Stuart phoned me at half-past one. I was sitting in my office with Caroline at the time, discussing the applications for the warehousing jobs. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. Are you free to talk?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve just been to see Mrs. Downstairs.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Not too good. She hasn’t been conscious since she came in, apparently. They’ve done various scans. Seems like she might have hit her head harder than first thought when she went down.”
“That’s awful.”
“They were asking me if we knew who her next of kin is.”
“I haven’t a clue.”
Caroline gave me a questioning look to ask if I wanted her to go. I waved her back into her seat.
“Maybe we could try the management company. They might have someone on file—I don’t know.”
“I’ll give them a call this afternoon if I get a chance,” Stuart said.
“If not, I could call them.”
“I’ll let you know.”
There was a little pause. I wondered if he’d been thinking about that kiss. I’d thought about it a lot.
“What time’s your flight tomorrow?”
“Early. And I’m back on Sunday night. Will you miss me?”
I laughed. “No, of course not. I hardly see you during the week as it is, you’re always at work.”
“Hm. Maybe I should start rethinking my priorities.”
“Maybe.”
Was he flirting with me? It felt like he was. I wondered what this conversation would be like if he were sitting in my office instead of Caroline.
“Can I give you a call tomorrow?”
He was definitely flirting with me.
“I’m sure you’ll have more important things to do.”
“You’re joking—it’s only Dad and Rachel.”
“Even so, you said yourself you don’t see enough of them. Make the most of your time there. And you could do with a break as well, you’ve been working really hard.”
“I want to find out how your appointment with Alistair goes. How are you feeling about it?”
“All right. I’m trying not to think about it, to be honest.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow evening. If you don’t want to talk to me you can just turn your phone off.”
“I might do that. I’ll see how I feel. Look, I need to get back to work. Have a safe trip, okay? I’ll see you next week.”
“Okay.”
I hung up.
“Let me guess,” Caroline said. “Stuart?”
“Our neighbor downstairs had a fall the other night; they took her off in an ambulance. Stuart went to see her—she’s not doing too well.”
“Oh, that’s rough.”
“I’ll try and see her tomorrow night, she might be better by then.”
“Is he going on vacation or something?”
“He’s going to Aberdeen to see his dad and sister.”
“You were giving him a hard time,” she said.
“Was I? I wasn’t. Really?”
She raised her eyebrows at me in response.
“He asked if I was going to miss him,” I said, trying to remember if I’d imagined that tone in his voice.
“You
are
going to miss him, of course.”
“It’s only four days, Caroline, for heaven’s sake. He works such long hours sometimes I don’t see him from one week to the next, it won’t be any different just because he’s gone to Aberdeen.”
“Is he going to call you?”
“Says he is.”
“That’s it, then,” she said. “If he calls you every day between now and when he comes back from Aberdeen, you’ll know.”
“I’ll know what, exactly?”
“That he loves you.”
I was momentarily taken aback. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. I’d thought of Stuart as being someone I could trust, someone who understood what might be going on in my head, even someone who found me attractive and probably wanted sex. But not as someone who might be in love with me. Not as someone I could be in love with.
“What are you, some kind of soothsayer?” I said, laughing at her earnest expression.
“You mark my words,” she said. “You’ll see.”
I thought he was working, but he came in drunk. He let himself in with his door key when I was sitting watching the news on television. For a fleeting moment I was happy—I was back to looking forward to seeing him again, to getting things back to where we should have been, relaxed, happy, having fun as a couple.
Instead he stumbled, half fell through the door, and as I rose from my seat to meet him his fist hit the side of my face with a crashing blow, sending me flying backward into the side table.
I was so shocked that I didn’t move, just lay there for a moment seeing the carpet against my face and wondering what on earth had happened. Then pain all over my head, excruciating pain, as he took hold of a fistful of hair and dragged me up to my knees.
“Whore,” he said, breathing hard, “you fucking bitch . . . you complete fucking whore.”
With his left hand he slapped me, a stinging blow across my cheek. I would have fallen backward again but he still had hold of my hair.
