“I’m so sorry,” I call down the garden to the figure shrouded in shade. I rummage for an excuse, but it’s not as if I can get away with “the traffic was terrible” or “I missed the train.” So instead, I’m honest and say, “I completely lost track of time.”
A woman who looks a lot like Anna steps out from the shadows, which completely confuses my already discombobulated brain.
“Oh,” I say, as I wait for her to morph into Melanie Langley.
“I’m sorry, I just needed to see you before your first client,” she says.
“Is everything OK?” I ask, conscious that I’ve not yet got around to finding her somewhere to live.
Her eyes instantly fill with tears.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Can I come in, for just a minute?” she says.
“Of course,” I say, fumbling with my keys to try to open the door.
“Here, let me help you,” she says.
As she reaches out to take the folders and laptop from under my arm, I see a vivid red welt on her wrist.
She catches me looking and quickly rearranges herself, pulling down the sleeve of her jacket.
“What’s happened?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything as she follows me into the office.
“Anna?”
She puts my things on the desk and takes a moment before turning around—I guess in an effort to compose herself. But she doesn’t need to put on a brave face for me.
“Anna?” I ask again, going to her and putting a hand on her shoulder.
As soon as she feels my touch, her shoulder caves in, as if it had been waiting for an excuse to.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice thick with empathy.
She automatically turns to me, her body racked with deep sobs. “I-I can’t…” she whimpers. “I just can’t do this…”
“It’s OK,” I say, wrapping my arms around her. “It’s going to be OK.”
“No, no, it’s not,” she cries. “Nick went for one of the children last night.”
“Oh my god,” I say, holding her away from me. “What happened?”
“It’s my fault,” she says. “I should have expected it. He’s been acting so strangely recently and it’s all been building up to today.”
“Today?”
She nods. “It’s the anniversary. It’s a year today that we lost Ben.”
“Oh, Anna, I’m so, so sorry.”
She falls heavily onto the couch. “I understand how hard the last few days have been; waking up to the sickening reality that after today, we can no longer say, ‘This time last year, Ben was alive.’”
I nod, knowing first-hand what a devastating milestone that is. It suddenly feels that the person you love and miss more than life itself is so much further away than they were before.
“But I never dreamed he would take it out on the children,” she says. “Doing what he did to me the other night was shock enough … but the children?” She shakes her head. “I can’t have that. I won’t have that.”
I sit next to her and place a reassuring hand on her knee. Every part of my training told me to keep a distance from my clients, both literally and metaphorically, but it goes against human nature to see someone this distressed and not reach out a hand to comfort them.
“You and the children can stay here while we figure out a game plan,” I say.
“I couldn’t…” she chokes out. “I—”
“It’s OK,” I say.
“I don’t want to cause a problem between you and your husband,” she says, her eyes searching mine.
“Why would you think that?” I ask, hoping that she can’t see through my veneer.
“He didn’t seem very happy that I was here the other night,” she says. “And the last thing I want to do is make things difficult for you.”
“It’s absolutely fine,” I say. “He was probably just distracted because he’s got a lot going on.”
She tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Could I … could I get a glass of water?” she asks, her voice hoarse.
I look around for the jug I always bring down with me, but remember I was caught by surprise, so didn’t get around to it.
“I’ll go and get you one,” I say, starting to stand up before thinking better of it. I really don’t want to leave her on her own.
“It’s fine,” she says, as if reading my mind. “I’ll be OK.”
I spend the time it takes me to walk up the path back to the house to practice what I’m going to say to Leon. But then I wonder if it might be the distraction we need, I need, to hold off the freight train that’s railroading my life right now.
“Hello,” he shouts down the phone, when I call him from the kitchen while waiting for the tap to run cold.
“Hi, it’s me, I know you’re busy, but I just wanted to give you the heads up that Anna, the woman you met the other night, is going to stay with us for a few days—with her children.”
There’s a loaded silence at the end of the line and I’m secretly hoping that he’s too busy to care. But who am I trying to kid?
“Is this a joke?” he barks.
I close my eyes and try to calm myself. I don’t want another row. “It’s not going to make much difference to you,” I say. “You’ll be working all weekend.”
“Yes, exactly! And in the rare moment I’ll get to myself, I’d like to be able to come back to my house, for a few minutes away from all the madness.”
“I promise you won’t even know they’re here,” I offer.
“When are you going to stop with this one-woman crusade to save the world?”
“That’s not fair,” I say. “I’ve only ever wanted to help people.”
“What, by setting up some halfway house where all of life’s waifs and strays can come and go as they please?”
“No, if you’ll just—”
“I tell you what,” he says, and I know another barb is coming. “Why don’t you put her in the flat as well?”
My blood runs cold.
“We can turn it into a commune for battered husbands and wives, or would you prefer to keep it for just you and lover boy?”
“Leon…” I start, though I have no idea how to say what needs to be said.
“Do what you like,” he snaps. “I’ve got work to do.”
The line goes dead and I take a few minutes before going back down to the office, jug in hand and a fixed smile on my face.
“Thanks,” says Anna, as she sits back down on the couch and pours herself a glass of water.
“Leon says it’s absolutely fine,” I say with a reassuring smile. “We’ve got two spare rooms, so there’s plenty of space for you and the children.”
“Thank you,” she says. “It’s just until I get myself sorted out.” She snorts derisorily. “If you’d have told me that I’d ever be in this position, that Nick would ever turn violent…”
“None of us know what turn of events our lives are going to take,” I say. “Even the strongest relationships can do a complete one-eighty.”
“I would never have thought he was capable of … of bringing the children into this dark world he inhabits, especially after everything with Ben.”
I place a hand over hers in a show of solidarity. “There’s certainly a line that has to be drawn and that’s normally when the children are directly impacted.”
She nods her head sagely. “D’you know, there was a case in New York when I was a teenager, of a wife—the mother of a couple of kids, if I remember rightly—who was stabbed to death by her husband.”
I almost stop breathing. I’m trying to fix my focus on Anna’s mouth, which is still moving, but millions of tiny white dots are floating in front of my eyes, making me feel dizzy.
I must have imagined it. She couldn’t have said what I think she said, yet her words are resounding in my head as if they’re coming from a megaphone.
“You were probably too young to remember,” she’s saying, through the wall of cotton wool that my defense mechanism is quickly attempting to build. “But I vividly remember this horrific case and asking myself why that woman didn’t get out when she had the chance. To save herself. To save her children.”
I suck in air that seems to be in short supply and Anna looks at me with a concerned expression.
“Are you OK?” she asks.
A sudden flash of the courtroom dazzles me and I’m back in the witness box, being interrogated by my father’s lawyer.
“So that night, when your mom was dragged from the bed you were both lying on, what did you do?” he’d asked.