NINETEEN
“You shouldn’t have booked the leisure center for the party.” Dom was sitting upright in our bed, his broad shoulders hunched like a cliff face next to me. “I can’t afford it. The kids’ school fees are due this week. What the hell were you thinking?”
It was the morning of the twins’ birthday, just before dawn. I wasn’t sure Dom had slept at all; I certainly hadn’t, and my body felt lethargic but also wired, on high alert. I could sense his agitation even in the semi-darkness. I’d been aware of it most of the night, lying next to him as he’d tossed and turned, my eyes firmly shut, body rigid as I tried not to give away that I’d heard him come in.
“I was thinking that I wanted to give the twins a lovely party for their tenth birthday. With their friends. And do you know what’s really sad?” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my tone but it rankled that he was making a fuss about the cost of the party. He hadn’t shown the same frugality last night, judging by the way he’d lurched around our bedroom, bouncing off the walls when he tried to sneak in during the early hours. I could still smell the alcohol evaporating from his pores.
“No, but you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
“What’s sad is that every friend they’ve invited is from their old school. No one but the kids they’ve grown up with—the ones you don’t want them to have as friends any more because they haven’t got the right background, or the right sort of parents, or enough money to go to a posh school.”
“Annabel loves that school,” he insisted, rubbing his hands tiredly over his eyes.
“Does she?” I said, letting skepticism coat my words. Does she? I thought anxiously, wondering if this was one more thing she hadn’t felt able to tell me.
“Yes, she does. She told me so,” he said, and I could hear the smug undertone.
“When?” My voice was faint now.
“What?”
I could make out the glint of his eyes in his shadowy profile.
“When did she tell you? Where were you? What were you doing?” I said more confidently, certain he was making it up to hurt me. I tried to think when Dom might have had a tête-à-tête with our daughter. He was hardly ever around these days.
“Oh, the other day. Whenever. Stop interrogating me, for God’s sake!” he barked.
“Shh! You’ll wake them up. This is supposed to be a special day for them, remember?” I reached out a pacifying hand but withdrew it at the last moment, suspecting he might slap it away.
“For them—or for you?” His voice sliced through the air.
“Surely for us both—and you—all of us, Dom,” I said wearily, bracing myself for the row that seemed inevitable now but having little energy for it. “What happened to us being a family? You’re never here any more, you’re always angry, you just don’t seem happy at all. Dom, this can’t—we can’t go on like this.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice softened unexpectedly, blowing the faintest whisper of hope across my despair. “It’s just . . . I so want to give you all the best of everything. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” His frown was plaintive.
“I know. I know you do. Look, let’s just try to have a happy day, shall we? Just get through one more day without a fight. Celebrate the twins’ birthday—they deserve a bit of fun after—”
“After what?” A chink of light through the curtains caught the glint of his blue eyes as he angled his body to loom over me, his steady gaze challenging me to answer truthfully.
“After how difficult things have been. These last few months,” I said, hearing my own breathlessness but willing myself not to look away. It had taken me a while, but eventually I’d learned my lesson: maintain eye contact; betray no fear. Sometimes that stopped his anger from boiling over. I had to be honest with him, but I also needed to keep things calm. Meet him halfway without riling him or humiliating myself further.
“Difficult, you say? You been paying any bills lately, then? Because they’re sure as hell not paying themselves.” He rubbed his hands over his face again and for a second I thought he was going to drop the subject and back off.
“I didn’t know money was so tight. Why didn’t you say?”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“That’s not fair. You’ve always told me that you manage the finances and I manage the kids. That’s what we agreed, isn’t it? And besides, the party isn’t costing much.”
His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, taking me by surprise; immediately I felt the blood pulsing in my constricted veins. “What bit don’t you get?” he said, his voice hard again. “I—can’t—afford—a—party.” He spelled it out with a bone-snapping squeeze to my wrist after each word. “We’re practically broke. The business is sinking. We’re in danger of losing the house. That meeting in Manchester I told you about, after the party, is actually a job interview, and if I don’t get it, we’re screwed. The bank will repossess the house.”
I was so shocked I could barely speak. “Why didn’t you tell me, Dom?”
“And what exactly would you have been able to do about it? It’s not like you have any head for business. Not like Lucy. She knows—”
“Lucy?”
“Yes. Lucy. But don’t worry; she won’t be conveniently around the corner from my office if I do get offered this job. We’ll have to move to Manchester.” His voice was flat and hard.
“But I don’t want to move. The twins are settled here.”
