Chapter 42: Lori - The Foster Child

I make the train just in time and it’s packed. I put my case in the luggage rack and thread my way through the body of people, praying I can find an empty seat near enough to keep an eye on it. It’ll take almost three hours to get to the Cotswolds and I’m too exhausted to stand all the way.

Luckily a man about fifty lets me have his seat saying he’s getting off at the next stop. I thank him and almost collapse into it. I’m so weary. I can’t believe that I’ve actually left Jacob and am on the way to stay with my mum. And Elliot. I close my eyes, my mind going back to the first time I met Jacob. Has it really not even been two months? It seems a lifetime. It will certainly take me a lifetime to forget what he’s put me through.

Jacob is so charismatic. When he walks into a room everyone turns to look at him, male and female alike. The guys want to be like him and the girls want to date him. I was bowled over by him, and at first he showered me with compliments and love. Love bombing they call it. It all happened so fast and felt so right. I really thought we’d be together forever. I can’t believe that I’ve ended it but I had to for my own sanity. Jacob is charming, clever – and cruel.

I was so infatuated I’d do anything to please him, and he knew it. It wasn’t long before he started making comments about me studying social work. He said that social workers were do-gooders who split up families and tried to convince me to change my course. If I’d have stayed with him any longer I really think I would have. He makes me doubt myself so much, my looks, my clothes, my friends, my family, my beliefs. He’s so clever how he does it though. He never openly criticises, his words are soft, persuasive… ‘I think the black suits you better, you don’t want to look tarty, do you?’, ‘I had planned on us having a quiet night in but if you really prefer to go out we will’, ‘I’d love to see your hair short, it seems so lank when you wear it long,’ and so on. If I do as he suggests he is so loving and generous, if I don’t he’s cold, distant, unavailable, out until all hours making me wonder what he’s up to, who he’s with. He can be so lovely that I would do everything I could to please him. Mostly. But I don’t want to change my course and he won’t drop it.

I have wanted to be a social worker ever since I was young, because of that business with Violet. The whole experience had traumatised me but when I was older I realised that it wasn’t Violet’s fault. She hadn’t grown up in a loving family like me, her parents hadn’t been able to look after her. That must be very hard to deal with. She probably acted like she did because she was jealous of my life and wanted it for herself. Who could blame her? So I’d decided that I wanted to be a social worker and help children like her. I try to explain this to Jacob but he just gets angry. He says it’s the social workers who took Violet away, they should have tried to sort it. That they take kids away from families instead of trying to support the families to look after their kids.

After the weekend with Mum and Elliot I could tell something was on his mind. He’d been so up for going, actually invited himself. He said that he wanted to meet my mum and let her know that he was going to look after me and was eager to meet them both. But when we returned he seemed angry. He kept going on about Elliot being snobby, and how sorry he feels for Violet, even though I’ve told him how horrible she was to me. And it’s like I can’t do anything right for him. Everything I do irritates him.

I’m getting more and more scared of his temper. He started to push me a little, or put his face right in mine, snarling and throwing cups against the wall. At first he hugged me and said he was sorry afterwards but I felt like I was living on my nerves. Then, after that day he grabbed my wrist when I took a peep at some of his papers, he started to get more and more aggressive. One night I said that I was going back to my digs because he was being so nasty and he snarled in my face that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was so scared that I couldn’t sleep all night. The next day, Jacob bought me a big bunch of flowers and was full of apologies, saying it was only because he loved me so much and didn’t want to lose me. So I forgave him. Things were okay for a bit after that.

Then last night we had a terrible row. The worst one ever. Jacob was vile. He punched his hand in the wall, leaving a dent, and I backed away terrified. I grabbed my bag. ‘I’m going. We’re finished,’ I told him.

His eyes darkened and he lunged at me, pushing me against the wall, bruising my cheek. ‘You’re not finishing anything. No one leaves me. Never.’ He almost spat the words out.

I was shaking with fear. I’d never seen him as bad as this before and genuinely feared for my life. I managed to pacify him but when he finally fell asleep I packed my bags and left. I was shaking in the taxi as I headed for the station, expecting him to appear any moment and try to persuade me to have him back.

I open my eyes as another text pings in, and I open it wondering if it’s from Mum asking if I’ve caught the train. It’s from Matty, a mutual friend of me and Jacob.

Hi Lori, you okay? Where are you? Jacob is going crazy with worry about you.

I read it and my stomach constricts. So this is how Jacob is going to play it. Get his friends, and maybe my friends, to message me one by one, wear me down. I can imagine the story he’s telling them, he’s so convincing. He’ll make it sound like he was being perfectly reasonable and I’ve overreacted again. I block Matty’s number and turn my phone off.

I’m never going back. I never want to see Jacob again.