‘Because I was only a child and I thought it was one of those things that happened between grown-ups that was never spoken about. Like catching your parents having sex. You know they do it, but you don’t ever want to think about it or admit to anybody else that they do it.’
‘But why?’ said Martha. ‘I don’t understand. Yes, Dad had a temper, but he wasn’t a violent man. He just wasn’t like that.’
‘What kind of a man do you think hits a defenceless woman?’ asked Naomi.
Martha covered her face with her hands in distress. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ she cried. ‘Just not somebody like Dad. He wasn’t a monster.’
‘No,’ agreed Naomi. ‘He wasn’t. But he was someone who couldn’t always control himself.’ She reached for her eldest daughter’s hand to try and comfort her, but Martha snatched her hand away and pushed it into her coat pocket.
‘When did this all go on?’ she demanded.
‘Throughout most of our marriage,’ Naomi answered matter-of-factly. ‘The first time he hit me, I made him swear he would never do it again, and despite his protestations of remorse and shame, and his promise that he would never repeat what he’d done, he did, time and time again. It was always stress-induced, brought on by some problem at work. I think it had a lot to do with the way he lost his parents when he was so young, suppressed grief perhaps. Whatever the cause, it was beyond his control.’
‘Only recently I remembered you once telling me that,’ said Willow. ‘It was after Rick told me how exactly he’d lost both his parents when he was younger.His father was an alcoholic and was knocked down by a car and then his mother committed suicide. Rick actually found her body.’
Calling to mind how evasive Rick had been about his parents, Naomi said, ‘I did wonder why he was so reluctant to talk about them. But why didn’t you say anything to us?’
‘He didn’t want people to know. He made me promise I’d never tell you.’
Martha frowned. ‘Look, I don’t care about Rick and his parents, but if Dad had a problem, Mum, why didn’t you get help for him?’
There was an undeniable tone of accusation to her question, as if Naomi was at fault. Rather than point out that Martha was falling into the classic trap of blaming the victim, she said, ‘I tried on many occasions to persuade him that counselling might help, but he refused point-blank to consider it. I think he was scared of what inner demons he might be forced to confront.’
‘But how come we never saw any bruises on you?’ Again, Martha sounded as though she doubted the veracity of what Naomi had shared with them.
‘He was either clever with where or how he struck me, or I had to resort to using make-up to conceal the marks.’
When Martha didn’t respond, Naomi turned to face Willow. ‘I’m so sorry you witnessed any of it, truly I am. I wish you’d told me.’
‘I just didn’t know how to,’ Willow said sadly.
‘But you’ve carried this for so long, and when you didn’t deserve to.’
‘Presumably Auntie Geraldine knew this … this awful secret of yours?’ interjected Martha.
‘I never once mentioned it to Geraldine,’ Naomi replied, ‘I can only imagine that something gave me away. In fact, such was my shame at what I was hiding from everybody, I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Not until I told Ellis a short while ago.’
Martha groaned. ‘Oh Mum, how could you?’
‘Because I wanted him to know the whole of me, the good bits and the bad. Especially the bad. And I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us; I wanted a fresh start that was built on truth and honesty. After so many years of lies and pretence, it was a relief to say the words out loud. But it was also terrifying. I felt completely vulnerable and laid bare and horribly disloyal to your father. To you two as well.’
‘If it was so bad being with Dad, why did you stay with him?’
‘Why do you think, Martha? For the sake of you girls. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy the life we had as a family. Or ruin the love you had for your father. It would have broken your heart, and his too.’
Martha picked up a stone and threw it angrily at the retreating sea. ‘But it’s okay to do that now?’ she said, ‘for me now to know that my father wasn’t the man I thought he was, that he was an abusive wife-beater?’
In the painful silence that followed, Willow said, ‘What did you mean by Ellis knowing the bad bits about you, Mum?’
‘I mean the shame, Willow. The shame that has been like a second skin to me all these years.’ More firmly, she said, ‘And I won’t let that happen to you. If you forgive Rick what he’s done and go back to him, you’ll live in constant fear of him losing his temper again. You’ll also end up living a lie and you’ll hate yourself for pretending to the world that you’re fine, when, deep down, you’re not.’
‘I think it’s too late for that,’ Willow murmured. ‘I’ve already been living a lie.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
It had happened during the first term of her second year at Warwick University and was, of course, her own fault; she shouldn’t have drunk so much. Although that wasn’t her first mistake: that had been to go to the party in the first place. She hadn’t planned to, but at the last minute she had abandoned the essay she’d been part-way through writing and gone. The other two girls with whom she shared the house were away in London for the weekend, so with no company for a few days, a party had seemed like a great idea. She could not have been more wrong.
She’d lost count of how many tequila shots she’d downed by the time he approached her. She’d noticed him watching while she’d been laughing and joking with a group of friends and had liked the look of him. Tall and powerfully built, his hair was thick and dark and from beneath his brows, a pair of sultry dark eyes had stared at her with obvious interest. Even when he raised the bottle of beer in his hand and tipped his head back to drink from it, his eyes never left hers.
