He was afraid of her.
‘I’m so angry that I want to kill you. I want to hurt you. I want it so that …’ The words evaded her, and she licked her smirched lips and then clenched her fists, staring at the knuckles as if they belonged to someone else.
‘… I want it so you know what it feels like.’
Then she turned her back on him. She stumbled away to the window and stood there, her face hidden and her whole body stricken with her crying.
‘I’m sorry it’s such a shock. I’m sorry for what I did,’ Michael said helplessly.
Marcelle turned once more. ‘I want you to go,’ she screamed at him. ‘Get out of here.’
‘What have you told the children? What do you think it’s going to mean to them, if their father suddenly isn’t here any longer?’
‘Why didn’t you think about that?’ She ran at him, with her arms swinging, and struck at his face and head with her floury hands. He had to struggle to hold her, to keep her at bay.
‘Stop it. Marcelle, fuck you!’
They were both shouting. The front doorbell rang.
‘It’s the children. Janice brings them home on Fridays.’
Marcelle stepped back from him, panting. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pulled at the whitish horn of hair that sprang from her forehead.
Michael walked down the hall to the front door. Through the frosted glass panels he could see the dark heads of his children and the comfortable bulk of Janice behind them.
‘Hello,’ she called. ‘All well?’
Jonathan and Daisy sidled past him, pale-faced.
‘Yes, thanks, Janice. Have a nice weekend.’
He closed the door against the bright outside.
‘Hi, kids. Had a good day?’ His voice sounded as false as a clown’s red nose.
‘Where’s Mum?’ Jonathan asked.
In the kitchen the two of them stood on either side of Marcelle. Trembling, she put her arms around their shoulders.
‘What is this?’ Michael asked, seeing how they ranged themselves against him. He was rebuffed by the stares of his children.
‘Daddy wants to tell you something,’ Marcelle said.
‘Marcelle,’ he warned her. ‘Don’t do this in front of them.’
‘Why not? Why not this? Are you ashamed now? And don’t you think they have a right to know what their father does?’
The rounded eyes glanced from one parent to the other.
‘It’s okay,’ Jonathan said. His mouth was tight with his efforts not to cry.
‘Why do you always have to be like this?’ Daisy burst out. Jonathan kept his anxiety within a shell of control but his sister was accusatory.
Michael wondered, are we always like this? He didn’t even know how much of the discord between himself and Marcelle had seeped into the children’s lives. He felt vanquished, defeated by the impossibility of trying to reassure them.
‘Come here.’
He opened his arms to encourage them, but they stayed at Marcelle’s side. Michael hated her for forcing this division on them, but then he thought that she would claim he had created the divide himself, long ago. Yet it seemed that Jonathan and Daisy had always belonged first to Marcelle, and to him only secondarily. That was the way Marcelle had ordained it.
Michael let his arms fall to his side. He said quickly, to get it over, ‘Your mother is very angry with me, and she’s right to be. I told her a lie about where I have been for the last two days. But that isn’t the only trouble between us. We haven’t been making each other very happy. I’m sure you know that, in a way.’
‘So what’s going to happen?’ Jonathan asked, out of his tight mouth.
‘I think I am going to have to leave. To live somewhere else, for now.’
Jonathan nodded very quickly two or three times, as if he were merely satisfied to get the facts.
‘Daddy, I love you,’ Daisy shouted. She ran to him and threw her arms round his waist, noisily crying. Over her head Michael looked at Marcelle. This was indeed how it ended, he thought. With a strip of the kitchen floor between them like a crevasse.
‘See? Do you see what you have done?’ he said.
She spat at him. ‘I didn’t do it. You did.’
Michael knelt down so he could look at Daisy. ‘I love you too. I always will, and we’ll always be your parents, whatever happens.’
Daisy began to wail. ‘No. Nooo. I can’t bear it.’
He stood up again. As firmly as he could, he steered her back to her mother. Then he left the kitchen and went upstairs, noting the scratches in the wallpaper and the chips like little eyes gouged out of the paint, the honourable scars of family life. He packed another suitcase and came down the stairs again. The house had fallen silent once more. He could not think how he would say goodbye, and so he did not try. He closed the front door softly behind him.
The front door bell began to ring. Once it had started it seemed that it would never stop; whoever was doing it must be holding his thumb pressed to the bell push.
Darcy was already awake, lying in bed beside Hannah in the room flooded with yellow early morning light, but the sound pierced his skull like a dart. He had not heard any car.
Hannah stirred and mumbled, ‘What is it?’
Darcy left the bed, put on his dressing gown over his pyjamas.
‘I’ll see to it,’ he said.
He met Hannah’s au pair girl at the top of the stairs, also in her dressing gown.
‘I’m going,’ Darcy said to her. The bell stopped shrilling and there came a barrage of knocking. The stairway dipped in front of him, and the wide mouth of the hallway, and the slivers and lozenges of reflected sunlight lay like broken glass on the floor. He could hear the sounds of his children waking up, disturbed by the thunderous noise.
Darcy descended the stairs, flat-footed in his slippers.
He opened the door, but he already knew who would confront him.
There were five of them this time, not the same men but enough like the ones who had come before. They wore shirts and ties and short casual jackets, aggressive clothes, and in his nightwear Darcy felt disabled and exposed.
‘Why are
