I rose from my chair and took a step towards him but he held out his other hand to keep me at bay. When he spoke, he sounded close to tears, his voice low and broken.

‘If you think I’m capable of behaving like that, if I put my hand on your face to show you where I had stitched up a child and you think that makes me some sort of abuser … Seriously, if you think that of me, then why are you even with me?’ He took the hand away from his face then and poured a look on me. His expression was so wounded. ‘You really don’t think very much of me at all, do you? What you’re saying is I’m a really terrible person.’

‘Of course not, I love you, I admire what you do, I think you’re amazing.’

He gave a bitter half-laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I do …’ I approached him then, put my hands on his arms.

He turned his face away. ‘Honestly, Lisa, I was hoping, I was even thinking this might go somewhere, you know, but if you think so little of me, what’s the point?’

I felt the familiar panic then – panic mixed with a weird sort of hope. Was it possible he really didn’t understand how firmly he had held my face? There had been no bruises, after all. Was I exaggerating the whole thing? If I could just make him understand what it had been like for me, perhaps we could get this sorted.

‘You sent me flowers the next day …’ I said. The flowers were an apology. Surely he would concede that. If he hadn’t had something to apologise for, then why send them?

He turned violently then, shaking my hands off where they rested on his arms. ‘So even that’s being held against me now? Well thanks very much, last time I make that mistake.’

I grabbed at his hands with mine, clumsily, clenching his fingers in mine, compressing them in an awkward grasp, and shrieked at him, my voice high and shrill in a way I had never used it before – there was a kind of wild freedom in it, even though I knew it meant I had lost control, a kind of joy in knowing that I could scream at someone that way, that my voice could even make that sound. ‘Please please listen to me! Just listen to me! You’ve got to understand!’

He reached out his right hand and took me by the neck and pushed me across the kitchen until he slammed my back against the doorframe to the bedroom. It all happened so fast. One minute, I was grabbing for his hands, begging him to understand, and the next the breath was slammed out of me as he held me against the doorframe and the edge of it was digging hard into my back. My chin was tipped upwards by his grasp, my breath short. He banged my head back against the doorframe, just once, hard, for emphasis, or as if he was trying to knock a thought out of my skull. His face was very close to mine. ‘Don’t …’ he said, his face contorted with rage. ‘Don’t …’