Miss Toulouse Home for Unwanted Girls

Chapter 16

Miss Toulouse says goodbye to Harry ....

1973

Have you ever felt so lost?
It's like you're caught in the eye of the storm, you can see the world crashing around you but your stuck there in the middle, not knowing what to do.

As I wandered outside the hospital after discharging myself, my blood soaked nightie in a bag dangling from my wrist and grandmothers walking stick, I'm wearing clothes given to me from the hospital lost property, that are ridiculously oversized and smell of vomit

I left before my mother came, it's not that I didn't want to see her. I just know if I see her heartbroken face, I know I'll fall to pieces again. I'm barely holding on to my sanity.

So I wander home in an hypnotic state, just an empty shell of a person, unaware of life that's passing me by.

As I reach my modest little house that I so desperately tried to make a home, I realise I never really belonged here. It suddenly dawns on me I don't have the front door key, I have nothing - before I can work out how I'm going to get in, the door is swung open by Harry who's looming there like a bad smell.

His face is grey and haggard, eyes sunk with black bags, his usual cocky demeanour and smug face has gone - He starts to nervously waffle on "the hospital had said you was gone" but I walk straight past him as if he was nothing more than a tiresome ghost that insists on haunting me.

You see to me he is dead now, any love that I felt for him died with our child and he knows it.

As I walk in I see that the passage floor still has faded red stains of my blood ingrained into the wooden floor, he clearly tried to scrub it away like one of his many messes but some things in life you can't clean up, scrub away like it never happened.

Slowly I walk up the stairs grasping on to the banister, each step excruciating agony, my broken insides pulling and churning within me.

I go to my bedroom and pull out the tiny travel bag from under the bed, I take my clothes and place them in there, with my books from the sideboard, then I roll up my wedding quilt made by my grandmother and mother - I think to myself "Harry you can have the house, you can have the furniture, I won't even take a penny of OUR money but your not having my quilt".

This quilt was lovingly stitched for me, on this quilt I would lay and talk to my baby as it grew in my belly, this quilt kept me warm in a cold marriage - you can't have it.

Unbeknown to me he was standing there silently like a poisonous snake by the bedroom door watching, waiting to strike.

"Where do you think your going?" he hisses.

I carry on packing, blocking out his noise.

"I won't let you leave!" he screams, before he punches the bedroom door in an act that once upon a time would have scared me.

I don't bat eye lid at his outburst, this is all so tiresome now.

Desperation leaks into his voice as it become shrill, in the knowledge he's lost all control over me "If you leave...."

I grab my grandmother's walking stick and whip him across the face with all my might, the cracking sound of it against his flesh echoes throughout the room, then I push it into his chest where his heart should be "You'll do what Harry, beat me, hurt me, degrade me, kill me ..... it doesn't matter, none of it does, you've already done the worst thing you could do - you can't hurt me, I'm not scared of you anymore because I'd rather be dead than have to spend another moment with you, disgusting, fucking pathetic excuse of a man, that makes my skin crawl".