What Have I Done

Ten years ago



Mark spooned the asparagus onto his plate and proffered the bowl to Lydia, who was sitting to his right.

‘So, Lyds, how’s the revision going?’

‘Not too bad. Struggling with Latin and Chemistry, but getting A stars in Art.’

‘That’s great, but art isn’t exactly a career choice, is it? I’m sure your brother could give you a hand, eh, Dom? There’s no point in having a good academic brain and not sharing it!’

Dominic glared at his father and gritted his teeth.

‘Sure.’

His smile was fleeting and forced and for a split second Kathryn thought he looked a bit like her. For some reason this gave her a jolt of joy.

Lydia was incensed. ‘That’s a crap thing to say, Dad. There are plenty of careers that involve art! I could work in graphic design, illustration, fashion and a gazillion others – what you mean is it’s not a career that you would like me to go into!’

‘I never said that, Lyds.’

Mark flung his hand to his breast, feigning hurt.

‘Darling, I honestly don’t mind what you do as long as it makes you happy – and makes you money! And I don’t want you to feel pressurised by the fact that you are being given an education that most people would kill for. It’s perfectly okay to take that expensive tutoring and put it to best use by colouring in pictures all day.’

‘God, I knew it!’

Lydia threw down her fork in protest.

‘Lydi, I’m joking, kind of. If art becomes your thing then you must follow your dream, but you can’t neglect other subjects that might help you achieve that dream, that is all I am saying. For example, if you want to run an art gallery, you will need an understanding of commerce and marketing. Graphic designers still have to work to a budget and be aware of material constraints and so forth.’

He ruffled his daughter’s hair.

Lydia grinned at her smart dad.

Mark changed tack and kept the teenage duo amused with his impersonations and stories of his colleagues, their tutors. Kathryn thought this was most inappropriate. It was not the way to teach the kids respect for other people, but she was not about to raise that at the dinner table.

‘So, I expect everyone has been nattering about the big award, have they?’

Dominic looked blankly at his father.

‘What award?’ Slivers of salmon fell from his lips and back onto his plate.

‘Please do not talk with your mouth full, Dom, it’s disgusting.’

Everyone ignored Kathryn’s comment.

‘The Excellence in Education awards. I am to be named Headmaster of the Year. Ta da! There’ll be a swanky all-expenses-paid do at a posh hotel in London, which will be very good publicity for the school. Governors are over the moon. It’ll be in all the Sundays…’

Dominic snorted through his nose.

‘Actually, Dad, no, I haven’t heard it mentioned. Have you, Lyd?’

She shook her head. ‘Nup.’

Kathryn tucked her lips inward and bit down to stop herself interjecting, but she was dying to know what ‘nup’ meant and where it had come from. However, having already commented on Dominic’s eating habits, she didn’t want to wade into Lydia about her speech, didn’t want to give them any more ammunition, didn’t want to be continually branded as the baddy. There were lots of things that she didn’t want.

Dominic was still snorting.

‘So, Dad, if you’re going to a swanky do, are you going to take a swanky bird with you? I mean, you can’t turn up with Mum!’

‘Once again, Dominic, I feel I should point out that I am actually here, sitting at this table in the room and not absent. I am also not deaf, so please refrain from talking about me as if I am either or both.’

Everyone ignored her and a curious thought struck her: maybe she was invisible.

Dominic’s statement caused her husband to roar with laughter whilst shaking his head in mock disapproval.

‘You might have a point, Dom, but who would you suggest I take?’

He winked at his daughter, reassuring her that it was all just a bit of banter, good fun, no harm intended.

‘Dunno, you could always dust Judith off and give her an airing.’

This made Mark roar even louder.

‘Oh my God, please! Judith!’

He pushed his plate away and feigned being sick.

‘That has really made me lose my appetite!’

Dominic then piped up.

‘It’s a shame Natasha Mortensen has left. She would have done you proud, Dad! I can just see her frock now, Oxfam meets Tinkerbell.’

Mark gave an exaggerated shudder of revulsion.

‘Oh please, Dominic, I will have no mention of that grotesque lesbian.’

‘Actually, she is not a lesbian. In fact she was sleeping with Dr Whittington the whole time that she was here; may in fact still be seeing him for all we know.’

Kathryn didn’t know where the idea to say this aloud had come from, or the actual voice, but one thing was sure: she now knew that she wasn’t invisible as all three members of her family stared at her in surprise.

‘No way!’ was her son’s response.

