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

‘I’m staying at Amie’s tonight,’ I told Mum. ‘Would you give us a lift?’

Amie lived just a short walk from the big Tesco’s in town, so Mum always dropped us there and did a bit of shopping while we headed down the alleyway that linked Amie’s road with the supermarket. There, Amie changed her clothes and packed an overnight bag.

‘I’m staying at Adele’s tonight,’ she told her mum. ‘Her mum’s waiting for us at Tesco’s.’

‘OK, girls,’ she said.

But of course, by the time we’d headed back through the alleyway, congratulating ourselves on how well our plan had worked, it wasn’t my mum who was waiting for us in her car, it was Scotty and Anthony in the green Punto.

‘All right girls!’ they said, grinning as they spotted our overnight bags.

The texts between me and Anthony had got cheekier and naughtier over the last few days and it was obvious we were going to have sex that night. We had a laugh that evening, sitting in Scotty’s living room, drinking and joking together. His mum came home while we were watching I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!

‘All right Scotty,’ she said, poking her head around the door. ‘I’m going to bed. Don’t make too much noise.’

‘OK, Mum,’ he said, and the night was ours.

We stayed up until the early hours, listening to music, and then finally it was time to go to bed. Amie went upstairs to Scotty’s room, while I followed Anthony up to the spare room where he was sleeping.

‘Sshh,’ I giggled as he took off my top, and kissed me. That was the first night we slept together, and it was everything I hoped it would be. But it was, after all, just sex. Anthony made that clear from the start, and I liked him so much that I wasn’t going to disagree. Like many girls, I guess, I thought that if we slept together long enough, if he got to know me, then it might change some day. For now, I was just happy that he was mine, even if it was just for a few hours a couple of times a week.

And that’s how it started. Perhaps you could call us friends with benefits, and it was fun, especially as Amie was hooking up with Scotty too. It was the four of us together. Amie and I would go off to college together in the morning, and then we’d take our homework round to the boys’ house and lie on the bed in Scotty’s bedroom as we pored through our books and drank and joked and the boys played Call of Duty on the Xbox. Then, when it was time for bed, me and Anthony would go to his room and Amie would stay with Scotty. And outside of our little foursome, nobody knew what was happening, and that gave everything an added frisson. Sometimes I’d be laying in bed with Anthony in the morning and my brother Scott would text or call him.

‘Why don’t you tell him you’re with his sister?’ I’d whisper, and he’d shake his head.

‘No way,’ he said. ‘It’s not like it’s anything serious. Why should anyone know?’

And I’d try to swallow down the disappointment that collected in my throat each time he said something like that. Instead I’d laugh and say ‘I know’ or anything else that might convince him that I wasn’t taking it seriously either.

But then once a week became twice a week, and twice a week became Anthony texting and asking if we could see each other alone. Sometimes it wasn’t even about the sex, we’d just cuddle up with a DVD. It was more like a relationship, and yet at the same time Anthony was always keen to let me know he was sleeping with other girls.

‘I got in such a mess at the weekend, I woke up next to this ginger girl on Sunday morning,’ he told me once, and I tried to laugh it off, or hit him playfully, or act like it didn’t matter, but deep down, it did. Deep down maybe I wondered why I wasn’t enough for him to stop seeing other girls, and it didn’t matter how much fun we had together, he always left me wanting more, because come the weekend, when he was out clubbing and I knew I’d never get in at 16, I had no idea what he was doing. And then again, he wasn’t shy to tell me who he’d got off with, or who he’d woken up with. But even if I didn’t know it then, it was eating away at me.

Yet, at the same time, he was getting closer to me. He started staying at his dad’s more, which was on my side of town so it was easier to see each other. I’d go in the house and straight upstairs, never saying hello to his dad or his stepmum, who was eight months pregnant at the time. We’d watch DVDs up in his room and when we were hungry he’d leave me there and go and get us a KFC. But we still were only friends with benefits.

We’d been like this for a couple of months when I started going to the same clubs as him. I’d be there with the girls, he’d be there with the lads – sometimes my brother among them – but we’d never speak. All of my friends knew what was going on, of course, but none of his did. Instead I’d watch from across the bar as he chatted to other girls in front of me.

‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ my friends asked.

‘But I’m the one who’s going home with him,’ I said.

Because when he was ready to leave I’d feel my phone buzz in my pocket and it would be a message from him.

I’m going, you coming?

I’d look up and he’d be watching me, and I’d nod and meet him out the front of the club. There was a bit of a buzz about our secrecy, something about it that made my tummy flip in excitement when my brother watched me leave the club without any idea that I was going home with his friend. But there was also something else swelling inside my belly, a dark feeling that felt like jealousy, and I was trying very hard to keep it inside and not let it come spilling out.

