Trapped

by Freda Lightfoot

  As I turn to put her into her car seat, Emma hugs and kisses us both. ‘Keep it,’ she whispers in my ear, and I know she’s referring to the key.

  ‘I’ll call you . . . about my decision,’ I reply.

  As we drive on through Bowness and up the hill to Windermere, Oliver’s silence is chilling and I too say nothing, keeping my gaze fixed on the small shops and Lakeland stone cottages as we pass by. At the T-junction by the station he pauses before turning right, and acidly remarks, ‘You never told me you were coming here today.’

  ‘Should I have done?’

  ‘I would have preferred it if you had.’

  I don’t question this remark. I don’t have the nerve. I sink down in my seat and wish I could vanish in a puff of smoke, wish I were invisible or a million miles away from here. Oliver says nothing more but I’m left in no doubt what to expect when we’re finally back home with the door locked behind us.

  He is generous enough to allow me to put Katie down in her cot before he starts to interrogate me, punctuated with the usual slaps and punches. Fortunately I am able to say, in all honesty, that Emma and I talked exclusively about business.

  ‘If you were planning to go back to work, forget it. We don’t need your pathetic earnings now that I’ve been made a partner, and I certainly don’t want that woman poking her nose into our affairs.’

  ‘I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet,’ I recklessly reply, desperately striving to hang on to the last shreds of my independence. ‘Who knows, I may need a job one day.’

  Oliver glares at me, his tone sardonic and mocking. ‘When you finally summon up the courage to divorce me, you mean? I don’t think that’s likely to happen any time soon, is it Carly dear? You need me. You couldn’t possibly cope on your own. Remember that if you were to ever consider leaving me, you’d find yourself alone and penniless. This house is in my name, don’t forget.’

  I’m not sure whether I’m being brave or foolhardy, but I face up to him. ‘I don’t believe that matters these days. I’m your wife so I would get my share. You’re obliged to provide for me.’

  ‘And what about your precious child? Would you run away from her too? Because I’d make damn sure you weren’t granted custody.’

  I instinctively gasp, shocked by this. ‘You wouldn’t be so cruel. In any case, you’d never win custody. I could get a solicitor to make sure that you didn’t.’

  But he laughs in my face. ‘I’m an accountant, I’m not stupid. Believe me, I know all the tricks. I have a good income and a fine home, whereas you have no transport, no job, no income of any kind. You’d have nowhere to live for a start. Do you really want to bring up your child on a sink council estate, which is all you’d get from social services? Do you imagine they would allow you to when I can offer our child so much more?’ My blood runs cold as he warms to his theme. ‘I would simply make sure that I got the lion’s share, and you the absolute minimum. I could accuse you of having a lover, of turning into an alcoholic, and of not being a fit mother.’

  ‘But that’s a complete lie! I don’t have a lover. I’ve never had a lover, despite all your jealous accusations. And I am a fit mother!’

  ‘That’s why you carelessly started a fire when your baby was asleep in the house, is it?’

  A chill creeps down my spine as a terrible thought strikes me. Could Oliver have somehow set that fire? Did he deliberately tamper with the wiring in order to accuse me of being an unfit mother? Christ, surely even he wouldn’t risk our baby’s life just to discredit me? ‘That was an accident!’ I yell, banishing the thought.

  ‘It was complete carelessness on your part. Hadn’t you been smoking and gossiping with a friend, that old woman from across the road? It’s so difficult to prove your innocence, isn’t it?’

  ‘How can you make up such bare-faced lies? You know perfectly well that I don’t smoke. And having one glass of wine too many at Sunday lunch doesn’t make me an alcoholic. ’

  ‘Oh, right, and you’re being so drunk the neighbours felt obliged to call the police was an accident too, was it?’

  I’m enraged, longing to get really angry with him but doing my utmost to curb my temper, knowing no good would come of losing it. ‘That’s not how it was,’ I quietly respond, ‘and you know it. You created that row, smashed all those cups and plates, not me.’