‘Lucky Ms Mortensen, he’s a total dish.’

It was Lydia’s retort that caused Mark’s eyebrows to rise the highest. He said nothing.

For the second time that evening Kathryn turned her lips inward and bit down. She hated them being so mean and openly mocking of her friend, and Natasha had also been very kind to each of them in different ways. It felt nasty and she hated nasty.

‘How was your day, darling?’

It took a split second for Kathryn to realise that she was being spoken to.

‘Oh! Sorry, I was miles away. Fine. Good, thanks. Fine.’

‘Fine. Good, thanks. Fine! There we have it, kids, the engaging description of how your mother spent eight hours while the rest of us toiled over dog-eared pages.’

Mark’s comment was clever. Not only did Kathryn recognise it as a cruel and pointed reference to her love of reading and the fact that while every other individual in the school had access to hundreds of books, her passion was denied her, but it also told her children that her life was pointless, wasted. Instead of retorting, she busied herself with clearing the table. The scraping of plates was always a good diversion.



Dominic and Mark had taken a cricket ball to the nets. Lydia, however, remained slumped in her chair, observing her mum with a furrowed brow.

‘Why do you do that, Mum?’

‘Do what, Lydia?’

‘I can’t really describe it, but it’s like you don’t listen to what’s going on around you. You should try to join in more; it would make everything so much easier.’

‘Easier for who, Lyds?’

‘Well, all of us actually. You never find Dad’s jokes funny and he really tries. I know he can be a bit of a chauvinist, but he doesn’t mean it. He’s just being Dad.’

Kathryn sat down opposite her daughter; the plates could wait. She swallowed her automatic response, ‘Oh, he means it, darling. He means it more than you could ever know.’

Her daughter wasn’t done.

‘And like when we are on holiday, it would be so much better if you did what we did, if you joined in more. I hate it when we are all in the sea just mucking about and I look up and you’re sitting on the beach on your own looking fed up. You have never, ever come swimming or even for a dip! You shouldn’t be so self-conscious, Mum. No one cares if you’ve got cellulite or whatever, lots of old people have it. We would rather see your cellulite than have you sitting on the beach in your linen skirt every day. It’s like you’re Victorian and can’t show off your body! You make yourself more obvious by never getting undressed.’

Lydia let out a long sigh.

Kathryn looked at her daughter in earnest.

‘What do you think of me, Lydia?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean, when you look at me, what do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

Lydia poked her tongue out of the side of her mouth; it was her thinking face. Kathryn watched her strike a similar pose whenever there was a paintbrush in her hand.

‘Well, I don’t think much…’

‘Charming!’ Kathryn swatted at her girl with the end of a dish cloth.

‘No, I don’t mean it in that way. I mean, it’s never a shock or surprise to see you because you are always there and you have always been there, obviously.’

‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not, Lyds!’

‘When I look at you, I see my mum and so I don’t think much beyond that. You are just Mum, always there and always doing… something. You are like background noise or my favourite pillow. I don’t have to look for you or think about you much because you are always there, but in a good way.’

‘Background noise, but in a good way?’ Kathryn was struggling to find the positive.

‘Yeah. It’s like, you could be really bad background noise – like, say, one of those naff boy bands, or classical music, which I really hate. But you’re not; you are background noise like something soothing or a lovely smell, baked cookies or jam. Which is really cool.’

‘So I am cool?’

Lydia snorted her laughter through her nose and rolled her eyes.

‘God! No! Mum, you are so not cool. Even hearing you say that is funny!’

‘Right.’

Kathryn rubbed at her eyes and tucked her hair behind her ears. She didn’t like the verbal cul de sac into which they had talked themselves; it was three-point-turn time.

‘Okay, Lydia, let’s move away from jammy-scented background noise and let me put it another way. When I say what do you think of me, I mean more explicitly, would you like to live my life?’

Lydia was silent, thinking. Her mother prompted her further still.

‘A good example would be that when I was your age, I was sure that I would teach English. That was always my ambition. I’ve always loved books and I always thought I’d be a really good teacher. I got a first in English and I sometimes think it’s a shame that I’ve never put it to good use.’

‘Why haven’t you?’

How to answer that? What to say? Neutral, watered down, diluted, agreeable: she had to find the words that fitted the formula.

‘I don’t really know, Lyds. I guess life just got in the way.’

It would have to suffice as an explanation; it would have to suffice, for now. Kathryn again tried to steer the conversation.

‘Want I want you to do, Lydia, is to picture yourself in your forties. What does your life look like?’

