Sam lost her temper.
“Yes, I’m fucking that wonderful woman!” she shouted back at him. “I’m fucking her up, down, sideways, inside and outside, backwards and forwards, in all the wonderful ways that you never deigned to show me while you were sleeping around, you lying, womanising pile of philandering baggage! How long was it, Mark! Were you fucking other women on the sly before I was pregnant? Or was it just once I got too fat for you?”
“After all I’ve done, this is how you thank me!” he roared.
And my lover graduated from furious to incandescent without touching any point in between.
“All you’ve done? All you’ve done! How much have you done, mister ooh-what-a-nice-suit-I’m-wearing? When last did you check on your daughter, you gangly, self-absorbed fuck? When last did you check on me? When last did you give either of us the time of day? Never, that’s when! You’re almost never here! And when you are here you’re on calls, or “working”, or networking, or spending your time on… on your vinyl or wine or your fucking suits! You never have time for us. Never. Fuck you! You may own this fucking museum to your ego but you do not live here. I do. Beth does. And we’ve had to manage without you for years! So don’t you dare swan in here and try to stand on the moral high ground! Fuck off back to your hotel suite and your rancid little Mancunian slut and don’t ever, ever presume to talk to me again unless it is to lay out the terms of the divorce. We’re done. Done, Mark! I have screenshots, and transcripts, and they are lodged with someone you will never, ever be able to find or intimidate! So, frankly, you can fuck the fuck off and when you get there, you can go right on and fuckity-fuck right off again! Got it? Or do I need to write it out for you in smaller words?”
“This is not over, you ungrateful, unfaithful little bitch,” he snarled at her. He turned to face me and pointed an accusing finger my way. “And as for you, you… you harpy, I hope you’re happy!”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Nothing good would come of responding.
Sam had pretty much covered all all the relevant points, anyway.
He took a breath, spun back to Sam once more.
“Move your shit out of my room,” he said, with a slow, unsettling intonation.
“I already did, months ago,” she retorted. “And that shows precisely how present you are in this sorry bloody marriage. Enjoy the en suite. Maybe you can go wash some of that reek of other women’s diseased minge off of you while you’re at it. I changed the linen for you. You’re welcome, fucker,” she added venomously, underlining her scorn with a mocking little curtsey.
He let out some sort of strangled animal howl and stalked off.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed, once his footsteps had faded.
She let out a shaky breath and staggered; I dashed to her and pulled her into my arms.
“Sam? Sam! Are you okay?”
She was shivering; skin as cold and pale as mist.
“Oh fuck me, that was scary,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen him that angry.”
“Does he do that often?”
“Shout? Yes. But… never like that.”
The hairs on my neck suddenly stood up.
The words she’d said sounded… wrong.
“Lets get dressed and go,” I begged her. “Please, Sam, lets get out of here until he’s… cooled down. I want to go now, Sam. Please.”
“But… where will we go?”
“My place. It’s tiny and cluttered but my flatmates are awesome and Pete’s a rugby player. We’ll be safe there. Please! We’ve got to go!”
“Okay. Okay, sweetie. Just breathe. Come. Lets get our things.”
We scuttled back to the bedroom and fumbled our clothes on – I didn’t even bother with my underwear, I just stuffed them back into my weekend bag and snatched it up. Sam bundled some essentials and a change of clothes into her daypack.
She peered out through the door; loud music was blaring from somewhere upstairs.
“He’s put his noise on. Let’s disappear before he notices and comes back for seconds.”
She snatched up her keys from the kitchen counter and opened the front door for me; we tottered down the gravel to Bertha and threw our things onto the back seat.
Sam dashed round to the driver’s side; I started to close the rear door. But then I saw a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.
I turned.
Sam’s husband was standing in the doorway, staring at me.
He was holding a cricket bat.
“Sam,” I said, as I went cold with terror. “Sam, he’s got a bat. Sam!”
“Get in the car!” she screamed as she slammed the driver’s door closed behind her. I fumbled at my handle as her enraged husband charged down the gravel towards us.
Bertha’s engine clattered into life.
Pebbles skittered and sprayed as Sam floored the accelerator.
And the rear window glass gave a ear-splitting crack and frosted over with a newly-formed spiderweb of fractures as he connected with the only blow he managed to land before we fishtailed down the drive and out onto the road outside.
I fought, panting and gasping, trying in my panic to get the seat belt fastened; Sam was pale-faced, hunched forward and staring forward through the windscreen as the speedo surged upwards.
“Slow down!” I screamed, in mortal fear of my life as we screeched around a corner more sideways than straight.
“Not yet, we need the head start!”
She negotiated a nail-clenching sequence of sharp corners; I clung to anything I could and stared at her in awe as I realised that my girl could drive.
“Big Ash. Big rock. Signpost. Junction to Tigg’s place. Elm. Second Elm. Hedge. There. There! Hang on, Willa,” she suddenly shouted, “we’re going off-road.”
She braked hard, and I screamed again as she spun the steering wheel to the right and sent Bertha sliding and careening through a gap in a hedge and down a narrow path that barely looked wide enough to permit a dog. Leaves and branches squealed and scraped along the sides of the car; she winced, then flicked off the lights and let momentum carry us forward into the lane guided only by what faint moonlight there was.
“He’s going to get in his car and try to chase us,” she said in a shaky voice, speaking over the sound of the destruction going on outside. “I just know it. This is an unmarked path, and he will get stuck very quickly if he even notices it and thinks we’ve taken it. But the main road forks a mile or two on from where we turned and one branch heads towards Horsham; there’s a police station there he might think we’re heading for. I hope he takes that road, it will take him at least a quarter of an hour even in the Jag. We’ll be long gone by the time he thinks of alternates…”
“I think I actually wet myself this time,” I said, voice all weak and shaky.
“You’re not alone. Oh fuck, oh fuck me, I’m so glad Beth wasn’t home this week. Oh… oh fuck…”
She retched, slammed on the brakes, and forced her door open wide enough so that she could be violently ill.
“Sorry,” she panted, when she was done. “Sorry. I’ve never been that scared. I’ve never seen him that way.”
I handed her a half-finished bottle of water from the passenger door’s shelf; she rinsed her mouth and spat, then slumped back into her seat.
I reached out and clutched her hand.
“Sorry,” she whispered again. “Oh fuck me, Willa, I’m so sorry for involving you in my little psychodrama.”
I stared across at her pale face and dishevelled hair and inside-out-shirt…
She was incredible.
And indomitable.
And mine.
“I love you,” I said.
“What did you just say?” she breathed, eyes widening.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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