TW: Gillian & Caroline deal with some of the trauma caused by Eddie

This is a fairly tough chapter for Gillian. It does have a happy ending, but I understand if you wish to skip it. We looked at some of Caroline's difficult past in previous chapters, mostly in Tuesday - The Anniversary, so it was fitting to look at some of Gillian's difficult past too.

I promise the next chapter will be more fun.

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"Has something happened? Has someone hurt you? Threatened you?" Caroline had never seen Gillian like this. Something was wrong and Caroline was starting to be very worried.

Gillian was silent. She knew she needed Caroline and that's all she could think about. The relief of having found her was profound. Gillian was mentally playing the word 'Caroline' in a loop in her head, trying to drown out the visceral violence of Eddie's hateful phrases that threatened to upend her into a spiral of mental decay. They filled her head, stripping her to a husk, an empty vessel to be filled with his hatred. She clung tighter to Caroline.

Caroline hugged Gillian for a few moments, waiting for Gillian to tell her what was going on. When she didn't, Caroline stroked the back of her partner soothingly and said quietly, "Whatever it is, we'll sort it out together. You and I, we can sort this out together."

Gillian remained silent, rigid in her arms.

Caroline could feel the fear rising like a cold wave up her body. Gillian was in deep trouble; there was something seriously wrong. Caroline pulled out her mobile phone and called Doug, the Deputy Head Teacher, to let him know that she was leaving the fete a bit early and that she'd see him on Monday.

She held one arm tightly around Gillian who clung to her like a life raft as they walked through the sea of people to the Jeep. Caroline was oblivious to everyone one else; all she could think about was getting Gillian to safety. She helped Gillian in the passenger side and climbed in next to her. She plugged in her phone and called Celia as she drove out the school gates.

"Mum, Hi. It's me. I need you to do me a favour. Would you please look after Flora tonight? Something's come up."

"What's happened Caroline?" Caroline could hear the worry in her mum's voice.

"Everything's fine. Something's come up and I need you to look after Flora. Can you do that for me please?"

"Tell me what's happened." Celia was digging in.

"Everything's fine. I just need you to look after Flora. If you're busy I'll find someone else."

"Okay. We'll look after little Flora. Everything is still at ours, is it?"

"Yes, it's all there. Thank you, Mum. I'll call you tomorrow morning."

"You will tell me what's up, won't you?" An unpleasant thought popped into Celia's head. "You're not going for a mucky weekend are you?"

Caroline could hear the disapproval in her mum's voice. "No Mum. It isn't that."

"Okay. What is it then?" Celia still wanted an answer, but Caroline wasn't ever going to give her one, not about this.

"I'll call you tomorrow Mum. Thank you for looking after Flora. Bye. Bye bye." Caroline hung up before her mum could get in another question.

Flora looked after for the evening, Caroline returned her attention to Gillian, noticing she was hugging the door, looking smaller every second they got closer to the farm.

"Gillian, do you want to go home? Would you rather go somewhere else? We could go to mine but our parents and Flora are there. We could go to a friend's place, or to a hotel. What do you want me to do?" Caroline could see the distress coming off Gillian in waves. She thought someone might have triggered something about Eddie, but with no information, it was hard to know.

"Not the farm."

Some information at last. Caroline had a guess. "Hotel?"

Gillian nodded.

"Okay. Hotel it is. Any particular one, or somewhere you haven't been before?"

"Somewhere new."

Ah, okay. This was starting to click into place. Caroline turned at the next intersection, redirecting them to a quiet hotel she'd been to when she attended a conference two years ago. She figured that somewhere expensive would be out of Eddie's price range. Quiet and out of the way, it had room service and big spa baths in some of the rooms, which she thought might give them some options. She hoped they had a vacant room at such late notice.

Caroline called Raff and asked him to feed the animals at the farm for the rest of the weekend, and cancelled their Sunday lunch. Their obligations dealt with, Caroline focused on Gillian and getting to the hotel. She made one quick stop on the way for supplies. She knew the upmarket hotel would provide some of the toiletries, but they'd still need a few things. When they arrived, she left Gillian huddled in the car while she checked in, feeling a bit awkward that they didn't have any luggage.

