He scratched the back of his head. ‘Lisa, I’m not sure I can remember that far back, honest to God I have not the faintest idea what you are talking about … I did what, exactly?’
Surely he could not have forgotten? ‘We had a row, about tea, and you grabbed my face. You were telling me about the girl, the one where you had to do stitches on a Sunday morning. She’d fallen onto a radiator.’
For a moment, he kept his face still, thinking, then it dawned on him and he gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘Lisa, honestly, talk about exaggeration. I didn’t grab your face. I showed you where I’d stitched her, I was explaining, honestly, really …’
‘You grabbed my face hard.’
‘I’m sorry but Lisa, it just never happened.’
‘It was really uncomfortable.’
‘Yeah, well, I guess it’s pretty uncomfortable for the poor kid having her face stitched and honest to God, Lisa, the most I would have done is shown you. Seriously, I do wonder sometimes …’
‘Wonder what?’
‘I dunno, Lisa …’ He dropped his head then, his voice became low as he turned away, then back, both hands held out low, palms upwards, ‘honestly, what? What do you think of me? Just stop and think of what you’re accusing me of. Am I abusive? Have I ever hit you, have I?’
‘I’m not saying …’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘Matty, I never said …’
‘Have I ever hit you, have I?’
‘No.’
‘Have I ever punched you in the stomach, or slapped you, or pushed you down the stairs or held a knife to your throat, have I?’
‘I’m just trying to explain …’
‘Have I? Have I? We have to get this straight because quite seriously I’m wondering if you’re totally insane or I am, you’ve got me wondering about myself now, have I ever ever hit you, or been violent towards you, ever in any way, have I?’
‘No, no, I’m not saying …’
‘Have I? Have I? I need a straight answer.’
‘I’ve already said no, I’ve already said I’m not …’
He was facing me full on now, standing over me, his face rigid. ‘Because you know, I’ve seen domestic abuse victims, I’ve stitched a few of them up in my time. I once set a broken tibia on a seventeen-year-old. Her boyfriend had punched her to the pavement and jumped on her, right outside a Tesco Metro, while his mates stood and watched. You wouldn’t believe what some men are capable of, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you and I’ve seen it and if you’re putting me in the same bracket as, as …’ He gasped to a halt and clapped a hand over his face, shaking his head. ‘Dear God, I don’t believe I’m even hearing this.’
I rose from my chair and took a step towards him but he held out his other hand to keep me at bay. When he spoke, he sounded close to tears, his voice low and broken.
‘If you think I’m capable of behaving like that, if I put my hand on your face to show you where I had stitched up a child and you think that makes me some sort of abuser … Seriously, if you think that of me, then why are you even with me?’ He took the hand away from his face then and poured a look on me. His expression was so wounded. ‘You really don’t think very much of me at all, do you? What you’re saying is I’m a really terrible person.’
‘Of course not, I love you, I admire what you do, I think you’re amazing.’
He gave a bitter half-laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I do …’ I approached him then, put my hands on his arms.
He turned his face away. ‘Honestly, Lisa, I was hoping, I was even thinking this might go somewhere, you know, but if you think so little of me, what’s the point?’
I felt the familiar panic then – panic mixed with a weird sort of hope. Was it possible he really didn’t understand how firmly he had held my face? There had been no bruises, after all. Was I exaggerating the whole thing? If I could just make him understand what it had been like for me, perhaps we could get this sorted.
‘You sent me flowers the next day …’ I said. The flowers were an apology. Surely he would concede that. If he hadn’t had something to apologise for, then why send them?
He turned violently then, shaking my hands off where they rested on his arms. ‘So even that’s being held against me now? Well thanks very much, last time I make that mistake.’
I grabbed at his hands with mine, clumsily, clenching his fingers in mine, compressing them in an awkward grasp, and shrieked at him, my voice high and shrill in a way I had never used it before – there was a kind of wild freedom in it, even though I knew it meant I had lost control, a kind of joy in knowing that I could scream at someone that way, that my voice could even make that sound. ‘Please please listen to me! Just listen to me! You’ve got to understand!’
