I thought he was working, but he came in drunk. He let himself in with his door key when I was sitting watching the news on television. For a fleeting moment I was happy – I was back to looking forward to seeing him again, to getting things back to where we should have been, relaxed, happy, having fun as a couple.

Instead he stumbled, half-fell through the door, and as I rose from my seat to meet him his fist hit the side of my face with a crashing blow, sending me flying backwards into the side table.

I was so shocked that I didn’t move, just lay there for a moment seeing the carpet against my face and wondering what on earth had happened. Then pain all over my head, excruciating pain, as he took hold of a fistful of hair and dragged me up to my knees.

‘Slag,’ he said, breathing hard, ‘you fucking bitch… you complete fucking slag.’

With his left hand he slapped me, a stinging blow across my cheek. I would have fallen backwards again but he still had hold of my hair.

‘What have I done?’ I yelped.

‘You don’t get it, do you, you fucking slag?’ His voice was icy cold, and I could smell the beer on him.

He let go of my hair, then, and before I could fall back or get to my feet he brought his knee up and it connected with my nose with such force that I felt it crack. I screamed, and tried to crawl away, tried to get up, still stunned. Tears were spinning down my cheeks and splattering away with the blood that was pouring from my nose and my split lip.

‘You’re mine,’ he said, ‘you are my fucking whore. You do exactly what I tell you. You understand?’

I whimpered, clutching on to the leg of the dining room table with slippery fingers, my eyes closed. I felt him grab my hair again, yanking me away from the table, and a voice that must have been mine, pleading with him, ‘Let me go, please, please…’

He undid his jeans with his left hand, staggering over to the sofa, pulling me along as though I were a rag doll whilst I scrabbled to get to my feet to take the pressure away from my scalp.

With a sigh, he sat back heavily onto the sofa, his jeans now at mid-thigh, his cock hard – as though the sight of me broken and bleeding was turning him on – and told me to suck.

Sobbing, blood over my hands and in my mouth, I did as I was told. I wanted to bite his fucking knob off and spit it in his face. I wanted to use my fist and punch him so hard in the balls that he’d need to get them surgically removed from his pelvic floor.

‘Look at me. Fucking bitch, I said, look at me!’

I raised my eyes to his face, and saw two things that terrified me. Firstly, the smile, the look in his eyes that told me that he had me exactly where he wanted me, and that this wasn’t going to end. And secondly, the black-handled lock knife that he held just a few inches away from my face.

‘Do it right,’ he said, ‘and I might not cut your fucking nose off.’

I did it right, I did the best I could, with blood and snot and tears streaming from my face to his crotch, and he didn’t cut me – not then, anyway.

I need to escape. I need to make sure that I can get away without him even realising it, because I will only get one chance.