Monday 22nd June
I sit behind the curtains today to make sure she can't see me, but she doesn't come past. I nearly freaked last Friday when she waved at me, how long has she known that I watch her as she walks past every day? What prompted her to look up at my window and wave? I look quite normal if I'm half hidden by the curtains, but still I need my anonymity. I'm the watcher, not the watched.
My life as it was ended when I was 22 years old and someone stole my face.
I had been seeing Ray for about a year when his drinking started to get out of hand. One night he came home so drunk that when I tried to help him inside he shouted and screamed at me so loudly that a neighbour called the police. He was so apologetic the next day that I almost felt sorry for him -- until the next time when he came falling through the front door, slurring, reeking of booze and full of passion. He couldn't understand why I didn't feel amorous towards him so he punched me -- hard.
Before the bruise on my cheek had even had the chance to blossom into the ugly yellow and purple thing it would become I had changed the locks on my flat and sent all of his belongings to his Mum's house in a cab.
I wasn't going to play the abused spouse, no sir, not me. How ironic looking back.
Of course he was very contrite, begging for forgiveness, sending me flowers, calling several times a day and leaving me tearful messages when I didn't answer his calls, promising to change.
His Mum called me to apologise for her son's behaviour and to say that she thought I'd done the right thing; I'd always gotten along well with his Mum and was glad we could stay in contact despite Ray and I splitting up.
Eventually the calls became less frequent but he showed up in strange places where I wasn't expecting him. I'd leave work to find him parked outside my building "just in case I needed a lift home" or he'd be sat in my local pub when I went out with friends despite hating the place because he didn't like the music they played.
Sometimes he'd come and try to start up a conversation, usually asked me out on a date to "start again", offering to buy me drinks or trying to give me expensive presents, but sometimes he just stared at me until I had to leave or move to a corner where I couldn't feel his eye's boring into me.
The anger started soon after my local pub landlord barred him from the pub for harassing me.
He stopped trying to talk or buy his way back into my life and just hurled abusive language at me, left foul messages on my answer phone, posted abusive letters through my door, slashed my car's tyres. I think I knew something bad was going to happen even then, so I kept all of the evidence of his obsession just in case. Not needed as it happens as he didn't even try to run away.
I don't know how Ray found out that I had a date with a guy I worked with but as I left my flat he was there waiting.
'Where the fuck do you think you're going dressed like a whore' was his opening gambit
'You think that dullard from your office is more of a man than I am?' was the only other thing he said before he squirted a clear liquid into my face and stood there watching as I screamed, the acid eating its way into my flesh.
So now I watch.
Sometimes on bright, sunny, cold winter days I venture outside with my face covered in a scarf and large sun glasses but usually I stay at home.
I try not to scare too many people but even shopping on the internet involves seeing delivery drivers occasionally. They're usually polite and professional but they always seem to run back to their vans quicker that necessary as if my strange melted face could somehow be catching.
I do have an active 'virtual' social life; it's amazing how many other people don't go out for one reason or another, or choose to spend hours on the internet or typing e-mails to people they'll never meet in person.
I also have 2 people who I actually let into my house. Sarah was the police woman who arrested Ray and went well beyond the call of duty to spend hours by my hospital bedside as I recovered over the weeks and months; she doesn't even see my hideousness any more and we've become firm friends over the years.
Rachel was my home nurse back in the days when my dressings needed to be changed twice a day to prevent the open wounds on my face from becoming infected. It's thanks to her careful ministrations that I have any movement in the right side of my face at all despite the stiff scar tissue that is rippled down my cheek like a washboard. It was her that literally sat on me to hold me still because the pain of having the cream rubbed over my raw flesh was becoming too much to bare.
I love them both for their blindness to my looks and they help me so much with things that I just can't do online. They show me no pity and don't try to persuade me back into the "real world" as many others have tried to do.
Ray's mum used to come and see me before she died but the visual proof of what her son had done was too much for her to bare. In letters to me she would describe him as a monster -- funny since that's how some people must view me.
Apparently Ray went nuts in prison when he heard his Mum had left everything to me in her will when she died, attacking another prisoner and sending him to the prison hospital for 2 weeks. I felt sorry for the other prisoner but glad that Ray had just added another 5 years onto his already lengthy sentence.
Fortunately Ray's family was wealthy, so with the compensation he was ordered to pay me by the court and the money I received from his Mums will I am actually quite well off. I bought this lovely 4 bedroom house with its huge secluded garden that affords me both indoor and outdoor space without having to leave the confines of my own domain.
Ray applied for special leave to attend her funeral but they turned him down. I was there though, ironically I have little problem with funerals as even if people think a full mourning veil a little over the top these days, no one is going to openly question it during the proceedings, and so I've been able to attend the funerals of my own Mum and Ray's Mum, to say my last farewells.
It's ironic really that as Carla Warren I was a nobody who worked in a big impersonal organisation as one of many faceless administrators; now I've lost my face for real and changed my name to Kate Walker, to prevent Ray from finding me should he ever be released, I actually have a career of sorts.
I write short trashy airport novels that actually sell amazingly well. I never cease to wonder that people will buy such mindless drivel so that they don't tax their brains too much while on holiday.
I know that after many years of producing these paltry romantic or detective literary offerings that I could actually write something of note, but hey, that wouldn't help my anonymity much would it? I even write under a pseudonym to put an extra level of distance between my readers and myself, so I certainly don't want to be drawing attention to myself by writing something memorable!
