Dearest Rose (43 page)

‘Maddie, come here,’ Rose said as calmly as she could, holding out her arms to her daughter, who took a step towards her but was prevented from coming further by her father’s hand.

‘What are you doing?’ Rose asked him as calmly as she was able, drawing on her years of practice of not letting him see she was afraid, even if he already knew it.

‘I’ve missed my little girl,’ Richard said, his tone so cold, so devoid of any affection, that Rose wondered if he’d ever loved their daughter at all, if all that too had been just another charade to add to his carefully constructed replica of the perfect family man. Her maternal instinct flaring fiercely, Rose went to Maddie and took her arm in one hand, the other detaching his hand from her shoulder with relative ease. Richard seemed amused by her efforts, but not intimidated.

Rose backed away, towards the door, sheltering Maddie against her body, noticing the red fingerprints on her skin that would soon turn to bruises.

‘What do you want, Richard?’ she asked him.

‘I’m rather surprised that you have to ask me that,’ he said, his smile icy. ‘You run away, for no reason, with
my
child, without telling me where you are, or how she is. Am I expected just to give up without looking for you, when you know I love you both so much and that your place is at home with me?’

‘I didn’t run away for no reason.’ Rose forced herself to speak, despite feeling paralysed with the fear that came from knowing what her husband had been, and was, capable of. The longer she kept him talking like this, the better chance she would have of finding a way out, of getting Maddie away. Rose knew that this polite conversation was a thin veneer, scarcely concealing the fury that simmered below, and if Richard was willing to intimidate his daughter to get his own way, there was no telling what else he would do. It seemed that her bid for freedom had eroded what little self-control he’d had. Now he
felt
justified in doing what he must to regain control, and Rose knew with heart-stopping certainty that he was waiting for his chance to crush her in whatever way he could. She also knew that there was a very real chance she might not be able to escape him.

Think of Maddie, she told herself, tensing every sinew of her body, refusing to allow herself to shake in front of him. Save Maddie.

‘I left you, Richard, and you know perfectly well why,’ she said.

Richard’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and then he smiled that awful smile so laden with menace that Rose knew only too well. It was her final warning.

‘I’ve missed you too, Rose, I can’t wait for the chance for us to get reacquainted,’ Richard said, walking slowly towards them.

‘Maddie, go to Granddad,’ Rose said urgently, pushing her daughter towards the door, putting her body between the exit and Richard. ‘Go and tell him where I am.’

‘But …’ Maddie hesitated by the door, torn between wanting to run and a reluctance to leave her mother.

‘Go!’ Rose told her, as steadily as she was able to, unable to muster a smile. ‘I will be fine.’ The last thing Rose wanted was to be parted from her daughter, but she could not use her as a human shield and they could not stay here in this stalemate for ever. If Richard was going to strike it was best that it was when Maddie wasn’t there. Maddie took one last look at her mother and ran, the outer barn door slamming shut in the wind that raged outside, rattling the rafters and beams of the barn.

Rose turned back to Richard and braced herself for what was to come, her relief at getting Maddie out of immediate
danger
short-lived. The rational part of her mind told her this was her husband, and she’d been married to him for years; it wasn’t as if he was going to kill her. But another, more primal part of her knew with awful certainty that something had broken in Richard, that what little restraint he’d had before was gone and now he was capable of anything.

‘Shall we?’ he said, gripping her arm the moment that Maddie left, dragging her further inside the room, and pushing the door shut again.

‘Don’t touch me,’ Rose said fiercely, shaking his grasp free with some effort, feeling the imprints of his grip on her tender arm. She glared at him, gratified to see that her show of temper surprised him, not that it would do her much good. In one manoeuvre, he had her trapped inside the room, and was blocking her way to the door.

‘You don’t get to touch me any more, Richard,’ she said boldly. He wasn’t used to her standing up to him, being anything but compliant and meek. Perhaps if she showed him how strong she had become he would back down. It was a faint hope, but the only thing Rose could think of at that moment.

‘Don’t I?’ Richard said, watching her and seeming to take a great deal of pleasure in her predicament. ‘We’ll see about that, won’t we?’