  He puts back his head and roars with laughter. ‘Says who? Prove it. Go on, prove it, if you can. It would be so easy for me to conjure up evidence of your guilt, irrespective of whether or not it’s true, exactly as I did when those police officers came asking a lot of damn fool questions. And what about that young man you were talking to at the agency’s office today, for instance. Who is he?’

  ‘What young man?’ A cold chill runs down my spine. If Oliver saw me talking to Tim Hathaway that must mean he’d been hanging around for much longer than I’d imagined. Was he at the pub too? Watching us? Listening in to our conversation? I feel suddenly faint as I recall how near I came to confiding in Emma. What on earth would have happened if I’d done so with Oliver close by, listening to every word I said? ‘If you mean Mr Hathaway, the walker, he’s a client. That was the first time I’d met him today. Tell me, Oliver, did you follow the bus? Or did you come home early, as you so love to do to check up on me, and then realise where I’d gone? Why didn’t you come in and say hello to Emma when you first arrived? Why wait till after we’d had lunch? Why hide?’

  His smile is wintry and doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘Much more fun to watch you both gossiping and making your little plans, scheming your little schemes.’

  I’ve heard enough and I turn away from him in disgust. ‘You’re sick, do you know that? An absolute creep to follow me about in that shameful way. Am I to be allowed no freedom at all then? No transport, no job, no independence, just because I’m your wife?’

  ‘You have what I give you, what I allow you to have, and don’t you ever forget that,’ he yells at me as I march away up the stairs. ‘Don’t ever consider bailing out, Carly. You’d find it far too expensive, and dangerously risky.’

  Upstairs I throw myself on the bed too angry to cry, but I know that he’s won. Again.

  It’s all about survival. Despite my moment of recklessness, I do indeed take his threats seriously, however flawed and fraudulent they might be. Very seriously indeed. I’m worn out by a constant feeling of dread, by this suppressed anger burning deep inside me, the pent-up emotion, the fear and desperation. But I daren’t even begin to express it. Far too risky. I feel drained, constantly tired, overwhelmed by a strange lethargy that robs me of energy. There are no more bus trips to Bowness. Sometimes I can’t even bring myself to step outside the door. I can’t remember the simplest thing, can’t think straight. My rashness in disagreeing with him that night cost me several more bruises, but I’m not a masochist. Generally I make very sure that I say nothing to inflame his temper. I am learning to protect myself.

  I concentrate entirely on getting through each day, on surviving each display of temper. I can’t focus on anything beyond that, cannot view my marriage as an entity over which I have any control, or visualise any future for us. I’m far too concerned with coping with the day-to-day, with telling silly fibs and practising little deceits, with being resourceful and courageous, being really quite cunning at times. Far removed from the pathetic, passive creature everyone imagines when they think of battered wives. But then survival requires me to scheme and cheat, and be underhand.

  I may need to appear submissive at times, be excessively wary and cautious of my husband’s volatile moods, go along with his wishes against my better judgement at times, but I need to make sure that he doesn’t hit me now. I make every effort to appease him. I tell myself that by tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, I might have thought of a way out of this mire. Maybe then I’ll be able to work out a long-term strategy and escape plan.

  The memory of the two occasions I attempted to run away are still painfully fresh in my mind:
how he cajoled and tricked and even dragged me back. I’m aware that even when I’m not attempting to leave, such as my trip to Bowness to see Emma, Oliver works on the assumption that I might be, and keeps a very close watch on my every movement. It’s chilling, and deeply disturbing. I’m far too afraid of him to try again, even though I castigate myself for being weak and soft.

  But then I can’t afford to take too many risks. I have Katie to think about now. And Oliver does have all the aces. Where could I live? Even if I go back to the agency, how could I care for her and work at the same time? Could I earn enough to keep us? No doubt social services or the council would find me accommodation, in some grim, run-down housing estate where I’d be at risk of being attacked by strangers every time I set foot out the door. I certainly have no wish to bring up my child in such a place. Or they might take her away from me altogether, put her into foster care if they weren’t satisfied with what I could offer.

