Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
‘Ari’s asleep and he has to get up early…’ ‘Ari’s got a business associate over tonight, so I don’t want to disturb him.’ ‘Ari’s family are visiting…’
After six weeks, whereby we had now officially become ‘besties’ and I could no longer imagine or bear the thought of my life without her in it, I finally managed to pluck up the courage to mention it.
‘How come I haven’t met this amazing fiancé of yours yet then?
Is he actually real?’ I ribbed her, light-heartedly.
She’d told me all about the lavish and glitzy wedding they were planning in Dubai next year, and admittedly, I was desperately hoping she would invite me.
Secretly, I’d even fantasised about her asking me to be her bridesmaid, because that’s what best friends do, right?
I could picture us both on her wedding day, standing together in front of a mirror, Sam looking like a celebrity, dazzling and gorgeous, in her ridiculously expensive handmade designer gown that showcased her incredible figure.
I am next to her, wearing a simple yet chic silky slip dress, admiring how beautiful she looks as we toast each other with vintage pink champagne…
My greatest concern at the time though was that Sam might be embarrassed by me and that’s why I had not yet met him.
I was paranoid that perhaps I wasn’t cool or clever enough to meet what sounded like Ari’s exacting and high standards.
Ari, the fancy financier in London who travelled all over the world.
Educated Ari, who was loaded and hung out with CEOs and influencers I’d never heard of.
The dynamic city boy who drove a brand-new soft-top Mercedes that was probably worth a small house somewhere.
Sam had pointed it out to me once, in the private car park of their apartment complex.
It was sleek and black as vinyl, shiny enough to fix your make-up in the reflection on the paintwork.
I could just picture her in the passenger seat, next to her husband-to-be, stereo cranked up, platinum blonde hair whipping in the wind, like something from a slick social media marketing campaign.
I wanted to do life like Samantha Valentine did life, big and bold and brave and beautiful and bombastic. I was completely in awe of her.
Some people, it would seem, have all the luck because on top of the above, Ari Hussain was also seriously fit.
Dark-haired, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, he looked like some kind of AI-generated Arabian god.
Or at least he did in the pictures I’d seen on her phone – pictures she showed me of them together on dates in opulent and trendy five-star hotels and restaurants, where the food looked like art and way too good to eat.
There were photos on bright white beaches with crystal-clear waters in the background, Sam in a sparkly diamanté bikini, Ari, tanned and toned, his arm draped around her waist.
‘You will, I promise,’ she said. ‘He’s desperate to meet you too! He’s just always so busy, working, travelling…’ But I could sense something was off.
Whenever Ari returned from one of his business trips, Sam would disappear for a couple of days, though she always kept in regular contact with me on Snapchat.
It was following one of these occasions that I first noticed the bruising.
The UK summer weather was breaking records that year, someone had made the local news for frying an egg on their own doorstep, and the annual, mandatory hosepipe ban had been put in place – but that day, when she came to meet me for lunch, Sam was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
It was tipping thirty degrees outside and the humidity was uncomfortable, so it struck me as odd, though it was more a passing observation than an immediate concern.
‘So, how is it, having your soon-to-be betrothed back home?’ I asked her, keen to get the gossip. Everything about them as a couple seemed so perfect, I imagined the sex had to be incredible too. ‘Did he have a good trip? Did he bring you back anything gorgeous, something sparkly and expensive?’
‘He hasn’t mentioned it much… and of course, it’s wonderful to have him back.
’ But I could tell instantly in her voice that something was wrong.
She wasn’t her usual effervescent self. Her tone was flat.
She was masking upset – something my mum had done regularly – I had no difficulty recognising those signs.
‘Are you OK, Sam?’
‘Yes. Sorry, I was miles away, hun.’ She sipped her iced latte and brought the conversation back round to me again. ‘So, how’s work going? Have you managed to seduce that filthy rich, gorgeous boss of yours yet then, or what?’
Some weeks later, while we were out running together, I noticed a particularly nasty-looking, large bruise on her upper thigh. It was dark and purple, the colours of a storm.
‘Ari and I were messing around in a hot tub. It’s a sex injury, sweetie.’ She brushed it off with a wink, but it felt disingenuous, and horrible little maggots of doubt started burrowing their way into my thoughts.
I was at work when I got the message from her asking me to meet her, urgently, at my place.
