by Hannah Pearl
Jake listened quietly, handing me tissues as I cried and rubbing my back when he sensed that I needed comforting. When I finished talking, he turned me round so that he could look me in the eye. He kissed away the last of my tears, and spoke slowly, as if trying to make sure I hung on his every word.
‘This wasn’t your fault, Evie,’ he told me again. ‘You couldn’t have known how violent he would be to your friend. And what kind of friend goes out with your ex-fiancé so soon after you break up anyway?’
‘She didn’t deserve to end up in hospital,’ I reminded him.
‘I never for a moment thought that she did,’ he assured me. ‘I just want you to see the bigger picture. There were obviously things going on that you didn’t know anything about.’ He ran his hands through his hair, pushing his fringe away from his eyes. ‘I’m just glad that you dumped the fucker before he injured you,’ he said, leaning over to kiss me.
I pulled back, out of his reach. ‘That’s the thing,’ I said. ‘I didn’t dump him. He broke up with me.’
Chapter Thirty
Jake was quiet, and I wondered what he thought of me now that he knew. I wasn’t the strong person he’d assumed I was. I hadn’t walked away when things had got tough. I’d wanted to, and I liked to tell myself that I would have, and that it would have been sooner rather than later. I hoped that if it had been up to me I’d still have escaped from Ryan before he’d injured me as badly as he’d hurt my friend. I couldn’t guarantee that I would have though.
Eventually I got up and made some breakfast, more to keep busy than because I had any kind of appetite. Handing Jake a plate of toast, I sat down next to him again and tried to force myself to eat something.
‘I don’t understand,’ Jake said, finally breaking the silence. ‘Why didn’t you leave him?’
‘Because he’d been so sweet when we first got together,’ I said. ‘Then as he slowly changed, there was never one thing that happened that was bad enough to make me walk away. At the time I thought that it would either get back to how it had been at the start soon or I would think about leaving him. The shitty stuff just crept in. One day his magazines had to be lined up neatly. That was fine. It’s nice to be tidy. Then he started to complain about my books. They took up too much space. I think he hated when I bought a new one as I’d have long baths and read them cover to cover. I wasn’t there to run around after him. A few weeks later I came home and he’d thrown my books out, saying they were crap and that I only read them because I wasn’t bright enough to read proper literature. I was so shocked I couldn’t even begin to point out that I’d read English Lit at uni. Then he came home the next day and apologised. He said he’d been stressed at work, and he bought me a new hardback that I’d been wanting.’ I couldn’t begin to explain to Jake how the constant corrections of my behaviour or my speech or my actions had worked to slowly erode my confidence until I had actually started to doubt my own abilities.
‘So you thought he’d change each time, but he didn’t?’ Jake asked.
I shook my head. ‘I never managed to rebuild the collection he got rid of. I didn’t get the chance because he came home one day and told me that he was breaking up with me. He gave me an hour to pack my bags, then he threw them out into the street. We’d been together for a year and a half and that was how he treated me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had no idea where I’d stay. I didn’t want to go home and explain to my parents what had happened so I went to see Tina.’
‘Only to find out that she was seeing him. No wonder you were angry with her.’
I tried to eat another bite of toast but could hardly swallow. ‘Now I’m kicking myself, wondering if I should have warned her, but, honestly, looking back, I don’t know what I could have said that she’d have listened to.’
‘So what did you do?’ Jake asked me.
‘I crashed at Charmaine’s for a week, told my folks that Ryan and I had decided to break off our engagement, then found this flat and I’ve lived here ever since.’
‘No wonder you’re attached to the place, dodgy plumbing and all,’ Jake said, trying to tease a smile out of me. ‘It seems to me though that anyone who can go out with their friend’s ex so quickly should know that the bloke is a wanker.’
I had to agree with him, and yet given that it was my friend lying in a hospital bed, put there by someone I’d once been engaged to, I couldn’t shake the guilt. Maybe Tina should have known that Ryan wasn’t a nice guy for dumping me for her, but she’d have had no way of knowing that this was only the top of his own personal iceberg of awfulness.