  And all of this supposes that Oliver would actually let her go? Despite his lack of interest in our child, I believe him when he says he would fight me for custody. He would do that simply to bring me to heel, to score points and win. The thought of losing my baby is too terrible to contemplate. Surely staying is by far the least of these evils.

  I’m learning to be resilient, perhaps brave sometimes to the point of being foolhardy. I’m in a living hell and it takes all my strength to keep my life on an even keel. I never feel relaxed as I have to be forever on my guard against upsetting him, and when it goes wrong I crawl inside my invisible shell and wait for the storm to pass. I seem to lurch from one crisis to another and I can’t think beyond that, cannot distance myself from the present day sufficiently to visualise any alternative future.

  I feel like a hostage who has to barter with her captor for leniency. Yet it’s worse in a way because it’s my own husband who has captured me, and I have this instinctive need to reach out to him for help.

  I wonder sometimes if Oliver too feels trapped, enmeshed by his own desire for power and control. We’re caught up together in this destructive situation, an ever-recurring pattern of abuse. I no longer ask myself whether I love or hate him, whether it’s right for me to stay or leave. I’ve given up questioning such things. I’m defeated. He’s won. Consciously or unconsciously I’m way beyond such reasoning. My one object now is to survive.

  He becomes increasingly distant in the days and weeks following, cold and distant towards me, often not speaking to me for days on end. I try to tell him about my conversation with Emma, to explain how lonely and isolated I feel and that I really would love to get back to work, if only part time. I beg him to reinstate my car, to at least talk to me. Finally I’m forced to admit that I can’t stand the way he’s ignoring me. His whole demeanour is unnerving, frightening.

  Then one Sunday morning I recklessly say I’d prefer anything to this cold, endless silence. ‘At least if you had another woman I’d have something definite to deal with.’

  ‘It’s interesting you should say that,’ he blithely responds. ‘Because there is someone as a matter of fact.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  I am utterly devastated. It feels like the ultimate betrayal. Has Oliver ever told me anything close to the truth? My entire marriage seems to have been built on lies. In the awful recriminations, explanations, and row that follows, Oliver makes it clear that it’s all my fault. I’m the one who has driven him into another woman’s arms because of my ‘constant complaints’, my ‘nagging’ and my ‘need for independence’. He complains about my ‘hysteria’, and I freely confess that at times I have got a bit hysterical when he’s beaten me, particularly in the early days. Who wouldn’t?

  Apparently the first affair was with Poppy, the rather pretty girl I met at the dinner dance, but now he’s taken up with my old school friend, Jane. I can hardly believe it. Jane, of all people, and she was so critical of Oliver, telling me she thought him far too full of himself. She was jealous because she imagined we’d moved up in the world to a detached house on a posh estate. She’s clearly not so condemning of him now. No wonder she’s never made any effort to return my call, and was so cool and distant at the dance. She must have deliberately orchestrated that meeting between myself and Poppy, and then decided she rather fancied him herself.

  I’m in complete despair, haunted by the images of the man I love, the man I believed loved me, making love to another woman, to the person I once thought of as my best friend.

  I can take no more and go to my sister.

  ‘Can I stay here tonight?’ It’s the following day and I’ve walked most of the two miles to her house, although a kind neighbour spotted me struggling with Katie, baby buggy, and a heavy overnight bag, and gave me a lift for the last half mile. Now I’m sitting in my sister’s lounge telling her all about Oliver’s betrayal, explaining that I’d like some time on my own. ‘I just need some space, a little peace in which to think and decide what I should do about it.’

  Jo-Jo sighs. ‘You won’t find any peace here. This house is pure bedlam.’

  I look at her and frown. She looks tired with dark rings under her eyes, her cheeks pale and puffy. It’s half past ten in the morning and she’s still in her tatty old dressing gown. I find myself starting to worry about her. Is she sick? Is one of the children sick? I know she’s exhausted, and who wouldn’t be with four young children to care for, but my sister seems oddly detached, as if she isn’t in the least interested in my troubles, isn’t even listening. ‘Did you hear what I said? Oliver is having an affair.’

