Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [150]
Panic filled her. She clawed wildly at his face, but he still didn’t let her go. Instead he grabbed hold of her by the hair with his free hand, banging her head against the wall.
Her ears ringing with pain and nausea, Bella sobbed in panic, begging him, ‘Stop it, Alan, please stop it.’ She was crying and too frightened to conceal her terror as Alan dragged her towards the top of the stairs.
‘One push and that would be it,’ he told her. ‘You and that brat you’re carrying would be dead and I’d be free. Trixie wants me really, I know she does. She’s always loved me and she always will. She said so. She’s only got engaged to this other chap because of you.’
He had pushed her back against the banister and was leaning in to her. Bella could hear the wood creaking and moving beneath their combined weight.
Abruptly he swung her round, and away from the banister, so that she had her back to the stairs.
Bella hiccuped in sick relief. Thank God he had come to his senses. He was still holding on to her wrists, manacling both of them now.
She tried to pull them free and then screamed in sick terror as Alan jerked her backwards, causing her to fall off the top step, suspended for a nauseating heartbeat of time in nothing other than the air before he yanked her back to the safety of the stair.
‘That’s it, you go ahead and make me let you go, and then it will be your own fault. I’ll tell them that I tried to calm you down and stop you, but you just went ahead and fell all by yourself.’
He was grinning at her now, a maniacal drunken grin, his eyes savage with his hatred of her.
He was going to do it. He was going to let go of her wrists and push her down the stairs. Bella could see it in his eyes. Sobbing in terror, she was trembling violently. She was going to die. Alan was going to kill her. She felt him release her right wrist. She reached out frantically towards the banister.
Suddenly there were feet on the stairs; an RAF uniform; Jan, his body supporting hers as he punched Alan once and so hard that he collapsed onto the landing like a deflated puppet.
Bella sagged against Jan, too shocked and weak to do anything other than let him take charge. She was trembling so much she could hardly stand, never mind walk, and she had to lean heavily on him. She could smell the scent of his skin and his hair.
He took her into the kitchen and sat her down on a chair.
‘I’ll call your doctor.’
‘No,’ Bella protested. ‘There’s no need.’
‘He would have killed you if I hadn’t come in.’
‘No,’ Bella denied, but she knew that it was true and that in his drunken fury Alan had intended to do just that. Bella, though, had been brought up by a mother who had taught her that appearances were everything, and Bella couldn’t endure the shame of other people knowing what Alan had tried to do.
Now that she was out of danger, all she wanted to do was to pretend that it had never happened. The last thing she wanted was everyone knowing what kind of husband Alan was, and even worse, that he loved someone else and had wanted to leave her.
Alan! She could hear him lurching down the stairs and she looked anxiously towards the door but to her relief he didn’t come into the kitchen, and within a few seconds she heard the front door being slammed behind him as he left.
‘You need to see the doctor and tell him what’s happened,’ insisted Jan.
Bella shook her head and then stopped, wincing. Just moving her head hurt because of the way Alan had banged it against the wall.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she challenged Jan. Now that she was safe, her normal desire to make sure that the refugees knew their place reasserted itself. Far easier to do that