He reached out his right hand and took me by the neck and pushed me across the kitchen until he slammed my back against the doorframe to the bedroom. It all happened so fast. One minute, I was grabbing for his hands, begging him to understand, and the next the breath was slammed out of me as he held me against the doorframe and the edge of it was digging hard into my back. My chin was tipped upwards by his grasp, my breath short. He banged my head back against the doorframe, just once, hard, for emphasis, or as if he was trying to knock a thought out of my skull. His face was very close to mine. ‘Don’t …’ he said, his face contorted with rage. ‘Don’t …’
He released me and I sank to the floor.
He whirled into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him. I sat on the floor for a moment, winded, then I began to cry, great loud gulping sobs. I sat there for a long time, weeping with my hands over my face, until my howls abated. I raised my knees and wrapped my arms around them and carried on sobbing, with soft desperation, until there were no tears left, after which I stayed there, where I was, curled into a ball.
*
Eventually, Matty emerged from the bedroom. He came and stood over me, his arms crossed. I just wanted him to hold me and comfort me, but he didn’t even bend.
‘Look, if this goes on, maybe you should see someone? I mean, it’s not just the tiredness, is it? Look, I’m sorry if I pushed you away harder than I should have done but that attack from you really bloody scared me. I mean, clearly, there’s something not right with your head right now. I know you’re not sleeping. You think I can’t tell you’re awake half the night? It’s going to start affecting your judgement, I mean it has already but in other ways I mean. You’ve got a full-time job, how long before it starts affecting that, if it hasn’t already? Seriously, this can’t go on.’
He squatted down in front of me but didn’t touch me. ‘Has this sort of thing been happening at work, I mean, you losing it like this? Have you been been losing it with your students?’
I kept my head low. I was so exhausted. I had not one ounce of fight left in me. ‘That means you’re awake too, I suppose, if you know I am. Do I wake you?’
He put his hand out – finally, a gesture of comfort – he put it on my head and stroked my hair. ‘Don’t you worry about me, I’m fine. Just please, promise me you’ll see someone, for both our sakes but mostly for your own sake, I’m so worried about you. Please.’
*
I woke again that night. I had gone to bed so exhausted that I thought I would sleep straight through but there I was, 3.25 a.m. this time. Instead of lying there, staring at the ceiling and sighing, I rose quickly, grabbed the trousers I had been wearing the previous evening and left the bedroom as quickly as I could.
*
I don’t know what I was thinking. What was I thinking? They all asked it. ‘What were you thinking?’ the young woman police officer would say, two hours later.
‘Love, what were you thinking?’ Matty would ask when the police brought me home, his voice soft with concern.
I pulled on my trousers. Matty had left a hoodie lying on the back of the sofa and I put it on on top of my nightshirt, the puffa jacket on top of that, his sports one, the warmest
coat in the house. I laced up my trainers – I couldn’t go back into the bedroom for socks without risking disturbing him, so I would have to do without. My handbag was on the kitchen counter. I found my purse, I found my keys. My phone was plugged in by my side of the bed but that didn’t matter, I didn’t need my phone. I was going. I was going to be gone.
I stood for a moment in the darkened kitchen in the middle of the night, swaying a little with a strange mixture of exhaustion and exhilaration. I was going to do something, this time, instead of just lying in bed staring at the ceiling.
