Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday - Cathy Kelly - Страница 28

Her addiction to hot chocolate with Danish pastries for elevenses would have to go, Mara decided as she drove down Willow Street in the direction of Lorena’s, the best café in Avalon. She could feel her waistband getting tight and, now that Christmas was coming, she didn’t want to have to watch what she ate. Mara loved Christmas. The only problem was working out where she’d be for it.

Danae was clearly much more comfortable with her around and Mara had begun to wonder if she’d stay in Avalon for Christmas Day itself and then drive to Dublin the next day.

At the back of her mind was Danae’s secret: Mara was consumed with a desire to know about her aunt’s past. Would Danae ever tell her?

All these thoughts flooded Mara’s mind as she wound her way down the town to look for a parking place in the central square, which was already full of vehicles double parked in the rush up to Christmas. Only two more shopping weeks to go! said signs stuck outside the butcher’s shop, where tinsel and illustrations of happy turkeys on platters were painted in primary colours above real slabs of meat.

‘I miss you,’ Cici had said mournfully on the phone the night before. ‘We had such good times together.’

‘I miss you too,’ Mara said. ‘But I couldn’t stay. It was all too painful, everything reminded me of Jack. Anyway,’ she added, determined to haul the conversation away from dangerous territory, ‘bet you’re having great fun with all the Christmas parties in full swing.’

‘It isn’t the same without you,’ Cici said gloomily. ‘Everyone says so.’

Mara was briefly gratified by this information. At least the friends she and Cici hung around with missed her.

‘Nobody wants to go dancing because they say going out’s too expensive. Despite that, they all go round to each other’s flats and drink cheap beer or the latest Lidl wine offer by the crate. Next day, it’s alcohol-induced depression and even less money all round. At least dancing doesn’t give you a hangover.’

‘That’s because we danced without having to have six cocktails each,’ Mara said virtuously. She hadn’t had so much as a drop of wine since she’d been staying with Danae, who never drank anything but water and green tea.

‘I saw Jack and Her last week in Eyre Square: Tawhnee,’ Cici said the name in a rush, as if she had to say it fast or she wouldn’t be able to say it at all. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you, but they were arguing. I thought you’d like that.’

‘Arguing?’ Mara said faintly. Unless there was a gun, blood and a body lying in the gutter, it would take more than ‘arguing’ to make her happy. In fact, the only way she’d be happy was if Jack had been seen dragging himself to the train station, bleating ‘Mara, I must see her, she’s the love of my life, I made a huge mistake, if only she’ll forgive me and have me back …’ while Tawhnee screeched ‘No!’ while clinging on to him and somehow looking much less beautiful in the process. In fact, Mara decided, Tawhnee had become Scrawnee. Her boob job had flopped and she was no longer skinny with a huge bust but skinny with a droopy bust …

‘Yeah, he was smoking and she was shouting at him, saying he was supposed to have stopped.’

‘And you could hear all this?’ For a moment, Mara wondered if Cici had gone insane with a type of single-white-female stalker thing.

‘They were shouting.’

Mara was surprised. She and Jack had never shouted at each other, he wasn’t that sort of man. Raised voices weren’t in Jack’s repertoire. When he wanted his own way, he played the trump card of flashing his charming smile and Mara fell in with what he wanted. His other trick was to shrug and go missing for a day, which sent Mara into spirals of despair, thinking he’d left her because of her demands – not that she’d ever demanded much. When he’d eventually saunter back in, she’d apologize for anything – the sinking of the Titanic, the Icelandic volcanic eruption, anything – because she was so relieved to have him back.

‘It looked to me as though not everything’s rosy in Jack’s world,’ Cici said smugly.

‘Oh, it doesn’t mean anything, Cici. I’m not surprised he’s back on the fags. She’ll get used to it. Women will get used to anything for Jack.’

She had.

‘But, you know, it proves they’re not happy …’ began Cici.

‘It proves they argue,’ Mara said quietly. ‘Couples do.’

‘You should come back,’ Cici said. ‘The city’s boring without you and I miss you.’

‘Miss you too, but I need some time away,’ Mara said.

She couldn’t tell Cici that she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to live in Galway again, to revel in an atmosphere that was at once both medieval and very, very modern. Galway was where she’d finally found love, only to discover that it hadn’t been love after all, not for him at least.

It wasn’t exactly female warrior behaviour, to run away from the scene of the pain, but she felt a peace living in Avalon that she knew she wouldn’t feel in Galway.

And she was healing in Avalon. Healing took time. So did her job, which she loved.

A delivery truck began to back out of a parking space ahead of her and Mara grinned. It was a sign. Parking spaces that became vacant as you drove by were always a sign.

She hopped out of the car, paid the meter fee and marched off to Lorena’s with a spring in her step.

Avalon had embraced the festive season with what Danae described as its usual exuberance. There wasn’t an eave that hadn’t been adorned with Austrian-ski-village-style fairy lights, and a Hollywood producer doing a remake of A Christmas Carol would not have been let down by the amount of red and white adorning every shopfront.

