Brave: How I rebuilt my life after love turned to hate

‘We’ve got some making up to do, ain’t we, baby?’

I nodded and I must have blushed because Anthony reached out for my hand.

‘Come on,’ he said, indicating his bedroom upstairs. We left everyone else downstairs and up in his old room we had sex for the first time in a year. That was when he cried, when he came undone. While our bodies were still tangled together, I wrapped my arms around him, stroking his hair, wishing all the time that we could stay like this and that 9 pm wouldn’t come around and steal him from me. And just as my mind drifted back to a time when we were free, when there was nothing and no one to keep us apart, he suddenly looked up at me. This time, his face was different, and when he spoke it wasn’t in the same gentle way he had all day. It was cold, hard.

‘You’ve blatantly had sex with someone else,’ he said.

‘What!’

‘You have, you clearly have.’

‘Anthony, what are you talking about? I haven’t been with anyone, I’ve been waiting for you!’

He looked away.

‘Anthony!’ I tried, reaching for him, my fingertips brushing the tattoo dedicated to his mum, and my voice becoming instantly softer. ‘Don’t start this, you’ve been in prison and I’ve been waiting on you. You know I have …’

When he turned around again, he was back to me, his face soft, his brow ironed out.

‘Come on,’ he smiled. ‘I better be getting back to the hostel.’

I drove him back with Lorraine, stopping off at Asda to get him a cheap mobile phone.

‘This way I can ring you all the time,’ he said.

Even something as simple as walking around Asda, under the harsh supermarket lights, his hand in mine, having him back in my arms, felt amazing. I’d got my man back, everyone had been wrong and I had been right, I had waited and now I had him back. It was worth every single day without him.

We got him back to the hostel for 9 pm.

‘I’ll ring you when you get home,’ he said, waving his new phone at me.

And he did, despite the fact that he was home, that he had other people to sit with or chat to in the hostel, it was still me he wanted. I went to sleep that night knowing that he was that step closer to me, that I could see him tomorrow, or the next day, or the next; that I could lie down with his arms wrapped around me, that there would be no prison guards standing over us, watching us. We were free, just a little bit more free, and soon we’d be even closer. I’d waited this long, and I just had to wait a little while longer.

We fell into a routine which mostly – due to the times Anthony needed to check into the hostel – meant I would travel over to Ipswich to see him. The journey took an hour and a half on the train, but it was always worth it. He’d usually keep me from getting bored by phoning me on the way there and on the way home, and he’d always be there to meet me from my train.

We had nowhere to go in the day as I wasn’t allowed into the hostel, but we still had fun. We’d go swimming, or look round the shops. Sometimes Anthony would see a dress he liked for me.

‘Do you like it?’ he’d ask, holding it up. And when I said yes, he’d head straight over to the till and buy it for me.

There is romance to be found in wandering a city together with nowhere to go, the dinners or long lunches, sitting together in the darkness of a cinema holding hands, and in between walking round the shops planning what our life would be like when we could finally be together properly. On sunny days we’d get fish and chips and lie in the park together.

‘Look at me being all romantic,’ Anthony would laugh, and he really was, people didn’t see the side of him that I did. They didn’t know the soft side, they didn’t know the letters he’d written to me from prison. But I did, I remembered every single stroke of his biro as each word had built a better picture of the life that we were working towards.

Mum never suspected that I was skipping college to go and meet Anthony, not when I left the house at 8 am in my black tunic and headed to the bus stop like I usually would; she didn’t see me phoning the admin office to call in sick. On Tuesdays Anthony had to meet with his parole officer in Lowestoft and those days he didn’t need to sign in, so we’d meet at his dad’s and spend long afternoons in bed together before he had to go home.

But the demons were still there, the jealousy was only ever one wrong word away. Sometimes, just out of nowhere, when I’d spent an hour and a half on a train to visit him, he’d turn to me with dark eyes.

‘The other day I got told you cheated on me when I was inside.’

‘Anthony, I haven’t, we’ve been through this!’

I’d perhaps roll my eyes at first, knowing we’d been here before. But that would just rile him more, so I’d plead and beg and try to convince him.

‘I’ve waited for you all this time,’ I’d say. ‘Believe me I haven’t done anything.’

‘That’s not what I heard.’

I’d start to cry, and then he’d just accuse me of being a baby.

‘You feel guilty now, don’t you,’ he’d say. ‘But you didn’t feel guilty when I was inside, did you? Not when you were taking the piss out of me –’

‘Anthony,’ I’d sob. ‘I haven’t –’

‘Don’t lie to me!’

Round and round it went, any happy day ruined by him telling me that people had been talking about me to him. But I hadn’t done anything. I didn’t want to.

‘I only ever wanted Anthony,’ I cried once to his Aunty Claire.

She sighed and put her arms around me. ‘He’s just come out of prison, he’s finding it hard to adjust.’

And on the good days, that’s what he’d tell me too, he’d remind me that he had never felt like this about anyone.

‘It’s only because I love you so much that I worried you cheated on me,’ he’d say.

‘But I didn’t,’ I tried again. But I only ever got through to him until the next time.