story

They say trauma bonds people together; a rail crash, being held hostage, surviving a natural disaster…

That June, the hot one of 2015, the six of us, women of different ages, class and creed slumped or stretched out on huge sofas in the L- shaped living and dining room.  It wasn’t yet dark but we’d closed the curtains – just to be safe, just to be sure. 

Of course all the windows were closed and locked.  Outside the refuge, our cars lay like sleeping monsters under dark covers. The house was set back off the road, discreetly hidden behind tall trees and hedges but even so, number plates must not be glimpsed.

Somehow the soft roe scent of the estuary crept in and the calls of men and women, who had their freedom, rose up into the heady night to compete with the soulful songs of owls and foxes crying for a mate.

I think that was the night we watched Sleeping with the Enemy. I didn’t see the ending because the staff confiscated the next day the video in case it re-traumatized us.

In her usual corner of the brown faux suede leather, Sonia curled up in her pajamas next to her make up bag, wiping off the mascara framing her large green eyes as she giggled at messages on her mobile, a mug of tea balanced dangerously on her knee.  This was her nightly ritual, except that the tea wasn’t tea, it was wine and this was a dry house. Eviction was too high a price for the rest of us.

What did bond us together?  Fear, anxiety and self esteem so low it grated on the floor and danger…I’d read that two women a week get killed by their abusive partners.  Domestic Violence so bad that we had to be hidden far away from all friends and family for many months.  Some of us knew our chances of being murdered were very high. 

I was one of those, but none of the women that night knew how long it might be before the Grim Reaper, aka the men who loved us to death – the irony of it not lost on us – found us.  And the punishment for leaving them could be our own deaths. Or worse, our children’s.