‘Look,’ Rose said, fighting to keep her composure, her voice strong and loud, struggling to say anything,
do
anything that would diffuse the situation, ‘if you just think, for a minute … see what you are doing. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to hate each other. Let’s just do the right thing. Let’s get divorced and you can see Maddie. I won’t stand in your way. I just want –’

‘Nice try,’ Richard said, slowly closing the gap between them. ‘It’s too late for that now. I want my family back in my house. I want you and my daughter back in my home where you belong. And when I’m ready you’ll go inside, you’ll pack your things and we’ll leave. But first, I think it’s time we had a little reunion, don’t you?’

‘No.’ Rose shook her head, pressing her lips together to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘No, Richard, please don’t –’

‘Don’t argue with me, Rose,’ Richard said, dangerously close to losing his cool.

‘Why?’ Rose asked him desperately, trying to circle round him towards the door. ‘Why do this? When you haven’t loved me for years, if you ever did. When all you do is trap and torment me, even hurting your own child, because you can’t wait to punish me for something I will never understand. Why?’

‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ Richard asked her angrily. ‘You belong to me. You owe me. I rescued you, Rose. I picked you up at your lowest, most pathetic point and I gave you a life, a husband, a family, a home. And now you are going to repay me for all the strain and stress you’ve put me through. You’re going to make me feel better, like a good wife should.’

Richard backed her against a wall, his sour breath filling her nostrils, making her want to gag.

‘Just do exactly as I say,’ he murmured as he closed the gap between them.

On the last two words he closed in on her, trapping her against the wall of the barn with an arm either side of her head.

Gritting her teeth, Rose was determined not to show him fear, not to show him even a glimpse of the sickening dread
she
felt coursing through her, knowing all too well what would come next.

‘No,’ she told Richard, determined to meet his eye, ‘I will
never
do what you want me to, never ever again.’

With whip-like precision Richard hit her sharply across the face, sending her cheek smashing into the barn wall with the force of the blow. Rose blinked, fighting the darkness that suddenly crowded the edge of her vision, stumbling sideways, momentarily dazed as stars swam in front of her eyes. Adrenalin was the only thing stopping her from passing out – that and the knowledge that, no matter what happened, she couldn’t leave Maddie and John to Richard’s mercy.

‘See what you made me do?’ Richard asked her. ‘Me, who has never laid a finger on you in anger. And now you’ve made me hurt you. I hope you are ashamed, Rose. You should be.’

Despite the pain that seared down her neck Rose brought her gaze up to meet his.

‘You are pathetic,’ she told him, quietly defiant, finding a will to fight him that she didn’t know she had. ‘Nothing more than a bully. I’m done being frightened of you, Richard. You bore me.’

‘You are my wife,’ Richard said, fury twisting his face as he pushed her hard into the wall, pinning her shoulder with one hand, and pulling at the buttons of her jeans with the other, dragging the waistband down over her hips. ‘And I think it’s about time I reminded you of that. I’ve missed you, Rose.’

‘No!’ Rose shouted, using every scrap of strength she had to push him backwards with just enough force to break his grip on her for a few moments. She twisted herself away from him, pulling up her jeans, as she raced for the closed door. But Richard grabbed her arm before she could make it, throwing
her
, sprawling, onto the hard concrete floor. Rose felt the back of her head reverberate with the pain on contact, as he stood over her, his image blurring before her eyes.

Do not pass out, she told herself furiously. Do not pass out!

‘You are my wife,’ Richard repeated as he knelt down between her legs. ‘You belong to me.’

Furiously, Rose pushed against his weight, as he lay on top of her, one arm pinned across her throat, pressing hard against her windpipe, the other dragging down her jeans once more, until she could feel the cold, rough floor rasp against her skin.

Unable to talk, barely able to breathe, Rose struggled for as long as she could, until it hit her with a sudden cold clarity that she could not win this fight. If she kept trying to push him off he would only hurt her more, perhaps more than her body could bear, and even though in those last few seconds before Richard got what he wanted, death seemed like a haven, Rose could not allow it to happen. She knew she must do whatever it took to survive.