Mara smiled as she passed Reagan’s bar, which stuck out like a sore thumb with its single limp gold star stuck to the door, looking as if it needed a dose of decorative Viagra to perk it up.

‘Billy Reagan hates Christmas,’ Danae had explained to Mara. ‘Christmas Day is one of two days in the year when he has to shut. If he could get a couple of beds into the back snug and pretend the place was a hotel, so he could have a hotel licence and serve drink, he’d be in heaven. The only reason he’s hung that gold star is as a concession to Belle – our lady mayoress sent all the local businesses a memo on the importance of Christmas decorations.’

There was no queue at Lorena’s this morning, but the café was jammed and Mara pulled off her ugly but warm frontier-style hat with the two floppy ear flaps. A girl could only take being a slave to fashion so far when it was a degree above freezing. Shaking her mane of flaming hair, she looked around for a seat. There was one left at a table for four, where two women sat opposite each other and chatted, while on the third chair sat a man, head bent, engrossed in his magazine. Perfect.

Brian behind the counter mumbled ‘hello’, which was the equivalent of an effusive greeting from him. He was so painfully shy that Mara felt sorry for him, therefore she always did all the talking for the two of them.

‘Morning, Brian. Isn’t it a lovely day? I love the low December sun when it comes. Lifts your spirits, doesn’t it?’

Brian mumbled something in reply and Mara’s eyes spotted the Swedish cinnamon buns that Lorena, Brian’s mother, had recently begun selling. Giving up Danish pastries didn’t mean she couldn’t try Swedish buns, did it?

‘I think I’d like one of those buns, too, Brian,’ Mara went on. ‘Very bad for me, I’m sure. Or is that the low-calorie version?’

Mara’s eyes twinkled as she looked up at Brian, and he smiled nervously back, then hurriedly turned away to busy himself with the coffee machine.

‘I’ll grab that empty seat before anyone else gets it,’ Mara added, and wriggled through the crowded café to the single vacant spot.

‘Is there anybody sitting here?’ she asked.

‘No – sit away,’ said one of the two women, before turning back to her friend to resume their conversation.

The person opposite lowered the motorbike magazine he was reading as Mara plonked her bag on the seat and began removing her winter parka, a giant duvet-like garment that looked ugly but felt snug. From out of nowhere, a big masculine hand reached across to help her wriggle out of the coat.

She blinked as she saw who it was. The flirtatious Kiwi cowboy. He wasn’t wearing his ridiculous hat today, which was why she hadn’t spotted him first.

The idea of having her elevenses snack as a takeaway suddenly appealed, but Mara decided she wouldn’t be run out of the café on account of a man. She’d had enough of fleeing the vagaries of men, thank you very much.

‘I can manage to get my coat off,’ she snapped, and did some more struggling with the parka.

The café was so full with tables jammed next to each other that the long duvet coat thwacked at least three people at nearby tables before Mara had it under control.

Crossly, she stuffed it on to the seat and marched off to get her coffee, looking all the while for another place to free up.

At the counter, she paid Brian, smiled thanks and took her small tray grudgingly back to the table.

She sorted herself out and was about to take a bite of cinnamon bun, when the two women decided they were leaving. Mara and the Kiwi Cowboy were alone at the table.

He put his magazine down and smiled at her.

‘Hi, Red,’ he said, in that velvety Southern hemisphere accent.

Honestly, she thought, was he ever going to take the hint? She was Off Men.

‘Don’t bother,’ she snapped.

‘Do you hate all men or is it just me?’ he asked engagingly.

Mara was about to snap, It’s just you, but held her tongue. Ignoring him, she concentrated instead on checking the sugariness of her chocolate.

Cici would definitely like him, Mara decided. He was much more her style. Mara liked the lean, elegant types like Jack, men who wore nice suits and had an aura of elegance about them even when they wore casual clothes. Cici had always gone for the macho guys with big muscles; the type of men who exuded animal magnetism and probably played sports morning, noon and night. That was this guy to a tee.

He had that sort of face, marked by smile lines and fresh air. He’d probably never used moisturiser in his life.

‘I’m only making polite conversation,’ he remarked.

‘Well, don’t,’ she snapped, inwardly shocked at herself. That had been harsh. OK, Jack was a bastard; that didn’t mean all other men were. She had now veered from mildly brusque to downright rude. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That came out all wrong.’

Mr Cowboy said nothing, but he continued to smile at her. She struggled to think of something to say – a rare phenomenon where Mara was concerned.

‘You’re clearly not local,’ she decided upon. ‘Do you live here or are you passing through?’

‘I live here,’ he said.

‘What do you do?’ Mara asked.

‘I run a business with my brother – custom-made motor cycles,’ Rafe explained.

‘Oh,’ said Mara. She knew precisely nothing about custom-made motor cycles. She had a vague recollection of Jack watching some American TV programme about it once. But he wasn’t a bike sort of man. No, Jack was a Porsche sort of man. That’s what he really wanted: a Porsche. He was determined to own a 911. A red one, with a black leather interior.