Her daughter let out a deep sigh and lowered her voice in pitch and volume. Imagined or otherwise, it made the whole conversation smack of conspiracy. She looked at her mother through lowered lashes.

‘It’s hard because that is like so old, but I know I want to be in great shape. I’d like to look like Luca and Guido’s mum.’

Kathryn resisted the temptation to point out that with the same surgeon and if she didn’t touch a carb for twenty-five years, she could.

‘Plus, I guess, Mum, that I wouldn’t want my life to be quite as ordered as yours, you know, not quite so predictable. I think that I would like more variety. I know that I will always paint, but apart from that one constant, I’ll probably move around a bit, meet new people, go to different countries, have new experiences and fall in love a lot. I guess I think that unless you try everything, you might settle for the wrong thing and then you might be stuck. I don’t want to get stuck, Mum. I like the idea of not really knowing what I might be doing one year to the next. That would make it feel as if my life was an adventure and not just happening around me, if that makes any sense. I don’t think that I want to be married and having to look after people in the way that you look after us and Dad. No offence or anything, I mean, you are really good at it!’

Kathryn could only nod and swallow the internal tears that slid from her nose down the back of her throat, rendering speech impossible. In her head she was saying, ‘None taken, my darling, clever girl. You’re right, try everything! Go everywhere, never settle for anything that isn’t the best possible thing for you! Make good choices! Make the right choices! Have an adventure! Don’t get stuck…’

It was a massive relief to hear her daughter’s words. Kathryn knew that her little girl would be just fine, no matter what happened.



It was nearly bedtime, an hour that always seemed to come round much too quickly. In earlier years she would try and delay going up to bed, but this only postponed the inevitable and angered her husband more.

Kathryn trod the stairs, changed into her familiar white cotton garb and waited.

Mark bent down as he walked past the end of the bed and inhaled her scent.

‘Your hair smells of fish.’

She winced, remembering running her fingers through her hair after touching the salmon and knowing what that might mean. She was embarrassed. No matter how routine, it was still humiliating to receive negative and nasty comments.

‘That was an interesting revelation about Miss Mortensen earlier and I am surprised that you found it appropriate to raise it not only at the supper table, but also in front of the children.’

Kathryn knew that it was better to say nothing, although the temptation to point out that he frequently raised far more inappropriate topics at the dinner table and in front of the ‘children’, one of which she knew for a fact was sexually active and smoked like a chimney.

‘Tonight you will read to me. I know how much you like reading.’

He smiled briefly at his wife, who was kneeling and waiting in her regular pose.

While Mark showered, her heart lifted slightly at the prospect of reading, albeit aloud. She was unsure how she should react. If she showed any joy at the task, he would surely be angry, yet indifference could provoke the same reaction. She needn’t have worried. There was to be no joy in the task, none at all.

She rose shakily from her kneeling position as Mark handed her the book. He unfastened his dressing gown and indicated the ladder-backed chair that he had placed by his side of the bed. Kathryn handled the weighty tome and read the title: The Iliad. Her fatigue and desolation felt overwhelming. She was tired and the idea of having to plough through that particular text at that time of night felt like she had a mountain to climb.

Mark positioned himself centrally on the bed, lying face down with this head on his raised forearms, his face averted. She opened the first page and tried not to look at the plump pillow next to her husband’s head, to which her eyes were powerfully drawn.

She started to read, struggling to find a rhythm as the unfamiliar words formed on her tongue.

Sing, Goddess, sing of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus –

that murderous anger which condemned Achaeans

to countless agonies and threw many warrior souls

deep into Hades, leaving their dead bodies

carrion food for dogs and birds

— all in fulfilment of the will of Zeus.

Kathryn was not sure how long had passed. It felt like hours, but was in reality just one hour, singular. She shivered as the chilly breeze swept along the floor, rushed under the door and gathered in a swirling current around her feet and calves, causing her whole body to jerk and twitch with cold.

The raffia chair seat had started to bite into her thighs through the thin white cotton of her nightgown and was stinging her cuts. The desire to stand, to change position and ease her suffering was strong. The words started to blur. Each letter became a blackened mote on the pale page: no longer distinguishable as words, they were merely smudges and shapes that swam before her eyes, making the deciphering of each syllable and stanza almost impossible. Her head sat heavy on her neck, like a meatball supported by spaghetti; it wobbled and sought refuge by sinking to her chest. Her throat was parched, each word a dry husk. She wanted to drink, but mostly she wanted to sleep.

