Not long after we came back from Peru, I had to have an operation. I’d been experiencing pain in my pelvis for some time, while my stomach was often tender and swollen, and it had eventually been diagnosed as an ovarian cyst. I was told that they are quite common, and that a lot of women have at least one during their lifetime, although many don’t have any noticeable symptoms.
Joe insisted that, in some plague-of-locusts sort of way, the cyst on my ovary was the physical manifestation of my amorality and had started to grow as soon as I began my ‘sordid affair with a married man’. It was a belief he attempted to reinforce by citing various philosophers and theologians, and after a while I didn’t bother to argue with him, because I knew there was nothing I could say that would change his mind.
Joe came with me to the hospital for my appointment with the consultant, and while we were sitting in the waiting room my sister phoned me. I barely spoke to anyone in my family by that time. Joe had severely restricted my contact with my parents and sister, and always supervised and directed any phone conversations I did have. So I was surprised that he told me to answer it on that occasion.
‘Hi, Alice. It’s Lucy. I’m outside Joe’s house with Mum. Sarah and her boyfriend are here too. We know you’re in there and we want to see you. We’ve driven all this way because we’re worried about you. Can you open the door and let us in. Please.’
‘You’re outside the house?’ It took me a moment to understand what my sister was saying. ‘But I’m not there, Lucy. I’ve got a hospital appointment. I’m at the hospital.’
‘We know you’re there,’ Lucy persisted. ‘Your curtains are drawn. Please, Alice, stop lying to us. We just want to help you. Wait a minute … Sarah wants to speak to you.’
Joe’s face had darkened, the way it always did when he had to contain his anger for some reason, and he was hissing into my ear the lies he wanted me to tell my sister. The irony, which was apparent to me even then, was that all the misery of the last few months stemmed from Joe’s insistence that I must always tell him the truth, while he himself was a master of deceit and false promises.
If only once he had been kind to me or protected me in some way, maybe the impossible task of trying to fix him might not have been so incredibly wearing. But, even at the hospital, when I was facing the prospect of having to have surgery, he didn’t feel one iota of compassion or sympathy for me.
‘Tell them you don’t want to see them,’ he said. ‘Tell them that turning up on our doorstep like that, out of the blue, and trying to hijack you is abusive behaviour and that they’re making your depression worse. Tell them you’re fine and they’re just being ridiculous.’
‘Alice, it’s Sarah.’ The sound of my best friend’s voice made me want to cry. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you, but Lucy said you were on holiday. She told me what happened before you went away, about the taxi in the middle of the night and how he cut all your hair off. We want to help you. If you’re really not in the house, at least meet us somewhere, just for a few minutes, so that we can see for ourselves you’re okay. Just five minutes, and then we’ll leave you alone. You know you’d do the same for me if our roles were reversed. You know that we all love you, Alice. That’s the only reason we’re here. We don’t have any hidden agenda, I promise. We just want to know that you’re all right. Please.’
I knew Joe was wrong and that genuine concern rather than any attempt to exert control over me was what had prompted their attempt to see me. And I knew Sarah was telling the truth when she said they only wanted to help me. I hated myself for lying to them and for pushing them away. What was I trying to achieve by denying the fact that Joe was abusing me? Why did I persist in pretending – to my family and friends, and to myself – that I was all right? And why was I cutting off the only people who truly cared about me?
The answer to all those questions was the same: because I believed that doing so would somehow make amends to the man who I knew in my heart was ill and couldn’t be fixed – certainly not by me. What I didn’t realise at the time, however, was that the balance of my mind must have been disturbed to some extent, too, for me to have refused so persistently to give up on him.
‘I’m fine, Sarah,’ I said at last, clearing my throat to mask the sob that escaped as I spoke. ‘Honestly. Don’t worry about me. It was a misunderstanding: I cut my own hair. Of course Joe didn’t do it! I just wanted a change. I’m sorry, but I really am at the hospital. I’ve got an appointment. So I can’t see you now.’
In fact, it ended up being another hour before we were called in to see the consultant, during which time Joe barely paused for breath as he muttered malign accusations about my family and friends, and about how, despite everything I’d done to make him so ill, he was trying to protect me from their abuse.
I had turned my phone to silent after Lucy’s call, but I saw the screen light up every time she called again, or sent me a message that went unanswered. ‘Ignore them,’ Joe said. ‘They’ll give up eventually and go home. We can stay at a hotel tonight if necessary.’ But I couldn’t help wishing he was wrong and that my sister and best friend would somehow find out which hospital I was at and the next time the automatic doors slid open I would look up and see them walking towards me.
Joe insisted on my asking the consultant if the cyst could have been caused by sex and how long he thought I’d had it. ‘We don’t know what causes ovarian cysts,’ the consultant said. ‘They’re very common, and most of them disappear again after a few weeks or months without causing any problems or needing any treatment. But, for reasons that aren’t really understood, some continue to grow and can cause symptoms of pelvic pain, bloating, etc., as in your case, or even block the blood supply to the ovaries, which is why I would recommend having it removed. And in answer to your second question, there is no way of knowing how long it’s been there.’
Joe knew, though, or thought he did, and while the consultant was showing us the ultrasound scan of the cyst that had grown on my ovary there was an expression of revulsion on his face. He didn’t let the consultant see it, of course, and by the time he turned back to look at us Joe was nodding sympathetically again, and said all the right things. Later, as soon as we were alone, he told me that he found my ovarian cyst repulsive and he wanted me to have the operation to remove it as soon as I possibly could.
Of all the countless occasions when I felt miserable and alone, I think it was on that day more than at any other time that I longed for him to say something kind to me. ‘Don’t worry, Alice,’ he might have said. ‘I know you’re dreading having to have surgery, but you’ll feel better after it. And I’ll look after you.’ Instead, he called it ‘biblical retribution’ and berated me for the amoral behaviour that no amount of scientific evidence would have convinced him hadn’t caused it.
We didn’t go home until quite late that evening, when Joe drove slowly past the end of our road, to make sure Lucy and the others had gone, before turning round and parking. I was anxious for the rest of the night, in case they decided to come back, but they didn’t, although they did tell me later that they wished they had.
The few weeks I had to wait before I had the operation were a difficult time for me. I’d been having heavy periods for a while and had become a bit anaemic, which was making me very tired. Also I was dreading the thought of Joe being at the hospital with me when the time came. If only I could have my family there, I thought, or a friend like Sarah who would reassure me by telling me, as often as I needed to hear it, that it was straightforward surgery and everything was going to be okay. I wanted to know that I’d wake up from the anaesthetic to smiling faces and friendly voices, not to see Joe waiting impatiently for me to open my eyes so he could tell me again that my condition was the result of divine intervention or karma or whatever type of cosmic justice he might have decided had caused it while I was on the operating table.
As much as I wanted to do so, however, I knew I couldn’t