Twenty-five
London, 2017
I wake up to the sound of someone trying to get into my bedroom.
The room is pitch-black when I open my eyes, and at first the sound is so faint that I think maybe I’m imagining it. But as I blink and adjust to the least dark shadows masquerading as light, I start to see things, things I don’t want to. My ears pinpoint the sound and my eyes focus all of their attention on the handle of my bedroom door. As it slowly starts to turn, I already know that something very bad is behind it.
My heart is thudding inside my ears as well as my chest, I want to scream, but I can’t seem to move or make a sound, my body rendered stationary with fear and dread.
The handle twists all the way, but the door won’t open. The bolts I had fitted on the inside see to that, and I experience a brief remission of relief before the terror returns, spreading even faster than before through my rigid body. The sound of someone repeatedly kicking the door reverberates around the room. It shudders several times, then flies open, rebounding against the wall. Before I have time to reach for something to protect myself with, he’s on me.
It’s dark, but I can see who it is.
I can’t move, I don’t even try to.
His hands are around my neck, he’s squeezing, too tight.
“They’ll see the bruises,” I try to whisper. My croaky words are heard and acknowledged. He loosens his grip, then he starts to hurt me on the inside instead, where the bruises can’t be seen.
I let him do what he wants to me. I don’t react, I don’t make a sound. I’ve tried to fight him off before, and it never ends well. This is not the first time, but it’s already the worst. I know he planned it; he’s only this hard and it only lasts this long when he takes a little blue pill. He stops. I hear him remove his condom and drop it to the floor; he doesn’t need it for what comes next; nobody ever got pregnant from doing it that way.
He flips me over, as though I were a doll, so that I am facedown. I close my eyes, vacate my body, and wonder whether the rest of the world would still call it rape if they knew it was my husband who did it to me.
He’s always sorry afterwards.
I know why he hurts me like this, but I don’t know how to make him stop. He thinks I don’t love him anymore, but I do. It’s as though he is trying to prove that he still owns me. But he doesn’t. He never did. Only I own me.
He climbs off. I hear him walk to the bathroom and flush the used condom down the toilet. I think it is over, but then I hear him come back to the bed, take the belt from his discarded trousers, and I understand that it is going to be one of those nights. I lie perfectly still, facedown, exactly how he left me, used and discarded. He starts to hit me with the belt, in the places he knows that nobody else will see. My husband has always insisted on reading my scripts, not because he cares, but because with each new role I play, he wants to know which pieces of me the world will get to see, and which parts of me will stay only his. He hits me again and I try not to give him the satisfaction of crying, no matter how much it hurts.
Twenty-six
London, 2017
I’m woken by a sound I can’t translate.
I sit up in the bed, coated in my own sweat. I’m panting and shaking and crying because I know that what I have just experienced was a dream of a memory, rather than a memory of a dream. I remember how badly Ben hurt me the last time I saw him. I remember how he followed me back from the restaurant after I said I wanted a divorce, kicked the bedroom door open, and did what he did.
I didn’t even ask him to stop.
I think on some level, I thought I deserved it.
We marry our own reflections; someone who is the opposite of ourselves, but who we see as the same. If he is a monster, then what does that make me?
It wasn’t the first time, but I promised myself that night that it would be the last, and that I would never let him hurt me like that again. I always keep my promises, especially the ones I make to myself.
What if I did do something to him that I can’t remember?
I didn’t. I’m sure of it. Almost completely.
An uncharted corner of my consciousness uncurls like a treasure map, and I start to think there might be buried memories inside my head after all. Maybe when you’ve seen men do things they shouldn’t as a child, it can be harder as an adult to fully comprehend how wrong those things are. We are all conditioned and fine-tuned to our own unique brand of normal; we wear it like a fingerprint. We’re taught to fit in with others and learn what is expected of us from the moment we are born. Everything we ever do is an act.
I was foolish to marry someone so quickly, without really knowing who he was. I thought I knew, but I was wrong. I was seduced by our whirlwind romance, and I thought I might lose him if I said no. I thought we were the same. I thought he was my mirror, until I looked properly and realized too late that I needed to run from what I saw. I spent month after month dipping into my savings of happier memories, until the account was empty. I thought I could change him. If we had had a child, I think things might have been different, but he wouldn’t give me what I wanted, so in revenge I took away what he desired most: me. I withheld my affection, my love, my body, thinking he would change his mind. I didn’t realize he was the sort of man who would take what he wanted anyway, regardless of whether it was given to him.
I hear something again, footsteps in the distance, the sound pulling me back into the present. I try to sit up, but the pain in my head disables me. I open my eyes a fraction, just enough to establish where and when I am, but the light is too bright, so I close them again.
I do not feel good.
I remember being in the bar at Pinewood with Jack. I remember Alicia White joining us. I vaguely remember a third bottle of wine and then my memory of the evening stops.
Where am I?
I force my eyes to open and relax a little when I see the familiar sight of my own bedroom. So, I made it home, that’s something at least. My throat hurts and I notice the foul taste inside my mouth; I’ve been sick. I’m such an idiot, I know I can’t drink that much on an empty stomach. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t. I hope I didn’t embarrass myself before I left, and I hope I got a taxi, there’s no way I would have been able to drive.
I can’t remember what happened.
I try so hard to fill in the gaps, but there’s nothing there. The detective’s suggestion—that I have a condition which makes me forget traumatic experiences—comes back to haunt me. If I can’t remember last night, what if I can’t remember what really happened to Ben too? But I dismiss that thought; this has nothing to do with amnesia, just alcohol.
How did I get home?
I hear something again, and this time I pay attention.
There is someone downstairs.
My first instinct is that it must be Ben, but then the rest of my memories start to slot into place and I remember what has happened. I remember the photo Detective Croft showed me yesterday of Ben’s face bloodied and bruised, and I remember that she accused me of being responsible.
I hear another sound down below. Quiet footsteps.
Either my missing husband has returned, or someone else is creeping around downstairs, someone who shouldn’t be.
The penny doesn’t just drop, it nose-dives, and I’m convinced it’s her, the stalker.