Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters) - By Caitlyn Robertson Page 0,19

What woman didn’t like to be waited on hand and foot, to have her partner jealous and protective of her? She’d come from a large family with parents who had no time for her, and he had made her feel loved and wanted.

Yes, she knew some of the things he liked to do were frowned on by modern women. Ordering for both of them in a restaurant. Suggesting what clothes she should wear each day. Stopping her from seeing her friends because he didn’t like them. Wiping her iPod free of the pop songs she liked and replacing them with music he thought she should listen to.

She’d suppressed her unease, wanting to please him, hating it when he got his dark, cold moods and refused to talk to her, or even worse, when he grew angry and shouted at her. She loved him, and she just wanted to make him happy.

But gradually it grew more and more difficult. He seemed permanently irritable, snapping at everything she did or said. She couldn’t do anything right. He hated her clothes, called her fat and frumpy. She dieted hard to lose thirty pounds but he still didn’t like the way she looked. She cut her hair and dyed it like one of the actresses he was always going on about, even though she didn’t like her hair short. She cooked him all his favourite meals, but he came home and said he’d already eaten.

And slowly the relationship turned abusive—she could see that now. He’d yell at her until she was in tears, then walk out and leave her, sometimes all night, and she never knew where he went. Once she asked if he was having an affair and he grew enraged and threw a book across the room in her direction that glanced off her cheek. It gave her a black eye, although he swore he hadn’t aimed it at her. She never asked about other women again, even though he regularly disappeared for several nights at a time.

The abuse grew worse—more mental than physical, and she became depressed. She had so many days off that she lost her job, but at least then she didn’t have to go out the house.

“Why did you stay with him?” asked the lawyer.

“Because I loved him,” Sarah replied simply. “And it takes a long time for love to erode.” And because she had nowhere else to go. She hardly saw her family anymore. Her friends had all drifted away. She had no savings and no job to pay for her own place. At least with James she had a roof over her head and food in her belly. She grew to love the nights he went out—she would watch her favourite programmes on TV, the ones he hated and wouldn’t have on when he was home, and eat chocolate biscuits that she’d smuggle in so he didn’t take them for himself.

But of course things couldn’t go on like that. One night he came home drunk with lipstick on his cheek, and she lost her temper and accused him once again of having an affair. They had a terrible argument, and he said he was leaving. She begged him not to go, but he said he was done, and he didn’t care if he never saw her again.

She spent several days in utter panic, knowing he would want her out of the house that he was paying for, alternatively relieved and upset, loving and hating him at the same time. The house was in a rough part of the neighbourhood, and at night she’d have to lay there alone listening to neighbours shouting, bottles breaking, the occasional police siren. It hadn’t been as bad when she’d still been with James and he’d left her alone at night because her neighbours knew him and left her alone, but once he’d gone, she felt vulnerable and scared. Sometimes drunk men would bang on the door, and once someone threw up on her doorstep. They’d been burgled before, when they were out, and she was scared someone was going to break in to steal her TV and maybe attack her while she lay in bed.

Then one night she heard someone fumbling at the door. Terrified, she crept down the hall to the kitchen. She heard the front door open and grabbed the nearest object to her, which happened to be a knife. The intruder fumbled around the living room, stuffing objects into a black bag. When he came closer, she