Her eyes were itchy and sore, and cramp crept along her forearms as they protested at holding the heavy book unsupported for that length of time. She had endured a long day, a busy day, like every day. She wanted to close her eyes, just for a second…

Bang! The two noises woke her simultaneously, followed by a sharp pain. The first sound had been the smack of her skull against the back rung of the chair and the second was the scream of surprise and fear that had jumped from her throat as she was unexpectedly wrenched from her dream. The pain was her head, protesting from being smacked with force against the wooden bar. Her breath came in shallow pants; she must have fallen asleep, just for a second.

‘Everything all right, Dad?’ Dominic shouted through the closed door, alerted by the scream.

‘Yes, son, go back to sleep. I think Mummy had a bad dream.’

The creak of the floorboards signalled Dominic’s return to bed.

I’m living a bad dream… Kathryn pursed her lips, resisting the temptation to either utter this or, worse still, scream again, scream for help, for escape.

The book had fallen shut on her lap. Mark stood over her and was holding her by the hair, keeping her head upright. He spoke softly, his face invisible, above her, slightly behind her.

‘It would not be advisable to wake the children again, Kathryn. When I said tonight you will read to me, I meant tonight you will read to me, not some of the night but all of the night, is that clear, darling?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice sounded croaky.

‘Good.’ He bent low and kissed her mouth.

‘That’s my good girl. I think maybe we should go over the last few pages, who knows how much you have missed.’

He let go of her hair and walked over to his chest of drawers. After rummaging among his underwear, he produced a silk scarf with a tasselled fringe. She stared at it, dreading what might come next.

‘Sit back, sweetie.’

She sat bolt upright.

Mark took the scarf and wound it around her forehead and under her chin. Taking the ends, he tied them to the frame of the chair. She was anchored and fast, unable to turn her head.

‘You may start reading again now, Kathryn.’

For the second time that night he lay face down on the mattress and made himself comfortable, again with his face averted. The instant rise and fall of his back hinted that he might be sleeping; this was probably the case, but she couldn’t take the risk. The only way to see the text was to lift the book up to eye level, with her arms at right angles. The cramp came quickly, but she had no option other than to try and ignore it.

Achilles, interrupting Agamemnon, shouted:

‘I’d be called a coward, a nobody,

if I held back from any action

because of something you might say.

Order other men about. Don’t tell me

what I should do. I’ll not obey you any more.

But I will tell you this – remember it well –

I’ll not raise my hand to fight about that girl,

no, not against you or any other man.

You Achaeans gave her to me, and now,

you seize her back again. But you’ll not take

another thing from my swift black ship –

you’ll get nothing else with my consent.

If you’d like to see what happens, just try.

My spear will quickly drip with your dark blood.’

Kathryn fought to maintain the unnatural position, struggling against the desire to wrench herself free from the silk binds. She was grateful for one thing: with his face averted, she could cry silent tears as she sounded aloud the words into the dawn.

The alarm as usual heralded the start of another day. Her eyes, red and aching, were running; she was no longer consciously crying, but it was as if her very soul was shedding tears. Her speech was slurred with the confusion of a drunkard. Her cramped muscles and painful limbs had simply numbed themselves, and to move even slightly was agony.

Her husband almost sprang from the bed and performed an elaborate stretch whilst yawning to indicate a sleep well had. He walked slowly over to the chair and untied the silk scarf. Her head fell forward involuntarily and felt surprisingly light and unstable, as if her neck had forgotten how to support its weight unaided.

Mark reached for her hand and helped her stand. As her legs became separated from the raffia, the pain was intense, as though her skin and the chair base had become fused and to remove one from the other meant undergoing the agony of dissection.

‘Come.’

He gave the usual command, the one word with which he could summon or direct. She followed his lead, too weak in every sense to protest or resist. He laid her face down on the bed and took his pleasure in his usual violent way. With her body prostrate against the mattress, her face felt the softness of the pillow and she fell into a deep sleep that rendered her immobile and removed from what was occurring.

He tapped her cheek with his palm, rousing her into consciousness.

‘Shower time for me and you must get breakfast for the children. We are running a couple of minutes behind schedule and so no shower for you today, Mrs Sleepyhead.’

Kathryn stripped the bed and stepped into her clothes, exhaustion rendering her weak and unsteady. She teetered on the stairs and had to clasp the banister rail to ensure she didn’t fall. She put the bedclothes into the washing machine and started to lay the table, fishing around in the cupboard like a blind woman groping for cereal boxes, bread, honey and anything else that she considered necessary for a good start to the day.

