Paula nodded at him, her jaw set, clenching down on it, because she didn’t want to cry in front of him, in front of any of them. Not in front of her, especially.

‘Cunt,’ she said, louder this time, directed at Anna, because there was nothing left to lose and she quite liked the feel of the word on her tongue. She turned on her heel and staggered back through the casino the way she had come.

‘Nothing was happening, nothing happened or was going to happen.’ Tommy’s voice was a whine, long and scratchy, like a mosquito buzzing, or a broken record. Loud too, now they were alone in their suite.

She turned to the doors and put her sleeve in her mouth, biting down on the material to stop the word coming out of her. That awful word that she had never spoken, in all these years, and now she just wanted to spit it at him again and again.

‘And what was with the condoms, for God’s sake?’ he hissed, self-righteous now, a true narcissist, putting it all on her because she was the one who had called him a bastard and a cunt in public, and shown him up by throwing the condoms on the table in the packed casino.

The croupier had asked her to leave.

Paula closed her eyes in shame.

‘Where did you even get them from,’ he shouted, ‘and more to the point, why?’

She turned to face him. ‘They’re yours!’ she exclaimed.

‘What the hell do I want condoms for?’ He threw his hands up in a gesture of disbelief.

‘To screw her,’ Paula shouted back. Had she ever even raised her voice to him before? If she had, she couldn’t remember. ‘You need them to fuck that awful wretched woman.’ An unplanned sob escaped and she tried to swallow it down. ‘I should be grateful you thought of that; who knows what you might have caught?’

‘Fucking hell, Paula,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Well, they’re not for us, are they?’ she cried, tears flowing now, a river of hurt. ‘We don’t use condoms, do we? I’m on the pill.’

A grin broke out on his face, so out of keeping with the current conversation that she blinked in confusion. He clapped his hands together slowly, and carried on smiling as he walked towards her.

‘But you’re not, are you, darling?’ he said. His voice was vicious, cruel. ‘You threw them away, didn’t you?’

Paula swallowed. How did he know?

‘What… how… h-how…?’