Read Online Woman Walks into a Bar by Rowan Coleman - Free Book Online

didn’t cry that time. He didn’t say he was sorry and that he didn’t mean it. He wasn’t sweet or loving. He didn’t hold me and stroke my hair. He just went out and didn’t come back until two days later. That was the first time he punched me, but it wasn’t the last.
    When I tried to tell Joy how it was, she didn’t understand.
    â€œHe hit you,” she said. “A guy lays a finger on me and I’m outta there!”
    â€œBut that’s not really him,” I said. “Most of the time things are really good.”
    â€œYou don’t have to put up with a beating to get a few good times, Sam,” Joy had told me. “If he really loved you he wouldn’t touch you. You’ve got to get out of there. What about Beth?”
    â€œHe’s a great dad,” I said. “He loves me.”
    â€œHe loves you and he’s done that to you?” Joy winced as she looked at me. “Get your stuff and come to my place till we sort something out.” But I hadn’t listened. I still loved him.
    It hadn’t always been love. But the first moment I saw him unloading bricks off the back of a lorry for our neighbor’s extension I knew that I wanted him. I’d been out of school for less than a month and I was on the way back from the shops with a loaf of bread. It was hot. He had no shirt on. I’d never felt anything like that before. It wasn’t love, it was lust. Suddenly I wanted to know what it would be like to press my skin against his. Adam was older than me, nearly twenty-five, so I thought my parents would hate him. But Adam could charm the birds from the trees when he wanted to. They loved him before I did. I knew the exact moment I fell in love with him. It was when I told him I was pregnant. He put his hand on my belly and told me he’d look after me and never leave me. That was the moment I started loving him.
    Nothing in my life had ever been as good as those first few years in that flat with Adam and Beth. I felt like a real person at last with my own family. I felt happy and safe. I couldn’t let that go without trying to get it back. So when he came in from the pub I kept my head down and hoped for the best.
    â€œWhere’s Beth?” he asked, his voice short and dark. Every part of me tensed.
    â€œIn bed,” I said keeping my voice light. “Has been for hours! Your tea’s ready. Do you want a lager with it?”
    â€œWhy are you having a go at me?” he shouted. Just like that. He exploded, knocking the dishes I had set out on the table onto the floor. “Nag, nag, nag! That’s all you ever do!”
    He was right up in my face then. His angry mouth stretched into a snarl, the stink of stale beer on his breath. I leant back away from him and I could feel the edge of the worktop bite into my spine.
    â€œI’m not,” I said, even though I knew saying anything was the wrong thing to do. Part of me still hoped that the other Adam, the Adam I loved, might hear my voice and remember he loved me. “I just said your tea was ready.”
    I smiled at him.
    He slammed the back of his fist into the right side of my head. I went down. He kicked me hard in the ribs twice with his boots, making me cough the air out of my lungs. I remember I could see under the fridge. I remember thinking it really needed cleaning. I could hear Beth’s thin cry rise above the whir and rattle of the washing machine.
    I wasn’t going to do anything else then. I was just going to wait for it to be over, wait for Adam to finish and go to bed so that I could go to Beth and get her back off to sleep like I had done before.
    But then Adam did something different.
    He crouched down beside me.
    â€œCan’t you hear your kid crying? Someone like you shouldn’t be allowed to have kids,” he said, his voice quiet, almost a whisper. “Some­one like you isn’t fit to be a mother. I should never