Every Move You Make

Meg*, 38, feels her life is constantly in danger.

- Laea Marshall And Harriet Rose-Gale

When I first met Robbie McBeath in 2005, I felt so lucky.

Introduced by friends, we’d hit it off right away, and soon became a couple.

Robbie, then 30, treated me like gold, and doted on my son Charlie*, then a year old, caring for him as his own.

We were so happy, and I felt like I’d met the love of my life.

But as the months went on, the cracks started to show.

I soon noticed that Robbie was drinking all the time, and when he did, he’d become moody and aggressive.

‘Who are you going to see?’ he growled as I put my coat on one morning.

‘No one,’ I said. ‘I’m just popping out to get some milk.’

Robbie hated it when I went anywhere without him and had become so controlling.

And he wasn’t afraid to knock me about, either.

He would hit me across the face, and I quickly learnt to cover up my bruises.

I didn’t want Charlie to see, so I often sent him to stay with my mum.

Things went from bad to worse when a year later, in 2006, I fell pregnant.

At just two months, one Friday night, Robbie and I got into a heated argument.

Running towards me, he kicked me in the back, sending me falling into a door.

I spent the rest of the weekend in bed, but the trauma was too much for our unborn child, and on the Sunday, I suffered a miscarriage.

I was devastated.

Still, we battled on, and a few years later, in 2009, I fell pregnant again.

But this time, something about Robbie had changed.

He became more attentive, seemed excited about the baby, and I thought that maybe we could make things work.

Our daughter Bella* was born in 2010, and Robbie was so happy to be a dad.

But over the next few months, Robbie continued to drink, and we started to argue more and more.

The old cracks were starting to reappear.