The Wife Before Me(60)

She stood in front of the full-length mirror after he left and examined the bruise on her left breast. Reddened skin, as if teeth had sunk deeply into the tender skin around her nipple. The same kind of mark on her thigh. Did it explain the dull, throbbing ache between her legs? The bloodstains on the nightdress blurred as she felt her mind exploding. The night of the Christmas party; she was back there again, hearing the roar of the sea. No… no… She clamped her hands to her head as she tried to force the images into a shape she could understand. She had been in the bath, water cascading, bubbles. Her legs going from under her. Eyes open, her body floppy, unresponsive, jolting. Tendrils of wet hair in her eyes, unable to fight back. Last night had been the same. Whatever had occurred during those forgotten hours was somewhere in her consciousness, waiting to be freed. He had found another way to violate her. Another memory stirred. Paper, she had signed something. She recalled the pen in her hand and Nicholas picking it up when it fell from her fingers. What document would demand her signature? Her will? It was the only answer. She had willed Woodbine to him in the event of her death?

The bandages had been tight on her arms, wrapped with clinical precision. No need for them. The wounds would heal easily. It was what they symbolised. A binding. Her throat tightened, as if his thumbs were already pressing hard against the carotid arteries.

Rohypnol. When he left for work the following morning, she keyed the word into her laptop. Impaired memory, partial amnesia, especially when mixed with alcohol, confusion, panic attacks, breathlessness. It was as she suspected. The drug of choice for men who need to prove they are not firing blanks. She wiped the history from her laptop, knowing that Nicholas would find a way to probe through the sites she had opened, the information she had absorbed, the memories that had been returned to her.

She walked to the empty space where her father’s cross had stood. Leaves were beginning to turn, their green vitality seeping into the rustic hues of autumn, but Amelia could only see his body falling into the ditch below her. Water flooding his mouth, blinding him. Echoes rustled between the reeds and, in their sway, Nicholas’s voice rushed upon her once again. It gurgled in the rising stream and it seemed as if her disjointed memories had become the spate of a river in full flow… blue lights shining – jets of water… his hand on her mouth – whore, bitch, cunt – ’til death do us part… I’ll find you if you dare to leave me – I’ll find you even if it takes forever…



* * *



The madness of those first letters. What a purging. Each violent act held up to the light and judged for what it was. Leanne wrote back by return of post, addressing the letters to Amelia’s interior design studio. Nicholas opened every envelope that came to Woodbine. Nothing was safe from his curiosity; emails, texts, phone calls – all could be the breeding ground for her infidelity.

She shredded the letters as soon as she had read them, afraid to leave anything to chance. When he arrived unexpectedly at her studio one evening just as she was destroying Leanne’s most recent letter, she shoved the page and envelope she was about to shred into her pocket.

It was, Nicholas said, the anniversary of their first date and he had booked a meal for her in their favourite restaurant, the Peach Tree. How could he remember a date that she had wiped from her memory? When she returned home, she added the envelope to the store of mementoes in the ice house, rushing back to the living room before he could notice her absence.

Her fear grew as the gap between sanity and madness began to close. Her fear of his willpower became deeper than her fear of water. Her longing to escape deeper than her love for Woodbine. Her affection for the old house had turned it into her prison and, two months later, knowing there was only one way to escape from his violence, she made her decision.





Part Three





Thirty-Three





The Present





The policewoman is gentle but firm as she pries Elena’s children from her arms. She hands them over to the social worker who has arrived to take them to a place of safety. Elena is escorted to the squad car and driven to Kilfarran Garda Station. In the interrogation room, she huddles in a chair, her mind spinning from one fragmented impression to another. Joel crying, Grace shrieking, black uniforms, hi-vis jackets, cold steel handcuffs on her wrists, the smell of coffee brewing on a hotplate, faces pressed too close, asking questions she can’t answer, a glass wall with ears and eyes, a table in the interrogation room with scars scored into its surface… her children gone – gone – and Nicholas, his blood spilling from him.

She narrowly missed the aorta in his abdomen. Dully, she absorbs this information. Yvonne and Henry are keeping vigil by his bedside. He will recover, providing he does not develop sepsis from being stabbed with a rusting ice pick. She rocks back and forth as she lists the assaults she has suffered at his hands. Some are too hazy to remember clearly and she shakes her head each time she is asked for evidence. The only bruise she can show is on her neck. She knows what her interrogators are thinking. A bruise administered in self-defence when Nicholas tried to ward off her grievous attack. Why didn’t she go to hospital when she was beaten up? they ask. Why didn’t she call the gardai? Why didn’t she leave Nicholas, take out a barring order against him, confide in her friends?

She is adrift, unable to think straight until Rosemary Williams arrives. She had heard about the attack on Nicholas from Christopher Keogh. KHM is in turmoil but Christopher, remembering the friendship between Isabelle Langdon and Rosemary, had decided to inform her that Elena had been arrested.