He put his hands on each arm of the wicker chair and bent over Anna, his breath buffetting her in hot, furious bursts. She tried to evade it, putting her hands over her face.
“I d-don’t have any lovers,” she sobbed. “Only you. I only love you.”
John made an incoherent roar of frustration and swept all the tea things off the table with a discordant smash.
“Love?” he shouted. “Don’t make me hurt you, Anna. Don’t talk to me about love.”
He put a hand in her hair, as if about to rip it out at the roots, then seemed to think better of it, straightened up and stormed out of the room, leaving her to weep hysterically.
When longer intervals began to intersperse the choking sobs, Anna heard the familiar sound of John going down the basement steps to his workroom. He would be busy there for hours. It wasn’t even near dinnertime. Why had he come home early? Had somebody alerted him? Luana perhaps?
She tried to control her breathing and stood shakily, looking around her as if completely unfamiliar with her surroundings. Fear and shock had changed her, galvanised her. She wasn’t going to let this happen to her. She picked up her phone, took it into a bathroom, locked the door and dialled.
Chapter Ten
“You really think he would beat you up?” Liam, holding a shivering Anna in his arms in the corner snug of a Highgate pub, swallowed. This was all starting to look a lot like something he would have to take seriously. What would a real man do? A grown-up? In a situation like this?
“He was so close,” whispered Anna. “I really thought…I was so scared…I think Caro’s right. I think he’s losing his mind. What can I do? How can I help him?”
“You want to help this abusive dickweed? Why?”
“Liam! He’s my husband. He’s my baby’s father. I want him well again, that’s all. The man who threatened me—that wasn’t John.”
Liam sniffed. He thought otherwise, but realised Anna was in no frame of mind to listen to reason, or his version of it, at least.
“I wish Mimi was here,” he muttered. “She always knows what to do. At least, she did, before she started being a bitch.”
Anna looked up, pinching his thigh. “Hey! Mimi isn’t a bitch. Have you split up? Have you even seen her since yesterday? I can’t get her on the phone still.”
“Looks like it. Anyway, never mind that. I’m sitting here in a pub with a married woman who’s scared to go back to her husband. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t force him to see a doctor.”
Liam thought about this. “You can, though.”
“How?”
“Go to the police. Say he threatened you.”
“What? No! And he didn’t threaten me…not exactly.”
“Look, it’s either that or you just leave him. Come and stay with me, or Mimi. Preferably Mimi,” he amended, untempted by the visions of an irate Stone turning up at his front door with a machete.
“I can’t just leave him.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Anna. Look, I’m going to lay down the law. Listen carefully, ’cos it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You aren’t going back home tonight. There’s no way I’m going back to my flat and spending all night worrying about whether that mad bastard has lost control of his fists. Okay?”
Anna, breathing heavily, considered Liam’s proposition.
“I don’t want to lose him. I want him to be well again.”
“Call the police on him. Tell them you think he’s a danger to himself and others. They’ll get
him assessed. He’ll get help. You can drop the charges once he’s seen the shrink. Come on, Anna.”
“He’ll hate me.”
“Maybe in the short term. But he’ll see that you were doing it for the right reasons, once they’ve sorted his head out.”