Bracing himself, although for what he had no idea, he opened the door and went in. Kate was sitting on the edge of the bed, her face pale and her eyes troubled.
‘Are you all right?’ he said grimly, scouring her expression for signs of pain and fear. He saw none, but he well knew that that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me look.’
With a tiny sigh, Kate held out her arm and he stalked over to her, taking the wrist he’d grasped and examining it for marks, which thankfully didn’t exist.
‘You see,’ she said softly. ‘It’s fine.’
He let her go and stepped back, shoving his hands through his hair. ‘It’s not fine.’
‘Really.’
‘I owe you an explanation.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said with a quick shake of her head. ‘If anyone owes anyone anything, I owe you an apology.’
Theo frowned. ‘What for?’
‘Pushing. I had no right.’
‘You had every right.’ Because she’d been bang on when she’d confronted him on his attitude over dinner. Despite his conviction he’d dealt with it, he hadn’t been able to shake the image of that child, and the realisation that his hold on his control wasn’t as invincible as he’d assumed had been deeply disturbing and worryingly all-consuming.
‘When you dropped the glass,’ he said, addressing the part of the evening he understood marginally better and did need to explain, ‘it triggered memories. Bad ones.’
She swallowed hard and lifted her shimmering gaze to his. ‘Of abuse?’
He ruthlessly ignored those memories clamouring to be let out of the cupboard he kept them locked in and nodded once. ‘Yes.’
Her eyes seemed to suddenly blaze. ‘Who?’
‘My father,’ he said, totally in control, his voice utterly devoid of emotion as he relayed the facts. ‘I grew up on the roughest estate in west London. We had virtually no money. Dad lost his job as a builder when he fell off a ladder on a construction site just after I was born. He never worked again. My mother was a cleaner. What little she brought in he drank, along with most of the benefits. When he’d had too much he threw things. Plates. Cups. Glasses. Anything he could lay his hands on. And when he’d run out of things to smash he took his frustrations out mainly on her, sometimes on me. Punches and kicks were his speciality.’
For a moment Kate didn’t say anything, and Theo could understand her silence. What he’d just told her, the implications of it, was a lot to process. ‘Did anyone know?’ she asked eventually, her voice oddly gruff.
‘No.’
‘Does anyone know?’
‘No.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died,’ he said bluntly. ‘Five years ago.’ As the next of kin, he’d received the call. When he’d heard the news he’d felt nothing.
‘And your mother?’
‘She had a brain haemorrhage three years before that. Caused by him, I suspect, but the evidence was inconclusive.’