‘I’m going to have a quick shower,’ I said, giving up on my food. ‘Visiting times start in an hour, I thought I’d go back and see Tina. She seemed determined not to go back to him yesterday. I want to make sure she still feels the same way now.’
Jake stood up as I did but didn’t move to start getting dressed. He still seemed pensive, taking in what I’d told him about my past. I stopped to give him a kiss before I left. ‘I know that this has probably shocked you,’ I told him. ‘It was one thing seeing me go back and relive my glory days at university; it’s another finding out about this. I just wanted to thank you for being there for me last night. And for not running a mile when I told you the rest of it this morning.’
Jake pulled me into his arms and rested his chin on the top of my head. ‘Evie, I could never run from you.’ He tipped my chin with one finger so that I was looking up at him. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ I said, relieved to finally say the words out loud. ‘I think I have for a long time.’
‘Since you came to visit me in hospital and were so happy to find me alive that you kissed me until my heart skipped a beat,’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ I admitted. ‘Or maybe since you burnt the cake.’ He kissed me again. ‘I’ll call you when I get home,’ I told him.
I’d been out the door for ten minutes before I realised that I still hadn’t asked how his job interview had gone.
Tina had been moved to a private room on the same ward, and as I opened the door I realised that she wasn’t alone. I hadn’t meant to interrupt, but she waved me in and pointed to the chair next to her bed. I dropped my bag on the floor underneath, shrugged off my cardigan and sat down. She was chatting to a woman, around our age, mid-to-late-twenties, with long curly blonde hair, which she wore in a messy ponytail. She was wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt with a picture of an old kids TV show on the front. She had earrings all the way up her ears, and so many silver studs in them I lost count. I wondered who she was. Clearly she wasn’t a police officer.
Stepping into the room I saw a pile of leaflets on the bed. ‘This is Steph,’ Tina said, making the introductions. Steph and I stood up and did an awkward handshake. Neither of us was completely comfortable with meeting over the bed of an injured lady without knowing why the other person was there. ‘I found a telephone helpline number on the back of the loo door when I went to the bathroom and gave them a ring. Steph kindly agreed to come and visit me. I needed to talk to someone, face to face. She works with people who have, or had, violent partners. I thought I’d better see about getting some advice.’
‘Apart from stay away from the bastard?’ I asked.
Tina nodded. ‘I intend to,’ she assured me. ‘Evie knows Ryan too,’ she said to Steph by way of introducing me.
‘Sadly, it isn’t always as simple as planning to stay away,’ Steph chipped in. Her voice gentle but assured. ‘Sometimes partners apologise and women decide to give them another chance.’
‘That’s not going to happen here,’ I growled. Tina shook her head too. I got the feeling Steph was supposed to be trying to stay neutral, but I could tell from the ghost of a smile that flitted across her face that she was pleased with Tina’s vehemence.
‘It can be very hard when you first leave; it’s a big upheaval, moving house, feeling lonely. But try to remember why you made that decision to get yourself safe,’ she continued.
/> ‘I’ll have the scar to remind me too,’ Tina pointed out, gingerly touching the back of her head.
‘Do people really go back to their partners after they’ve been attacked?’ I asked, thinking as soon as I said it that I’d put up with all kinds of crap and stayed so I wasn’t one to talk.
‘More frequently than you think, sadly,’ Steph answered. ‘It’s different to being assaulted by a stranger. There are a lot more emotions involved, a history. Often there are children, the wife might be scared of bringing them up on her own, she might struggle for money. Sometimes he apologises, swears he won’t do it again.’
‘But he does,’ I chipped in.
‘All too often,’ Steph agreed. ‘Sometimes it can be like a cycle. You have the violent incident, then he’s repentant, attentive, saying sorry, buying gifts, making all kinds of promises. But all too soon it shifts and he becomes slowly more aggressive, slowly more threatening, then eventually he is violent and the cycle starts all over again.’
‘So some people get hurt like this over and over again?’ I asked, gesturing to the bruise on Tina’s face, which was now a vivid shade of purple.