“What have I done?” I yelped.
“You don’t get it, do you, you fucking whore?” His voice was icy cold, and I could smell the beer on him.
He let go of my hair, then, and before I could fall back or get to my feet he brought his knee up and it connected with my nose with such force that I felt it crack. I screamed, and tried to crawl away, tried to get up, still stunned. Tears were spinning down my cheeks and splattering away with the blood that was pouring from my nose and my split lip.
“You’re mine,” he said, “you are my fucking whore. You do exactly what I tell you. You understand?”
I whimpered, clutching on to the leg of the dining room table with slippery fingers, my eyes closed. I felt him grab my hair again, yanking me away from the table, and a voice that must have been mine, pleading with him, “Let me go, please, please . . .”
He undid his jeans with his left hand, staggering over to the sofa, pulling me along as though I were a rag doll as I scrabbled to get to my feet to take the pressure away from my scalp.
With a sigh, he sat back heavily onto the sofa, his jeans now at midthigh, his cock hard—as though the sight of me broken and bleeding was turning him on—and told me to suck.
Sobbing, blood over my hands and in my mouth, I did as I was told. I wanted to bite his fucking prick off and spit it in his face. I wanted to use my fist and punch him so hard in the balls that he’d need to get them surgically removed from his pelvic floor.
“Look at me. Fucking bitch, I said, look at me!”
I raised my eyes to his face, and saw two things that terrified me. First, the smile, the look in his eyes that told me that he had me exactly where he wanted me, and that this wasn’t going to end. And second, the black-handled lock knife that he held just a few inches away from my face.
“Do it right,” he said, “and I might not cut your fucking nose off.”
I did it right, I did the best I could, with blood and snot and tears streaming from my face to his crotch, and he didn’t cut me—not then, anyway.
I need to escape. I need to make sure that I can get away without him even realizing it, because I will only get one chance.
After work on Thursday I took the Northern Line heading south of the river. I bought some flowers at a stall at Victoria, freesias and pink roses, then caught the bus to Camberwell and King’s College Hospital.
Getting off the bus at the same place where I’d seen Sylvia not too long ago felt a bit peculiar. I kept looking around in case she was there again, but of course she wasn’t. Not on a bus, not on the sidewalk either. It felt strange, too, to be so close to Stuart’s workplace and yet he was hundreds of miles away by now.
It took me an age to find the ward; I went in through the main entrance and then ended up in a building adjacent to the bus stop, opposite the Maudsley. I found Mrs. Mackenzie on Byron Ward, in a side room. She was either asleep or unconscious, breathing noisily through her open mouth. She had lost weight, or maybe it was my imagination; either way she seemed tiny, childlike, lost in the big hospital bed. The cabinet next to the bed already had a bunch of flowers in a vase, daffodils, in full and vibrant bloom. Next to the vase was a card.
“Hello, Mrs. Mackenzie,” I said quietly, wanting to wake her and yet not wanting to, at the same time. “I brought you some more flowers. How are you feeling?”
What a stupid question. I sat on the visitor’s chair next to the bed and reached for her hand, surprisingly warm, the back of it bruised from various needles that had been inserted under the skin.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner,” I said. “I wish I’d been there.”
I thought I felt a flicker of pressure on my hand. I gave it a squeeze.
“Did you fall, Mrs. Mackenzie? Was it an accident?” My voice was quavering a little. “I wondered if you’d had a fright, or something. If you saw someone, or something, that scared you.”
There it was again, a twitch more than anything, as though she was dreaming and her hand was moving of its own volition.
“You’re safe here,” I said. “They’ll help you get better. And we’re keeping an eye on things, Stuart and I. You don’t need to worry about anything.”
It was hard keeping up a one-sided conversation. I glanced across at the card. It was an artist’s print of some red flowers, with the message “With Best Wishes” printed at the top. My curiosity got the better of me. Inside, it read:
Get well soon, with love from Stuart (Flat 3) and Cathy (Flat 2). X
Oh, well, I thought. Hopefully when she wakes up she’ll remember who we are. I added the flowers haphazardly to the vase of daffodils rather than go on the hunt for a second vase, and topped up the water from the sink in the corner.