Dominic was the first to appear. She looked at him and waited for his comment. She searched for her happy voice, for that false brightness that dispatched her children each morning with a sense that all was right with the world. But try as she might, she couldn’t find it.

‘Oh my God! You look like total shit.’

She nodded and fought to swallow the tears that had gathered behind her swollen eyes. Still no words came. She implored him with her eyes: Please, Dominic, please be kind to me today.

‘What’s going on, are you ill, Mum? Is that what this is?’

‘Yes, probable.’

She had meant to say more, she had meant to say ‘probably’, but the exhausted state in which she was trying to function made even the smallest of tasks impossible.

Her son took a seat at the table. Kathryn reached for the teapot and poured clear hot water into his mug.

‘You forgot to put the tea bags in.’

Dominic stared at her with a lack of understanding and something bordering concern.

‘It’s okay, Mum, I’ll do it.’

He stood and emptied the water into the sink and filled the kettle, ready to start the process again.

‘Is this anything to do with last night?’

She stared at him, mouthing silently, not knowing how to respond or where to start.

He continued. ‘You know, the bad dream you had?’

There was something about the flicker of his pupils, the irregular rhythm to his breath that told her he hadn’t bought the bad dream story.

‘Yes, Dom, just a bad dream.’ She smiled at him.

‘It will all be okay, Mum. Don’t worry.’

‘Will it, Dominic?’

‘I hope so, Mum, I really do. I hate to see you like this. Sometimes I wish I could make things better for you. I just don’t know how.’

Her sweet boy. She nodded her thanks and wandered over to the washing machine.



With her wicker basket under her arm, Kathryn stood in the garden in front of the washing line and allowed the start of the working day to wash over her. It went some way to restoring her mind, the feel of the early morning sun against her skin and the slight breeze that lifted her hair and let it settle again. She breathed in deeply and tried to heal herself from the inside out.

Kathryn reached into the basket and caressed the wooden pegs that had spilled from their bag and now sat on top of the linen. A picture of her mother swam in front of her eyes; she looked concerned. Kathryn shook her head and blinked her mother away.

The pegs sat in her palm, they knew what came next. She placed three of them in her mouth and with Peggy in her hand, pulled the large white sheet taut, anchoring it with the precious wooden splints, removing them from their floral holding pen, one by one.

‘Good morning, Mrs Brooker!’

‘Good morning, Mrs Bedmaker!’

For some reason, call it hysteria or despair, today this made her laugh. Not just the subtle chuckle or smirk of an adult in the know, oh no, it was a full chortle that was almost a combination of crying and laughing. She didn’t really know where it came from.

‘Morning, George! Morning, Piers!’

She dissolved once again into laughter, shaking her head to try and regain composure as her tears continued to fall.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Brooker?’

‘Yes, thank you for asking, quite all right.’

She mopped at her eyes with her sleeve.

‘Have you had a good night, Mrs Brooker?’

She looked at the daring George Nicholls, whose bravado would be common-room gossip by break time. She could hear the whisper now: ‘And then she said, “Quite all right,” and then he said, “Did you have a good night?” I swear to God he did, because Piers was there and he heard him and my best friend’s sister is going out with his brother and he told her and she told me! Can you believe that he said that? And what did she say?’

Kathryn thought long and hard. What should she say? Come on, Kathryn, think! You’re becoming folklore. Think smart, say something, for goodness’ sake. Speak, Mrs Bedmaker!

‘Oh, you know, George, the usual – up all night.’

She gathered her basket and winked at him briefly before turning on her heel and treading the path back towards the kitchen and her breakfasting family.

George and Piers stared at each other. This was bloody gold dust!

She opened the door and the three members of her family paused from their cereal munching and conversing to stare at her.

‘Morning, everyone!’

She had found her happy voice, just in time.

Lydia abandoned her spoon in its murky bowl.

‘Blimey, Mum, you look like total—’

‘Yes, I know.’ She cut her daughter short. ‘I really don’t need an unfavourable analysis from you on how awful I look this morning, thank you, Lydia. I would like to propose that if we can’t say kind and nice things in the mornings then we say nothing at all, how about that?’

Kathryn restored the wicker basket to its usual position. The family were unnaturally quiet behind her. She glanced at them all as she returned to the table and reached for the teapot.

‘Well,’ she commented as she filled her cup, ‘that was easy.’