Mara wasn’t sure about red for a car, particularly a sports car. It seemed a bit flashy. Loud. But then, who was she to comment on vehicle colours when she was the proud possessor of a bright green Fiat Uno? Bright green was more of a happy statement than a shiny, red sports car. That was a bit of a macho cliché, surely.

‘And what do you call the business?’ she asked.

‘Berlin Bikes,’ he said. ‘That’s my surname: Berlin. Rafe Berlin.’

‘Oh, like the city! Cool! I like that,’ said Mara.

‘I could show you around,’ Rafe said.

‘I’m too busy to be shown around,’ Mara said quickly, and then realized she had ventured right back into ultra rude territory again. Where men were concerned, it was as if her manners had been surgically removed the day Jack dumped her. A Dumpectomy. ‘Sorry, that came out wrong. It’s simply that I have a lot of things on. I’ve taken a mad busy new job.’

‘What do you do?’ asked Rafe, which was a reasonable question under the circumstances. Mara toyed with a variety of answers: a trapeze artist in the circus, a burlesque dancer, a secret agent – but if she told him that she’d have to kill him. She went for the truth.

‘I … I used to sell houses, I worked in a property agency. Now I’m working for the man who’s just bought Avalon House – and living with my aunt, who runs the post office here.’

Damnit! That was far too much information to give away. She’d definitely never make it as a secret agent. One hot chocolate and she’d spilled everything. Secret agents had to be able to drink treble vodka martinis and lie brilliantly.

‘Kind lady, long dark hair, lots of cool jewellery – that’s your aunt?’ said Rafe.

Most of the bike stuff was delivered by couriers and turned up in giant vans or lorries. The post office wasn’t a place he was overly familiar with, but he was prepared to become their best customer if it would help him get to know this crazy girl whom he was liking more with every moment. He liked the rudeness of her, the sheer difference. Rafe had had girls throwing themselves at him since he was fifteen. This quirky girl was different.

‘Rafe Berlin, nice to meet you,’ he said, holding out a hand.

Mara took it. ‘Mara Wilson,’ she said, before fixing him with a gimlet glare. ‘Are you married? Engaged? Going out with anybody? The father of a passel of children, perhaps, on the run from paying maintenance?’

‘What’s a passel, exactly?’ Rafe enquired.

‘I don’t know,’ revealed Mara. ‘Loads. So, are you any of those things, otherwise connected with another woman?’

‘No,’ said Rafe truthfully.

Mara narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said, channelling her inner secret agent.

‘That was the truth,’ Rafe said. ‘Why? Have you recently fallen victim to some married dude with a passel of children who won’t pay maintenance?’

The brief flicker of pain behind Mara’s eyes told him he wasn’t too far from the truth.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘didn’t mean to be intrusive.’

‘No,’ said Mara, apologetic, ‘it was my fault. I have been giving you the third degree.’

‘Why do they call it the third degree? Everyone says that around here,’ said Rafe. ‘I don’t get it.’

Mara shrugged, ‘One more weird Irish custom you’ll have to get used to,’ she said. ‘Us Irish are a mysterious race with a proud tradition of being poetic and given to flights of fancy.’ There, that all sounded mad enough to put him off her.

She gestured as she talked and he liked looking at her. Liked the way her eyes lit up. Liked the way those red curls bounced around and the lips, in that glossy fire-truck red, moved as she spoke, like she was creating a story out of thin air.

‘What brought you here, Rafe? Seems like an out-of-the-way place to start a business.’

‘It’s a long story,’ Rafe said, his merry eyes looking sombre. ‘My brother was badly injured in a bike accident. I came here to help him keep the business going.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘Gotta run, Red. Would you like to have dinner with me?’

Mara was momentarily at a loss for words again. She stared at him. ‘Dinner?’ she repeated.

‘Yes, dinner,’ said Rafe. ‘A meal we Kiwis traditionally have in the evening. Is there a mysterious Celtic way of saying this perhaps?’

She smiled at him for real then. Mara’s smile had the power to make anyone fall in love with her. Rich, warm, marvellous. ‘You’re asking me out to dinner?’ she said, as if the whole idea was both unexpected and totally delightful. ‘Dinner.’

Some madness possessed her. Dinner with another man: yes, that was the way to de-Jack her soul.

‘Dinner … I think I’d like that.’

‘And you can tell me about the married man with the passel of children.’

‘Not married at the time, though he is now, which is the problem – he didn’t choose me as the bride,’ said Mara. ‘Please, let’s not talk about him at all.’

‘Fine by me,’ said Rafe. ‘Any weird food allergies, before I decide what to cook?’

This left Mara nonplussed. ‘You’re going to cook for me?’

Jack didn’t know how to do anything but heat microwaveable meals or cook steak and baked potatoes. Red meat or ‘pierce the film and microwave for four minutes on high’. Nothing in between.