As much as I enjoyed the thrill of Anthony being mine and no one knowing, I was starting to wonder why he refused to tell anyone. Was he ashamed of me? Why was I his dirty little secret when he was texting me all the time, asking to see me and staying at his dad’s just so we could see each other more? What was it about me that wasn’t good enough for him to want to make me his girfriend? Although I tried to be casual, to go along with the rules that he’d set for our relationship, it was starting to bite deep inside. I wanted Anthony and I wanted him to want me.

And then on Christmas Eve it finally came to a head. We were out in a club, and as usual I watched from the other side of the dance floor as he danced with other girls in front of me, and then – right there, while I was watching – he started kissing one. My friends looked at me, and there was nothing I could do to keep my feelings from spilling out. Perhaps it was the vodka sloshing around in my belly, or maybe I’d just had enough. But when we bumped into each other in the club’s toilets, I went mad. I was pushing him and kicking him, and although all he had to do was keep me at arm’s length and I couldn’t even feel my body impact with his, he must have seen how upset I was.

‘How could you do this to me?’ I shouted at him, losing every ounce of cool I’d worked so hard to maintain.

And then I left. Angry, humiliated, mascara running down my cheeks. The clock had already struck midnight, but it was anything but a Happy Christmas.

We didn’t see each other on Christmas Day, and he hadn’t bought me a present either. We texted throughout the day, and I think I realised then just how much I really liked him. But I felt like a fool too because, while I’d silently been falling for him, he’d been taking the mickey out of me by sleeping with other girls behind my back, and then, of course, flaunting it in front of my face. It was impossible to not feel completely hurt, and totally humiliated.

On Boxing Day Mum and Dad went out for the night, and Amie came round. It was Christmas and we were bored, I wanted to drown my sorrows and there was a bottle of Jägermeister in the fridge. Somehow between the first shot and the sixth we’d started messaging Scott’s friends on MSN, and before we knew it, high on Jägermeister, we’d invited two of them over.

One of them was Bruce, who was dark, handsome and really fit, the one that all my friends fancied, and when he showed me attention that day, perhaps it was just what I needed. So when he tried to kiss me I pushed all thoughts of Anthony from my mind. I let myself fall into him, telling myself that this after all is what Anthony does, that he’s not thinking of me when he’s with other women, that perhaps I should try and behave like he does, that I should sleep with another guy. After all, like Anthony told me a dozen times, it was only a bit of fun.

And so I did, buoyed up by alcohol and immediately afterwards came down with a heavy shot of regret.

‘Let’s go out,’ the boys said.

And because it was Christmas, and because I was drunk and because I didn’t care any more, I decided to do just that, and guess who we bumped into – Anthony.

Not that he spoke to me. He did his usual thing of pretending I wasn’t there, which mixed and curdled with the Jägermeister in my stomach and made me feel worthless. So maybe when he texted me asking if I was ready to go, I wanted him to feel just a little of what I did. We started arguing on the way home, I can’t even remember what about, something and nothing, and so when we got back to his and we were still arguing, that’s when I decided to say it, to tell him, just like he’d told me.

‘We don’t have to have sex anyway,’ I said. ‘Because I’ve already had some tonight.’

His face darkened, right there in front of me a shadow passed across his eyes, an unmistakable look of anger furrowed his brow. He was speechless. Gone was the petty irritation of whatever it was that we were arguing about, and in its place was a blackness I’d never seen in him before.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said. ‘You do it openly, you tell me.’

I sat down on the bed and stared at him.

‘You’re treating me like a dickhead,’ I said. ‘You’ve done the same and now I’ve done it, you’re going to kick –’

But I didn’t get chance to finish my sentence because he grabbed me by my hand and pulled me from the bed.

When he finally spoke it wasn’t in his usual tone, it was in a hard, cold voice that I hadn’t heard before, and made my insides turn icy cold. And those green eyes, they weren’t twinkling any more. They were hard; they were frightening.

‘I’ve got feelings for you and you’ve ruined it all,’ he spat.

It was the first time he’d ever acknowledged he felt anything for me, and any other time I would have felt so happy, but he was dragging me from his room, pushing me down the stairs, trying to get me out of his house.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shouted. ‘I’m going home!’

I opened the front door and felt a blast of freezing cold air whoosh into the house from the street. I ran out, leaving the door open behind me, but I hadn’t got many steps down the road when I felt someone’s arm on mine. It was his stepmum. She was standing there in her nightie, her huge, swollen, pregnant belly wrapped in her arms.

‘It’s five o’clock in the morning, Adele. What’s going on?’

It was the first time I’d ever spoken to her, and I felt terrible that we’d woken his parents up by arguing, but she insisted I couldn’t walk home. She led me back into the house and upstairs to Anthony’s room. He was sitting on his bed, his head in his hands. In this room there were two double beds, one by the window, one by the wall.

‘You sleep in this one,’ she said, indicating the one by the wall. ‘And Anthony can sleep over by the window, and you can sort this out tomorrow when you’ve both calmed down.’

I must have fallen into a drunken sleep because the following morning I woke up to feel Anthony’s arms around me.