Once Caroline had shepherded Gillian into the room, Caroline shut the door behind them, leaving the do not disturb tag swinging on the door handle outside. She turned to find Gillian was seemingly anchored in the middle of the room, silent, staring, arms wrapped around herself like she was freezing despite the warmth of the room. When Caroline stood in front of Gillian, Gillian stared right through her. It was more than unnerving; Gillian was tangled inside her own head.

Caroline was trying to remember some of the books she'd read recently about trauma and abuse and helping people to cope. She wished she'd done some training in it, but she hadn't made the time. She would in the future, she silently promised Gillian.

Self-autonomous power and consent were good starting points; she did remember that. She stood in front of Gillian, careful not to touch her.

"Gillian, I don't know what's happened, but does this have something to do with Eddie," she asked quietly?

Gillian nodded once.

"It's just you and me here. We're safe. No one else will come in. I've put the sign on the door." She paused, wondering what to do next. "Would you like some food, or a cup of tea? Would you like a bath, or a shower? We can have alcohol if you want; I'm not sure that's a great idea today, but we can do that if you like. What do you want?"

"Bath."

"Okay. I'll run the bath."

Gillian followed Caroline into the bathroom. Once the water level in the bath started to rise, Caroline turned to Gillian, quietly asking, "Would you like a hand to get undressed?"

Gillian shook her head, but she slowly unfolded her arms and took off her jacket, handing it to Caroline. Gillian gradually undressed, handing each item of clothing to Caroline in some sort of ritual Caroline didn't recognise. When she was naked, she covered her breasts and crotch like she was ashamed in a way Caroline had never seen before. She stepped into the deep bath, submerging herself for over a minute before coming up for air.

In a small voice, she asked, "Would you scrub my back please? I want to be clean."

Caroline swallowed, holding in her tears. "Whatever you want my love." She took off her clothes quickly and sat behind Gillian in the large bath, hoping to hide the tears that were spilling from her eyes. Caroline's heart broke a little, seeing Gillian like this.

For the next hour, Caroline washed every part of Gillian, scrubbing as hard as Gillian wanted, as hard as Gillian could bear it, washing away the memories of whatever was haunting her. Every step was prefaced with a question, asking permission to touch, telling Gillian what she was going to do before doing it, always ceding to Gillian the control over her own body.

By the end of the bath, Gillian's skin was red raw from the scrubbing she wanted, but at last Gillian was starting to feel clean again. They got out of the bath, wrapped themselves up in thick cotton bathrobes and Caroline ordered an early dinner for them.

While they waited for the dinner to arrive, Caroline picked up all of Gillian's clothes, emptied the pockets and asked the laundry service to wash and sterilise the lot for them by tomorrow morning. If Gillian had wanted to scrub off her own skin, Caroline figured she'd need her clothes decontaminated too.

After a dinner of surprisingly satisfying burgers and chips, Caroline showed Gillian the scented candles and massage oil she'd bought on the way to the hotel.

"This oil is fantastic for healing your skin. I'd like to give you a massage. Would you like a gentle massage? I thought it might be nice for us, but it could be too much for tonight. Entirely up to you."

Caroline held out her hand, and after a second or two, Gillian placed her hand in Caroline's. "Yeah. That would be nice. Thanks Caroline." Gillian's words and small smile gave Caroline such relief that her face blossomed into one of her miraculous, loving smiles that warmed the entire room.

Caroline spent the next three hours gently touching and kissing and massaging the oil into Gillian's skin. Starting with Gillian's extremities, Caroline slowly moved towards Gillian's trunk, gradually reconnecting Gillian with her skin. She paid special attention to all the scars and burns, knocks and bumps, all the epidermal evidence of Gillian's path through life. She kissed and lovingly tended each of those old wounds. Caroline didn't know what had caused them; she had thought it was too intrusive to ask. Some could have been from childhood accidents or farming, but some were clearly from Eddie. The circular burn marks, obvious by their circumference to be from cigarettes, were damning of Gillian's first husband, and also of the second, who had ignored the violence of the first.

At some point during the tender reclamation of Gillian's body, Caroline had explained how she felt. "I can't change what has happened in your life. I would love to have changed Eddie for you, so that you didn't have to go through that nightmare. And yet, those experiences have made you who you are today. I love who you are. I love your body; all of it. I love that it is you who inhabits it. You are the strongest person I know; the most loving, and the most generous." She kissed Gillian between her shoulder blades. "You are sweeter than I will ever deserve." She lovingly kissed Gillian on each of her shoulders. "I love you Gillian."