  ‘Join the club,’ she bitterly remarks, and pours us both a glass of wine. ‘I think we need something a bit stronger than tea and sympathy today, don’t you?’

  ‘Have you even had breakfast?’ I ask, taking the glass she offers me. ‘And what do you mean by join the club?’

  She shrugs as if she really couldn’t care less, then takes a long slug of wine, pushes back her tousled hair which clearly hasn’t seen sight of a brush for some time. ‘I’m quite convinced Ed is having it off with someone too. Possibly your Emma.’

  ‘What?’ I look at her in horror. ‘You have to be joking! Ed absolutely adores you, and Emma and Glen are very much a couple, even though they aren’t married. In any case, Ed would never do anything to risk losing his children.’

  Jo-Jo starts to pout. ‘Are you saying that’s the only reason he stays with me, because he loves the kids?’

  ‘No, I’m saying that he absolutely adores you.’

  ‘He’s been working a lot of overtime lately, or so he says. For all I know he could be over in Bowness with the gorgeous Emma, that so-called business partner of yours.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake Jo-Jo, he is not in Bowness with Emma. You’re having delusions. Of course he’s working a lot of overtime! You have four children to keep for God’s sake, and you don’t bring any money in.’

  She almost bites my head off. ‘Don’t go all sniffy on me because I had to give up my job. I do my best but how can I possibly work with four kids to look after? It’s all right for you and Oliver. You’ve loads of dosh. For us, money is tight.’

  I sigh with exasperation, wondering how it is that every time I go to my sister with my problems, we end up talking about hers. Patiently, I try again. ‘Ed is not having an affair, not with Emma or anyone. You’re imagining it. You’re seeing problems where they don’t exist, just because you’re tired and depressed. Stop it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.’

  ‘I’m not imagining things. It’s not good between us right now. We never have sex. Never! I never want it, never feel like it, so why would he stay faithful?’

  ‘Because he loves you. I’m sure it will pass, this feeling. I dare say your lack of interest is only because you had a more difficult birth this time, and you’re over-tired. But you’ve nothing to worry about where Ed is concerned, really you haven’t. He’s a one woman guy, absolutely faithful, no doubt about that. Ed is a good husband and an excellent, caring father. Oliver, unfor
tunately, is neither.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, now who’s exaggerating? I saw him fawning all over you at the christening, and his precious baby. He was clearly a man content with his lot. Has he been neglecting you lately? Has he forgotten your birthday or something?’

  ‘It’s not my birthday, as you very well know.’

  ‘So having a baby means it’s no longer just the two of you in wedded bliss, and endless romantic evenings out. Get real. That’s life! Buy yourself a new sexy nightdress,’ she says irritably. ‘That’ll soon bring him running.’

  I put down the glass of wine untouched. ‘Well, if I was wanting tea and sympathy, I’ve obviously come to the wrong place.’

  She gives my overnight bag a long, hard stare. ‘And if you were thinking of staying, forget it. I couldn’t even lend you a clothes line to sleep on. House full. No vacancies. Didn’t you see the sign when you came in?’

  I pick up my bag, tuck Katie back in the baby buggy, and leave. What is the point in talking to her, of trying to expect her to understand? Why would she even care about me? She’s only my sister, for heaven’s sake. And if she won’t listen to what I have to say about Oliver’s infidelity, she certainly wouldn’t be interested in hearing the rest of my sordid tale.

  I walk out the door without a backward glance. I certainly don’t give her the satisfaction of seeing my tears.

  I go instead to see Dad. I call in the shop at lunch time while Mum is at home making dinner for the old folks, and tell him that Oliver has been unfaithful and I don’t think that I can go on. Despite all the stuff that has gone badly wrong in my marriage, I’m heartbroken. I feel bitter and angry, as if all my efforts, all my striving to help Oliver overcome his problems have been for nothing. Dad is clearly angry too, and upset that I should be hurt in this way. He hugs me close, offering what comfort he can, but then to my utter horror urges me to be brave and not do anything rash.