Twelve Days The Beginning - By Jade Reyner Page 0,147

she silently pulled up her jeans around her ripped stockings and fastened them. Fortunately he had left her jumper alone so she slipped on a pair of flip flops, the first shoes that she could find and quickly collected as many of the belongings of her handbag as possible – leaving behind her brand new but now completely battered and therefore totally useless, broken phone.

Silently she exited the room, all the while holding her breath in case he woke and then crept down the stairs, her heart thumping so loudly that she felt certain he must be able to hear it. Every step was agony and it was all that she could do to stay upright, but she knew that this would be her only chance. She had to get away.

Grabbing her car keys from the rack in the hallway, she opened the front door and walked on unfeeling legs to her car. Dimly she was aware of the front door slamming behind her as she exited in haste but she couldn’t worry about that now. Her car and the end were in sight and she concentrated all of her efforts on getting into the car and automatically going through the motions of starting it up and driving.

She had no idea where she was going but she needed to just drive; get away, create some distance from Dale, from this house, from this life. The only thing that she knew with absolute certainty was that she had just embarked on the first part of a journey that would inevitably lead her onto a very long and very painful road.

That she would be embarking on this journey had become inevitable over the last five years but today had been the absolute end. Today she had realised that she could take no more. She was done. She could no longer make excuses for Dale, no longer pretend that she had a marriage and no longer deny to anyone that her heart belonged to Vaughn.

At the thought of him, she smiled against the pain in her face and her gaze dropped to the dashboard where she registered the date – the 25th December. Of course. It was Christmas Day.

Unbidden, another date popped into her head; the 13th December, the date of the office Christmas party, the day that she had first clapped eyes on Vaughn and the day when, unbeknown to her, the path to her future had been totally and irrevocably changed.

The 13th of December. And it was now the 25th of December. That meant that it had only been twelve days since her life had spiralled out of control.

Twelve days since she had had any kind of influence on her life.

Twelve whole days.

And in that significantly short space of time, she had managed to cheat on her husband, fight off unwanted drunken advances, cry almost endlessly and hold her best friend’s hand as he had begun to realise that he too was battling some demons. She had been hit more times than she could remember, she had had phone sex in a disabled toilet, she had passed out on the floor of a car park, been threatened with legal action and had countless knives put in her back by so-called friends.

Those twelve days had unwittingly marked the beginning of her future and they had meant that she had finally found the strength to leave her husband and hopefully her past behind.

And above all else, during those long and trying twelve days, she had done something she never thought she would do again. And she now realised that it was actually for the very first time.

In those twelve days, she had fallen hopelessly and inexplicably, in love.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Present Day

Elise drove aimlessly for what seemed like hours whilst the adrenalin still kept much of the pain at bay. Although she felt like a great weight had been lifted, she was also very much aware that this was just the beginning and when the low petrol light on her car started flashing, she realised that she was going to have to find somewhere to stay and fast. She couldn’t just drive around without direction all night.

The problem was that she really had nowhere to go. In the back of her mind, she registered that she would probably need a hospital but that was the first place that Dale would look for her. Then he would move onto her parent’s house and then Cole’s place so both of those were out of the question too.