12 Months to ' I Do '

It was more like a hospital waiting room, if you went private. Cosy chairs and carpeted floors. A coffee machine in the corner. A box of tissues on the table that sat in the middle of the chairs, with a vase of fresh flowers. Just a few small windows high up that you could not see out of as the glass was frosted and way too high, unless you stood on a chair, but let in just enough natural light for the light not to be turned on. But I was a child, after all, so maybe this was a special room just for kids. The policewoman wasn’t in uniform either. She wore an oversized shirt and jeans with a flowery scarf and looked more like my art teacher, but she made me feel comfortable from the start. She told me she liked my shoes, they were another present from my mum black patent with a chunky Perspex heel. That way you open up, I suppose, but I still lied my arse off. My mum had not been well since the accusations about Malcolm had come out. Someone sprayed pedo on his front door, too which had upset my mum. She even helped him clean it off, marching round there she went with her rubber gloves, bucket and scouring pad. My mum was in a particularly bad way after that. She had episodes like this before and battled with depression, but I had never seen her this bad. She would be tearful one minute and would not come out of her bedroom, and the next minute she would be going mental and smashing plates in the kitchen. She did take medication for it but, in my opinion, she needed a higher dose or something different, as clearly it was not working. She scared me sometimes as her behaviour would be so unpredictable. I wouldn’t know who I was coming home too but I tried to shield my brothers and sister from it as much as I could.

The only thing I told the nice policewoman was that he’d hugged me once; which was not a lie I just left out all of the other things he had done. I knew mum was watching the footage from another room as there was a small camera pointed directly towards me recording every word I said.

Edward was away again another training course, which did not help as I was home alone with my thoughts, which was definitely not a good thing. I couldn’t sleep and would lay awake overthinking everything. Trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I couldn’t get Malcolm out of my head. I didn’t even know if I wanted to be around any more. Sure, there had been times in my life before when I had wanted to end it all. Hasn’t everyone?

Edward was rarely at home any more so didn’t notice anything was different with me. I even started smoking again since the dad news, but in secret, so no one else knew. I became a master at hiding the cigarettes. I would put them inside a paracetamol box in my bag, so if Edward went in there for any reason, he wouldn’t find them unless he had a headache. I made any excuse when Edward was at home to go to the shop just so I could nip out for a fag. You would think I would have smelt of smoke but he never said anything.

The first fag after three years was vile as I breathed in; it burned the back of my throat like it had when I first took a cigarette down as a teenager. Before then I would pretend to try and act cool and would just hold the smoke in my mouth then blow it out. When I did take it down, I coughed my bloody guts up, but after that it was okay I got the knack. It left the most awful taste in my mouth, but by the third one it was good again.

Edward had been more distant with me, not interested in what I had to say, constantly on his phone and always would rather be out than spending time with me when I needed him the most. He didn’t even want to have sex any more would always make an excuse, or make sure he went to bed after me when I was already asleep, gone were the days of him bending me over the sofa during dinner. He was suddenly into losing weight and watching what he ate. He was even dressing differently and had been going to the barbers to get his short hair, cut rather than doing it himself with his clippers. I had noticed, too, that he has been liking a lot of girls’ selfies on social media. Maybe he knew them, I don’t know. It had crossed my mind that he could be having an affair; to be honest who could blame him, life was stressful at the moment. He wasn’t that private about his phone, though, leaving it lying around. If he was having an affair would he do that? Or did he know that I wasn’t the type of girl to go through his phone? I had never done that in the past and would not now because I trusted him.

He was constantly doing overtime, so I didn’t see him that often due to our shifts clashing and it felt like he would rather be at work than at home with me. Well, that’s how I felt anyway. I had tried to talk to him about it, but he just said that he was doing the overtime for me. For our wedding. But I was like what wedding, there won’t be one as I don’t see you enough. There was once a time when he would rush home to see me as he missed me. But that had changed over the last few months.