Don't Get Caught

Flashback 2 - Christina

2015
Whitby, England

You know that wonderful feeling of contentment you get when you're in your own home? A familiar space where you can totally do you? A haven you can go to at the end of a hard day? Somewhere you can feel completely  safe?

I knew that feeling. I loved that feeling. But I didn't appreciate that feeling until it didn't exist anymore.

I'll never forget the day it started. Bernard and I were a year into our relationship, and we'd had a wonderful honeymoon period. He loved to make romantic gestures such as buy flowers, rustle up breakfast in bed or whisk us away on romantic weekends. He also tried really hard with Malcolm, my thirteen-year-old son: playing computer games with him, buying him presents, ferrying him home from after-school clubs. He took him to football practice of a weekend. I honestly thought I'd hit the jackpot after my first marriage had fallen apart.

About ten months into our whirlwind romance, we moved in together and things changed. The romance was the first to go as we fell into daily routines. He found having a teenage boy in the house an annoyance. Let's face it, he found me an annoyance. He worked hard all day as a police officer and would come home from a hard day on duty to find me there. In his eyes, I was there all the time. I only worked part time in a local café, so I always left after him in the mornings and arrived home before him of an evening. As he never saw me at work, his perception was that I never worked, and therefore he expected the house to be clean, the washing to be done and the dinner to be on the table. In reality, I maybe had two extra hours a day than he did, but Malcolm had special needs and required a lot of work to ensure he did his homework and was properly organised for school and his other activities.

Over the next couple of months I could see Bernard's frustration growing, and mine did too.

Jump to the evening everything changed...

His thick, stubby fingers wrapped around my throat as he shoved me against the kitchen cupboard. His dark brown eyes were ablaze and as wide as I'd ever seen them. There was no pain as the cupboard door handle plunged into my lower back on impact. It didn't even hurt my throat as he pressed on my windpipe. Loose strands of my hair caught in his grip but the pull on my scalp didn't register. The shock simply numbed me. After all the things I'd said to Bernard over the last couple of months, this was one of the less antagonistic.

"Your conversation was boring me."

But it was.

He had been talking to a colleague at our kitchen table about work stuff. They were eating fish and chips which they'd picked up on their way over, drinking lager from a can and putting the world to rights. This bothered me for many reasons.

One, his colleague was a beautiful woman. Yes, she was in her black police uniform which wasn't the most flattering, her black hair pulled back in a sensible bun, but her face had striking features, from her piercing green eyes to her full naturally pink lips. Cute and petite. A huge contrast to my tall lanky frame with my angular face and dark blonde hair. He knew I didn't like him having female friends after my previous relationship had ended in an affair.

Two, Malcolm and I hadn't had dinner, yet they had only bought fish and chips for themselves.

Three, we had agreed we didn't drink alcohol midweek, yet there they were on a Tuesday night with a four-pack on the table.

Four, Tuesday nights were when I went to Zumba. Malcolm didn't need a babysitter, but we had an unwritten agreement that Tuesday nights Bernard would be responsible for my son.

Five, Bernard was talking like he would with his force buddies, throwing abusive language around as if it were imperative to the English language. He knew I didn't like Malcolm being exposed to that kind of talk. He was a sensitive boy.