she sneaked into the bed before he came back; knowing it was futile because he would straightaway head for the sofa.
He didn’t need her any more. Or he didn’t want her. What did it matter which or both it was? They both hurt like hell. They both hurt like someone had ripped out her heart and torn it to shreds and trampled on the pieces.
Could injured pride feel this bad? Could a miffed ego tear out your heart and rip it to shreds? Or had she been kidding herself and it had been Maureen who had been right all along?
Oh god, surely she hadn’t fallen in love with Leo?
And yet all along she had known it was a risk, the greater risk; had known the possibility was there, the possibility to be drawn deeper and deeper under his spell until she could not bear the thought of being without him. All along she had known he had a heart of stone and still she had managed to do the unthinkable.
She’d fallen in love with him.
She lay there in the semi-gloom, the once silvery light of the moon now a dull grey, listening to him climb into bed, listening to him toss and turn and sigh, wishing him peace, even if he couldn’t find it with her.
The scream woke him and he stilled with fear, hoping he’d imagined it. But then he heard the shouting, his father’s voice, calling his mother those horrible names he didn’t understand only to know they must be bad, and he cringed, waiting for the blow that would come at the end of his tirade. Then it came with a thump and his mother made a sound like a football when you kick it on the street and he vomited right there in his bed. He climbed out, weak and shaky, to the sound of his mother’s cries, the bitter taste of sick in his mouth.
‘Stamata,’ he cried weakly through his tears, knowing he would be in trouble for messing up his bed, knowing his mother would be angry with him, wanting her to be angry with him so that things might be normal again. ‘Stamato to tora.’ Stop it now!
And he pulled the door open and ran out, to see his father’s fist raised high over his mother lying prostrate on the floor.
‘Stamato to!’ he screamed, running across the room, lashing out at his father, young fists flying, and earning that raised fist across his jaw as his reward, but not giving up. He couldn’t stop, he had to try to make him stop hurting his mother.
He struck out again lashing at his father, but it was his mother who cried out and it made no sense, nor the thump of a body hitting the floor and then a baby screamed somewhere, and he blinked into consciousness, shaking and wet with perspiration, and waking to his own personal nightmare.
She was lying on the floor, looking dazed, tears springing from her eyes and her hand over her mouth where he must have hit her. And Sam screaming from the next room.
And he wanted to help. He knew he should help. He should do something.
But the walls caved in around him, his muscles remained frozen. Because, oh god, he was back in his past. He was back in that mean kitchen, his father shouting, his mother screaming and a child that saw too much.
And he wanted to put his hands over his ears and block it all out.
Oh god.
What had he done?
What had he done?
SHE blnked up at him warily, testing her aching jaw. ‘I have to get Sam,’ she said, wondering why he just sat there like a statue, wondering if that wild look in his eyes signalled that he was still sleeping, still lost in whatever nightmare had possessed him.
‘I hit you,’ he said at last, his voice a mere rasp, his skin grey in the moonlight.
‘You didn’t mean to,’ she said, climbing to her feet. ‘You were asleep. You were tossing and—’
‘I hurt you.’
He had, but right now she was more concerned with the hurt in his eyes. With the raw, savage pain she saw there. And with reassuring her son, whose cries were escalating. ‘It was an accident. You didn’t mean it.’
‘I warned you!’
‘I have to see to Sam. Excuse me.’ She rushed around the bed to the dressing room and her distraught child, his tear streaked face giving licence for her own tears to fall. ‘Oh Sam,’ she whispered, kissing his tear stained cheek, pushing back the damp hair from his brow and clutching him tightly to her as she rocked him against her body. ‘It’s all right, baby,’ she soothed, trying to believe it. ‘It’s going to be all right.’
She heard movement outside, things bumping and drawers being opened, but she dared not look, not until she felt her son’s body relax against her, his whimpers slowly steadying. She waited a while, just to be sure, and then she kissed his brow and laid him back down in his cot.
And then she stood there a while longer, looking down at her child, his cheek softly illuminated in the moonlight, while she wondered what to do.
What did you do when your heart was breaking for a man who didn’t want family? Who didn’t want your love?
What could you do?
‘What are you doing?’ she asked when she emerged, watching Leo stashing clothes in a bag.
‘I can’t do this. I can’t do this to you.’
‘You can’t do what to me?’
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Leo, you were in the midst of a nightmare. I got too close. You didn’t know I was there.’
He pulled open another drawer, extracted its contents. ‘No. I know who I am. I know what I am. Pack your things, we’re leaving.’
‘No. I’m not going anywhere. Not before you tell me what’s going on.’
‘I can’t do this,’ he said in his frenzied state, ‘to you and Sam.’
She sat on the bed and put a hand to her forehead, stunned, while he opened another drawer, threw out more clothes. ‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘It makes perfect sense!’
‘No! It makes no sense at all! Why are you doing this? Because of a nightmare, because you accidentally lashed out and struck me?’
He walked stiffly up the bed, his chest heaving. ‘Don’t you understand, Evelyn, or Eve, or whoever you are, if I can do that to you asleep, how much more damage can I do when I am awake?’
And despite the cold chill in his words, she stood up and faced him, because she knew him well enough by now to know he was wrong. ‘You wouldn’t hit me.’
‘You don’t know that!’ he cried, ‘Nobody can know that,’ giving her yet another hint of the anguish assailing him.
And Eve knew what she had to say; knew what she had to do; knew