Gillian turned over, her whole body glistening with the oil, and held out her arms to Caroline. "Hold me, Caroline."

Caroline lay down next to Gillian. They embraced, the oil making their bodies slide together. As Caroline held Gillian in her arms, Gillian talked about the man who had groped her at the fete. It had been such a shock that Gillian didn't react, giving the sly predator the opportunity to escape into the crowd. The episode wasn't really about what he had done, but that it had brought back all the trauma of Eddie, all the pain, the humiliations, the shame, the hostile words, the violence. She explained that normally if she couldn't get Eddie out of her head, she would go on a bender, or find someone to shag. She'd never done something like this before but she felt like she had reclaimed some of her body today. She felt more whole, more 'Gillian'.

As they lay together, Gillian nestling into her, Caroline thought of all the men that Gillian had slept with. She'd guessed that it might have had something to do with Gillian's response to the trauma caused by Eddie, but to hear it so explicitly stated was still shocking. It made her re-evaluate all of their sexual encounters, sifting carefully through each one to find if she could have unconsciously played any part in perpetuating the trauma. The thought that she might have made things worse for Gillian horrified her.

She wondered if Gillian's need to continually touch her in public was a response to this too. She had thought it was the simple chemical response of lust, the lure of the pheromones of a new lover, but she now wondered if it was something else. She didn't think it mattered in the end if Gillian wanted to keep doing it. Caroline had overcome some of her own fears and had grown to like holding Gillian's hand in public. It gave her the sense that she wasn't on the journey alone, that they'd be going wherever they were going together. And it had been a revelation to find that while two middle-aged women holding hands may have surprised some people, there were very few negative reactions.

They talked about Eddie in more detail, and how Gillian coped with the memories. Caroline was amazed at how well Gillian had been able to cope with all that violence and still be as sane and loving as she was. She was in awe of how well Gillian managed; how she'd raised Raff alone despite the maelstrom with Robbie. And now she was raising Raff, Ellie and Calamity while holding down two jobs and a new lover. As for that last bit, Caroline wondered how the hell did Gillian manage to be such a generous lover after all of that violence? Caroline didn't think she'd be able to move past such a history. It seemed so strange that they were born on the same day and yet their paths had been so different before they found each other.

It was when Gillian spoke about having brought some of these men back into her bed, to disguise the memories of Eddie, that they both acknowledged that the bed had to go. It was too full of the history of all those blokes, all those random shags. Caroline said she would buy them a new bed tomorrow morning, and on Monday, when it was delivered, they would ask the delivery people to put the old one in the courtyard. She would hand Gillian the matches and the petrol and Gillian could set the bastard on fire, saying goodbye to the bloody lot of them.

Gillian loved this idea.

"That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that before?" Gillian laughed with glee at the thought of dowsing the bed with petrol before ceremoniously flicking the match to start the conflagration of her traumatic and problematic past.

"Ha! That's going to be epic. We should read something by Jeanette Winterson, or sing Cell Block Tango while it goes up. Ha!"

Caroline was wondering if she'd regret the idea. Not the new bed, obviously. She'd been busting to get rid of that lumpy bed full of bad memories for months, but the idea of setting the thing afire was now troubling her. She should have known that Gillian would push any slightly mad idea she came up with to it's illogical conclusion.

"I don't know that all blokes are bad, Gillian. Only some of them are ball bags that deserve to be made into coin purses."

She could feel Gillian shaking before the laughter burst out loud. It was too hard not to join in, and they laughed until they had tears running down their cheeks. Some of the tension and horrors of the day finally released, they snuggled into one another happily and eventually drifted off to sleep, entangled in one another's limbs.

It was Gillian who woke first, in the wee hours of the morning, sliding her body over Caroline's, waking her with long slow kisses and tender caresses. It was several weeks before Gillian wanted to make love, and a month before Gillian invited Caroline insider her again, but when she did, Gillian felt her body was entirely hers again and the choice entirely hers to make. Their lovemaking had changed over the months they'd been together and had become deeper and more connected. They were the richer for it.

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My first iterations of this were diabolical for both Gillian and Caroline. I've softened this to a large degree, while trying to retain some of the indicators which are common among sexual assault survivors and survivors of family violence. I apologise if it goes too far, or not far enough.