If You Love Me: Part 3 of 3: True love. True terror. True story.. Jane Smith

one night. I hadn’t even been consciously aware of any of the people at other tables on that occasion, and Joe hadn’t said anything until we got back to the house, when he suddenly lost it and started screaming at me, ‘You know what you did.’

      ‘I don’t know, Joe,’ I kept telling him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What did I do?’

      ‘You tell me,’ he’d insisted, grabbing me around the throat and pushing me with such force against the wall that I could almost feel the bruise spreading across my windpipe. ‘You tell me what you did wrong. Don’t pretend that you don’t know.’

      But I didn’t know what I’d done on that night in London any more than I knew now, in the restaurant in Sardinia, and I was afraid to guess in case I said something that gave him an excuse to blame me for something else too. In the end he told me that, as we walked into the restaurant, I’d looked at the two men sitting at the table next to ours – ‘flirtatiously’, Joe said. The accusation was ludicrous. If I ever had been prone to looking at men flirtatiously – which I don’t believe I was – those days were long gone. In fact, most of the time I barely noticed my surroundings at all, and I certainly hadn’t been consciously aware of any of the people sitting at any of the tables in that London restaurant. Maybe I did look in the direction of the two men when we walked in. Or maybe it was all in Joe’s imagination. But whatever he believed I had done, I didn’t deserve his vicious attack that night, or the bruises and bite marks that were its legacy the next morning.

      So now, as we sat in the restaurant in Sardinia, I tried desperately to guess what heinous crime Joe might be accusing me of.

      ‘The girl,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the girl. She must have been about the same age as the daughter of the married man.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered, resisting the sudden urge I felt to lay my head on the table and sob until I fell asleep. ‘I should have paid more attention. I didn’t notice her. I wish I could take back what I did. You know how sorry I am.’

      I hated hearing myself speak in that pathetic, obsequious ‘victim’s’ voice. But it was as if I’d become conditioned to being servile and submissive, accepting blame without question for anything and everything Joe accused me of, however unlikely or absurd it actually was.

      ‘How could you do it? It’s disgusting.’ He was shouting now. ‘You’ve ruined that girl’s life forever. You’re a fucking whore.’

      In fact, Joe always swore at me when he was angry. He had a way of saying certain words that made them sound particularly harsh and ugly. But I haven’t normally included them here, mostly because I find it so upsetting to remember the expression on his face when he said them.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, while silently, in my head, I was pleading with him: ‘Please don’t do this. I can’t take it any more. It’s madness. The way you behave is crazy. And I’m crazy too, for trying, over and over again, to find the key that will make everything the way it used to be, when the rational side of me knows that will never happen and I should simply walk away.’