Steph nodded again. ‘I’ve talked to people on the helpline who have experienced abuse for decades.’ Tina and I fell silent. ‘That doesn’t mean that you have to,’ Steph continued, trying to reassure her. ‘It is possible to leave and go on to live a perfectly normal happy life. This is your opportunity to decide what it is that you want to do.’
‘Not being put in hospital would be a good start,’ I muttered and Tina shot me a dirty look. ‘Sorry,’ I said, and sat down, taking her hand. ‘I just can’t believe it came to this.’
‘That’s a hard one too,’ Steph continued. I got the feeling she enjoyed raising awareness and that this was a topic she cared about passionately. I could only imagine how forthright she would have been had she not been mindful of Tina’s injury and emotions. She seemed to weigh her words carefully before she spoke again. ‘Often the first violence doesn’t occur until later in a relationship, after the couple are married, pregnant or have small children. That doesn’t mean that the relationship was perfect to begin with, though I guess there is no such thing as completely perfect, but the abusive behaviours can start out fairly innocuous and get worse over time.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. She’d grabbed my attention now. I wondered if this could explain why my relationship with Ryan had gone downhill and how he had then progressed on to be violent with Tina.
‘Often we find that violent partners display a range of other controlling behaviours,’ Steph explained. ‘In some cases they control the finances so that their partners have little or no financial freedom. They have to ask for money to buy anything or provide receipts. Other men go through the credit card bill with a fine toothcomb. Being financially savvy is fine, sensible even, but it’s about the power imbalance. One partner controlling the other, and this is just one arena where we see it.’
I sat back, thinking about how when Ryan and I had moved in together we’d set up a joint account for bills. He’d been pretty thorough with tracking what we’d spent. He’d claimed he was being responsible, but it had niggled me and so I’d kept my own account for the majority of my wages. Just before we split up he’d started asking, more and more forcefully, for me to pay my salary into the joint account. It was one of the few times that I’d stood up to him, and it was lucky that I had. I’d needed every penny I could access to pay for the deposit and first month’s rent for my flat when he kicked me out. If he’d controlled all my money, I would have struggled to leave. Maybe this was one of the reasons he had been able to dominate Tina, she had no family or friends to run to.
‘Other partners demand seemingly innocuous things around the house be a certain way, and it can creep in slowly, all these little rules that you realise you mustn’t break or it gets unpleasant, but each one on their own isn’t bad enough that you break up over it.’ I thought about Ryan’s insistence, which began shortly after we got engaged, that we cook proper meals at home. At the time he’d talked about how much healthier and cheaper it was to live this way, explaining that it would help us to save up for the wedding. Looking back he hadn’t ever done any of the shopping or cooking, even though we both worked full time. It wasn’t a factor that was difficult enough to cause a breakdown in our relationship, but it had affected his mood and put extra demands on me but few, if any, on him. He had been particular about which foods I cook and how his meals tasted. I’d had to leave work early many, many times to fit in an extra trip to the shop for an ingredient or two so that I could cook that evening’s dinner exactly to Ryan’s specification. A failure to do so could lead him to spending the rest of the evening sulking or complaining at me. I’d hoped that he would go back to how he had used to be soon, and told myself it was the stress of saving up or him having a bad day at work. Now I knew that it wasn’t true. He’d behaved that way because he thought it was acceptable.
Steph’s descriptions of violent and abusive partners explained why the police had been so interested to hear about my relationship with Ryan. It was evidence of a lot of the early controlling behaviours. I began to realise what a lucky escape I had had. It also explained why the police had been so interested to talk to me. They must have wondered whether I had been through similar experiences to Tina and never reported it. My experiences of being with him were also why I had found it so easy to understand that he had injured Tina. Though he hadn’t hit me, somewhere in the primitive parts of my brain, that fear had been lurking. It was why I’d worked so hard to appease him and keep him calm. Underlying my behaviour was the knowledge that I wasn’t really safe. I’d never wanted to admit, even to myself, that when he threw a mug against the wall and smashed it, or ripped up a magazine that I was reading because I’d been slow to get up and greet him when he got in from work, his underlying message hadn’t been that he was doing that to save me from his temper, it had been showing me how easily he could have broken me instead. No wonder it had taken me so long to begin to heal after we’d split up.