Both children seemed to lose their appetite in the strange, edgy atmosphere. In silence they scraped their chairs on the wooden floor, pushed bowls of half-eaten cereal to the middle of the table for collection by their waitress mother later, and sloped out of the door. Heavy bags were carelessly slung onto backs, weighing down fragile shoulders and banging against bony spines.

‘Did someone get out of bed the wrong side this morning?’ Mark’s tone was almost sing-song.

Her smile was thin as she acknowledged her husband’s comment.

‘Yes.’ She nodded.

She looked at his eyes, which were bright and animated. She had so many questions for him, so much that she wished she had the courage to say. Her very first question, the one that hovered at the front of her mind, would be: ‘Are you mad, Mark? Is this where this comes from? Are you insane? Do you know that you are mad, or do you think that you are not? It surely has to be madness that drives you. It has to be an unsound mind, a cruel and mad disposition that drives you to do those unspeakable things to me. Where does it come from, Mark? Did someone do bad things to you? Where do these ideas germinate? Does your behaviour bring you joy or sadness? It brings me sadness, Mark; it brings me great sadness. You have taken the person that I was and you have slowly dismantled me over the years until this is all that is left, this shell, this casing, that used to house a person. It used to house me, but me is gone and the husk is all that is left. I am gone and you have done that to me. Why me, Mark? Why did you pick me? I had so much to offer, I had so much to give. I had a life…’

Her husband continued. ‘Well, an early night for you tonight, my darling.’

She nodded at the comment, which was heavy with connotation. She felt an overwhelming urge to cry; it was tiredness, she knew. She found it so much harder to cope when she was exhausted.

Kathryn downed two cups of very strong coffee, knowing that she would need it as fuel to get through the day’s chores. Failing to complete the requisite chores meant a dire end to the week. On Sunday nights Mark would sit with a checklist that he would print off from the computer. If a tick could not be applied to each chore that was listed, alphabetically, then each chore without a tick would earn her one point. That could mean as many as six or seven extra points.

Chores for Wednesday began with the polishing of all ‘best shoes’, or ‘chapel shoes’ as they were also known. This meant a good coat of wax polish and then a stiff brush followed by a shine with a soft cloth, for four pairs of shoes, one per family member. She then had to change the water in all the vases of fresh flowers, to avoid that nasty rotting smell; plump all cushions; remove all the objects and detritus from the kitchen dresser, wash and dust each item as appropriate, and return them to their correct positions after dusting the shelves and wiping out the cupboards; polish all the mirrors until they were smear-free and shiny; and rake the shingle on the front driveway to ensure that it was as evenly dispersed as possible, removing any litter or other objects that might be lurking under those tiny stones.

Kathryn had in the past tried lying about the chores. She recalled one particular Sunday night when Mark had been reading from his checklist. His modus operandi was to read out the chore and the day and wait for her to reply ‘Done’ or ‘Fail’. That night he was standing behind her as she knelt, and read, ‘Cleaning on top and inside of medicine cabinets, Friday’. She knew that she hadn’t done it; she had been distracted and had simply forgotten. So she lied. To avoid being cut, she lied and said, ‘Done’.

He had swiftly and accurately swiped her around the side of the head with the clipboard, the plastic corner of which cut her just below her left eye. A single drop of blood ran down her cheek and dripped onto the shoulder of her nightgown. Mark had broken one of his own cardinal rules: never to hurt her where it would show or require explanation.

‘Look what you made me do!’ He was furious. ‘Do not ever lie to me.’

He pulled her face towards him by gripping her chin in his fist.

‘What is this?’

In his hand was a small ball of rolled-up newspaper, no bigger than a large grape.

‘It… it’s newspaper,’ she stammered.

‘Correct. And do you know where I hid it?’

She shook her head, although she could have made an educated guess.

‘I placed it on top of the medicine cabinet, and in the dust that sits there I wrote the word ‘filthy’ with the tip of my finger. And do you know what I saw when I went there earlier today?’

Again she shook her head, knowing that despite asking her questions, he didn’t really want her to give him the answers, it was all part of the game.

‘This ball of paper was still there and so was my word, “filthy”. Not only do you expect this family to live in total squalor but you are also a liar. That is very bad indeed.’

Kathryn for some reason could see the humour in the fact that Mark’s definition of total squalor was that there was a film of dust on top of the medicine cabinet.

Ten minutes later, however, she found very little humour in anything as his punishment had been exacting and deliberate.