The Doll's House

94

‘Don’t let her murder go unpunished.’ The blubbering bitch seemed to look directly at him as she said it. He swore violently at her, what did she and her slut of a daughter know about suffering?

The exertion of shouting at the TV brought the pain crashing back again. He was lying on the sofa in the filthy living room, an ice-pack clamped to the back of his head. Empty packets of Naproxin, super-strength Ibuprofen that he’d been prescribed some years earlier, littered the floor. He had taken four times the recommended dose, but it didn’t seem to be making much difference. It was like the worst migraine he’d ever had – a deep, insistent throbbing at the back of the skull.

Worse than all of this, however, was the pain of Summer’s betrayal. How had he been tricked so easily? And so cruelly? She seemed to have returned to him, to want to please him, but actually she was carefully planning her attack, waiting until his heart was open and his guard was down.

Despite the fact that he was concussed, he had dragged her back to her cell by her hair and once there delivered a beating that was savage and unremitting. It shocked him to realize that he had no idea how long it went on for or even if she had survived the attack. Eventually he had run out of steam and then the full extent of her subterfuge became clear. How she had removed the metal strut from the side of the bed, then propped up the bed with one of the chairs to make it look intact, so she could enjoy the element of surprise. What a mug he had been – all those cosmetic purchases from Boots had been designed to lay her hands on something metal. Why had he not seen this?

Rising from the sofa, stuffing two more Naproxin in his mouth, he vowed not to be so naïve again. She had tricked him once – he wouldn’t let her do so again. From now on things were going to be very different.