‘It started during my first year at the technical college. I’d decided to do an admin course and got myself a room in a house, renting with two other girls. I would stay up in Galway for the week, then come home at the weekends. I was still living with my parents then, but mostly I stayed with Shane in his flat. Looking back, I think he was kind of an escape from the atmosphere at home. It was fine when we were in school together. I mean, he was a bit jealous at times, but nothing that made me think he might be any different to any of the other lads.’
The hardest thing about telling my story were the flashbacks – one minute I was here, in Dublin, and then, bam!, I’d be back there, cowering on the floor, trying to protect myself. Had it actually happened, or was it some awful nightmare that I’d imagined? No one could have lived through that kind of abuse, could they? I thought of the day my two girlfriends came home to find me hiding in the wardrobe in my room. I remembered getting out and putting my hands in the pockets of my jeans, so they couldn’t see them shaking. I tried to pass it off as a joke, as though I were planning to surprise Shane. I was so embarrassed – I would have said anything to make it look like something other than what it obviously was. He had come up to Galway for the night and I couldn’t wait to show him around. But he was moody the entire time, making fun of my friends and acting jealous of every guy in my class. How did they know my name? Was I flirting with them? By the end of the night, he was roaring drunk and calling me a slut. He shouted at me on the street the whole way home from the pub and by the time we got to my door, he had worked himself up into a fury. I shouted back that he had no right to speak to me that way. Next I heard a crack. He had smacked me, open-handed, right across the face. I was too stunned to speak. He took the keys from me and opened the door. I’ll never forget what he said as he walked past me.
‘That’ll teach you to answer back.’
I walked in behind him, stunned into silence. I didn’t want to wake the girls. I lay on the bed beside him and didn’t even change out of my clothes. He fell to snoring as soon as his head hit the pillow. After a while I got up and didn’t know where to go. I was terrified. So I hid in the wardrobe until I heard him leave the next morning. That year, which should have been about my first year at college, became all about Shane and his jealousy. My flatmates knew what was going on. They saw the bruises, even under the layers of makeup. The worst part was, right before the exams, they convinced me to break up with him. And I did. For two whole months, I was free of him. But his father died and I felt so sorry for him. He swore to me that he had changed and was ashamed of what he had done. He said he wasn’t himself at the time and I believed him because it was true; he wasn’t being himself. That wasn’t the person I fell in love with. And so we both believed the story that he had somehow been possessed by a mad fit of jealousy and of course it wouldn’t happen again. I failed my exams in the summer and that was the last time I ever went back to Galway. I could see the look in the girls’ eyes when I told them I’d got back with him. I think they felt betrayed and confused. How, after getting away from a man who hit me, could I go back? I couldn’t bear their judgement. Because they were right, after all, weren’t they? His promises meant nothing and I was a bigger fool for believing him.
I was so lost in my memories, I almost forgot where I was or what we were doing. I looked up at him and saw a look of empathy in his eyes. Not sympathy, thank God. I couldn’t bear that.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can do this.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, about to embrace me but then stopping short. ‘Um, do you want a hug?’
I nodded. A lot. Yes, I did want a hug. I never asked anyone for anything, but to have what I needed offered to me like that was a blessed relief.
Chapter Fifteen
HENRY
Holding her in my arms, I wondered how any man could inflict the kind of pain and terror that would fracture this woman apart. That was how she felt in my arms, like broken pieces that no longer fit together. I wondered if there was more going on than she had said, but her poker face was the best I’d seen. Until now. Just then my phone began to ring and she pulled away. I searched in my pocket, trying to turn it off.
‘Bloody thing,’ I muttered, until I finally got hold of it, only to let it slip through my fingers and on to the ground. We both bent to get it, bumped foreheads and finally she picked it up.
‘Isabelle,’ she said, reading the name and handing it to me.
I just stared at the screen until it stopped ringing. Isabelle. I’d somehow managed to put her completely out of my thoughts. Like I’d compartmentalised my life in London into a separate filing system in my head. Having spent the most incredible day with Martha, opening up about our pasts in a way that neither of us ever had before, and being in a different country, I felt like a different person. I felt as though I were no longer running, at least for now. My whole life up to this point had been running away from something, losing myself in books and hoping to God that no one would notice the great big hole inside of me where something vital should have been. I looked back at Martha, the vulnerability in her eyes challenging me and my propensity to simply tell people what they wanted to hear, rather than the truth. She’s just a friend, I could have said. But there was something about her gaze, like she could see right through me.
‘Isabelle is my girlfriend.’
‘Oh.’
There was a vacuum, which I stupidly chose to fill with more words.
‘Actually, I should probably call her my fiancée. I proposed just before I left.’
‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Well, congratulations!’ She smiled with a forced jollity that made me feel even worse.
Why hadn’t I told her earlier? I should have told her at the start. Surely that’s what a normal person would have done. I could sense her embarrassment, which was misplaced because I was the one who should’ve been embarrassed. I tried to seek refuge in the thought that lying and not telling the truth were two different things, but even I didn’t believe that. She then made a big production out of checking the time on her phone and saying she should get back home. Alone. That point was underlined and in bold. I’d fucked up.
I arrived back at my B&B to find Nora watching a quiz show on the telly in the front room. She sat on an armchair with wooden armrests, her ashtray balancing precariously on one while a Jack Russell snored peacefully on her lap. I looked around for the other two, then realised they were sniffing my shoes. He could probably smell where I’d been and how much of an idiot I was.
‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said, despite the fact that I had not made her aware of my departure. She simply maintained an air of familiarity with everyone coming through her house. Like a mother to all of us.
‘Do you want a cup of tea or a sandwich?’ she asked, slotting her bunioned feet into her slippers.
‘I’ll make it,’ I said. ‘You stay where you are.’
She looked at me as one might look upon the face of a saint, which made me realise how little it took to make someone happy and yet how rarely it happened. I rinsed out a brown teapot and set the cups on a tray, with a packet of pink wafer biscuits.