Sensing an emergency, I left immediately, giving my supervisor the excuse that I’d been violently sick in the toilets with a stomach bug.
She couldn’t really argue with me, though it looked like she had wanted to.
Sam was waiting outside my apartment when I arrived. Her left eye was badly swollen and I could see she’d been crying.
‘Oh my God! Sam, what’s happened?’ Though deep down, I already suspected.
That afternoon she told me everything. The perfect couple that she’d led me to believe she and Ari were didn’t exist. It was all a sham.
‘He hates me going out, he hates me wearing nice clothes, he hates me having friends… This is why I don’t like us having our photo taken together.
Photos of me with anyone send him into a violent, jealous rage.
I can’t even call someone without him knowing, as he put a bug on my phone…
he knows my every move. And he especially hates you; he thinks you’re trying to come between us and spoil our relationship. ’
It all appeared to make sense to me then, why she’d never invited me up to her apartment and why I’d never met Ari in person. I have to admit, in hindsight, it was pretty clever, very plausible. It never once occurred to me to question anything she was telling me at the time.
‘You have to contact the police,’ I told her as I held her and let her cry it all out in my arms. I felt safe in the role of her comforter; it was a role I was familiar with.
It made me feel useful and needed and fed into my co-dependency.
‘You have to tell them what he’s like, what he’s been doing to you!
’ I was crying myself now. I couldn’t bear to see her like she was, a shadow of her usual vibrant, vivacious self, her fat, puffy eye rapidly disappearing into her lovely face.
This couldn’t be happening to her, not Sam.
Only I knew, more than most, that abuse doesn’t discriminate. It really can happen to anyone.
‘You said yourself that the police are useless. Every time I’ve called them for help in the past, they turn up and he switches into Mr Nice Guy again and makes me look like I’m the one who’s unhinged! Last time, they threatened to arrest me for wasting police time – can you believe that?’
‘What?’ My heart rate shot up. This was history repeating itself – the victim-blaming, taking the side of the cunning, covert abuser and re-traumatising the victim while the abuser walks away unscathed.
Acute rage burned inside my chest as my PTSD became triggered.
Why do they still let this happen? Why do they always let these bastards get away with it?
If only the police had taken more notice of my mum back then, if they had really listened to her and believed her, then maybe, just maybe, she’d still be alive today.
Now, all these years later, they were doing the same thing to my friend Sam, to another beautiful, vibrant and innocent woman who they should be protecting.
Nothing, it seemed, had changed. It enraged me.
We made a plan that afternoon, Sam and I, over many tears and as much wine.
‘You know you have to leave him, don’t you?’
She nodded, solemnly.
‘He jokes that he’ll kill me if I do.’
‘Jokes? Who jokes about killing their fiancée, Sam? You have to take it seriously – we have to take his threats seriously. Please, Sam,’ I begged her, ‘look at what happened to my mum.’
I was genuinely scared for her. I knew how this story could end. But I could never, at this point, have known the real tragedy it would become.
Sam’s situation was all too believable to me; after all, I’d been here before.
At no point did I think it might not actually be real.
The bruises I saw on her body, her swollen black eye, they were real.
Her tears and emotions were real too. I saw them and I felt them.
No one invents a lie like that. Why would they?
‘We can do it when he’s next away on business,’ I said, springing into action mode.
I felt powerful and determined. ‘We’ll take all your stuff and place it in storage.
We’ll do a moonlight flit. You can leave your phone at your apartment, so it looks like you’re at home the whole time on the tracker.
Don’t worry,’ – I started to chew my fingernails with anxiety – ‘we’ll get you a new phone, a new number if we have to.
Then you come and stay with me until we figure out what’s next, OK? Does Ari know my surname?’
‘Nope, don’t think so, I’ve never told him it.’
‘Does he know where I live?’
She shakes her head.
‘Perfect. Then he won’t find us, will he?’
‘He’s got money, he’ll hire a PI or something.’
‘We’ll get a non-molestation order out on him.
I’ll protect you,’ I said. ‘I won’t let him get to you, Sam, I promise.
If the police won’t help you, then I will.
’ I seized both of her hands in mine and squeezed them tightly.
I don’t think I’d ever been as sincere about anything else before in my life.
‘He goes away again next week,’ she said.
‘We’ll do it then.’
‘If he doesn’t kill me first,’ she sniffed.
‘Over my dead body.’
I wasn’t going to let that happen, not this time, not again.