‘I love cooking,’ Rafe said, with a grin that revealed white, even teeth. His eyes were a hypnotic grey blue.

Going to his house seemed a bit risky, though.

‘No, let’s eat out,’ she said. ‘If you’re really nice, you can cook me dinner next time.’

As if there would be a next time.

Rafe drove the jeep down the drive and parked it outside the workshop. He always felt a surge of pride when he looked up at the big sign on the doors: berlin bikes – custom made motorcycles.

So far as the locals were concerned, this was simply a small business run by the two Berlin brothers. But to bike aficionados, Berlin Bikes ranked up there with Orange County Choppers. The Berlin brothers had more clients in the US and the rest of Europe than anyone in Avalon would believe.

Jeff’s jeep was in his spot and Karen’s car was parked up at the house. The house itself was lit up. Karen had the gift of homemaking. When she and Jeff had first moved in, the house had been nothing but an empty shell; five years later, it was a home. With Christmas approaching, string lights twinkled from the eaves, while Scandinavian-style decorations made the wooden interior cosy and bright.

Only the other day Karen’s mother had rolled up with yet another bag of red gingham hearts to hang on the tree, causing Jeff and Rafe to exchange amused grins.

‘I’ll never understand these Avalon women,’ Rafe muttered.

‘Best not to try to understand them – just love them, that’s my advice,’ Jeff said.

Jeff’s love for an Avalon woman was the reason they were all there. She’d been pregnant with their first child when he had the accident. Not many people survived motorbike collisions with drunk drivers, so Jeff was lucky to be alive, but the spinal injury he’d suffered had left him paralysed from the waist down.

It changed all their lives. Jeff and Rafe had originally planned to set up their own business in California, home of custom-bike culture. But with a husband confined to a wheelchair and a new baby, Karen needed the support of her family in Avalon. So Rafe had given up his dream of life in Los Angeles and the brothers had set up Berlin Bikes in the small Irish town instead.

‘You’re looking pretty pleased with yourself,’ Jeff said, pencil in one hand as he expertly rotated his custom-made wheelchair round the specially lowered design table where he was working on a new commission from a guy in Switzerland.

Rafe grinned. ‘You could say that, bro. I’ve met this amazing girl in the coffee shop …’

On Saturday morning, Mara had the most marvellous lie-in. Waking to a sunny but crisp December morning, she put on her fluffy socks to go into the kitchen in search of coffee. There was no sign of Danae. It had to be one of her mysterious Saturdays, Mara thought, with a little irritation. Why wouldn’t Danae confide in her? What secret could be that bad?

Noticing a book lying in the middle of the kitchen table, she pulled it towards her and opened it.

Danae was on a familiar journey, one she’d taken every single month for the past eighteen years.

Normally she drove straight to the nursing home. On her arrival she’d go into the kitchen, where she’d make herself a cup of tea and the cook would give her a bowl of soup or whatever the residents were having for the day. They all knew Danae well, she’d been going there so long.

Today she’d been too tired to complete the journey without a break. Instead she’d stopped along the way for a cup of tea and a scone that she covered with butter and jam, to give herself a hit of sugar. Anything to pep her up. The thought of darling Mara reading her diary left her feeling absolutely shattered.

She was a slow driver and it was twelve o’clock by the time she drove up the manicured driveway to Refuge House. It was a charitable trust nursing home, so any money that was made from the inhabitants went straight back to the old-fashioned building with two modern wings on each side. Beautifully maintained, warm, kind, loving. If a person needed nursing home care, this was one of the best places to have it. Danae knew that. A lot of her salary went into making sure that Antonio would be looked after.

When his mother, Rosa, had been alive, she’d contributed. After she died, no more money had come in from the Rahill family. Danae knew it was because Antonio’s brothers wanted her to shoulder the cost of keeping him in a private nursing home. After all, it was thanks to her that he’d ended up there.

In the front hall, the smell was the same as always: the vaguely institutional smell of cabbage and cleaning products. Every surface gleamed. The floors were polished. Each rung of the staircase to the first floor had been burnished till it glowed. Up there lived the ambulant residents and the elderly who were in full command of their senses. There was a scent of beeswax mixed with lemon oil in the air.

Antonio was downstairs in an area that nobody called the locked ward. It was simply ‘downstairs’.

‘My husband’s downstairs,’ a person might say if they met Danae in the visitors’ room and she’d nod, knowing what that meant.

Downstairs was where people who needed twenty-four-hour care lived. These were the patients with dementia or brain injuries; they would never be able to live on their own. They only got out into the garden under supervision. Gentle walks with kind members of staff. So for their safety, the downstairs was locked, but nobody called it that; it was part of the ethos of Refuge House.

There was a receptionist on duty who looked up when she came in.

‘Danae, how lovely to see you,’ she said, before pressing the buzzer that allowed access to the rest of the building.

The code to get in downstairs was a rotating one. There were three separate four-digit codes; if you tried the first one and it didn’t work, you’d try number two and then number three. Today it was number two. The door pinged open and Danae went in.