Leave my home, go to a place where I wouldn’t know anyone—without any friends to support me, trapped with a husband who—
“You don’t have a choice. Look what happens when you make the decisions! You’ve booked that scuzzy leisure center for the kids’ party. I don’t like them swimming there. It’s full of old pervs. I thought you’d have more sense.”
“Your brother works there!” I said, trying to pull my wrist away. I was starting to get a dead arm.
“Yes, well, quite. I’m surprised they haven’t sacked him, after that incident last year. I spent the best part of last night in The Bell Inn listening to all his usual trumped-up twaddle. Said he wanted to talk to me about something. Only I had to buy him at least seven whiskies first, of course, before he’d actually tell me what it was. Same old Max. Same old shit. He’s surpassed himself this time, though.” He finally let go of me and sagged forward to rest his arms on his raised knees, his shoulders slumping.
“What incident? What is it? Tell me!” I wasn’t interested in pub talk, but I did want to know if something bad had happened at the pool where I’d booked the twins’ party. A chill ran through my body. There were far too many secrets. Dom had clearly stopped telling me anything of any importance, and Annabel had stopped confiding in me, shutting me out of her world. The former shocked me, but the latter was devastating. “Dom, I read Annabel’s diary last night,” I said, when he remained silent. The words sounded thick, my voice deeper than usual; I was struggling to get my breath now.
“And?” He raised his eyebrows, mocking my concern.
“And I think something bad has been happening. Something truly awful.” My throat was so tight I could barely speak.
I hadn’t been going to tell him. Annabel had refused to talk to me when I’d sat on the end of her bed and gently asked about her diary. Rage and despair had been ripping a hole in my heart all night, but Dom and I had long since stopped sharing our pain. I’d lain in bed thinking of nothing else, trying to work out what to do, and now my agony was bursting out of me. I had to tell him. He needed to know; something had to be done.
“Don’t be so overdramatic. Give the girl a break. You’re always so hard on her.”
“I am not!” I said, my heart aching.
“Go on, then, what is it? No, don’t tell me: she’s been smoking. Or she tried a sneaky cider at the drama club disco. Come on, hit me with it. What shocking secret have you discovered about your sweet, innocent nine-year-old daughter?”
“I’m serious, Dom. I think someone has been trying to . . . to touch her. Or make her touch them. I don’t know. Just . . . something. Something isn’t right. I tried to ask her about it last night, but she refused to say anything.”
“What did she say exactly?” His big body stilled; his eyes bore into mine.
“I told you, nothing. That’s the point. She just said nothing. That she’s fine.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is I don’t believe her.”
“See, this is your trouble, Maddie. You always think you know better than everyone else. The perfect mother who is right about everything, and everyone else—”
“Dom . . .”
“You just sit there on your high fucking horse, and you can’t bear anyone or anything that tarnishes your halo. You worship Aidan because he’s a soft mummy’s boy who does everything you ask. But you come down hard on Annabel because she challenges you. Because she wants a bit of independence and doesn’t want you poking into all her business. And that makes you feel like you’re not quite the perfect parent. She makes you angry, doesn’t she? Go on, admit it. She infuriates you and you hate that about yourself—about her.”
He whipped back the duvet and twisted round to sit on the edge of the bed. I turned away, not wanting to see his naked body, too upset to allow that intimacy between us.
“That’s not true, and stop changing the subject all the time. This isn’t about me, it’s about Annabel!”
“No. It isn’t. It’s about you needing to appreciate what you have in your own life, concentrate on our marriage for once and stop living vicariously through your daughter. Let her go, Maddie. Let her go.”
He stood up and reached for his jeans and shirt on the chair, yanking them on but leaving his shirt hanging open; it was so hot in the bedroom. I watched him fasten his belt. I wanted to get up, too—get up, out and on with the day. Clearly, neither of us was going back to sleep now, even though it couldn’t have been much after five. Only I wanted to wait until he’d left the room.
I was trying really hard not to cry—Dom found that just as infuriating as my daring to disagree with him. When had he stopped seeing me as the most beautiful woman in the world? When had I stopped seeing him as my hero? Perhaps we’d hit the top of the slippery slope years ago; certainly the events of our ninth anniversary had been a low point. But it seemed to me that things had really begun to slide when Dom decided the twins needed to go to private school.
Yet Dom had been the one to insist on it. The best of everything; never settle for second best. That’s what he always said, and we’d all paid the price for his pride. His arrogance. He was buckling under the pressure of expenses he couldn’t meet and aspirations he couldn’t afford. The last nine months had been a fast track to hell, I acknowledged bitterly. Dom had become increasingly absent, and whenever he was around he was fraught with stress. And now I realized why. With his business struggling, the self-imposed burden of the school fees must have been the last straw.
