If You Love Me: True love. True terror. True story.
'You said I was the perfect boyfriend. If you can prove you really love me, perhaps I can be that way again.'This is the chilling true story of a woman trapped in a devastating relationship as she tries to prove her love – over and over again.Within days of spending their first evening together, Alice and Joe were talking about getting married and spending the rest of their lives with each other. Everything about Joe seemed perfect, and Alice was the happiest she’d ever been.Then one day Joe saw a message on her phone from an old love, and that changed everything. He ignored Alice’s explanations and desperate pleas. And soon the violence and abuse began.As she attempted to prove to Joe that he really was her world, Alice gave up everything that mattered to her, including her family, her friends and her job. But still it wasn’t enough.Then the ‘challenges’ started, and finally Alice dared to hope that this time, maybe this time, Joe might just believe she loved him …
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Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
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First published by HarperElement 2017
FIRST EDITION
© Alice Keale and Jane Smith 2017
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photograph © Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images (posed by model)
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Alice Keale and Jane Smith assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008205256
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008205263
Version: 2016-12-20
For my family and friends, who never gave up on me. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their continued love and support.
Contents
I glanced down at the luminous hands of the large watch that made my wrist look as thin as a child’s. Surely that couldn’t be the right time. It couldn’t possibly have taken me as long as that just to get this far. Then I remembered that he’d set the watch before I left, so I knew it was accurate. Which meant that I would have to run even faster if I was going to reach the pub, take a photograph on his mobile phone and get back to the house in the few minutes that remained before time ran out.
Quickening my pace, I scanned the darkness of every side street and every shop doorway I passed. And I listened too, for the sound of approaching footsteps or distant voices.
As I ran past the café where we had sat together just a few hours earlier, I thought I saw a flicker of movement, and the ever-present knot of fear tightened inside me. It was almost 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night and I’d been certain I was the only person out on the street. But, suddenly, a man stepped out of the shadows directly in front of me.
I had to swerve off the pavement and on to the road to avoid being caught in his outstretched arms, and as I did so I was engulfed in the alcohol-laden breath he exhaled when he lunged towards me. I gasped in shocked surprise, but kept on running, ignoring the sharp objects I could feel cutting into the flesh of my bare, bruised feet and the incoherent shouts of the man who stumbled after me down the dimly lit street.
I couldn’t really blame him for pursuing me – a woman running naked through the streets of London in the middle of the night. Perhaps he thought I was playing some salacious game. It was certainly an explanation that would have made more sense than the real reason, which I didn’t understand myself – and I was completely sober.
I was frightened of the drunk man, and of what he might do if he caught up with me. But I was even more frightened of what would happen if I didn’t get home within the next three minutes. ‘Maybe this time it will be enough,’ I thought, as I ran, sobbing, through the darkness.
‘Please, God,’ I whispered into the night, ‘let it be this time.’
Although my love life was pretty much a disaster, things were going well at work and I’d managed to save enough money for a deposit on a flat of my own. So when my flatmate, Connie, went to live with her boyfriend, I arranged to rent the spare room in my friend Cara’s flat until I could find somewhere to buy.
It was August 2011 and I was alone on what would be my last night in the rented flat Connie and I had shared. I’d already taken almost everything I was going to need in the short term to Cara’s place and stored the rest in the garage at my parents’ house in Devon. So all I had to do that evening was pack a small suitcase to take with me the next day. I was looking forward to buying a place of my own and starting the next phase of my life, and after having a nice dinner out with friends I was just thinking about heading off to bed for an early night when I heard the sound of breaking glass.
The flat was above some shops on quite a busy street, and my first thought was that there’d been a car accident. But what I saw when I looked out of the window was like a scene from a dystopian film. There were people running in every direction, most of them wearing hoodies and scarves that concealed their faces and some of them hurling what looked like bricks and bottles through shop windows. At first, I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. Then, as I watched, with my back pressed against the wall beside the window so that I couldn’t be seen, a group of people started rocking a car from side to side, before stumbling backwards when smoke began to curl around it and then flames exploded out of it.
