A Man of Honour. Caroline Anderson

      ‘The coffee-jug—ouch!’

      ‘Sorry. It’s a good job it was empty.’ She probed again, and he flinched. ‘There’s a bit of glass left in there, and it’ll need a stitch. Do you want to go down to A and E?’

      He peered up at her from under his eyebrows. ‘Can’t you do it?’

      She looked doubtful. ‘I can, but—I might leave a scar.’

      ‘Shame,’ he said softly. ‘Just stitch it, Helen.’

      She took him into the treatment-room and made him get on the couch.

      ‘Don’t bother with the lignocaine,’ he told her as she picked up the syringe. ‘If it’s only one stitch it’ll hurt less just to do it.’

      She shrugged and washed her hands, then opened the suture pack, swabs and antiseptic before pulling on gloves. It was his head, she reasoned. If he wanted it stitched without a local, so be it. And anyway, he was probably right, a local anaesthetic did hurt.

      She lifted out the glass and swabbed the cut with antiseptic, and he winced and flinched.

      ‘Sorry—that’s probably the worst bit.’

      ‘God, I hope so,’ he said with a weak attempt at humour. ‘It brings the tears to your eyes.’

      ‘Just tough it out, cowboy,’ she told him firmly. ‘You wanted it this way—OK, hang on, here it comes.’

      He didn’t move a millimetre, but she could see the muscle jumping in his jaw and knew it was hurting him.

      ‘OK, all done,’ she said seconds later, and snipped the suture.

      He sagged back against the couch and shot her a weak smile. ‘Thanks.’

      ‘My pleasure.’

      ‘Sadist.’

      She snorted and wiped the skin around the cut dry before putting on a couple of butterfly sutures each side of the stitch. ‘It was your idea to play the hero,’ she told him laughingly.

      ‘Hmm. Remind me next time not to bother,’ he said with a smile, and her stupid heart went into overdrive again.

      She turned away, clearing up the debris from her suturing, and he was so quiet she thought he’d fallen asleep. Then his hand rested lightly on her arm and turned her towards him.

      ‘About yesterday…’

      She forced herself to meet his eyes.

      ‘What about it?’

      ‘I’m sorry I got ratty. It’s just—the furniture was a bit of an issue in the past. You just hit a nerve. I’m sorry I was short with you.’

      All the lectures she had given herself over the past twenty-four hours went out of the window at a stroke. She knew the smile must have lit up her eyes, but there was nothing she could do about it.

      ‘Forget it,’ she told him. ‘I thought it must be something I’d said or done to irritate you ——’

      ‘No. No, Helen, it was nothing to do with you. You’ve been marvellous.’

      He sat up and swung his legs over the side, and his mouth quirked into that fleeting smile again.

      ‘Forgive me?’

      ‘Of course I forgive you,’ she said softly, and wondered if her heart would stand the strain of that wretched smile.

       CHAPTER THREE

      THE police came and interviewed Tom and Helen, and then talked to Judy Fulcher who was still very shaken but clearly so familiar with the pattern of her husband’s behaviour that she was unsurprised.

      The only surprising thing, she told Helen, was that he had waited so long. However, even under pressure from the police she refused to press charges.

      ‘If he goes to prison, he’ll kill me when he gets out,’ she explained, and behind her matter-of-fact delivery Helen sensed a deep-rooted terror.

      Instead of going off duty as she had planned, Helen sat and talked to Judy, letting her pour out all her troubles, and gradually a picture built up of a long-term pattern of abuse, both physical and mental, that had turned Judy into the submissive, diffident woman that Helen had been nursing for the past week.

      Helen promised her that the medical social worker would come and talk to her in the morning, and that if she didn’t want to return to her husband she wouldn’t need to.

      Again, Judy felt that there was no way she could escape from him, that if she left him he would find her and kill her.

      ‘It’s not that he’s deliberately cruel,’ she explained. ‘It’s just that he’s got definite ideas, and if I agree with him that’s fine, but if I want anything different—like this sex thing. I’ve been feeling awful for months, but still he insisted. When I finally told him I couldn’t stand it any more, he started going off with other women—prostitutes, mainly. So I let him do it with me after that—well, people were talking. Anyway, it’s hardly the first time.’

      Helen didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. Now she had started, Judy talked for hours, and it was nearly ten o’clock before she felt able to leave her.

      She went into the sister’s office and found Tom, slouched in a chair, reading a weighty textbook.

      ‘You’re still here!’ she said, surprised.

      He put the book down and smiled fleetingly. ‘I was waiting for you. I went and got a book—it looked like a long job.’

      Helen nodded and sank into the other chair. ‘Yes. God, what a coil, Tom. That man is a complete bastard.’

      Tom gave a wry chuckle. ‘Tell me about it! I’ve got a hole in my head that says so.’

      She looked at the cut, now swelling and colouring well, and shook her head. ‘It looks sore.’

      ‘Surprise, surprise,’ he murmured. ‘Are you OK, by the way? I gather he threw you on the floor.’