Turning her head away from him as she ceased to struggle, she fixed her eyes on the wall, where once she had stood and gazed at one of her father’s beautiful paintings. And she tried with all her might to recall it in every detail, every brushstroke, every colour, to free herself from shame, the knowledge that no matter how her heart and mind might be strong enough to repel him, her body never would be, and that was why he would always win.

‘Good girl,’ Richard said, relieving the pressure on her throat a little. ‘See how nice things can be when you only do as you are –’

‘Get up.’ Rose heard a familiar voice echoing inside her head, as if from very far away and she wondered if she was imagining it. ‘Pull up your trousers and get up, I said, you disgusting piece of filth.’

Turning her head with some force of will, Rose saw Jenny standing in the doorway of the room, her hands on her hips. As clouded as her vision was, Rose could tell that Jenny’s face was white with horror, and there was fear there too, uncertainty that she could really do anything to help. Seizing the moment of distraction as Richard sat up to examine this intruder, Rose dragged herself painfully as far away from him as she could, pulling her dishevelled clothes back on.

‘Get out,’ Richard told Jenny, his eyes glittering with contempt. ‘She is my wife and this is none of your business.’

‘She is my friend,’ Jenny said, her voice finding strength and volume with every word. ‘
My
friend, and I won’t have the likes of you pawing her. Where’s your self-respect, where’s your manhood?’

If Jenny was attempting to bait Richard away from Rose, she was doing a good job, as Richard clambered to his feet, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, as he steadied himself, his attention fixed on this interfering woman.

Dizzy and sick, her head clamouring with pain, Rose used the wall to help herself climb to her feet, taking a couple of unsteady steps forward, intent on getting to Jenny, on getting to the exit.

‘I’ve called the police,’ Jenny said, keeping her eyes on Richard, focusing his attention on her. ‘They’ll be here any minute. And do you want to know why? Your daughter. She phoned me. She told me that the father who had hit her was up here at
Storm
Cottage. Your
daughter
asked me to call the police. What kind of man are you?’

She spat the words with such naked contempt that for a moment Richard was caught off guard, unused to strangers seeing his true colours. Then, realising himself exposed anyway, and with nothing to lose, the old fury caught light, and Rose gasped as he flew at Jenny, hearing her friend cry out as he raised his fist to strike her.

It was only after it had happened that Rose could make sense of it. One moment Richard had been poised to hurt her friend, the next he was sprawled prone on the floor and Rose was standing over him, a length of wood in her hand, the sirens that had been sounding in the distance, growing steadily louder.

Rose and Jenny stared at each other across Richard, who rolled onto his back, groaning.

Rose blinked at the image which was gradually coming into focus, searching for reason in the confusion of shadows and flashes of light.

‘You clocked him good and proper,’ Jenny said, her eyes wide.

‘Maddie?’ Rose managed to ask her, swaying dangerously on her feet, the wood clattering to the floor as her fingers lost the ability to grip.

‘Inside. She’s safe,’ Jenny said.

‘You came,’ Rose sobbed, the words tearing out of her throat with a rush of gratitude. ‘You came.’

‘Yes,’ Jenny said, as a policeman entered the room, followed by another, ‘but it was you who put him in his place.’

Rose wasn’t really sure about everything that happened next, only that somehow she was seated on the stool in her father’s
studio
, a concerned young police officer holding some gauze to her head, and reassuring her that everything was going to be all right. Scanning the room, Rose saw her husband being escorted away by another officer, who had a firm grip on his arm.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, stiffly, desperate to regain his composure. ‘This isn’t over. I’ll be having you charged with assault.’

Before Rose could shape a response to this, Jenny cut in with a mirthless laugh from where she stood at Rose’s side. ‘You’ll be charging her? I don’t think so. This time you’ve gone too far, son. Ever tried being a GP with a criminal record?’

Rose didn’t allow herself to breathe until Richard was out of sight. Only then did her knees buckle, her body trembling uncontrollably as she slid off the stool and sank back down onto the floor.