Steph wasn’t done yet though with her explanations. ‘These behaviours might seem similar to those that take place within a “healthy” relationship.’ She used her fingers to make an air quote around the word ‘healthy’. ‘But within an abusive relationship the acts have an undercurrent of power imbalances. They’re not joint decisions, they’re actions that are carried out in order to appease the abusive partner and avoid confrontations.’
I remembered the fight we’d had two weeks before Ryan dumped me. It was a Friday night and I’d had a long week at work as we’d had our school inspection. I had period pains and a thumping headache. I was too tired to cook so I’d picked up fish and chips and a veggie burger for me on the way home. I’d been hoping for a peaceful evening, a soak in the bath and some mindless TV. Instead Ryan had gone mad. He’d thrown the takeaway against the wall and shouted at me for wasting the food in the fridge. I’d ended up cleaning up, making us a quick soya mince spag bol and crying in the bath. I hadn’t mentioned that he’d been the one to waste the takeaway.
The next day Ryan had been full of apologies. He said he’d had a busy week at work too. He took me out for dinner and promised that we could get a takeaway the following week. He’d chosen such a posh restaurant, one that I normally thought of as far too expensive and I’d felt thoroughly spoilt. I started to see how his behaviours fit into the models Steph was outlining. I noticed that Tina was nodding too, and I wondered what she’d been through over the last year. I realised that some of the after-effects of living with Ryan were still with me now. I was careful about what I spent but I never checked my bank balance. I rarely had more than a few items in my fridge, and I had takeaways at least once a week. Even after months of freedom I was still rebelling.
‘And that’s before you even consider the impact on other close relationships,’ Steph continued. I snapped out of my reminiscences and tuned back in to what she was saying. ‘
It can be hard to maintain friendships. Lots of women stop inviting friends over because their houses have to be kept in a certain way, or because they never know what his mood will be like and they don’t want their friends to realise what they’re living with.’
I shook my head. Tina had been a frequent visitor to our flat before Ryan kicked me out, though obviously that hadn’t ended well for any of us. Steph was still talking though. ‘Other times, it is more subtle. The abusive partner belittles friends. He might be so rude or nasty about people that you stop talking about seeing them, then you see them less often. Eventually your other bonds weaken and you find yourself even more dependent on the man and with fewer options of who to talk to when it gets difficult.’
I found myself flashing back again to the times I’d gone out with Charmaine while I’d lived with Ryan. He’d been rude before she arrived, putting down her taste in clothes, calling her slutty though anyone else could see she’d looked gorgeous. I’d begun to meet her at her flat instead when we went out, but by the time Ryan had dumped me we hadn’t been out together for a few months. No wonder she had been so relieved at the break up. I also realised how many of my hang-ups about what I wore stemmed from this. No wonder I’d felt a lot freer this summer as I started to wear dresses and little tops again. I hadn’t realised how much impact Ryan had had on my behaviours.
I looked at Tina and wasn’t surprised to see that she was crying. If I’d got myself so messed up I wondered how she was feeling. ‘I’m so sorry, I should have come back and warned you about his moods,’ I told her.
‘How could you? We weren’t exactly speaking, and that was my fault. Besides, Ryan would have been in my other ear, telling me it was jealousy, or that he’d never treat me like that. And he was convincing. Every time he said sorry. Every time he promised me that he had changed.’
I think Steph sensed that we were straying into territory Tina wasn’t ready to go to yet. She reached out and gave Tina’s hand a gentle pat. ‘There’s a lot of support out there though for women who are trying to move on. We’ve got a local helpline if you need to speak to someone. There’s national helplines too, those run twenty-four hours a day. We can meet with you and offer you practical advice about moving on, or we can simply listen if you feel like you just need to talk about what happened. When it comes to the court case, we can make sure that you are fully supported throughout the process too.’