If You Love Me: Part 1 of 3: True love. True terror. True story.. Jane Smith
id="u3350b311-5b55-530f-bea1-acd8a484c9f9">
Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
HarperElement
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by HarperElement 2017
FIRST EDITION
© Alice Keale and Jane Smith 2017
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photograph © Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images (posed by model)
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Alice Keale and Jane Smith assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at
Source ISBN: 9780008205256
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008214920
Version: 2016-12-20
For my family and friends, who never gave up on me. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their continued love and support.
Contents
I glanced down at the luminous hands of the large watch that made my wrist look as thin as a child’s. Surely that couldn’t be the right time. It couldn’t possibly have taken me as long as that just to get this far. Then I remembered that he’d set the watch before I left, so I knew it was accurate. Which meant that I would have to run even faster if I was going to reach the pub, take a photograph on his mobile phone and get back to the house in the few minutes that remained before time ran out.
Quickening my pace, I scanned the darkness of every side street and every shop doorway I passed. And I listened too, for the sound of approaching footsteps or distant voices.
As I ran past the café where we had sat together just a few hours earlier, I thought I saw a flicker of movement, and the ever-present knot of fear tightened inside me. It was almost 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night and I’d been certain I was the only person out on the street. But, suddenly, a man stepped out of the shadows directly in front of me.
I had to swerve off the pavement and on to the road to avoid being caught in his outstretched arms, and as I did so I was engulfed in the alcohol-laden breath he exhaled when he lunged towards me. I gasped in shocked surprise, but kept on running, ignoring the sharp objects I could feel cutting into the flesh of my bare, bruised feet and the incoherent shouts of the man who stumbled after me down the dimly lit street.
I couldn’t really blame him for pursuing me – a woman running naked through the streets of London in the middle of the night. Perhaps he thought I was playing some salacious game. It was certainly an explanation that would have made more sense than the real reason, which I didn’t understand myself – and I was completely sober.
I was frightened of the drunk man, and of what he might do if he caught up with me. But I was even more frightened of what would happen if I didn’t get home within the next three minutes. ‘Maybe this time it will be enough,’ I thought, as I ran, sobbing, through the darkness.
‘Please, God,’ I whispered into the night, ‘let it be this time.’
Although my love life was pretty much a disaster, things were going well at work and I’d managed to save enough money for a deposit on a flat of my own. So when my flatmate, Connie, went to live with her boyfriend, I arranged to rent the spare room in my friend Cara’s flat until I could find somewhere to buy.
It was August 2011 and I was alone on what would be my last night in the rented flat Connie and I had shared. I’d already taken almost everything I was going to need in the short term to Cara’s place and stored the rest in the garage at my parents’ house in Devon. So all I had to do that evening was pack a small suitcase to take with me the next day. I was looking forward to buying a place of my own and starting the next phase of my life, and after having