‘He lied about everything! His name, his wife, his life! No doubt he’ll lie about what happened here tonight as well. But I saw what he did. I saw him kill her.’

‘But Mrs Chandler,’ says Robson, leaning in and tilting her head to one side. ‘It wasn’t her body we found. It was his.’

29

I feel like I’m falling, as if I’ve jumped out of an aeroplane without a parachute, turning and tumbling through the air, waiting for someone to catch me.

How can that be? That’s impossible. I saw him strike Vanessa with my own two eyes.

Just like you saw your mother strike your father, says a voice from somewhere far away.

I’ve spent years denying it. Wanting to protect her. But despite not wanting to go there, I can see Mom trying desperately hard not to make a sound as Dad holds her by the hair and knees her in the stomach. She falls to the floor, wheezing for breath, as he kicks her with his steel-capped boots.

‘Get away from her!’ I scream, launching myself onto his back.

But my strength is no match for his and he throws me off, sending me crashing like a ragdoll into the Formica worktop.

‘I hate you,’ I scream, as he comes at me with a raised hand.

‘No!’ yells my mother, rushing at us, with a fear in her eyes unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. ‘If you ever touch my children, I’ll kill you.’

My father momentarily doubles over, instinctively holding a hand to his hip. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he sees that his fingers are covered in blood.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Mom, dropping the knife and backing herself up against the kitchen wall. She looks at me with tears in her eyes. ‘Go!’ she says.

I shake my head, refusing to leave her side. ‘Go, Naomi!’ she implores. ‘Now.’

The next thing I remember, I’m sitting at the bottom of the stairs while the paramedics fight to save Mom’s life as she lies motionless on the kitchen floor.

I can hear the snip of the scissors as they cut her clothes away from her wound, feel the sense of urgency as they frantically try to resuscitate her. But all I can see are the red-starred sneakers that she’d promised me just minutes before, hoping and praying that they’ll move.

‘She came at me,’ cries Dad from the next room as the tiny wound in his side is being looked at. ‘I had no choice. She was going to kill me.’