It was always busy downstairs. There’d be music playing, sometimes jazz, sometimes dance tunes from the 1950s and 1960s. The people with dementia loved those songs. Music was often the last sense to go. People who didn’t know who their family were and couldn’t recognize themselves in the mirror – their eyes would light up when they heard Elvis singing ‘Wooden Heart’. They’d smile and try to dance a few steps clumsily across the room.

There was always lots of dancing. Finola, a small blonde nurse, was a great one for taking people up and giving them a whirl around the floor. Everyone loved Finola with her bubbly smile and her warmth. Today, Finola was feeding one of the oldest residents, a lady called Gwen who seemed so small and shrunken it was hard to believe she was actually able to breathe. She sat in a chair, her body cushioned against the hardness of the frame by a large sheepskin. Danae had often thought that the very, very old were like the very, very young. Babies were cushioned by sheepskin in beautiful buggies and frail old people needed to be cushioned when they were close to death.

‘Hi,’ said Danae quickly, keeping going. She didn’t want to stop today. She didn’t have the heart for smiling or chatting with any of the people who’d become her friends over the many years she’d been visiting.

There was no sign of Antonio. It was too cold for him to be out in the garden. The garden doors were shut, anyway. In one corner, the movement therapist was leading a small class; they had castanets and ribbons and were waving them wildly to the beat. They all looked so happy, gazing at their therapist’s face.

Danae turned into the corridor which led to Antonio’s dormitory. She peeped in, not wanting to intrude. Appropriate privacy was important in a place like downstairs. People were bathed and fed and taken to the toilet and had incontinence pads changed when required, but a person’s dignity was important, the director had always said, and Danae agreed with him.

There was only one man in the dorm, lying on his bed, his eyes closed, although Danae knew he probably wasn’t asleep.

In his bed, turned away from her, was her husband of thirty-five years. She took the chair and sat beside Antonio and reached out and held his hand, the way she had so many times before.

His brain injury had been so catastrophic that Antonio did not recognize her. He never would. The blows that had completely destroyed much of his brain had robbed him of all cognitive awareness. Yet when he lay sleeping, he looked exactly like the Antonio of old, merely an older version. The hair was grey along the temples where it had once been glossy black. Lines of age were etched into his face. Apart from that, he looked the same.

It was when he was awake that the injury became obvious: his mouth drooped to one side, his eyes looked at her with total incomprehension.

She sat holding his hand, stroking, hoping the morphine was taking away some of the pain he must be feeling. There was no drug for the pain she felt. There never would be. Science wasn’t that good. Guilt and agony reached places that no pharmaceutical could touch.

It was hard to explain fear to people who had never experienced it. True fear wasn’t jumping out of your seat at a tarantula in a scary movie or the thing under the bed in some horror flick. Such things had nothing to do with fear. To a degree, Danae had known fear in her childhood. A well-founded fear that she and her mother wouldn’t have the food and shelter they needed to survive. That was clear and present in her childhood.

But the fear with Antonio: that was a different sort of fear entirely, a fear that bleached into her very bones.

Before they were married, he’d seemed like a different man – happy, merry, kind, good-humoured, full of life, the sort of man everyone wanted at their party.

‘Let’s have Antonio along, he’ll sing us a few songs and play the piano,’ people would cry.

Danae loved that. She was the girlfriend and then the fiancée of this wonderful man. Antonio Rahill, half-Italian half-Irish, with flashing dark eyes, gypsy dark hair, pale skin. Black Irish, they called them. Thanks to his mother, he could speak fluent Italian. His second name was Luigi. A Calzone family name for decades. Antonio’s Irish father had wanted his son’s first name to be a good, Irish saint’s name, like Anthony. His mother had resisted. By way of compromise, he was christened Antonio.

He may have had a saint’s name, but Antonio was no saint. Danae hadn’t known that when he proposed, slipping the small ring with the tiny diamond in the claw setting on to her finger. The happiness she’d felt at that moment was overwhelming. This man loved her, loved her enough to marry her. There was to be none of the pain her mother had gone through, no succession of men. She would build a life with this one man, the man who loved her.

They had no money at first. After they married, they lived in a top-floor flat where the decor was at least twenty years out of date. But it was clean and dry, and it had great views out over the city.

She was a dreadful cook, Antonio would say.

‘Get my mama to teach you,’ he’d say, and she’d promised she would.

Danae could do any number of things with eggs, because in the bad old days, she and Sybil could always afford a few eggs. Omelettes, scrambled eggs – you name it, she could do it. With the help of Rosa, Antonio’s mother, she began to broaden her repertoire. Rosa was delighted that her son’s new bride wanted to learn how to cook like a proper Italian wife.

