A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [120]
But now she felt angry that he couldn’t see she had merely been protecting his feelings with this letter. She was the one who had been virtually cast out because of him. Dan had lost nothing at all. So how dare he get on his high horse about a situation which she had been trying desperately to improve?
‘Perhaps I would be better off without you,’ she snarled angrily at him in the heat of the moment, not stopping to think what she was saying. ‘My life took a downturn the moment I married you.’
The goading, smug look he’d had seconds before vanished. She saw deep hurt replace it, and if she could have clawed back those words, she would have done.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m sorry.’
He raised one eyebrow and just stared at her, not saying a word. Then he turned on his heel and went into the bedroom.
She heard the sound of the wardrobe door opening, but thought he was just getting some clean clothes out to get changed. She decided it was better to leave it for now, and she began to lay the table.
She looked round as he came out of the bedroom, and to her consternation he was just standing on the landing looking at her, his duffel bag in his hand.
He looked exactly as he had when they first met. A bit grubby, hair in need of a wash, stubble on his chin, even the duffel bag was the same one. But he’d smiled all the time that evening, and now his expression was cold and unreadable.
‘I’ll be off now. I’ve left money on the chest of drawers for you. When you go back to Bristol drop a line to the site, and I’ll come and get the rest of my stuff.’
‘You’re leaving me?’ she asked incredulously.
‘It’s better for me to go now than pull you down even further.’
The hurt in his voice matched that in his eyes.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dan,’ she pleaded with him. ‘You know perfectly well I didn’t mean it.’
‘You did, and I can’t really blame you either. It’s true, I have pulled you down.’ He was off down the stairs too fast for Fifi even to attempt to stop him.
‘Come back, Dan,’ she yelled, but the front door slammed and he was gone.
The shock was so great that she just stood on the landing like a statue. She couldn’t believe it. She half expected him to come back in after a few moments and say it was a joke.
He surely couldn’t leave her over something as petty as a letter. Could he?
As the minutes ticked by and he didn’t reappear, she realized he was deadly serious. It wasn’t just that cruel and thoughtless remark, she knew that. It had been building throughout the strain of the past weeks. Her mother’s visit, the letter, the way she treated him last night had all joined together in his head, and her angry words had just topped it off.
She collapsed on to the bed, crying. She could be strong as long as he was by her side, loving her, but without him she would fall apart.
Chapter fourteen
On Monday morning Fifi dragged herself reluctantly out of bed. She had spent the whole weekend alternately crying or looking out of the window in the hope that she’d suddenly see Dan coming down the street, and that everything would be all right again.
But by Sunday night she realized he wasn’t going to come back, and all there was left was the post mortem, apportioning blame for all the incidents that led up to him walking out. She felt she was responsible for almost all of them.
The thought of going back to work today filled her with dread. The other girls were bound to question her about the miscarriage, and maybe about Angela’s death if they’d read about Fifi’s role in the papers. She couldn’t talk to them about all that without revealing Dan had left her. If only she hadn’t been so smug in the past about her happy marriage! It was always ‘Dan does this, or Dan does that,’ as if he was Mr Perfect Husband.
She’d never admitted that her parents disapproved of him, or that their home was just two rooms