Last night was the worst yet. My chest, stomach, and arms are in agony today. I know the bruising will be bad. He apologized over and over and pleaded with me not to leave. ‘Everything I do is for you,’ he said. ‘The house is all for you!’ He said he was just under a lot of stress and that he sometimes gets jealous about the new baby. I can understand that. What I don’t understand is how rage apparently gets the better of him and yet he manages not to touch my face. All the bruising is covered by clothing. He won’t risk anyone asking questions. And yet, you just have to look into my eyes to see the sadness there. What this is doing to me.

He almost hit Gaia last night, which is how it all blew out of proportion. She had done something to his paperwork – drawn on it, I think – and he said he was going to talk to her about it. To the untrained eye he appeared calm, like any normal father going off to tell his six-year-old not to destroy Daddy’s important documents. But I read the air around him, saw the look in his eye and the twitching muscle in his jaw that all indicate when he’s about to explode. I can sense it in him, as though something builds and builds and needs release. I’d never seen it around the girls before, but as he started to walk out of the room I suddenly knew what was about to happen. I leaped out of the seat and grabbed his arm. He turned and looked at me as if I’d gone crazy.

‘Don’t,’ I said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘You know what,’ I said. My eyes were blazing. I didn’t care what he did to me, and suddenly it occurred to me that I would attack him if I had to. This thought has never crossed my mind because I figured he’d kill me, but protective instincts reared up in me at the thought of what he could do to Gaia, and I didn’t care. I was prepared for whatever he meted out on me. I could take it.

‘You don’t touch her,’ I hissed in his face. His expression changed from amusement to anger, and I saw the rage in him shift direction, like a fire caught in a new wind. He looked down, then lifted a hand and clamped it around my throat.

And that’s when it started.

Is it possible to feel terror and triumph in the same instant? I can tell you yes, it is possible, because for every blow of pain, I felt like I’d kept him away from Gaia a moment longer, each punch and kick allowing him to empty out all that fire on to me instead of her. I curled up in a ball afterwards and wept.