Chapter 41: THEN - The Safe Room

When Honey went to prison for attempted murder, the few loose stitches holding the Ellis family together finally fell apart. At the trial, Mum and Dad could barely look or speak to me. We walked into the courtroom in silence, listened to Honey’s guilty plea, and walked out in silence. When the judge sentenced her to twelve years in prison, I almost dropped straight to the floor.

“I wish there was more I could do,” Ed said, holding my hand on the way back to the car. “I feel so helpless.”

I’d stopped in my tracks. “Don’t. I can’t stand it… I…”

“What is it?” Ed held my shoulders as tears ran down my face.

“Feeling helpless. It’s how I make everyone in my family feel. Honey. Dad. Mum. They all want to do something to stop Peter, but no one can. No one can stop him.” I wiped tears away, shaking all over. “That’s why she tried to kill him. That’s why she’s…” I descended into a sobbing mess, crying all over Ed’s suit jacket.

“It’s not your fault, Amber. It’s his fault.”

“I know.”

We stood there in the middle of the car park near York Courthouse, the wind whipping my hair around my face, tears drying on my cheeks. I touched his face.

“Please don’t ever feel helpless because that’s when the mess happens. You’ve done so much for me and my family. The lawyer you found is the first decent legal representative we’ve ever had! That’s not nothing, Ed.”

“I think your dad hates me because I pay for things.”

“Yeah, well, Dad has made a lot of mistakes. We all have. We’re all smashed china at this point. Not even superglue can put us back together.”

Ed led me over to the car, his arm around my shoulders.

Over the next few weeks, he cooked when I didn’t have the energy, helped me with the constant legal forms I needed to extend my restraining order, and never, not once, made me feel like it was all my fault.

But deep down inside I felt like it was. I didn’t know what it was about me that Peter fixated on, but I knew there had to be something. My own sister tried to kill him because she saw no way out for me. He’d even impacted her own life, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t stand what it was doing to me, to all of us. It broke her.

Peter was never charged with what he did to my wedding, but Honey faced twelve years in prison. Twelve years. She’d miss the rest of her twenties and a huge chunk of her thirties, her time to find a partner and start a family or decide what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. It was gone. Those opportunities for growth, love, and life. And she was the one who felt shame, not Peter.

I called my mum one night and asked her why Honey wouldn’t let me visit.

“Oh, love,” she’d said. “She feels so guilty. When she sees you, she remembers what she did.”

“But I don’t blame her. I blame me! He chose me!”

“Please, love,” Mum said. “I can’t go over all this again. I just can’t. I have to go.”

“Dad told me you met with Mary for coffee again,” I said, my voice full of vitriol.

She sighed. “I needed to get some things off my chest. I know you don’t approve but I have to work with her.”

“Get another job!” I snapped, lost in the moment. “She gave him an alibi, Mum!”

“It’s complicated, okay? Mary has a lot of issues. She’s not a bad person⁠—”

“Are you insane?”

“She’s had a tough time with that boy and losing her husband like that. You don’t understand⁠—”

“I don’t understand you. Where’s your loyalty?”

“You know I love you and Honey.” She started to cry then. “You don’t know what it’s like, Amber. We’re social pariahs! We can’t move because we can’t afford it. Not everyone has money like you and Ed now, do they? And Mary is the only person who will spend even a little time with me. What Peter did has left a black mark on this family, and I know it’s strange, but Mary is the only one who understands.”

I hung up. Later that night, I crawled into bed, contemplating what it was about me that attracted him. That created this entire mess.

I stopped answering the phone to Mum and Dad after that. They’ve still never met Sophie.

Honey rejected every request for a visit that I put in. Maybe Mum was right. I had to move on for my own sanity. It took a while. Not until I found out I was pregnant with Sophie did I start to forgive myself. There was no way I could let more darkness seep in when I had a life to bring into this world.

Ed and I decided to build our own happiness.

We stayed in York, and for a long time nothing arrived to taunt me in the post. I never stopped looking over my shoulder or checking the rear-view mirror in the car, but there were no tall shadows lurking in my periphery. Peter’s blue BMW wasn’t trailing me.

When I found out I was pregnant, we celebrated with a dinner party, inviting Ed’s friends from work. Even Rachel and Karolina came by. It was one of the best nights of my life, surrounded by friends, happy and free. I started to think that my split from my family was for the best. Mum had Mary and Dad. I had Ed and friends. But not being able to tell Honey about the baby still hurt.

I gave birth in the middle of the night at York Hospital. Both red-faced and screaming, I felt a kinship with Sophie that I’d never felt with anyone before. Ed and I marvelled at her, counting her fingers and toes until we became so sleep-deprived, we couldn’t count to ten any longer. We were alone that night aside from the midwife and nurses. But after Sophie settled in her cot, and Ed snoozed in the chair by the bed, I began to drift away, and I saw him walk past the doorway.

Or did I?

That moment haunted me afterwards. Did I imagine it? Did Peter Harlow walk past my room in the maternity ward?

I never told Ed. If he knew, he’d be stressed, and I wanted to save him from that. Soon I was wrapped up in being a new mum, basking in that joy. Sophie was a pleasure right from the start. She slept well, she nursed easily, and she was giggling after three months.

But when Sophie turned four years old, I started waking up in a cold sweat. I was working as a teaching assistant at that point and in the middle of a lesson I’d feel a panic attack bubbling up from my abdomen. Heart palpitations fluttered in my chest. On the way home from work I’d imagine horrific scenarios of Sophie stolen, Sophie attacked, Peter in my home waiting for me, and my lungs constricted until I couldn’t breathe.

The panic attacks were daily. Now that I had to spend time away from Sophie to work, I was convinced that Peter would find us.

Ed sat me down and asked if I wanted to go to the doctor. They could prescribe anti-anxiety medication. I thought about it but ultimately decided that my anxiety was situational and I could never eradicate that fear from our lives so long as Peter Harlow was alive.

That was when he suggested the house in Eel Beck. It belonged to Ed’s parents. They kept it as a second home, visiting in summer for long hikes in the Nidderdale National Landscape.

“I can still commute to York from Eel Beck. And we can make it our own,” he suggested. “We can make it safe. I’ve been reading up about new security systems. I swear, we can make that place like Fort Knox.”

I’d kissed him on the cheek. “This is a huge gift, though. Are your parents sure about this?”

“I’m an only child; I’m allowed to be spoiled.” He pulled me into his arms. “Maybe once we’re settled, we could think about making a brother or sister for Sophie.”

“Hmm, I see you have it all planned out. Well, all right then.”

It was perfect. It meant moving away from friends, but surely we’d still make time for them. We could have weekends away or get a babysitter and travel into York for a night out. All I knew was that I needed this.

There have been times when I’ve lost myself in a crowd, finding comfort in the presence of strangers, and there have been times when I have craved solitude. I wanted solitude then, in a stronghold of a house with steel-reinforced doors and a security system I could control. Most importantly, with a man I loved and trusted.

I never expected to lose him. I found happiness, and the universe laughed back.

Ed’s diagnosis could only be described as a cruel twist of fate. I have cursed fate since that day, and I will every day until it claims me too.