Looking at her like this, from a distance, he understood how he had fallen in love with her. She was still beautiful, her body was hardly changed by childbirth. If anything, she looked lovelier. She had filled out somehow, and her curves were all in the right places. But now he knew her properly, and that, in all honesty, meant he knew that inside she wasn’t in any way beautiful. In fact, as far as her personality went, she was ugly. Ugly and hateful. Dissatisfied in every possible way with her life. And with him. She told him over and over again, how bored, disenchanted, and completely disillusioned she was with him and the life he had tried to give her. She made him feel as though everything he tried to do for her was pointless.

Now, as he watched her accept the communion host and look up at the cross of Christ, he wanted to slap her across the face. Of course he never would, he knew he wasn’t capable of that kind of display of emotion, not outwardly anyway. He seethed inside though, and imagined slapping her across the face again and again. Oh, how he dreamt of that, how he dreamt of putting her firmly in her place. But he didn’t know how to.

He waited for her to come back to the pew beside him and, kneeling down, he prayed to God to give him strength. The strength to fight against this wife of his, and the strength to fight for his children, because he knew that, if he wasn’t careful, she would hurt them too, just as she had hurt him.

Chapter Ten

Jonny Parker looked at Celeste as she walked back to the table and sat down and wondered at how much his life had changed through meeting this girl. She was lovely, really lovely. It wasn’t so much her looks – though she was certainly the prettiest in the pub tonight – but she was lovely inside. There wasn’t a bad bone in her body. He loved that she saw the best in everyone, even that leech of a sister of hers. What a narrow escape he’d had there!