the window if he chooses. I know I am being irrational, but I am unable to help myself. My sense of self has disintegrated and, as simple living overwhelms me, I struggle to get through the day without collapsing in a heap and crying for hours.
I am in my car one evening, completely overcome, my head hard against the steering wheel, my sobs punching through me, when my friend Karen calls. I tell her that I don’t want to any more, that I can’t carry on, that nothing matters any longer.
But for her it does. I matter.
She knows of a remarkable woman, a psychiatrist, who quickly takes me in. But in order for her to help me, I have to remember and I have to tell. In the beginning, it is hard to talk, to reopen old wounds, to pick at crusted scabs, but slowly, as I turn trauma into narrative, I am able to give my story shape. It is through telling that I can ultimately take control of my own life, make sense of it and even try to understand why.
And slowly I journey back into the light to find a new understanding of my worth.
It’s been four long years and only now do I feel I can put my story behind me.
This is the last chapter.
And then I will close the book.
One
“You’re not allowed here,” I warned him.
“I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck.”
Those were his words as he lumbered toward me with that loose, loping gait of a tall man. One who has spent a lifetime trying to shorten his stride so that others can keep abreast. He was not a man who could be quiet. His hands were lashing at the air, his shoulders twisting like shifting puzzle pieces. I was trying to put the pieces together, trying to make them fit, not quite certain how. My hands were still suspended, fixed in mid-flick, adjourned, a deferred gesture indicating that he may not enter, when I pressed the remote and soundlessly closed the garage door.
Perhaps he heard my silence because suddenly he calmed, the tension draining from him as his shoulders dropped. He ran his fingers through his tousled fringe and looked down at me with such tenderness.
“I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through,” he said, tilting his head. “Is there any chance of us getting back together?”
I was quiet.
“Please give me another chance.”
I said nothing as I absorbed his now familiar words.
“Don’t make me beg … But I’m asking you to give me another chance.”
His voice a little harder, more determined. He was looking down at his feet.
I watched him. I wanted to see the truth in his eyes. I wanted to see whether I could believe him, whether I could trust that this time he truly meant what he said. I wanted to see my pain reflected there. But I couldn’t. He was still looking away.
Then suddenly something deep inside me shifted.
I was no longer lost in his dark, brown eyes with their thick, solemn brows. I no longer saw the definition of his chiselled jaw, his high cheekbones or the endearingly flattened tip of his broad nose. As his words melted and morphed, and the last five months moulded as one, his boyish nonchalance, his charm, dissipated.
All I could see were the lies, his disappearing for days without warning, the screaming, the threats, the terror, the hostage-holding, the keeping me up all night, the dragging me through the house by my hair, the choking, the doors locked around me, the phones disconnected, the isolation, the fear and the uncertainty.
I realised that it was never going to change. Never.
As I stood there in my own stillness, I knew that I had been holding onto something that never existed. I finally understood that this could no longer be my journey. I could no longer give credence and value to his distorted perspective.
Was there any chance of us being together? No, there wasn’t.
There would never be. Not any more.
It was finally over.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said softly, trying to find my voice.
I didn’t want to anger him.
It took a moment for my words to register, then his face contorted in fury and his rage erupted in a deadly torrent of vile.
“You bitch! You fucking cunt,” he screamed. “Give me the fucking air tickets.”
He’d bought two air tickets for me and my son to go away for a few days. It was supposed to be a healing getaway, to win me over after the night he’d driven me straight into my garage wall, shouting, “Tonight you’re going to die!”
It was an admission of guilt, a bartering for forgiveness, but I had preferred to accept it as a selfless and thoughtful expression of love and apology. He had also sent a bouquet of flowers, which had long since lost their allure and been discarded. The tickets were on my bedside table.
“I’ll get them,” I said quickly.
It was a short distance to my bedroom, but I moved slowly. I put one foot before the other and trod deliberately away from him. It was only once I was in my bedroom, out of sight, that I rushed forward and reached for the tickets. As I did so I snatched at the remote panic button alongside. I’d recently installed the alarm system and kept the panic button poised and ready just in case. I grabbed it and pressed down frantically, counting, one … two … three.
Not breathing. Four.
I hoped it was long enough to activate the signal, but not long enough to raise his suspicion.
I tossed the panic button aside and bounded back across the room, to the doorway, making up time before slipping back out into the passage. I was still trying to catch my breath as I glided back towards him, eyes lowered. The tickets were in my left hand, carefully caught between thumb and index finger, and I was holding them up high, presenting them ahead of me like a floating, paper peace offering.
But he was having none of it.
He was in the hallway shuffling from one foot to another, immersed in a private dance of rage, as he fuelled his own fury. Somehow, I met his rhythm, instinctively mirroring him, rocking ever so slightly from one side to the other, trying to make myself part of his harmony, trying to placate him, to send out a silent signal that I was not a threat and that I meant no harm. But it was a hollow synchronicity.
As my three-metre journey came to an end I didn’t need to look at him, to meet his eyes, to know that his huge, rough hands were splaying and fisting, that his jaw was clenched tight, his teeth grinding. But I lifted my head anyhow and as our eyes locked I saw the shine. I saw how his pupils had brightened with the icy glow of anticipation.
“Please don’t,” I said, my words nearly silent.
Please don’t hit me.
But he did.
He slammed his right fist into my eye.
The pain was instant. I screamed. My hands flew to my face and I spread my fingers wide as I tried to mask myself, but it was too late. He hit me again. I stumbled backwards, but quickly scrambled to my feet and fled to the lounge. I was in the corner, the curtain caught around me, when he upturned the coffee table. I was still screaming when he hoisted the TV cabinet off the floor and hurled it across the room. Then he lunged at me, his hand clamped over my mouth to keep me quiet. But I wouldn’t be quiet. He gripped my head and pounded it down into the floor.
He was over me, his face so close to mine that I could feel his spit on my cheek as it sprayed.
“You need your fucking face, don’t you?”
I felt the cold glass. A shard from the shattered coffee table, and he was holding it tight against my cheek.
Oh my God! He wants to cut me. Cut my face.
It took everything I