She swung around to the computer and scanned Ferguson’s medical file. Most of the clinical notes had been entered by Mark Lang. She must talk to Mark when he came back to work—ask for his take on this guy, see if they could come up with a solution between them to ensure Rochelle’s safety.

‘I see that Dr Lang referred you for a cardiac stress test and other tests but there’s no record here of—’

‘Oh no,’ he interrupted, ‘I haven’t got time for that carry-on.’

‘Well, you might want to take more care with your health. You’re a sixty-two-year-old man with a young child.’

‘Yeah, yeah. My boy’s only six. Brody.’

The sound of the child’s name coming out of this man’s mouth made Paula shiver. He pronounced ‘Brody’ and ‘my boy’ with serrated edges, possessive, controlling. Was she imagining it? She might be. She might be. Even so, right now, she would do anything—she would rip his tongue out of his revolting wet mouth—anything to stop him saying the boy’s name again.

Paula pushed herself to regulate her breathing and fixed her eyes on the computer screen, but she kept seeing Brody’s anxious little face, checking his mother was okay. Then she saw Cameron, fretting, scanning the house for danger signs, keeping close to Stacey.

Paula heard her own voice coming out on autopilot. Her benignly firm doctor voice. ‘The thing is, Mr Ferguson, cardiac health is not something to ignore.’

‘I’m not gonna have a heart attack this week, though, am I?’

What a blessing it would be for Rochelle, for Brody, for anyone else in this man’s orbit, if a sudden heart attack took him out.

‘Since you’re here,’ said Paula, ‘we should take your blood pressure and talk about a few other tests.’

‘Rightio, you don’t have to earbash me about it.’

Paula put on the blood pressure cuff, pumped it up, read the gauge—using the familiar steps of the task as a way to settle herself.

‘One eighty-six over one twenty … that’s worryingly high,’ she said.

‘If it’s high, that’s because you got me riled up about all this,’ snorted Ferguson. ‘That’s from you putting stress on me.’

For this man, every setback, every irritation, would always be someone else’s fault.

Paula turned back to the computer monitor. ‘I see that Dr Lang prescribed some medication for hypertension a while ago.’

‘Yeah, I stopped taking it. Gave me headaches.’

Paula should allow this man to walk out of the consulting room and pray he had an almighty heart attack or stroke, thereby releasing his wife and child from fear and violence.

‘Look, Mr Ferguson, you can ignore my advice—it’s up to you—but I think you should follow up on some of these appointments. Is there a reason you never got the blood tests Dr Lang ordered?’