The Day I Nearly Left My Children Behind

The opening chapter of a memoir in progress

This chapter includes reflections on suicidal thinking within an abusive marriage.

You’re thirty-four. In the fourth-floor hotel room, facing the sea, you open the window. The January air has a bite. Behind you, your husband is shouting. His voice has a cannon-like boom that vibrates through your body. He is eight inches taller than you and five stone heavier. He earns hundreds of pounds an hour; you earn sixty a week. A spew of contempt rains down on your head. It’s your birthday.

You want to escape. Couples counselling didn’t prise open the hatch. You hoped she would give him her expert opinion that the marriage was over. Help you find a way out. But he charmed her. His words carried weight, while yours seemed as flimsy as ash. The problem, he said, is that we don’t have sex. A symptom, not the cause, of your distance. But she believed him, not you. Obliged you to commit to intimacy exercises. Unbearable twenty-minute sessions on the sofa with a man whose chain-smoker breath and belly repulse you. You are hungry for sex, but not with someone who despises you.

Then there was the moment by the pond. When you told him, Look, we’re both miserable. A whole year of counselling hasn’t worked. We need to break up, for both our sakes. His face turned to acid. He said those words you will never forget. Chillingly clear. There was no way out, unless you wanted to die.

Now you want to die. He’s ranting about how worthless you are. You push the window a little wider. Across the road, a man is battling the wind with a doomed umbrella. Wintry weather has cleared the front of tourists. Directly below the window, empty pavement.

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