gun hits John hard in the face with it, so that he falls down onto the pavement.
Then I hear a loud bang.
When I open my eyes, I can see that it wasn’t the man with the gun who made the sound, it was Maggie. She is standing outside the betting shop with a gun of her own, and she’s got her angry face on. She looks madder than I have ever seen her.
“Let the girl go, get back in your car, and drive away now. Or I will end you all.”
The man holding me smirks, and she shoots the gun in our direction. I fall on the pavement and feel strange. Maggie is right there in front of me, I can see that her lips are moving, but at first I can’t hear what they are saying. It’s as if someone is ringing a bell inside my head. She’s looking at something behind me, and I turn to see what it is. The three bad men are back in their car, and we watch as they drive away. I don’t think she shot the one who was holding me. I think maybe she missed on purpose. She strokes my hair, and my right ear decides to start hearing things again.
“You’re okay now, Baby Girl, you’re safe.” She holds me and I hold her back for the first time, because even though she hurts me, I know she won’t let anyone else. She picks me up. I wrap my arms around her neck, and my legs around her waist, and I only start to cry when I see that all the sweets that were in my ten-p paper bag have fallen out onto the pavement.
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.