Twelve Days The Beginning - By Jade Reyner Page 0,144
He went on. “Only went into your wardrobe to get the wrapping paper and then I got distracted by the smell of your perfume. Finally traced it to this dress that I knew I had never seen before – I definitely would have remembered it if I had. Seemed there wasn’t much to the dress and then when I got closer, I realised that there was something else there, someone else’s scent. An aftershave maybe. So I reckoned that not only did you go out without me dressed like a whore, you must have also cosied up to someone else. A man.” He pulled her hair harder and tighter, pressing his face right up close to hers.
“Didn’t make much sense to start with but I kept thinking that the other scent was familiar. I was going to ask you about it but it was when you were away at that conference so I thought I would just confront you when you got back. Thing was, I called your office to see when you were going to get back and I spoke to a very helpful young lady - Olivia. Seemed you were coming back early, something to do with a fight that a Mr Vaughn Granger had got into whilst defending your honour. And that’s when it hit me. That’s how I knew the scent – that bastard was wearing it when he came to visit me in the hospital – and that’s how I knew that it was him you had been with wearing that dress. The only time I knew that you were with him was at the conference and, as your dress was still here, that must have meant you had been with him another time – when I was in hospital perhaps?” He paused and took a deep breath, exhaling a disgusting smell of alcohol back into her face.
“That’s when I knew that my beautiful Elise had been playing around behind my back.” He jerked her hair back further, pulling it even tighter, continuing to stare, slightly unfocused, into her eyes.
“I knew that you needed to pay. No one plays around on me. Did you really think that I had changed so much that we could just go back to how we were?” She didn’t know if he wanted an answer or not but she chose to remain silent. Her head where he held her hair was really beginning to throb now, not helped by the bump that she had already sustained.
“I admit, I did enjoy the last few days – almost felt like the old times – but that’s not me anymore. It can’t be me. I can’t exist like nice old Dale used to, things have changed too much for me now. This is me now, this is who I am and now you, my beautiful darling wife, are going to pay.”
Abruptly, he released her and she stumbled forwards before he caught her and spun her around pinning her against the hallway wall. The first blow came as no surprise – he had hit her before – but the second one did; he usually only ever hit her once. Registering that he was way beyond any sort of control Elise tried to relax her breathing a bit, allowing herself to calm so that she could begin to escape to the safe space in her head. The place where she went when reality was just too ugly to bear.
She breathed in as deeply as she could, transporting herself to a calm and peaceful lake where the sun was shining, reflecting dappled light across the ripples on the surface. The birds were singing happily and in the distance she could hear children shouting, playing, laughing. The warmth on her face was a tonic and in her mind she turned her head to the light, allowing its soothing rays to soak through her tired brain.
Elise was rousled momentarily as Dale pushed her roughly towards the stairs, a hand on her back guiding her, ensuring that she complied with his wishes. She did. There was little point in doing anything else. In her dreamlike state she was aware of the physical pain but she had become an expert at blotting it out. It was jostling with the tranquillity of the lake for her attention but she didn’t want to grant it access yet – she knew that there was still more to come.
They reached the top of the stairs and Dale’s ugly voice penetrated, his anger far from