The muscles in Stephen’s jaw clench. ‘I did it because I love you.’ He holds my gaze and it is written clearly on his face: the deluded belief that it is true.
‘You love me? You tell me my entire family’s dead – that my son is dead – and you call that love?’
The expression on Stephen’s face shifts, like an actor in a Greek tragedy swapping one mask for another. ‘I should have known better. It’s always about you, isn’t it? Other people’s feelings just don’t matter. I used to think you were ungrateful, but now I think you’re just plain selfish.’
There is something in Stephen’s scathing tone that snakes between my ribs and I know I have heard it before. I know – somewhere beyond palpable memory – that this is not the first time Stephen has tried to twist the narrative, cast himself as the victim. I do not know how I have reacted in the past. All I know is that I won’t tolerate it now.
‘This isn’t what love looks like, Stephen. Love is about wanting the best for somebody, not imposing your will on them. It’s not about cutting them off from everything and everyone they care about. You don’t love me. You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
Stephen scowls. ‘You really don’t have a clue, do you—’
‘No, you don’t have a clue. You’ve stolen my entire life from me. You’ve stolen my parents, my sister, my son, my home. You’ve stolen my identity, for god’s sake. And you call that love?’
‘Stop being so melodramatic. I haven’t stolen anything from you. Let’s go home and we can talk things through when you’re less hysterical.’
He grabs hold of my arm, fingers digging into the flesh above my elbow, and it is like a physical memory rushing back to me. I know he has done this before, that this is not the first time his violence has imprinted itself on my skin.
‘Let go of her.’
I whip my head around, see Zahira standing beside me, cheeks flushed with adrenaline.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Take your hands off her or I’m calling the police.’ With one hand Zahira holds the hood of Elyas’s coat. With the other, she pulls out her mobile phone, holds it up in front of Stephen, unblinking in the face of his fury, daring him not to believe that she will do it.
‘This has got nothing to do with you.’ Stephen spits the words at Zahira, his grip tightening on my arm, needles of pain shooting into my flesh.
Courage finds its way into my throat. ‘She’s here because I asked her to be.’ My voice threatens to waver and I breathe fiercely against it, harden the edges of my consonants as if sharpening the tip of a blade. ‘Now get your hands off me.’
There is a momentary pause, like the silence before a storm.
And then Stephen opens his mouth to speak and I notice tiny globules of spit at the corners of his lips as he takes a deep breath, his hand still firmly on my arm, fingers pressing into my skin. ‘You know you’re nothing without me, don’t you?’
His words hiss at me through the cool September air and there is a split second when I sense my whole body flinch, like a visceral memory trained to react in a certain way. Something inside me is paralysed, as though I dare not act for fear of the consequences, numbed by whatever has gone before.
And then I think about Leo, about our enforced separation. I think about my parents and my sister, unaware of what has happened to me. I think of the life I must have led before Stephen tried to mould my personality to fit his twisted needs.
I yank my arm free from his grasp, flesh stinging as if pricked by a thousand pins. ‘Whatever I am without you, it’s got to be better than whatever you’re trying to turn me into.’
He glares at me – such hatred in his eyes – and I force myself to stare back, hold his gaze, refuse to surrender. And it is he, in the end, who looks away first.
I make myself study his face for a few seconds, to be clear in my mind who he is, what he has done. To commit this moment – this feeling – to memory. And then I turn around, link my arm through Zahira’s, breathe against the hammering of my heart, and I start to walk away. I ignore the sound of Stephen’s voice calling behind me, telling me I’m rubbish, I’m hopeless, that I won’t last five minutes without him. I ignore him shouting at me that my life is empty, pointless, that I am weak, pathetic, that I will soon be begging him to take me back. Putting one foot in front of the other, I distance myself from Stephen’s control. I walk away, towards whatever my old life looked like, whatever the past may have held and the future is yet to reveal.
I walk away and I don’t look back.
EPILOGUE
FIVE MONTHS LATER
Snowdrops line the path as I push the buggy through the park. The air is cold, but the February sun is making a valiant attempt to penetrate the chill.
‘Mama! Bir!’
I follow the line of Leo’s pointed finger to the wood pigeon flying overhead, watch it land on a branch ahead of us.
‘Bir-bir!’
Crouching down beside the buggy, I squeeze Leo’s thigh beneath his padded snowsuit. ‘Clever boy. They’re birds, aren’t they? Pigeons. They go coo, coo.’
Leo mimics the shape of my mouth, his lips a perfect circle. ‘Coo! Coo!’ His tongue finds the roof of his mouth and the sound emerges, his face breaking into a wide smile of achievement.
‘That’s it, sweetheart. You’re a pigeon!’ I lean forward, kiss the soft skin of his cheek, the ferocity of my love for him hot in my chest. And yet, even as I watch his wide, trusting smile, I cannot help but worry about the effect on him of the past few months, what implications they may have for his future. Whether those three weeks of my absence will stay with him forever, a fear of abandonment he will never quite lose.
A plane flies overhead and it takes me back in an instant to sitting on the bench beside Dominic as the whole, ugly truth emerged. I think about how the rest of that day unfolded and, even now, I find it hard to recall the details, as though a part of my brain is not yet ready to paint the whole picture.
I remember being back at Zahira’s flat, Zahira sleuthing through Bea’s Facebook profile and finding the veterinary practice where she worked. I remember Zahira phoning Bea, explaining what had happened, and the arrival of Bea and my parents with Leo a few hours later; the rush of tears, embraces, questions, answers. I remember, most of all, the feeling of Leo being placed in my arms: a feeling beyond words, beyond language, my heart expanding like a giant red star until I thought it would explode. So much love, such a fervent desire to protect him. I hadn’t known, until that moment, there was such capacity within me.
‘Swi-, Mama, swi-!’ Leo points a finger in front of him, as though he has every confidence that he knows the way.
‘You want to go on the swings? We’re heading to the playground now, sweetheart.’
He kicks his legs with excitement, claps his hands, and I take hold of the buggy, continue our journey.
It wasn’t until the day after I got home to Mum and Dad’s, when the police came to take a statement, that the full story began to emerge. How I had been born Anna Olivia Nicholson but that everyone had always called me Livvy. How my married name was Anna Olivia Bradshaw, that this was the name on my driving licence, my bank cards, the NHS register. How all Dominic had to do was allow the doctors to call me by a first name I had never used and thereby compound the confusion from my amnesia. My Facebook profile was still in my maiden name because I had used it so rarely since getting married that I’d found no cause to update it. It was one of the police officers who pointed out that Dominic had managed to create further disorientation by copying what I’d been doing most of my life: swapping his second name for his first. Dominic Stephen Bradshaw. Making me call him by a name that would have felt foreign on my tongue. He’d known there was little chance of me uncovering the truth, given how vigilantly he was isolating me from the rest of the world.