If only I’d known . . . But he’d never told me; he’d just taken his frustration out on me, with sarcasm and aggression. I’d grown more and more quiet and withdrawn, terrified of provoking his moods. Aidan, too, seemed to be shrinking into himself. Only Annabel had managed to keep a smile on her face, but it wasn’t genuine. I knew then that it had been an act, and I’d missed all the signs. Missed them because I was too busy scrabbling around in the scattered wreckage of my marriage.
I had to put it right; I had to do something about it. All of it. Before it was too late.
“Let her go. What, so you can turn her against me and have her all to yourself?” I said, knowing I was playing with fire. I didn’t want bruises on the twins’ birthday. I just wanted them to have a special day; a birthday they’d never forget.
“Fuck you,” he hissed.
“Just leave me alone, Dom. Please, just leave me alone,” I said, my throat aching with the tears I refused to shed in front of him and the effort of keeping my voice low. The twins were still asleep; I didn’t want them to hear us rowing—again.
“Is that really what you want? For me to just . . . step aside?” Just for a second he looked sad, and I wondered if it was still possible to reach him—the old Dom. “Because it’s not what I want,” he said, before I could answer, and his voice sounded strangled. “I’ve given everything I’ve got to this family, and I’m not letting you all go. Not without a fight.”
“I really thought you’d be happy about the party, Dom,” I said quietly. “And it honestly didn’t cost much. Max got me a discount on the booking, and he’s going to help me set it all up. He’s coming at ten, and—”
“No surprise there.”
“Lucy helped with the party food,” I said, ignoring his usual sarcasm about his brother. “The twins are so excited about their big day. I thought you’d be happy.”
“You thought? You thought? But you didn’t ask, did you? You didn’t ask me what I wanted. You just went ahead and—”
“That’s not fair. You always leave the kids’ stuff to me. You don’t have the time and I’m better at it—that’s what you always say.”
I could hear desperation in my voice—a mute plea for him to remember that we used to be a team, each fulfilling our own role so that we complemented the other’s: work, home, school . . . We each played to our strengths, and we were happy. At least we had been, once. After what I’d read in Annabel’s diary, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be happy again.
Dom crossed the bedroom in one long stride and knelt on the bed, looming over me, his face so close to mine I could see the beads of sweat on his morning stubble and smell the expensive aftershave he doused himself in so liberally. I’d left the bedroom window open last night, but the air was still stifling with summer humidity. I could feel heat coming in angry waves off Dom’s broad chest, and with scared eyes I tracked the dark arrow of hair arrogantly pointing down towards the waistband of his jeans, the bulge at his crotch. With his arms braced either side of my head, his biceps also bulged, taunting me with the leashed power in his body. I pressed myself back into the pillows, heart slamming against my ribcage, praying that he wouldn’t launch himself on me.
Not today. Please, not today, of all days.
I held myself rigid as he leaned in closer still, his knee sliding forcefully between my legs and pressing painfully against me, his breath hot on my face. “I was just trying to make you feel better about having turned into such a useless fucking passenger.”
“You bastard,” I said on a shocked intake of breath, and was as surprised as Dom when my hand seemed to jerk of its own free will towards his face, the slap ringing loudly in the quiet of the dawn.
“Bitch,” he spat, his punch bouncing like a piston off my cheekbone, jolting my head back with almost neck-snapping force.
I turned away and buried my face in the pillow, waiting for more blows, praying no bones would be broken this time; hiding a cracked rib while trying to be jolly decorating the Christmas tree with the twins had been excruciating. But Dom’s body weight shifted and a gust of air rushed through the room, followed by the sound of the front door slamming moments later. The whole house seemed to shake.
“Mummy?” Annabel’s voice from the next room was sleepy, uncertain.
“It’s all right, angel. I’ll be there in a second. Try to go back to sleep.” Weak with relief, I tried to swallow around the lump in my throat and keep my voice steady. My cheekbone was throbbing, the pain so sharp I thought I might black out.
“Was that Daddy going out? Has he forgotten to get our present? Has he gone to the shops? When is he coming back?”
She appeared suddenly at my side of the bed, unable to wait for answers. Her hair was gloriously wild and her purple nightie was endearingly crumpled and didn’t quite reach her knees.
“It’s OK, darling,” I soothed, reaching for her. “He’s just popped out. He’ll be back in time for your party, I’m sure. Daddy wouldn’t let his little princess down, now, would he?”