliding down my skin. I put my ruined right hand, three fingers now fat as sausages and numb, cold, on the side of his cheek. ‘Shh. It’s okay.’ My voice sounded distorted, my lip split and swollen. ‘It’s okay, Lee. It’s alright, really.’

  He cried against me for a long time, while I held him and wondered whether, actually, I was going to be all right after all.

  ‘I’ll get locked up,’ he said, his breath coming in rasping sobs, ‘they’ll put me away for this.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ I soothed. ‘I won’t say. We’ll be all right, honestly. Just you and me.’

  ‘Really?’ He looked up at me like a child.

  I wondered if he could even see my ravaged face. Did I look suitably comforting? How could he possibly imagine that anything was ever going to be all right again?

  I had to continue down this path – it was my only chance. ‘You have to let me clean up a bit.’

  ‘Of course.’

  To my surprise, he got up and left the room.

  I crawled across the landing to the bathroom, found my way into the shower and stood there, seeing the blood diluting as it washed away, swirling into patterns against the white enamel that were almost beautiful. I rinsed the piss out of my hair, trying not to watch as clumps of it came away in my fingers and blocked the plughole. My skin stung; my right hand was still useless. I wondered what would happen if I had broken bones in my hand and they weren’t fixed.

  Fortunately the towel in the bathroom was the navy blue one, not one of the white ones, so the blood that dotted it as I dried myself gingerly was not too noticeable. I was bleeding from between my legs. Probably my period, I thought, which had been overdue. I’d not thought about it, putting it down to the weight I’d lost, the stress, the fact that I wasn’t eating regularly. Maybe it had been brought on by the trauma.

  It was as though all this was happening to someone else. I went into the bedroom and found some sanitary towels, knickers, clothes to wear, jeans, a belt, a loose jumper. I could have run away, right then. I could have run out into the street, shouting for help.

  But that was just it. I couldn’t run. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t call the police, could I? He was one of them. They would look at me, and he would invent some story about me being traumatised by some incident he’d been working undercover on, how I was showing signs of mental illness and he’d been trying to help me. They’d take me to hospital, patch me up, and then I’d end up sectioned. Or worse, they’d send me home. With my left hand, I made a half-hearted attempt to clean up the blood in the spare room. It was everywhere – walls, carpet, smeared over the door. I gave up in the end, and went downstairs.

  Friday 28 March 2008

  On the way back from Leonie Hobbs House I walked fast, long strides, getting my heart rate up. If I was physically tired this evening at least I stood a good chance of being able to sleep. That was the theory anyway. I was finding it harder and harder to sleep in my flat, spending hours lying awake listening out for noises outside. Even sleeping with Stuart upstairs was difficult; every noise sounded as though it was coming from my flat below us.

  Once I turned away from the main road into Lorimer Road, the noise of the traffic faded away.

  I could hear footsteps that matched my own, perfectly. For several yards I thought they were mine. Then I realised that there was someone on the pavement behind me. I thought it was quite far away, so I chanced a look back. Just a glance.

  A man was walking behind me, about thirty yards behind, matching my pace. Dark clothes, a hooded top, the hood down. I couldn’t see his face because the streetlight behind him left it in shadow. Just clouds of his breath in the cold air.

  I picked up my pace and waited for the sound of his steps to match mine. The sound of them was jarring.

  He’d speeded up, too.

  At the end of Lorimer Road, the main road again. I could see buses, still stationary in the traffic, but at least I’d be able to get on one of them if I needed to. I didn’t care which one.

  Before the main road, though, I realised that the noise of the steps had ceased. I looked behind. The man had gone. He must have turned into one of the houses.

  At home, later, I looked and looked. I checked the door and the windows and the kitchen. I even checked the bathroom, though I’d stopped checking that weeks ago. I knew he’d been here. I could smell him, sense his presence, as a rabbit scents a fox.

  It took another hour on top of the checking I normally do before I found it. In the cutlery drawer, which I’d checked already – one single knife and one single fork, buried under all the others, carefully swapped over into the wrong section and hidden.

  Saturday 12 June 2004

  He was in the kit
chen, stirring a cup of tea. The happy little domestic scene, after what we’d gone through half an hour before, was peculiar.

  He gave me a smile. His blond hair was stained with red and brown bits at the front where he’d run his bloody hands through his hair. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and I managed a smile in return, the cut on my lip splitting open again as I did so. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked me.

  I nodded. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know.’

  We went into the living room and I lowered myself onto the sofa gingerly.

  ‘I didn’t want you to go,’ he said lamely. He sat in the armchair across from me, giving me some space. I felt that all the anger had gone from him. If I was going to run, now would be a good time. But I had no energy left at all.

  ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere now, am I?’ My voice sounded odd to me – not just the slurring of the words because my mouth was out of shape – I think one of my ears was funny, too. I could hear a ringing, a buzzing.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked. It didn’t really matter either way, now. I meant what I said. I wasn’t going to run again, I’d decided.

  Lee looked wasted. His skin was pale, tired, his bright blue eyes dulled. ‘I wanted to see what you’d do.’

  ‘Was that you, on the phone? Pretending to be Jonathan?’

  He nodded. ‘I thought you’d recognise me, but you didn’t. I set up an email address. It was all pretty easy, really. I never thought you’d fall for it. You never checked to see if any of it was real, did you?’

  ‘How did you get down to Heathrow so fast?’ That was the only other thing that had bothered me.

  He shook his head and sighed. ‘You really are unbelievably stupid sometimes, Catherine – you know that?’

  I shrugged. What the hell? He was right.

  ‘I’ve got blue lights and a siren. Traffic jams and speed limits don’t apply.’

  Well, knowing that didn’t make it any easier.

  ‘Of course, you did give me the fucking runaround, you know.’