The first time she had showcased her newly acquired Italian cooking skills, Danae set the formica table with a sheet as a table cloth so they wouldn’t have to look at the horrible blue-and-yellow pattern. She lit two red candles, got out their best glasses – a wedding gift from Antonio’s uncle, who owned a restaurant. She’d struggled hard with cannelloni. For dessert, there was tiramisu, Antonio’s favourite. Or rather, his second favourite. The dish he loved most was sweet cannoli, but Danae wasn’t to attempt that one, Antonio insisted. There was no point. She could never reach the culinary heights of his mother. And Danae, who was used to being in second place, meekly agreed.

Danae had asked Antonio to bring some wine for this special occasion. She rarely drank herself, but the glasses were ready. A jug of water was on the table. The oven was set on low with the cannelloni keeping warm inside. Having checked and doubled-checked that everything was ready, Danae waited patiently.

Seven came and went, eight, nine … She began to worry that something must have happened. Eventually she rang the restaurant, fearful that she’d made a mistake and tonight wasn’t the night they’d agreed on, maybe he was still working. But no, he’d left hours ago. So she sat on the couch, a second-hand couch from another of Antonio’s uncles, until eventually she fell asleep.

She woke with a start to find him standing over her, and her first instinct was to smile and reach her arms out and go: ‘Oh, darling, I was worried when you didn’t come.’

And then something inside her, some instinctive reaction, made her pull back a fraction.

The man who was glaring down at her didn’t look like her husband. He didn’t have the warmth in his eyes, the smile on his face. No, this man was different. He was Antonio, and yet not him.

‘Where’s my dinner?’ he growled.

The words, It was ready at seven o’clock when you were supposed to come home, died on her lips. She knew that this would not be the correct thing to say. Faded memories of fear surfaced.

Danae moved carefully off the couch, sliding away from him, as if the slightest touch might somehow inflame him. Afterwards, she never knew where the instinct came from, the awareness that there was danger here.

‘I’ll get it ready for you, darling,’ she said.

She wished she’d bought a bottle of wine herself. Perhaps that might have calmed him. But judging by the smell of alcohol on his breath, he’d been drinking already. Maybe more would make him worse; she didn’t know.

She set the dish on the table. The edges were burnt. Carefully, she served it up, her hands shaking.

He hadn’t moved from the couch. He stood staring at her, following her every move.

‘There,’ she said, putting down a simple tomato salad drizzled with olive oil, the way his mother made it. ‘I hope you like it.’

The matches were on the table and she tried to light the candles, but her hand was shaking so much that she couldn’t quite do it.

‘Can’t you do anything right?’ he snapped.

And then Danae was frightened, a pure cold fear that started deep in her belly, turning her bowels to water, making her stomach clench, creeping up her chest so that every muscle in her tightened, every part of her was coiled, ready to escape.

‘Maybe you could do it, darling,’ she said, turning to him.

‘Don’t look at me,’ he hissed.

He moved so quickly that he was beside her in an instant. The first blow went to the side of her head, and the pain that immediately followed was mingled with the strangest ringing in her ear.

She couldn’t compute, her mind couldn’t make sense of this.

She’d been hit, but how? Not by Antonio, not the man who loved her, he couldn’t have done this. She must be wrong, this must be a nightmare and any minute she would wake up.

The second blow went to her stomach, felling her. He was taller than she and much more powerful. His fist in her stomach sent her flying backwards, against the cooker. As she fell to the floor, her head bashed against the oven. Collapsed on the floor, one leg straight, one leg bent beneath her, her stomach spasmed with pain. Her head was ringing with the strength of his blows. She still couldn’t make sense of what had happened. Then she looked up at him again and he started kicking her.

When she came to, she had no idea what time it was, although the moon was shining in the windows and the oven was humming away on low. She tried to lift herself off the floor, but it was impossible. Every part of her body felt sore. As if someone had stood on her, tried to squash her flat like an ant. Nausea overwhelmed her, greater than the headache pounding through her head. Summoning all her strength, she pulled herself up. One eye couldn’t seem to focus properly and she kept blinking. The rooms were dark, the only light came from the moon outside, but she knew she wasn’t alone in the apartment – she felt his presence.

When she had managed to drag herself to her feet she stumbled to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face, hoping to revive herself, hoping that the coolness would make the pain go away.

She couldn’t move her left ankle properly and she didn’t know why until she realized it was swollen and there was a boot mark across it. Moving slowly so as not to wake him, she made it out of the kitchen and down the corridor into the tiny bathroom. Staring at her from the bathroom mirror was a horror story. Her face swollen on one side, lip split from something he must have done after she passed out. Gingerly she pulled up her blouse to see the beginnings of a huge bruise around her stomach, bruises on her arms, and in the bathroom light she could now see the marks on her legs too. Her ankles were swollen beyond belief.

Even with the bathroom door closed, she could hear Antonio snoring. It had always been a joke between them, how much he snored.

At the dinner to celebrate their engagement, his mother had announced: ‘My Antonio, always he snore! He wake us all up. Now he can wake you up.’

The family had laughed. It seemed like a million years ago. As if it had all been a dream. Or maybe this was the dream? But Danae knew this was no dream; this was her new, horrible reality and the fear possessed her, the fear of what would happen when he woke up. The fear of telling anyone.

