'In the early years I tried leaving many times, but my husband would threaten to kill me and I was demoralised enough to believe him'
When my husband John died from double pneumonia at the age of 54, I was relieved. It felt like a paving slab had been lifted from my head. We'd been married for 30 years, and for the last 10 of those, I hadn't been outside our five-bedroom house in Northampton.
I left school at 15, which most people did in those days, and got a job as a waitress, which I loved. The cafe was next door to a cinema where John worked as a projectionist. I knew from the moment we met he was terribly insecure. He had ginger hair, walked with a limp and had been badly bullied as a child. But I hoped my love would change him. We got married when I was 19, and a year later I gave birth to our first baby. By 28, I was a mother of six.
John was always a heavy drinker, but once we were married, he became violent and controlling. Whenever we went out, he would insist on holding my hand. If I so much as glanced at another man, he would beat me when we got home. We were barred from our doctor's surgery when John punched my GP for asking me to reach down and touch my toes.
In the early years I tried leaving many times, but he would threaten to kill me and I was demoralised enough to believe him. Gradually, it just seemed easier to go out less.
Then one day, as I was walking back from dropping the kids at school, a man tried to attack me. I was crying and shaking when I got home, but John refused to call the police. He thought it was my fault for giving the stranger the eye. I started to experience panic attacks. Some days I'd only be able to take the children half way to school, then it was a quarter of the way. Before long, just putting my hand on the front door knob would set me off. I began to rely on the elder kids to do the school run and my oldest daughter took over the weekly shop.
In some ways, my life as "her indoors" was easier. I no longer had to suffer John's temper if a man cast his eye over me. He wasn't bothered about me staying in and would take my eldest son to the pub for company instead. My days were filled with doing the housework and preparing meals for the kids, who didn't question why I no longer left the house ? they were scared of John, too. Television became my way of keeping in touch with the world, running up and down the stairs was all the exercise I needed. My family had long stopped visiting because of John's behaviour towards them, so I spoke to them by phone.
I was very unhappy. There was a bus stop just outside our house and every day I'd sit in the living room and watch people boarding and alighting, wishing I could do the same. Many times I considered suicide, but the thought of the kids stopped me.
Then John died and a lot of the fear I had been harbouring went with him. A few days after his death, I decided to go to the local shop. I drank a couple of glasses of sherry to calm my nerves and stepped out of the door for the first time in a decade. There was an old bike in the shed and I took that with me ? having something to hold on to made me feel reassured. I dashed in and out of there as fast as I could, not speaking or making eye contact with anyone, but when I got home, I felt elated.
Gradually, I was able to go out without the bike or a drink inside me and I relearned the art of making conversation with strangers. But the years of abuse still affected me, so I started group bereavement counselling. On that first session, I sat trembling until a friendly looking man came over to ask my name.
Bernie was on his own after losing his wife a year before John had died. I instinctively knew that I could trust him. He was shocked when I told him about my decade indoors and was determined to help me make up for lost time.
We have now been married for 16 years and had holidays in Austria, Germany and Cyprus, where we renewed our wedding vows. When people meet me, they struggle to believe I spent 10 years indoors. I have only to think of my first husband to remember how that happened. Sometimes I hover at the threshold of our house and recall how I wasn't able to cross it. The one small step I take from there is all I need to appreciate everything I now have.
? As told to Danielle Wrate.
Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@guardian.co.uk
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/30/i-didnt-leave-my-house-for-a-decade
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