‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘Your name hasn’t come up in anything Willow has said, but I would say that it was obvious to us all that the two of you took an instant liking to each other, which means Rick would have seen it too. It seems to me like he didn’t need much of an excuse to show his true colours.’
‘But I probably didn’t help matters, did I?’
‘Maybe you did. Maybe this needed to happen sooner rather than later.’
‘Do you think she’d be okay if I contacted her?’
‘I don’t see why not. Before today you wouldn’t have asked me that question, would you? She’s no different to the person she was when you last spoke.’
Was that an overly simplistic thing of him to say? Ellis pondered a few minutes later when he’d wished Lucas good luck with his talk and rung off.
Was there now a danger they would treat Willow differently, that she would now forever be cast in the role of victim? He hoped not. Otherwise she would never be able to move on and put this behind her.
But as Naomi had said, being raped and then terminating the unwanted pregnancy had shaped her from then on. It perhaps explained why she found it so hard to commit to anything,possibly believing she didn’t deserve anything good and lasting in her life.
How could the poor girl ever unpick all that? And what would she feel every time she looked at the baby and was reminded of Rick?
Worse still, what if Rick convinced her that he could change, that for the sake of his child he would do it? Knowing Willow with her naturally kind heart, she would probably give him a second chance. Just as Naomi had with Colin.
All evening they had been on tenterhooks wondering whether, after going home and discovering the note Willow had left him, Rick would show up at Anchor House. But there had been neither sight nor sound from him.
Ellis had been ninety-nine per cent sure that Rick would try calling, that he would be confident enough in his ability to persuade them that everything Willow had told them had been a lie. Of course he hadn’t hit her! How could anyone think he had when he loved her so much? He might even say that yes, they had argued, but she had fallen over and for some unaccountable reason had come up with a terrible story to make him look bad. Pregnancy, he might say, had made her behave irrationally, which he had done his best to cover up to save her any embarrassment. They already knew that he was a credible liar, so why wouldn’t he try to convince them that black was white and white was black? He was smooth enough to think he could get away with it.
This and a hell of a lot more had passed through Ellis’s mind when it came to second-guessing Rick’s reaction to Willow being here with them. It reminded him of somebody he had once worked with who had made a series of catastrophic errors of judgement over a client’s portfolio.When Ellis had challenged him, he had refused to acknowledge any fault on his part, but had justified his position even more tenaciously, all the while digging himself a deeper and deeper hole by insisting he was right. The only thing he’d been concerned about was managing his image, rather than resolving the problem he had created, or accepting he was responsible for it.
Odds-on, Rick would do exactly the same. He would lay whatever blame he could on Willow. But whatever excuse or reason he gave in the hope it would exonerate him would be a waste of his breath. There was nothing he could say or do that would make any of them think well of him. He was, if it didn’t sound too much of an exaggeration, a dead man walking as far as this family was concerned. Though how things would work out when Willow gave birth was anybody’s guess. As the child’s father he would have rights, and that was what worried Ellis most.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The combination of yesterday’s revelations and the baby inside her lying at an awkward angle, seemingly pummelling her ribs with both feet, had resulted in a restless night’s sleep for Martha. When she checked to see what time it was and she saw it was almost seven o’clock, it was with a sense of relief that she dispensed with the futility of trying to sleep.
Myriad emotions had spun her thoughts into a tangled and sticky web for most of the night, wrapping her in guilt. She had treated her sister far from fairly over the years, but if she had known the horror of what Willow had gone through, she would have acted very differently. Less exasperation and a lot more compassion. And she would have made sure that vile monster who had raped her would have paid for what he’d done. The injustice of what had happened to Willow made her angrier than she could articulate.
On top of all that was what Mum had revealed about Dad. Martha’s first reaction had been to call her mother a liar, to deny every word of what she said. But there had been such a calmness to Mum’s confession that Martha knew she had to accept that, as shocking as it was, Mum was telling the truth. There was also Willow’s corroboration to factor in, that she had actually witnessed the violence,as well as Auntie Geraldine’s suspicions. It was, she was forced to acknowledge, an open-and-shut case.
But just as Mum must have made excuses for Dad, so too did Martha want to invent some plausible and acceptable reason for his behaviour. But the truth was, in her condemnation of Rick for what he’d done to Willow, she had to condemn her father too. She could not make any allowances for him. Which left her feeling betrayed, as though she had loved and admired a fraud of a man, and consequently, everything she had built her life on was crumbling beneath her feet. None of it was real. She had been conned.
Tom had been predictably shocked by what she told him about Willow on the phone last night, but when she tried to tell him about her father her voice had cracked, and she’d begun to cry. She knew that if she alarmed Tom too much, he would grab his car keys and drive down to be with her, so she pulled herself together and forced the words out.
‘How could I have not known?’ she’d said to Tom. ‘How blind could I have been? All this time I’ve complained about Willow having her head in the clouds and not having a clue what was going on around her, while I was the one unable to see what was going on right under my nose!’
‘But it wasn’t going on under your nose, Martha. That’s the thing about abuse, it’s kept hidden.’ He’d then offered to drive down to be with her, just as she thought he would.
‘No,’ she’d said. ‘I’m perfectly all right.’
‘What if Rick shows up?’ he’d asked.
‘Don’t worry; Mum, Ellis and I can handle Rick. And don’t forget,’ she’d added lightly to reassure Tom that she really was okay, ‘Mum’s friend, Geraldine is here, so she’ll act as our first line of defence.’
He’d made a small attempt at laughter, but she could tell he was humouring her. ‘If you change your mind,’ he’d said, ‘or if you just want to talk, call me.’
‘I will, I promise,’ she’d said gratefully.
Now, as she pushed back the duvet and got out of bed, Martha thought how lucky she was to be married to such a kind and considerate man who would no more raise his hand to her than grow a second head.
Thank God she hadn’t been attracted to and married a carbon copy of her father. As difficult as it was to confront, the love she had felt for the man who meant so much to her was now irrevocably tainted with shame. She was unspeakably ashamed of him. He’d been a perpetrator of domestic violence who had got away with it for years and she didn’t think she would ever think well of him again.