And if she did tell, who would believe her? Antonio was the epitome of a hail fellow well met, a charmer. Everyone loved him. Nobody would believe he could do a thing like this. She could hardly believe it herself.

Wincing with the pain, she took a towel and a facecloth and tried to cool down her bruises and wipe the blood off her face. Apart from her face, he hadn’t hit her anywhere that would show. Shaking, she found the jar of aspirin she used when she had her monthlies and took two, fearful that she’d drop the glass of water, her hands were shaking so much.

Carrying the towels into the living room, she used them to make up a bed on the couch and laid herself down there, as comfortably as she could in her pain. Tomorrow, it would have to be different. Wouldn’t it?

In Avalon, Mara sat outside with the hens at her feet and Lady leaning against her, and struggled to make out the words through the tears in her eyes. Danae’s diary was the saddest thing she’d read in all her life.

The psychiatrist wanted me to write this. I don’t trust psychiatrists that much. I used to. They were doctors and doctors were gods.

Like I used to think anyone with a degree was brighter than me. I hadn’t been to university. I’d barely been to school, what with the way we moved when I was a child. My mother didn’t have much faith in education.

‘Life is the best university,’ she’d say, tapping the side of her nose.

The first psychiatrist was very young.

The last one was older, a man, kind and gentle, brains bursting out of him. He even had one of those big foreheads where it looked as though the brains needed more room than most people’s did. And yet, he didn’t really know. He said things to me, but I could tell from his eyes that he knew I was clever and that there were no absolutes. He said that once. Those exact words. ‘There are no absolutes.’

That was when I realized that nobody knew anything for sure. It was all guesswork. Guesswork made up of history and science, past cases and studies, but guesswork all the same.

Nobody knew what had been going on in my head or in Antonio’s head. They could postulate till the cows came home, but nobody knew for sure. That was when I began to realize that we were all clinging to the rock, hoping. Everyone was the same. Some people had better rocks and a better foothold, but it was all a matter of clinging on. Once I understood that, I began to get better, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I have nobody to visit. There’s only one person I’d like to come, my brother, but I told him not to. I don’t want him to see this place or me in it. The lack of dignity would shock him.

Sleeping in a ward with other women, no privacy, wearing a rag-tag collection of clothes because someone’s always stealing yours. At one time, I’d have thought there was no dignity in living like that, but it isn’t a worry to me now. I know none of that has anything to do with dignity.

The people here are trying to help us. They are tough but nice. Nobody hits you. Nobody on the staff shouts at you. They’re trying to give you back your actual dignity, which means giving you back your mind and your soul.

That’s dignity. All the rest, like peeing with the toilet door open, is immaterial. Did you know that when your mind goes, so does your soul? Like a dandelion blown in the wind, it floats away.

I had a visitor from the shelter today. Mary. She wears red a lot, that’s what I remember most: huge red cardigans wrapped around her and red necklaces. Her hair is yellow from a home-dye kit, something my mother would be scornful of. Mary is the kindest woman I have ever met. She hugs me and I try to let her. I don’t think I deserve hugs. I am stiff in her embrace and I know it. I try, really I do, but this kindness almost hurts. It’s wrong. I cannot have it.

When I cry, she has tissues in her pockets. She’s always had a never-ending supply for the never-ending tears.

‘You deserve to be loved,’ she says to me. It’s exactly what the older psychiatrist has been saying.

Mary has no education except for running the shelter, but she knows as much as he does.

When Mary goes, I sleep. They’re trying to get my medication right and that means lots of changing doses. This week, the drugs are making me even more tired than usual. I have to nap all the time. I lie on my bed with my eyes closed. I can blot out the noises around me. It’s safe here. Even though that banging-head woman is wandering around, the only one she wants to hurt is herself. Another girl came in today, half-crazed with pain. She’s in a room they have under camera surveillance all the time in case she tries anything. So I am safe. Safe in the nuthouse. If I could laugh, I would.

In the shelter, where I felt safe for the first time in years, we talked about our lives and our men. I said I’d never got used to being hit. Used to the idea, sure, but the pain and the fear was as bad every time. Except I knew I deserved it. He said I did. He said I couldn’t spend any money. He kept the housekeeping money and it was doled out every week. None to spare, none to let me buy a lipstick: ‘What do you want with lipstick? You think another man would look more than once at you? I’ll make sure no man looks at you, bitch.’

One woman had lived with her husband for twenty-seven years before she ran away to the shelter. Her son wouldn’t take her in. He blamed her for not leaving his da years before, blamed her for putting him through the fear of growing up in their house.

‘I couldn’t tell him how trapped I felt,’ she said, crying.

We all comforted her and we all understood.

You’re trapped, like the mouse that a cat’s playing with. Paralysed with fear. You believe all the things he says to you.

You believe you’re worthless. Eventually, you reach the point where he doesn’t have to be there for you to believe it. A little voice in your head tells you non-stop: ‘You are a worthless piece of shit. You deserve this. You drive him to this. It’s all your fault.’

