I still said nothing, so Denis gestured for me to be brought along. I found myself being marched into my own kitchen once more. I had a sick feeling that they were going to kill me. For a moment I imagined Carol coming back in a few days, and I’m ashamed to say I took pleasure in the guilt she would feel.

The whisky bottle was still where I had left it, and Denis poured himself a glass of it, taking a sip as he faced me. If I’d planned ahead, I realized I could have laced it with some poison, like in an Agatha Christie book. Honestly, though, where would I have got hold of a decent poison? He’d have tasted weedkiller, surely? The trouble with that sort of thing is that you end up in prison for life. No matter how things turned out, I wasn’t going to let that happen.

Michael snapped his fingers in front of my nose. ‘Pay attention and answer the question,’ he snapped.

My mind had wandered again, preferring vagueness to the actual reality of waiting to be murdered.

‘I don’t know where she’s gone,’ I said. Some part of me had been listening and that was what Denis had asked. ‘She’s gone away,’ I added. I wanted to answer their questions. I wanted the conversation to go on and on, all day if they liked. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen when the talking stopped.

‘Tell me, David,’ Denis said, pulling up the other chair and sitting down. ‘Tell me why your wife can’t bear to think of leaving you?’

I blinked at him, trying to look as if I was giving his question some serious thought. Only Carol would find me, and she might not be back for days.

‘I don’t know. She loves me,’ I replied. Denis was not a pleasant-looking man to stare at. His skin was flushed and his eyes were flat and cold. His freckles stood out on the pale, bony head, and for an instant I could only see them, like a web of dots on his face.

‘Are you cruel to her, David?’ he said to me suddenly, almost in a whisper. I could feel him tense as he watched me. He really wanted to know. Poor sod never understood her.

‘She’s the only thing I value in the world,’ I said, leaning closer to him. The truth of this was somehow clear, and Denis shifted uncomfortably. I wondered what his own meat and veg wife had been like. Did he have red-haired little kids with bony faces and hard laughter? Carol was a force of nature compared to his sort of home. I could almost sympathize with what he’d been through.

‘You should walk away from this mess,’ I told him as he stared. ‘She needs me, so I stay. Anything else, anyone else – they’re just strangers.’

I could see he was struggling with some internal argument. He practically shook with irritation and he knocked back the glass of poison-free whisky without seeming to taste it. I heard the bottle clink on the glass as he refilled. I didn’t much like the prospect of him getting drunk in my kitchen.

Denis turned round in his seat. ‘Are you wearing gloves, Michael?’ he asked.

I glanced up to see that Michael was. Denis too had a pair, and I had a sudden sense of dropping from a great height. I don’t think I’ve ever heard something more frightening than that casual question. When Denis turned back to me, I had to hold my hands together on the table to stop them shaking.

‘I could make you vanish, David. No husband for her to come home to, understand? Perhaps there would be room then for a man who’s more than some weird little parasite. You don’t even work, do you, David? You just sit here and spend the money she makes for you. Does that make you feel like a man, David?’

‘She would never trust you if I disappeared,’ I said slowly. ‘She knows you sent Michael the first time. She’ll know it was you.’ I liked the way this was going and began to warm to the theme. ‘She’ll hate you if you even bruise me, Mr Tanter. You should have that clear in your head. I can’t see a happy ending here unless you just leave.’

He sat back and seemed to ponder this for a while.

‘I see what you mean, Mike. He sits there as cool as you like with his arse out in the wind.’ I saw Michael smile behind Denis’s back. I wasn’t completely sure what the phrase meant either, by the way. If it meant vulnerable, that was about right.

Denis stood up, and I felt a spike of sudden hope that he was going to take my advice. He nodded to me.

‘You are a sick little man, David. You’ve turned a wonderful woman into a twisted, fragile… I don’t know what she is. You might be right about killing you, or it might be the one thing she needs to really wash you off her skin, you know what I mean? Just seeing you sitting there looking so smug makes me angry, David. I think you have a hold over her, like those men who beat women and somehow they still come back. I don’t understand it. However, I’m not the sort to walk away from things I don’t understand, David. I am a stubborn man.’

He said it like it was something he’d said a hundred times before, like he was proud of it. I could only stare blankly at him as he walked around Michael and stood at the other end of the kitchen. The room felt cramped with those two blocking the door.

‘I’ll stay to watch, Mike, if you don’t mind,’ Denis said.

‘How far do you want me to go?’ Michael asked, his eyes on mine.

Denis thought for a moment.

‘I’ll want to have another crack at this when she comes back, so keep it all under his clothes, all right? Teach him something. Break a couple of fingers, but hide the rest.’

I began to yell then, though I knew the neighbours would all be at work. There was no one to help me.

CHAPTER FIVE

I MANAGED TO GET myself to Brighton General hospital to have my hand splinted. I thought they’d ask me all sorts of difficult questions, but they simply made me wait for six hours just to be told that the X-rays showed two broken fingers. The first thing I’d said to the nurse on reception was, ‘I have two broken fingers,’ but I didn’t mind. They had given me painkillers, and I’ve always liked the building. It used to be a workhouse in Victorian times, and I like that sense of history. Anyway, it was warm inside and there was a machine to get cups of orange-coloured tea. After all the trouble I’d had getting there, I made the most of it. Steering with one hand isn’t a problem, but changing gear and steering is a nightmare.

I think if anyone had been nice to me I might have asked for help, or gone to the police, perhaps. The doctors were too busy to want more than a glance at someone with my kind of problems. Even the nurse who did the bandaging didn’t ask how it had happened. She was flustered and tired and she had a bright line of sweat where her hair met her forehead. I found my gaze focusing on it while she worked on me. It must be a strange thing to spend your day with people who have been really hurt. They say policemen think everyone is a criminal. I wonder if doctors think everyone is just a bag of skin and bones waiting to burst apart all over them. I saw some blood on the linoleum floor while I was there, though it was cleaned up so I stopped my mental letter to the local paper.

I think it was then that I thought of writing to my brother. I was a bit woozy from the painkillers and I had a prescription for more. There was a small leak of acid into my mouth, but when I swallowed it back it stayed down, to my relief. I couldn’t go home and I couldn’t find my car keys. I knew I’d driven to the hospital, but the damn things had walked somewhere between the reception and the waiting room and the X-ray waiting room and the X-ray machine and the nurses’ station and all the other places they’d sent me. I couldn’t bear to get up and begin the search for them.

‘Excuse me, miss, have you seen a set of car keys? I was here just a minute ago’ – over and over. If they were lost, I would walk home, or call the RAC and pretend to be a young woman on her own so they’d come quickly. I was past caring about anything.