Czytaj książkę: «If You Love Me: Part 3 of 3: True love. True terror. True story.»

Chapter 12

In the spring, Joe and I went on another holiday. To Peru this time, to trek part of the Inca trail. It was a holiday Joe could easily have afforded, but I paid for it all, out of what remained of my savings. And, in any other circumstances, it would have been worth paying almost any amount of money to be able to trek through that amazing landscape of lush valleys and high plateaux, surrounded by spectacular mountain scenery.

Our guide usually walked some distance ahead of us, mostly out of earshot of the endless questions and recriminations that, for me, made walking far more tiring than it would otherwise have been. ‘Many people would give anything to do what we’re doing,’ I thought, as I trudged along the trail beside Joe on what was probably the fourth day, barely noticing the breathtaking beauty of the mountains whose peaks seemed to touch the brilliant blue sky. Then, suddenly, Joe stopped, looked up at the birds that were swooping and calling to each other above our heads and said, ‘I think those are condors.’

It was a simple statement, the sort of thing anyone might have said at the time. But the fact that it was said by Joe was extraordinary. I looked at him as closely as I dared, trying to read the expression on his face, and could feel my chest tighten as I realised that the man I was looking at was the Joe I had fallen in love with, what seemed like a whole lifetime ago. He must have sensed that I was watching him, and when he turned to look at me he smiled and his face relaxed and was handsome again, the way it was in the photographs I’d taken of him on our first holiday together in Barcelona.

For a few minutes I was almost afraid to breathe, in case I broke the spell of the moment and sent us plummeting back into the misery in which we’d spent almost every waking minute of every hour since the discovery. But Joe continued to smile, and while Joe was smiling, the cross-examination stopped and the world around me came back into focus. Having walked for the last few days with my shoulders hunched and my head bowed under the weight of his aggressive questioning, I suddenly noticed the flowers that littered the path at our feet, the sunlight that was reflected off the mirror-like surfaces of distant rivers and lakes, and the sharp, clear outlines of the soaring mountain peaks.

Having wanted to trek the Inca trail for as long as I could remember, all I’d thought about since the day we’d arrived was catching the flight home, where I could at least feel safe knowing that I was in the same country as my family and friends, rather than alone with Joe 6,000 miles away. Now, though, as Joe talked about the things we used to talk about when we first met – what we were going to do with our lives, where we were going to live, how many children we were going to have – I thought that trekking in Peru had done what I’d been unable to do and had brought the real Joe back.

Although it was Joe who wanted to go to Peru when we did, he’d actually trekked the Inca trail before, twice: once with his wife and once with a girlfriend with whom he’d had a relationship that lasted for more than a year. ‘There’s this special spot,’ he’d told me, ‘where the view is magnificent. When we’re standing there, I think I’ll know if I can forgive you and if we can move on.’

I don’t think I really understood what he meant about it being a special spot, but it turned out that there was a particular place on the trail where he’d had some kind of epiphany moment with each of them. He didn’t have one with me, however. I knew it was the ‘special spot’ as soon as I saw it, and it really was beautiful. But although I tried to get him to tell me what he was thinking, he refused to say anything, either way. Then the questioning started again, and I knew it hadn’t worked. An hour later he was bent double at the side of the trail, dry retching and trying to catch his breath.

It was weeks after we’d returned from Peru when I first began to wonder if he’d done the same thing with his wife and girlfriend as he was doing with me. Perhaps it was a pattern of behaviour for Joe, I thought, believing he’d found the perfect woman and then everything spiralling out of control when he discovered she was only human after all. At the time I just felt disappointed, because being in what must be one of the most beautiful mountain regions in the world had failed to solve the problem – which was beginning to seem insoluble.

Not long after we came back from Peru, I had to have an operation. I’d been experiencing pain in my pelvis for some time, while my stomach was often tender and swollen, and it had eventually been diagnosed as an ovarian cyst. I was told that they are quite common, and that a lot of women have at least one during their lifetime, although many don’t have any noticeable symptoms.

Joe insisted that, in some plague-of-locusts sort of way, the cyst on my ovary was the physical manifestation of my amorality and had started to grow as soon as I began my ‘sordid affair with a married man’. It was a belief he attempted to reinforce by citing various philosophers and theologians, and after a while I didn’t bother to argue with him, because I knew there was nothing I could say that would change his mind.

Joe came with me to the hospital for my appointment with the consultant, and while we were sitting in the waiting room my sister phoned me. I barely spoke to anyone in my family by that time. Joe had severely restricted my contact with my parents and sister, and always supervised and directed any phone conversations I did have. So I was surprised that he told me to answer it on that occasion.

‘Hi, Alice. It’s Lucy. I’m outside Joe’s house with Mum. Sarah and her boyfriend are here too. We know you’re in there and we want to see you. We’ve driven all this way because we’re worried about you. Can you open the door and let us in. Please.’

‘You’re outside the house?’ It took me a moment to understand what my sister was saying. ‘But I’m not there, Lucy. I’ve got a hospital appointment. I’m at the hospital.’

‘We know you’re there,’ Lucy persisted. ‘Your curtains are drawn. Please, Alice, stop lying to us. We just want to help you. Wait a minute … Sarah wants to speak to you.’

Joe’s face had darkened, the way it always did when he had to contain his anger for some reason, and he was hissing into my ear the lies he wanted me to tell my sister. The irony, which was apparent to me even then, was that all the misery of the last few months stemmed from Joe’s insistence that I must always tell him the truth, while he himself was a master of deceit and false promises.

If only once he had been kind to me or protected me in some way, maybe the impossible task of trying to fix him might not have been so incredibly wearing. But, even at the hospital, when I was facing the prospect of having to have surgery, he didn’t feel one iota of compassion or sympathy for me.

‘Tell them you don’t want to see them,’ he said. ‘Tell them that turning up on our doorstep like that, out of the blue, and trying to hijack you is abusive behaviour and that they’re making your depression worse. Tell them you’re fine and they’re just being ridiculous.’

‘Alice, it’s Sarah.’ The sound of my best friend’s voice made me want to cry. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you, but Lucy said you were on holiday. She told me what happened before you went away, about the taxi in the middle of the night and how he cut all your hair off. We want to help you. If you’re really not in the house, at least meet us somewhere, just for a few minutes, so that we can see for ourselves you’re okay. Just five minutes, and then we’ll leave you alone. You know you’d do the same for me if our roles were reversed. You know that we all love you, Alice. That’s the only reason we’re here. We don’t have any hidden agenda, I promise. We just want to know that you’re all right. Please.’

I knew Joe was wrong and that genuine concern rather than any attempt to exert control over me was what had prompted their attempt to see me. And I knew Sarah was telling the truth when she said they only wanted to help me. I hated myself for lying to them and for pushing them away. What was I trying to achieve by denying the fact that Joe was abusing me? Why did I persist in pretending – to my family and friends, and to myself – that I was all right? And why was I cutting off the only people who truly cared about me?

The answer to all those questions was the same: because I believed that doing so would somehow make amends to the man who I knew in my heart was ill and couldn’t be fixed – certainly not by me. What I didn’t realise at the time, however, was that the balance of my mind must have been disturbed to some extent, too, for me to have refused so persistently to give up on him.

‘I’m fine, Sarah,’ I said at last, clearing my throat to mask the sob that escaped as I spoke. ‘Honestly. Don’t worry about me. It was a misunderstanding: I cut my own hair. Of course Joe didn’t do it! I just wanted a change. I’m sorry, but I really am at the hospital. I’ve got an appointment. So I can’t see you now.’