One woman lost two babies to her husband’s boot. She’d had six kids by then, it was all she could do to cope, and she didn’t know how she’d manage with seven. She told herself it was God’s way of making sure she didn’t have to cope with rearing another child.

I never had to cope with rearing my own baby. The first one I lost, I thought he’d be a boy. I felt it. Nobody did the trick with the ring on a piece of thread over my belly or said I was carrying low or high and that meant a boy or a girl. I didn’t have women friends to say or do these things. Antonio didn’t like me having friends. Friends got in the way.

It was all about control, I began to understand.

Control and fear was how they kept us under their boots and their fists. The beatings were just a way of reinforcing their control.

We’d been married six years when I lost the baby. He wanted sex off me and I was so tired, bone weary. I guessed I was somewhere near three months along. That’s when you’re tiredest, the books from the library said. I hadn’t been to the doctor about the baby. Our doctor said he hated treating me, seeing the bruises and the scars, when I would do nothing.

‘But my husband’s a good man, Doctor,’ I’d say. I didn’t add that it was me who made him do it and I had to stay with him, to take care of him.

I’d never refused Antonio sex before, never dreamt of it. Who knew what he’d do? I didn’t refuse him that night either. But I couldn’t pretend the way he liked, and he began to slap me.

The slaps could be the worst. He wouldn’t stop slapping. He didn’t even have a drink on him. Stone-cold sober, he was.

‘It’s that fucking brat inside you, isn’t it?’ he roared.

The fear that night was the worst. It wasn’t just me any more, it was my baby. Did you know that, even at three months, your hands aren’t big enough to protect your belly?

I must have passed out with the kicks. When I woke up, he was gone and I was lying in the bed, with the pain of losing my little boy deep in my belly.

The second baby was at the end. I didn’t know I could still get pregnant then. He punched me in the belly and I lost it.

That was the night something in me changed. Like a light switch going on.

The taxi driver said he wouldn’t charge for driving me to the shelter.

‘No, love,’ he said as he helped me in, then went back to get the few bits I’d taken from the flat. ‘It’s on me. He ought to be locked up, your fella. Locked up.’

Mary in the shelter was the first one I saw, and she got me straight to the hospital. She held my hand all the while, and when I woke up, when they’d scraped what was left of my second baby out of me, she was still there.

Mary didn’t say: If you’d left him, you could have saved your baby. But I was thinking it, and I was saying sorry to the baby.

The police went looking for him, but Antonio was always clever. Someone tipped him off and they couldn’t find him.

I knew he’d come after me, but Mary said I was safe. We used to sit on the fire escape looking out over the city, and she’d say he couldn’t touch me any more.

I believed her. I believed them all.

And then he found me.

Afterwards, the police wanted to know how he’d managed to locate the shelter, because not that many knew where it was, but when he was in a rage, Antonio was capable of anything.

It was nighttime when he came. It was cold and I was sitting up with another girl in the big room with the fire. All of a sudden I heard him screaming my name, and I thought I must be going mad.

‘Danae, you bitch, where are you?’

Then he was there, and the other girl ran to get help, and I was on the floor with him on top of me, choking me.

‘I’m going to kill you, bitch,’ he said. For a moment, I thought: let him. And then I remembered the baby coming out of me and I reached for the coal shovel.

I kept hitting him until his hands fell away from me.

Mary came running into the room with a baseball bat, but she didn’t need it. Whatever I’d done to Antonio was well done by then.

Mara was waiting for the sound of Danae’s car on the drive. It was evening when she finally arrived. She approached the door uncertainly, looking at Mara with anxiety in her eyes.

Mara threw herself at her aunt and enveloped her in a hug.

‘Oh, Danae,’ she said, ‘I wish I’d known. How awful it must have been to live with this for so long.’

‘I shouldn’t have tried to defend myself,’ Danae said, closing her eyes with relief. Mara didn’t hate her after all. ‘The police would have come, he’d have been put in jail.’

‘Only to get out again and hurt you again,’ said Mara angrily. She couldn’t bring herself to say Antonio’s name. ‘You did the only thing you could have done. And that’s why you’ve been punishing yourself all these years, isn’t it? Living alone, keeping away from people …’

Danae nodded. ‘The guilt kills me. Guilt over not having left him sooner, so my babies would have stood a chance. Guilt over what I did to Antonio. No matter what he did to me, I was alive and he was as good as dead. I couldn’t live with that.’

‘Have you never considered counselling?’

‘Apart from six weeks in a psychiatric hospital because I went into a numb state – catatonic, they called it – no,’ Danae said. ‘They were kind to me in there, but nobody could understand. I had as good as taken Antonio’s life away. His family never forgave me. Never. It was all my fault, they said. Your father and mother have always been wonderful. They understood my need to be left alone.’

Mara hugged her aunt even tighter. ‘You poor darling, Danae. You’ve got me now, I’ll do my best to help you from now on. You shouldn’t have to cope with all this pain on your own.’