I hesitated for half a second, wondering if I was overreacting. But then realising that the only way to find out was to stay, and that if I was right that might be catastrophic, I started the engine and put the car into reverse. The door was three-quarters of the way up.
When I glanced back at Billy, he was holding something in one hand and in horror I realised that it was a remote for the garage doors.
He grinned at me then – a sickly, horrible psychopath grin – and, with the theatrical gesture of a TV suicide bomber, he hit the button on the remote. The garage doors lurched to a halt.
I started to reverse out anyway, but as I did they began to descend again and the door scraped across the roof of my lovely little Polo, filling the air with a horrific grinding screeching noise.
Out on the street, I didn’t look back. I crunched the gears and sped away but, as I was continuing further down the same lane, I had no idea where I was heading.
After a mile of random turns on country roads I arrived at an unsigned intersection and was forced to admit to myself that if I didn’t look at a map soon I could quite easily end up back at Billy’s. So I pulled into a scrappy field with a farm building behind which I could park out of sight.
When I pulled my phone from my pocket to check Google Maps, it was showing multiple calls and messages. There was a voicemail from Rob, asking where I was, a text from Shelley, warning me that Rob was home and looking for me, and one from Mum asking if I was OK. Just as I was deciding that I’d deal with all of that later once I was a safe distance from Billy, a message arrived from him as well.
It said,You’ve broken my garage door you crazy fucking whore.
It would have been better, no doubt, not to reply, or at least to wait until I was calm, but in the end the wordwhorewas more provocation than I could resist.Good, I sent back.I’m glad.
I opened Google Maps, but then, realising that my reply hadn’t been enough – hadn’t even begun to encompass my anger, I sent another one.
You’re a fat, red-faced rapist psycho, I typed.
Followed by a childish (but satisfying),AndEars, Nose, Arsewas shit.
And then I began to cry.
It took ten minutes until I felt calm enough – could see well enough, even – to type Joss Bay into Google Maps, but as soon as the route came up I started to drive, still wiping the tears away with my sleeve. I needed to put some distance between Billy and myself quickly – I was still feeling physically threatened.
I remembered a Margaret Atwood quote about how men are scared that women will laugh at them, while women are scared they’ll be killed. I wasn’t sure if it was a reasonable thought but it had never felt truer to me than in that moment.
As I transferred onto the A38, I noticed the journey time in the corner of the screen and realised that I hadn’t been thinking straight. It was showing five hours and thirty-nine minutes, and there was no way I was capable of driving it safely. So I pulled into a siding and hunted for somewhere to stay over, settling on a chain hotel just outside Exeter. I didn’t know what I was going to say to them yet, but I decided I’d text Rob, Mum and Shelley from there.
As I drove, my emotions came and went in waves. I’d feel feisty or tearful, or angry, or scared and then, just seconds later, unexpectedly calm. I thought about the fact that I hadn’t booked a hotel, and how a judge – specifically a male judge – might have said, had I not got away, that it was proof I’d been planning to sleep with Billy all along, and that therefore it couldn’t be considered rape.
I thought about the termpremeditated, and thenpremeditated murder. But of course, murder is only premeditated if you both plan it and go through with it. If you change your mind at the last minute and put the gun or the knife or whatever away, then it’s premeditated nothing at all.
That seemed to be the whole point of the matter. Saying ‘yes’ is a continuous process, and saying ‘no’ stops that process instantly – whether it’s a process that leads to murder or sex – no matter how premeditated it may have been. At least that’s how it should work. But it’s a concept that men – or at least,somemen – don’t seem to understand, specifically when it comes to sex.
I thought about Rob and how, at the beginning, he’d constantly asked me if everything was OK. Sometimes he’d been in the process of going down on me and I was on my back groaning, and he’d pause and look up at me from between my knees and ask, ‘Is this OK?’ and I’d hated him for that. I’d found his constant need for reassurance – though these days, one might call itconsent– endlessly annoying, and, in an absurd way, a kind of opposite of manliness. That had been clearly incredibly unfair on my part when the alternative to ongoing consent wasrape.
Men!I thought, then,Sex, Christ, what an incomprehensible mess we’ve made of it all!
The hotel was clean, generic and easy – it was exactly what I needed.
I paid for my double room (there were no singles), went up to the first floor, walked a long bleak corridor, and then pulled back the covers to lie down on the cool, crisp sheets.
I thought of Billy moving in to kiss me with his cigar-stained teeth, and shuddered. I thought of Rob and wondered if he really had a mistress and if he did if he called her adirty little slut. I knew, even before I asked myself the question, that he didn’t, that he never would or could.
I wondered why I hadn’t loved him more for that – for his gentleness, for his constant search for consent, for his absolute reliability in the midst of the mayhem that was our family.
I fell asleep. It was only half past six, and my stress levels were sky-high, but I fell into a deep, deep sleep. Maybe it was the aftermath of all that adrenalin.
When I woke up it was dark both inside the room and beyond the window, and for a terrifying few seconds I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was. But then my phone vibrated and the screen lit up and I realised I was in a hotel room and that it was my phone that had wakened me in the first place.
I lifted the phone and struggled to focus on the screen. It said, Rob:Are you OK? I’m concerned.
Christ!I thought.Poor Rob.The time was 22:25.
I started to type a reply but I couldn’t think what to say, so I put the phone back down and went through to the bathroom, where I peed and washed my face.
