Betrayal

1

London, 1998

Don shoved the back door open, banging it hard into the wall. Eve knew by the ferocity of his entrance he was certain to pick a fight with her tonight.

She knew there was no chance of appeasing him. She’d tried every which way in the past and it always ended the same. He would hit her. Often till she was unconscious.

It was just after eleven. That meant he hadn’t found a willing candidate for more drinks after the pub and a kebab. That usually mellowed his mood.

Eve braced herself for the inevitable as he stomped into the kitchen, looking at her balefully. ‘Can I make you a bacon sandwich?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Fuck off, you silly cow,’ he snarled. ‘Do I look like I want a bacon sandwich?’

You look like a pig, she thought but didn’t dare say.

‘Is there something else you’d like to eat?’

She didn’t see the punch coming. For a big man Don could pounce as swiftly as a cat. As his fist connected with her cheek her head rattled with an explosion of pain.

‘Is food the only thing you can offer?’ he shouted at her, and the stink of his beer and cigarette breath made her stomach heave too.

He caught hold of her shoulders, head-butted her, punched her in the stomach so she fell to the floor and then kicked her again and again. She heard a faint crack and knew that, once again, her ribs had broken, but even as she wanted to scream out in agony, she felt the heaven-sent wooziness of unconsciousness.

She came to later to find herself lying in blood; she wasn’t sure which part of her was cut, as everything hurt. An attempt at getting up proved hopeless– her ribs and head hurt too much. Don had left the kitchen light on, and she wished she could manoeuvre herself to reach the cardigan she’d left on the kitchen chair because the heating had turned off and she was very cold.

There was nothing for it but to lie in agony waiting for it to abate enough to try to get up. She would blank out the thought of all the other times she’d lain for hours in this very spot.

‘You should never have married him,’ she muttered as she lifted one hand to examine her face. Her left eye had already swollen so badly she couldn’t see out of it, and one of her teeth was bleeding but it didn’t feel as if it would fall out. The rest of the blood appeared to be from her shin, where Don had kicked it.

So many people had advised her against marrying Don, including her father. They had all witnessed various bouts of bad temper, but back then Eve always found a good reason for them. Besides, back in 1986 when they’d married, his anger had never been directed towards her.

Eve’s mother Sandra had died from breast cancer when Eve was ten, and her father Jack had become a dour, difficult man, so getting married and gaining a home of her own seemed a happy solution. Don was ten years older than Eve, a big dark-haired handsome man. He was a plumber and made a very good living. He even owned a house of his own. Granted it was only a two-up two-down in a scruffy road in Lewisham, and in bad repair, but Eve felt she could make it lovely.

They had only been back from their honeymoon in Spain for a week when he hit her for the first time.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ he said almost as soon as he’d attacked her, and he got a bag of ice to put on her already swelling eye. ‘I had a terrible day at work and when you began nagging me about decorating the lounge, I just saw red.’

She found herself apologizing for merely offering to paint and wallpaper it herself, something she was good at. She hadn’t considered that was nagging. But as he kissed her bruised face and told her he loved her, she forgave him.

With hindsight she should’ve walked out of the door right then.