Everything they owned was packed up in the back of the car, which wasn’t very much: clothes, toys, bedding. Everything had come with the flat, even the cutlery in the drawer. Dayal was asleep in his car seat with his dummy teetering between open lips. Neena had left a note on the kitchen table apologising to her landlord for the quick departure. She couldn’t afford to pay him to the end of the month; her apology would have to do. The car’s tank was filled up and a cheap hotel room awaited them seventy miles away. She would drive through the night, but not before she got what she deserved.

Richard’s home was far bigger than she imagined. The house had more sashed windows than the front of her apartment building, with ivy growing up the brickwork and groomed around the windows and the large front door. Cars worth more money than she had earned in her entire working life occupied a long gravel driveway. Richard had all of this wealth, and yet he was still extorting her father to feed his greed. He expected to walk away after setting her life ablaze and leaving her in the ashes without repercussions.

Neena checked Dayal was still asleep and got out of the car. She wouldn’t have dreamed of doing something as bold as this before – but now she was driven by the instinctive need to protect her son.

She walked up to the front door and banged on the stained glass with her fist. As the seconds passed, she wondered if it would be Richard answering the door or his bruised wife, then began to fear that it might be their daughter, an innocent victim amongst them all.

A silhouette formed in the hallway behind the coloured glass. As it approached, she recognised his height and build.

The door opened and she barged through and into the hallway.

‘Neena?’

‘You’re a monster,’ she said. She didn’t know herself; it was as though another person was striding down the hallway and shouting over her shoulder.

She walked into a large, grand kitchen with marble worktops and designer wallpaper on the walls.

Richard followed behind her and stood at the threshold of the room.

‘It wasn’t my idea,’ he said. ‘I never wanted to hurt you.’

‘Then why did you?’

He stood in the doorway with his head down and his arms crossed.

‘Tell me,’ she said as she approached him. ‘Tell me why you recorded us having sex and then sent it to my father.’

As she looked up at him, she hated herself for still wanting him, even as her whole world crumbled around her. His lips, his eyes, his stature, he was beautiful, but only on the outside. Inside, he was evil. She wondered what he did to his first mistress, and what evil thought had provoked him to hit his own wife.

‘I didn’t have a choice.’