“You bitch, and what do you think you’ve been living off all these years? Heh? Your little Choo-Choo shoes, your little Chanel numbers, your shopping sprees at the finest? What do you think made all your little frivolities happen, your blonde loveliness? My job as an actor? Actor, my foot. Have I got news for you! What I earned as an actor wouldn’t buy your knickers! What do you think bought you this Highgate splendour in white, grey and black? And now you are telling me you can’t? You won’t? I’m a monster? Who the hell do you think you are?”
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The face I had loved for so long was transformed by rage. Sweat pearled on his skin and his black hair, swept back in a ponytail, moved alarmingly as Jason almost head-butted me with each spat out phrase. Spittle flew from his mouth. His long, elegant hands had become claws that seemed ready to strangle me.
I slowly retreated, trying to get away from Jason’s furious dance. My insides had turned to jelly. The one thing I had never been able to deal with was verbal violence. When my father used to lash out at my mother with words I never want to remember, I would creep into the nearest corner to get a six-year old kid full of fear out of his way. Once he threw an apple he was about to eat out of a closed window under which I had been cowering. I can still feel the shards of glass in my hair, inside my clothes, under my feet and the sensation of hot urine running down my legs.
Very similar to my father, Jason’s greatest charm had always been in his smile. When he smiled, the skin around his ice-blue eyes creased and they became gentle and teasing. Unlike my father, Jason was peaceful and calm. This Jason was no longer the man I knew...
“You slut, get up, get your gear on and get out! For once do what I tell you to do!”
I know I need to move, need to get out, need to breathe, need to think, need to escape ... I slide towards the door, my back against the glass-fronted book case that covers the wall.
“You think you’ll get away from me? Ever? I tell you what I think. I think you live in cloudcuckooland, that’s what I think, and you have a few things coming. This, for one...!”
On the cue of 'this' he punched the side of my face with all his force. Jason was not a big man, but fit and wiry and strong. His fist first made full contact with my mouth, nose and left eye and then with the doors of the book case. Shards of broken glass rained on me as I fell, and my head exploded. Slowly I began to crawl towards the door.
“... and this, and this ...”
Each 'this' was accompanied by a kick. This couldn’t be happening. Things like this happened to other people, not to us, surely? We love each other? Don't we?
On my knees and my hands, pressing glass splinters into my skin, I continued to move along, doggie fashion. Another kick sent me sprawling, and my face fell into the broken glass. How I managed to pull myself up and how I ended up outside, at the foot of the stairs that lead to the front door, I never knew. Either I fell, or perhaps he just pushed me out, kicked me downstairs.
I felt something warm and wet trickle down my inner thighs. Just like when I was small.
I could barely walk, but I instinctively knew that this was my only chance to escape more blows and pain – and perhaps worse. Una, my eccentric, always battle-ready neighbour, opened her door, and I fell into her outstretched arms.
“Una, open the door and bring the bitch out or I’ll break your door down!” Jason yelled outside and battered Una’s rather ramshackle old door.
“Jason, get the hell away from my door! If you don’t leave off this instant I’ll call the police, so help me!”
“Just wait, you old cow, you call the cops and I don’t give a fig for your house. It’ll burn, it’ll burn, you’ll burn...!”
But eventually it became quiet. I hunched up on Una’s sofa. As she brought her first-aid kit and looked me over with grave, concerned eyes, I felt almost safe. Her big, capable hands touched me gently, her sun-wrinkled face surrounded by short, snow-white hair turned to me with an expression of wisdom and worry.
“Aggie, what on earth ... I can’t deal with this alone. You are badly hurt. You have to call the police...well, you know I never liked him...” she muttered as she ministered to my cuts and bruises.
I could only whimper. My whole body was shaking uncontrollably. My brain wasn’t working and I hurt. Oh, how I hurt. There didn’t seem to be a spot on my body that didn’t hurt. Or in my soul. Oh, Jason, I loved you so.
“Una, he hit me, kicked me ... he beat me ... the glass, I am cut ... Una, Jason ...”
I look down at my hands, my legs, the cuts, the blood and feel the most ridiculous sensation of wanting to apologise for the mess I am making. “Una, I am sorry...”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Aggie. We’ll get all this cleaned up and you need to have some stitches. I am not really surprised; Jason had to blow sooner or later. But didn’t you see it coming? He’s not only been dealing, he’s been doing drugs. It gets to them over time. I see it every day in my work.”
“Oh Una, I didn’t know ...”
“Perhaps you didn’t want to know? Dear, dear Aggie. Everyone else knew or at least suspected. If you didn’t know you didn’t want to look. What on earth brought this on today?”
How could I explain the inexplicable? Jason, my laid-back, tender Jason... This morning, just before the moments that shattered my life forever, he had, after some hesitation and looking away and fidgeting, blurted out with fear in his eyes what he had been doing to “earn some extra cash”. My brain had felt paralysed and I didn’t even think to ask what he had been dealing – not that it mattered. He needed me to go and buy a large lot tonight. And he wanted me to put on my sexiest outfit and come on to ‘the man’. Jason hadn’t paid for the last two deliveries. “The man likes you. Give it to him,” he’d said. “That’s how I’ll stay alive.” Only after answering spontaneously “No way!” had the enormity of what he just said dawned on me, and then Jason exploded. And here I am.
Una was right, of course. I must call the police. I must call the police. I must ... But Jason hand-cuffed? Jason, lover of freedom, in a cell and put there by me? Oh God, what a mess...
“Una, you old bitch, bring Aggie out! Get a-move on!” Jason again, now kicking the back door, his face pressed against one of the small square windows. I can only see one eye, his nose and his mouth, distorted by rage and the faulty old glass. No place to hide. No escape. Such pain ... He’ll kill us both ...
Una immediately took the phone and dialled a number. Jason disappeared from view, and I must have fainted. Coming to, I saw Una in her favourite chair, watching me with a frown on her face.
A sharp knock on the front door made me want to vomit – the fear pulled my insides out. But a voice just said, “Ambulance,” and Una got up to open the door. “Can you walk, honey?” They looked at me and then at each other. “Stay right there, hon, we’re getting the stretcher.”
They helped me from Una’s sofa to the stretcher. All I could see was what seemd to blood. Blood running down my legs, blood on the tan upholstery, blood on the pine floor boards, blood now trickling into my shoes.
As they carried me through the front garden to the ambulance, Jason was leaning on the fence of our house, quiet, not moving, only his eyes following me, boring into mine. As we were passing, I looked at him and felt nothing but emptiness. Yet, out of that void came a realisation with sudden clarity: Jason had goaded and attacked me for one reason only - the moment I had said “no” to his desperate proposal, he had made up his mind; he desperately wanted arrest and prison because he hoped that ‘inside’ he’d be protected from his drug-pusher friends.
I won’t do him the favour. I won’t press charges. Not only had he betrayed my love and my trust – he had just murdered our unborn baby.