“I’d better go,” I said, giving her hand another squeeze. “I’ll come and see you again soon, all right?”
My phone rang as soon as I turned it back on, waiting at the bus stop on Denmark Hill.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Hello, me.”
“I said I’d call, didn’t I?”
“You did. How was your journey?”
“Not bad, thanks. How are you?”
“I’m okay. I’m actually standing outside the Maudsley, waiting for a bus.”
“Are you? Have you been to see Mrs. M?”
“Yes. She was asleep.”
“Did they say how she is?”
“I didn’t see anyone else. I just went in and stayed for a minute. Anyway, here’s my bus.”
“Oh. Can’t you talk to me while you’re on the bus?”
I was waiting my turn to get on, behind an elderly couple and a group of teenagers carrying skateboards.
“I could, but I’d rather not.”
“Can I call you later, then?”
I laughed. “If you like.”
“What time?”
“Give me at least a couple of hours—you know I’ll have things to do when I get in.”
That first time Lee hurt me, I mean the first time he actually left me with physical injuries, I had to take the next week off from work. I pretended I had the flu—to be honest I must have sounded rough when I phoned in on the Monday morning. It took a week for the marks on my face to be sufficiently disguisable with makeup. The only thing left was the cut to my lip, which ended up looking like a particularly horrible, scabby cold sore. My nose, fortunately, didn’t turn out to be broken, or, if it was, it wasn’t a bad break.
Needless to say, I didn’t go to the doctor.
He stayed with me for five days. The next morning he was distant. He looked at me as though I’d been especially stupid and managed to fall over in the street. Nevertheless, he made me some soup and helped to clean me up, wiping my face with surprising tenderness.
The following day he was exceptionally gentle; he told me I was the only woman he’d ever loved. He told me I was his, only his; if any man ever looked at me he would kill him. He said it dismissively, as though it were a remark that could be made casually in conversation with little meaning, but I believed he could do it. He meant it.
For the time being, I had to play along with it. For those five days, I tried to be what he wanted me to be. I told him I was his, only his. That I had made a mistake by trying to end it. That I loved him.
When he left to go back to work on the Wednesday night, I considered my options. At first I stayed at home, in bed, watching television and pretending nothing had happened. I waited, and waited, in case he came home again. In case it was a test.
I wanted to call the police, but I knew he would check my phone. I wanted to leave the house, run, run as fast as I could to the police station, and hope they would protect me. They wouldn’t, of course. He would be questioned, if I was lucky, and then there would be some sort of inquiry, during which time he would be free to come and go, free to hurt me, free to kill me. It wasn’t worth the risk.
On the Thursday I called an emergency locksmith and had the locks changed on the front door and the back door.
That night was the first night I started checking properly.
By the following Monday there had still been no sign of him. I wondered if he’d gone for good; some part of me hoped he was feeling remorse for what he’d done, maybe changed his mind about me, decided to leave me in peace.
Back then I was still at least partly an optimist.
I went to work on the Monday, and got a lot of sympathy from people that I didn’t really deserve. Nobody doubted that I’d had the flu—I’d lost about five pounds in a week, I looked pale and gaunt and had a scab on my lip. The swelling had gone down across the bridge of my nose, and the bruising was easily concealed under several layers of foundation.
I didn’t stay late; I was only at work until about four. I wasn’t away for long.
When I got home on that Monday afternoon, I spent the first twenty minutes or so checking all the doors and windows. Everything was secure and I heaved a sigh of relief.
I didn’t check the bedroom, of course; there didn’t seem to be any point.
When I went up to bed at about ten, there, on my bed, was a little pile of shiny keys, and a note:
GOT SOME MORE KEYS CUT FOR YOUR NEW LOCKS.
SEE YOU LATER XX
I spent the next hour or so going over the house again, tears pouring down my cheeks, looking for the way he’d gotten in, and I never found it.
That night was my first panic attack, the first of many.