At the end of the counter was a notepad, an old-fashioned spiral-bound one that I used for shopping lists. I found a pen from the old mug next to it, one of my favourites that had lost its handle in the dishwasher and was now used as my pen pot. It was a present from Rosaria. It had an owl on the side. I took out a fine black Sharpie and I wrote on the pad. Before I did, I held the pen above the pad for a moment, hesitating, because even in my strange, hallucinatory state, I knew this might be the point of no return. I should have told him to leave a fortnight ago, before we booked the flights to Venice, but if we wasted that money, then so be it. I wasn’t crazy except when he made me crazy. It wasn’t about Jasmine – if it hadn’t been her it would have been someone else and there would be a hundred other Jasmines in the future. I wasn’t jealous or unreasonable; it was about how he treated me, that was the issue. He had to understand that if he behaved like this, he had to go.
I scrawled quickly, a single sentence, simple and direct – the truth. Even though the letters were looped and hasty, he had to see it was the truth of our relationship.
I’m sorry, I can’t do this any more.
I left the flat.
*
The darkness of the stairwell – the automatic light still wasn’t working and I needed to contact the freeholder – the rubber matting on the concrete steps, the cold of the painted metal handrail: a few more moments and I would be out. I ran down the stairs.
The communal entrance hallway was lit by the sodium glow of the streetlight outside, the one that was left on at night because there was a sharp corner for cars to take in the dark. I was too wild with triumph to be considerate towards our downstairs neighbour and let the door bang shut behind me. I stepped outside and the night air hit me as if I had jumped into a lake. I turned right towards the main road and, gloriously alive, began to run.
*
I ran towards the main road. Every house had the curtains pulled or blinds closed – every building looked uninhabited. I felt as if everyone else had disappeared or was in hiding. The night is so beautiful, I thought. Why do we waste night after night staying indoors, asleep? We are so wrapped up in all the business of our daylight hours, so absorbed in their normality, that we forget the dark – how wild and strange it is, how limitless the sky, even on a cloudy starless night like this. Why do we talk about the small hours? They are vast.
It was such an exhilarating feeling, as if I could judge human beings because I wasn’t really human any more, I was a creature of the dark. How reassuring, how comforting it felt, to have my oddness confirmed. How small and scared those ordinary humans seemed in that moment, hiding beneath their duvets, lights off, doors securely locked, until daylight made it safe for them to come out – as if they knew that I was out there, roaming the night, like a sabre-toothed tiger. I laughed at myself as I ran. I felt like roaring.
At Thorpe Road I turned right and decided to run into town – I was wearing my trainers, after all. As I sped down the empty pavement I thought, I am super-fast. I have never run this fast in my life.
I didn’t even get as far as the station before my legs began to shake and shudder and I had to stop running. My body was letting me down, as my body had so often, but I still felt exhilarated, triumphant even, to be out when I shouldn’t be. Not exhilarated enough to use the subway, though – I wasn’t that far gone. I walked along the main road. I didn’t know where I was walking; I just wanted to walk. The air was icy; clean.
*
It was an hour or two hours later: I was on a wooden bench, somewhere. I had walked along the dual carriageway for a long time, then taken a couple of turnings and seen a bench on a grass verge, set back from the road. Even though I knew I would get cold very quickly, I sat, drawing my knees up so that I could pull Matty’s puffa jacket round my legs as much as possible, huddling into myself. Within minutes, I was too cold to move, to un-huddle, so I stayed where I was, breathing the beautiful night air and waiting to see what would happen next.
The police car slid silently to a halt. There was no siren, no flashing blue light, just a young woman in a stab-proof vest who opened the driver’s door and lumbered out knees first, using the doorframe to haul herself up, while another officer, a bearded man, stayed in the car. The woman officer hitched her trousers up by the waistband and ambled over to me. She squatted down in front of me and said, ‘Hello there. How are we, then? It’s a cold old night to be out. You must be freezing.’
My feet were still up on the bench, my arms around my knees and my chin resting on my arms. I looked at her and said, ‘I’m not real.’ I pronounced it simply, just stating a fact. ‘I’m a ghost.’
She leant towards me, looking me up and down, then she put a hand on my knee and wobbled it gently and said, ‘You’re frozen. How about we take you home?’
‘You don’t know where I live.’
