I watched her walk to the nearest Underground station and go down to the trains.

There was no choice but to follow in the Rover and make a guess as to where she might end up. I texted Ian and told him to ring her and find out for me.

I had to be there for her. I was going to be there for her.

There was no place else for me to be.

19

I vowed to never set foot in The Racehorse again. Never. Bad things had happened here. The worst sort of decisions had gone down inside these old walls. I’d lost so much, and gained so little, from encounters in the little Hampstead pub tucked away in the community where I’d grown up.

I gestured to Bert behind the bar for a refill and drank while waiting for him to show up.

It took a bit of time, but eventually he got there. I heard his motorbike pull up first, and that’s how I knew he’d arrived.

The swagger in his step, the self-satisfied smirk on his face, both were very telling of what he thought my invite was all about. What misconceptions poor Denny was under.

“Hey gorgeous, I have to say that getting your text absolutely topped my day.” He buzzed my cheek and sat down beside me at the bar.

I took a gulp of wine and looked him over. “Really. And why’s that?”

He leaned in close to me, his long hair falling over his forehead in a rakish wave, the looks of which helped to serve his bad boy image I suppose. Through all the intervening years since my time with Denny, I could say the whole concept he had going on, did absolutely nothing for me anymore.

I smiled a little…and held myself back from reaching out and squeezing my hands around his neck until he choked.

He spoke low and close. “I’ll take you back to my place and show you if you like.”

“Ahh, an invitation…other girls should be so lucky.”

“You can be, baby. Just like old times.”

“Old times, Denny?”

“Yeah, before you ran away, baby.” He wagged a finger at me. “You should have never run away. You made me pretty lost, when you took off for Europe—”

As Denny blabbed and spewed his twisted notion of me out of his too pretty lips, I felt myself centering. All of my energy and focus boiled together into a white hot rage that had to find an outlet somehow. To hold it inside any longer probably would have killed me. I was able to control the rage initially, waiting for my moment, but once he said those words out loud, You should have never run away, I truly lost my mind.

Denny was right, you see. I should have never run away.

I ran away from Neil when I should have stayed.

An out of body experience is a strange sensation. You feel very detached and the sounds in the room become muted. Your body floats above the ground and you can see everything so clearly. It happened to me at the bar. I knew it was happening and I welcomed the altered state of my reality with open arms.

I watched myself calmly from above as I morphed into something rather animalistic, a demon that resembled me, pounding away on Denny Tompkins. Anywhere on his body where I could make contact was satisfactory. I hit, and slapped, and scratched. I tried to rip his hair out of his scalp. My red wine was thrown along with my purse and whatever else I could get in my hands to hurl at him.

I could hear a woman screaming in an otherworldly cry. She didn’t even sound human, but the terrible pain and anguish she felt was clear to anyone that heard it.

Eventually, I realized that the woman was me.

Denny got in one good defense blow once the surprise of my attack was over. He shoved me off him and sent me sprawling down to the floor, my body sliding backward, taking out chairs and stools from the force of the fall.

“Get off me you crazy cunt!” he screamed, welts from my scratches rising up on his skin, blood trickling the corner of his mouth. “What the f**k is wrong with you, you f**kin’ whore?!”

“You know what it’s for! You earned it for what you paid Cora to do to Neil. You paid her to lie to us about the baby. I hope you rot in hell, you filthy, degenerate, cocksucker!”

He drew his fist back to strike me but he never got the chance. Neil clocked him in the jaw which took Denny Tompkins down. One punch. Out cold, on the scarred floor of The Racehorse.

Neil scooped me up and carried me out of there. He buckled me into his Rover and drove us away. I cried in the seat beside him and fell into absolute despair.

With each tear that fell, the weight of my anguish grew heavier.

Neil didn’t ask anything of me. He didn’t say anything at all beyond a quick check to see if I was injured. “Are you hurting anywhere?” he asked.

Only my heart. “No. I’m fine. The calm after the storm.”

I didn’t say another word after that, not even a thank you for taking Denny before he could beat me.

He let me be and drove us to my mother’s house.

When he came around to open my door and helped me out, I was grateful, because I was suddenly so exhausted I wasn’t sure I would make it on my own two feet.

I didn’t have to worry about that either.

He carried me inside the house.

I had to close my eyes. It hurt too badly to be so close up against him, to feel his skin, to smell his scent, to look at his beauty, and know that I had given it all away. Given it all away for a lie.

Neil laid me on my bed after pulling off my jacket and scarf. He took off my boots and tucked a coverlet over me. I allowed him to take care of me because I was physically unable to do any of it for myself at that moment.

I rolled onto my side and burrowed under the warm blanket. I slept.

****

The sound of laughter woke me from my sleep back from the dead. I heard Neil talking with my mother. The smooth deep roll of his voice was unmistakable to me. Just something I knew which was buried deep into my memories of the house and our time spent in it together. He’d been there so many times, and helped cook so many dinners, that hearing him gave me a feeling of nostalgia—comfort, from such long known and welcomed memories.

So, he’d stayed here after my meltdown with Denny? I couldn’t imagine why he had. Maybe Mum had pressed him to stay and eat since he wasn’t able to the night before.

Don’t think about that night.

I checked my bedside clock.

I’d been asleep for four hours. What in the hell had they been doing for all of that time I wondered. Well, no, scratch that. I didn’t want to know. The two of them were peas in a pod and they always had been. My mother and Neil had no problem spending time together period.