“Time was my greatest enemy. She used it as a weapon against me. She’d send me to the shops to buy something, and I’d be standing on the high street, looking at my watch, wondering if I could get away with popping into the butcher’s to get some of the sausages the children liked. Would it take too long? Would she accuse me of loving them more than her?
“I wanted to visit my mum’s grave. I wanted to browse the library. I wanted to stop and talk to the person whose dog was being over-friendly. But I didn’t have time for any of that—not if it was, quite literally, on her watch.”
His pained expression is back as the memory takes hold. “Do you have any idea how mentally draining it is to have to second-guess everything you do? To question whether it’s going to cause a problem if you go the long way home because it’s a nice day. It’s utterly exhausting.”
I nod, as if I understand. “Aside from needing to learn that you’re not to blame for everything, what else did she take away from you that you’d like to get back?”
He takes a deep breath and sinks into the sofa as he begins to relax. I sometimes wish I had a time-lapse camera set up, so that I and, more importantly, my clients, could see how far they’ve come. So many of them beat themselves up because they don’t think they’ve moved on, or that it’s taking too long to feel better about themselves. But they’d only have to compare their first visit, when they would undoubtedly be perched on the very edge of the sofa, straight-backed and furtively looking around, nervous and distrusting, to a few weeks later, when their body language would tell a completely different story. With every session, they sit further back, their shoulders come down from their ears, and they allow the sofa to take their weight.
“My relationship took away my sense of self,” he says. “I don’t know how to change it. I don’t know what it takes to be me—does that make sense?”
I nod. “I think it’s about being comfortable in your own skin. Just being who you want to be.”
He looks at me cynically, as if I’m trying to convince him of something that’s just not possible.
“I don’t think I even know who I am anymore.”
“Because that’s how you’ve been conditioned to feel.”
“But I can do no right,” he goes on.
“Being in the wrong is your default position now, and we just have to keep working to de-program the way your brain has been rewired and take it back to factory settings.”
He shakes his head solemnly. “I don’t think even you can do that.”
“I’m prepared to die trying,” I say with a smile.
“You’re a very special person,” he says, the edges of his mouth curling upward. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you in my life.”
His words catch on my conscience, making me feel uncomfortable. He makes it sound as if we’re more than we are; more than we should be. I shift in my chair, sitting up straighter in a futile attempt to make me feel more professional. Though it only serves to shine a light on the line that I’ve crossed.
Jacob looks at me, his eyes soft. “Why are you helping me like this?” he asks.
“I help a lot of people,” I say, careful to strike a balance between making him feel special and not singling him out too much.
“So do you put them all up in flats you happen to own?” he says, smiling.
“Not all of them,” I say. “Just my star pupils.” I instantly regret it.
“It makes a nice change for me to be the teacher’s pet. Normally I’m being accused of having my own.”
“How’s the new teaching job going?” I ask, eager to get the conversation back on more of an even keel.
“It’s different,” he says. “I’m used to dealing with boys, so a mixed school is a whole new ball game.”
I offer a smile.
“Boys just want to play sport and video games,” he goes on. “Well, that’s certainly what my own were like when they were younger. They were addicted to football and the PlayStation.”
His face clouds over and I can see him flinching at a memory his words have evoked.
“How do the children feel about you leaving?” I ask. “Have you spoken to them?”
He allows himself a little smile. “I went up to Leeds at the weekend to see Will at university. And do you know what he said when we hugged goodbye?”
I shake my head and smile because I can feel it’s going to be something that melted his father’s heart.
“He said…” Jacob chokes out. “That he’d never seen me like that before. That it was as if being away from his mother had finally allowed me to be me.”
“How did that make you feel?” I ask.
“Happy and sad in equal measure,” he says. “Happy that I’d finally made the break, but sad that it had taken me so long.”
“You were trying to do right by your children,” I say.
He nods. “I couldn’t have left them on their own with her,” he says. “I had to wait until they were old enough to look after themselves.”
“Your wife is a pillar of the community, a supposedly good mother, at least to those on the outside, looking in.” He nods. “Do you think how she was perceived by others also played a part in you not leaving her before now?”
“Probably,” he says. “I mean, obviously I knew exactly what she was capable of, but nobody else did. She had perfected such a polished public facade and it very rarely slipped. And even when it did, invariably off the back of me doing something wrong, you’d get a split-second flash of fire in her eyes before she got it back under control.”
“So you felt you needed others to see who was really behind the mask?”
He knits his fingers together, looking deep in thought.
“I guess…” he starts, before wiping a single tear that escapes onto his cheek. “Because without other people seeing it, I didn’t think I would be believed.”
I wish I were shocked that a grown man would ever doubt that his experience would be deemed credible enough to be believed. But unfortunately, it doesn’t matter whether you’re young or old, male or female; the greatest fear, apart from the abuse itself, is that nobody will believe you.
“I was scared that I would be made a social outcast if I said anything against her.”
“Would it have mattered if the people who held her in such high regard had wrongly cast you aside?” I ask.
“With the benefit of hindsight, probably not,” he says. “But back then, when I couldn’t see a way out, I thought I’d be called a liar, that I’d lose all contact with the children and then I’d be even more isolated than I already was.”
I nod, understanding his predicament.
“So I decided that the life I had with her was better than the life she would construct for me if I left.”
“But her taking a lover gave you the impetus to do what you wanted to do…”
He nods fervently. “It was what I’d been waiting for,” he says. “It meant that everyone else could finally see the cracks in the picture-perfect version she presented. His other half found out and suddenly people at my wife’s gym, church choir, and the stables where she keeps her horse were gossiping about it.”
He moves the cushion aside and pushes himself up and off the couch, stretching his arms toward the wooden slatted ceiling.
“I got a new bed delivered yesterday and I woke up with chronic back pain this morning. It’s Sod’s law that just when I’m allowed to sleep, I’m still unable to.”
“It’ll probably take you a while to get used to it,” I say.
“You’re probably right,” he says. “It just needs to be broken in.”
I can’t stop my skin from flushing as I picture him falling back against fluffy pillows. A woman rolls into him, resting her head on his chest, and it’s only as he brushes her brunette hair away from her face that I see it’s me.
“What have you got planned for the rest of the week?” I ask, in an effort to change the subject.
“Well, actually, I got a text from a very old friend yesterday—someone I haven’t seen in years, asking if we can meet up tomorrow.”
“That’ll be nice,” I say.
He grimaces. “Mmm, I don’t think so,” he says. “He told me he’s terminally ill.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I offer, never knowing quite what the right thing to say is. “It’s so sad it’s taken that to rekindle your friendship.”
“Well, Kyle was more my wife’s friend than mine,” he says. “But we always got along—until she severed the relationship.”