‘We do, Lisa,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you home, shall we? C’mon, it’s far too cold for this.’
She stood up and I allowed her to take my arm and uncurl me, help me off the bench and into the back of the car.
*
The next morning, I must have slept in. I stirred around ten. I could hear Matty talking on his phone in the sitting room. I closed my eyes. Ten minutes or so later, he brought me a cup of tea. He put it down on the bedside table next to me. I opened my eyes but didn’t sit up.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. He was silent for a moment and then said, ‘I was worried sick last night. The police asked if you had a history of mental health problems and honest to God, Lisa, I didn’t know what to say.’
I stayed silent.
After a moment, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Look, I’ve had a word with Adrian, I’ve explained, you don’t need to call him. He’ll arrange a supply for the rest of the week.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve got to go into work now, they can only cancel so much. I’ll call when I can take a break. Put your phone on silent if you go back to sleep.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, very quietly, but so quietly I’m not sure he heard.
*
When I went into school the following Monday, Adrian called me into his office at break, and asked me to sit down. He looked at me across his desk and I stared at the row of biros in different colours that were sticking out of the top pocket of his shirt. He asked what I’d done at the weekend and when I remained silent, he said that he had been to a very enjoyable classical concert, then gone birdwatching on Sunday. He paused, then said how sorry he was to hear I was having some difficulties and asked if I would like a referral to Occupational Health, or perhaps another sort of referral, maybe?
I didn’t know what Matty had said to him, so I replied, ‘No, not at the moment. I’ll think about it.’
As I left his office, Adrian said, ‘Lisa …’ and I looked back at him. He managed an inefficient smile, lips pressed too tightly, too much sadness in his gaze. ‘You’re an excellent teacher, you know. You’re really good at what you do.’
Quite unexpectedly, I felt tears well up inside me and I nodded and left his office as quickly as I could, before they could fall.
*
For the rest of that week, our lives continued. Matthew was gentle with me, quiet. He cooked every night. When I asked how his day had been, he answered in generalities, saying vague things about his patients that made them sound like case studies rather than people – he had patient confidentiality to consider, I knew, but I co
uldn’t shake the feeling that nothing he said to me was true, that it was all made up. Neither of us mentioned Venice.
*
That Saturday, Matty rose while I was still in bed. I heard him moving around the kitchen and waited to be called through but a few minutes later, he came back into the bedroom with a cup of tea and a plate with a piece of toast. He placed them both next to me and went out again.
I ate, dressed, and when I emerged from the bedroom saw that he had the fridge door open and had taken everything out – it all sat on the kitchen table and he was scrubbing the interior of the fridge. I picked up some of the jars from the table: a very old marmalade that had sugar crystals round the rim, a squat glass tub with a centimetre of mustard. Without saying anything, I ran the hot tap on the kitchen sink and added washing-up liquid. I took the old jars to the bin one by one and used a spoon to scrape out the contents, then put them to soak amongst the bulging suds in the sink.
Later, I went down the stairs with the recycling. I was holding a cardboard box full of the newly washed glass jars, an eggbox squashed flat and a porridge carton folded up. The bin men came on Tuesdays but I put the recycling out at the weekends as I could never remember to do it on a Monday night.
I was coming back into the building when the door to the ground-floor flat opened and Mrs Abaza emerged. She was a sallow-skinned woman with heavily accented English. She turned and propped her door open, using one foot to push a draught excluder in the shape of a sausage dog. Through the door, I got a glimpse of cushions and embroidered throws, a glass cabinet with a lot of figurines.
‘Leeza …’ she said.
‘Mrs Abaza …’ I replied. I was about to get a telling-off about letting the door bang the other night. I wondered if she had seen the police car bring me back.
She looked me up and down in a way I didn’t like. Her cat, the scrawny tortoiseshell she didn’t feed properly, wound itself round the door of her flat, performed a figure of eight around her legs, then sat down next to her and stared up as if it was judging me as well.
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