“I think masculinity’s more about how you feel.”
“Well, that morning, I couldn’t have felt any less of a man if I’d tried. Maybe that’s why I almost did what I did.”
He’d wiped a tear away and I pushed the box of tissues on the table closer to him.
“What did you almost do?” I asked.
His jaw tensed, the bristles of his beard pulsing.
“When she got off me and walked toward the bathroom, I reached for the baseball bat that we keep beside the bed. I’ve let her rain down blow after blow, insult after insult, without so much as a retort, but that morning, everything that I’ve held in over the years just rose to the surface.”
“What were you thinking you would do?” I’d asked.
He took a deep breath. “I wanted to kill her,” he said, before looking at me as if to gauge my reaction. When I didn’t give him one, he’d forged on. “It felt like the only way out and I remember thinking that all I had to do was swing it once and it would all be over. I was walking up behind her, having this internal dialogue with myself, wondering how bad it would be if I just did it.”
“So what stopped you?” I asked.
“As much as I so desperately wanted to do it, all the time I was rationalizing it in my head, it wasn’t going to be an instinctive act, was it?”
“I’m going to ask the question that I’m sure you’ve asked yourself a thousand times,” I’d said.
“Why haven’t I left her?” he sighed, beating me to it.
I’d nodded.
“I will, but it’s going to take some organization. I’ve been applying for new jobs in Canterbury as I can’t risk her finding me once I’ve gone.”
“What is it you do?” I asked.
“I’m a school teacher,” he said. “For my sins.”
I’d offered a small smile.
“And what about accommodation?” I’d asked.
“I haven’t got anything lined up, but if I get offered any of the positions I’ve applied for, I’ll have to get something sorted out pretty quickly, even if it’s just something temporary, until I’m able to get myself properly settled.”
I’d been tempted to offer him our flat, which was standing empty just a few miles down the coast, there and then. We were planning on decorating it, ready for the onslaught of tourists that descend on Whitstable for the holiday season, but somehow summer is already upon us and we haven’t got around to it yet. It’s in a great little spot, just two roads back from the beach, and has served us well these past six years while Leon and I have been commuting into nearby Canterbury: him to his job as events manager at the cathedral and me to my gray little windowless box in the council offices.
But when the opportunity to live in a grace and favor cottage at Tattenhall had presented itself, it had been a no-brainer. Not least because it gave me the chance to set up my own practice in the outbuilding, which, seeing as I was embroiled in a stand-off with my line manager, couldn’t have come at a better time.
“You’ve crossed the line,” he’d said, when he discovered I’d helped a woman seek sanctuary from her violent husband in the middle of the night.
“She was in imminent danger,” I’d retorted. “Are we really such slaves to bureaucracy that we’re prepared to risk a woman being killed?”
“Red tape’s there for a reason,” he’d barked as I walked away.
Well, if it was there, I chose not to see it when I slipped out of the house and drove the four miles to where Sarah lived. That’s not to say fear wasn’t coursing through my veins as I sat there with my lights and engine off, surrounded by what felt like an invisible trip wire that would set off a deafening alarm as soon as she crossed it. But my stomach was in knots for her, not myself.
I watched with my heart in my mouth as she came out and carefully closed the door behind her. Just one forced error, and her husband would be down those stairs and dragging her back up to give her the beating of her life.
“You can do this,” I’d said out loud, as she momentarily hesitated in the porch. “Come on, Sarah, just a few more steps.”
She silently ran toward the car without looking back, but just as she reached the passenger door, an upstairs light went on.
“Get in, get in,” I whispered, my voice hoarse with terror.
I’d managed to get her to the safehouse, but two days later her husband had paid me a visit in the underground car park at work, demanding to know where she was.
I wasn’t going to tell Leon, but I was still trembling when I got home, unable to shake the memory of a double-barreled shotgun being pressed against my temple.
“Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again, Naomi,” he’d said, as he pulled me close and wrapped himself around me. Right there, nestled in my safe place, I never imagined I would.
* * *
Yet here I am, once again, with the weapon’s indentation not yet forgotten, finding myself unable to deny someone in need.
“Are we still going to rent the flat out?” I’d mooted to Leon a few weeks ago, when Jacob told me he’d been offered a new job.
“Yeah, as soon as the concert’s out of the way,” Leon had said. “I’ll look at getting it ready for the summer season. I think it will do well as a holiday rental.”
“Yes, but that could be unpredictable,” I’d said. “Not to mention hard work for me and you. Wouldn’t it make more sense to rent it out on a six-month contract, or even three? At least we’d know we had that guaranteed income.”
“I’m not sure there’s anyone around here who would take it on that basis,” he said, his tone already distracted by something he was looking at on his laptop.
“Well, one of my clients might be interested,” I said, turning my back, conscious of what I was plotting being written all over my face.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he’d said. “Do you not think it would be better to keep your work and the flat separate?”
“Not when it’s someone as desperate as he is.”
“He?” Leon repeated, suddenly giving me his undivided attention. Was that what it took these days?
“Yes,” I said, wishing I’d kept Jacob gender neutral.
“So what’s his story?” he’d asked, his interest piqued.
“He’s been abused by his wife for the past ten years and he’s finally had enough,” I said. “Whenever he dares to fall asleep before her, she’ll pour freezing cold water over him or run razors across the soles of his feet. They leave just the tiniest of nicks that can barely be seen by the naked eye, but you try walking on a hundred paper cuts.”
Leon had looked at me with confusion etched across his brow. “And you want him to live in our flat?”
I’d nodded.
He’d shaken his head. “She sounds like a complete nutter.”
“She is,” I’d said, thinking he was finally beginning to understand the need to get Jacob somewhere safe.
“I don’t think that’s something you should involve yourself in,” he said. “God knows what she’s capable of.”
My heart had sunk. “But she won’t know where he is.”
“Yeah, but still—it’s probably best we stay out of it.”
“He doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said.
“Why is that suddenly your problem?”
“I just want to be able to help, that’s all, and the flat’s sitting there empty…”
“I think you do enough for your clients,” he’d said. “You’re paid an hour for just that; an hour.”
He’d made it sound so easy, but I defy anyone with half a heart to listen to what my clients say, and not think about it for long after they’ve left. It’s a bit like reading a book. You know that feeling you get when you’re so fully invested in the characters that you have to read one more page? And then another and another, until you find out what happens to them, even when you know you can’t do anything to change their fate and what the author has already written on the pages.
But what if you could change the end of the story? What if you had the chance to change somebody’s life, at no cost to your own? You would, wouldn’t you?
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