Naomi turned her head to look at her youngest daughter. ‘How do you know?’ she asked.

‘I saw him. I saw him hit you.’

‘No!’ cried Martha angrily before Naomi could speak. ‘Stop it, the pair of you!’

‘I’m not lying,’ said Willow, ‘and nor is Mum. I saw him do it.’

‘Oh Willow, why did you never say anything?’ asked Naomi.

‘Because I was only a child and I thought it was one of those things that happened between grown-ups that was never spoken about. Like catching your parents having sex. You know they do it, but you don’t ever want to think about it or admit to anybody else that they do it.’

‘But why?’ said Martha. ‘I don’t understand. Yes, Dad had a temper, but he wasn’t a violent man. He just wasn’t like that.’

‘What kind of a man do you think hits a defenceless woman?’ asked Naomi.

Martha covered her face with her hands in distress. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ she cried. ‘Just not somebody like Dad. He wasn’t a monster.’

‘No,’ agreed Naomi. ‘He wasn’t. But he was someone who couldn’t always control himself.’ She reached for her eldest daughter’s hand to try and comfort her, but Martha snatched her hand away and pushed it into her coat pocket.

‘When did this all go on?’ she demanded.

‘Throughout most of our marriage,’ Naomi answered matter-of-factly. ‘The first time he hit me, I made him swear he would never do it again, and despite his protestations of remorse and shame, and his promise that he would never repeat what he’d done, he did, time and time again. It was always stress-induced, brought on by some problem at work. I think it had a lot to do with the way he lost his parents when he was so young, suppressed grief perhaps. Whatever the cause, it was beyond his control.’

‘Only recently I remembered you once telling me that,’ said Willow. ‘It was after Rick told me how exactly he’d lost both his parents when he was younger. His father was an alcoholic and was knocked down by a car and then his mother committed suicide. Rick actually found her body.’

Calling to mind how evasive Rick had been about his parents, Naomi said, ‘I did wonder why he was so reluctant to talk about them. But why didn’t you say anything to us?’

‘He didn’t want people to know. He made me promise I’d never tell you.’

Martha frowned. ‘Look, I don’t care about Rick and his parents, but if Dad had a problem, Mum, why didn’t you get help for him?’

There was an undeniable tone of accusation to her question, as if Naomi was at fault. Rather than point out that Martha was falling into the classic trap of blaming the victim, she said, ‘I tried on many occasions to persuade him that counselling might help, but he refused point-blank to consider it. I think he was scared of what inner demons he might be forced to confront.’