He flinches. ‘The fuck!’ Then returns his attention to Jess in the dining room. ‘Get here! Now!’

Jess drops to her knees and attempts to crawl inside the tunnel that burrows amidst the furniture and boxes stacked around the dining table.

Tony slaps on the overhead light.

BANG! A second light bulb explodes above his head. He flinches then looks at the fitting, unnerved but too enraged to stop. ‘Fuckin’ ‘ell! You brought our daughter here an’ all! To a death trap to wipe up a spaz’s dribble!’ He races to the mouth of the tunnel and grabs Jess’s ankles. Yanks her backwards, out and onto the floor.

CRACK! A stack of old boxes near the mouth of the tunnel collapses against Tony’s head. ‘Cunt!’ Tony throws the obstacles aside. A hurled box smashes against the dining room wall. ‘Whole place is falling apart. And you bring our child here. As a mother, you are shite! You always was.’ Tony grasps Jess’s ankles and drags her backwards from the room.

Jess waves her arms around, trying to hold onto anything to moor herself. But Tony kicks and shoves any articles away from her grasping hands. As if she is a wheelbarrow pulled in reverse, he drags her backwards through the room, face down. Out and into the hall.

‘God, no! God, no. Tony! Stop! Think of Izzy!’

Tony hauls Jess across the hallway and back into the living room and up to his rucksack and the rope and the knife, then releases her legs.

Jess turns over, pulls her top down, struggles to her knees and sobs. She looks to the garden to make sure Izzy won’t see what’s about to happen to her mum.

Izzy prances happily about the lawn. Skip, skip, skip, cartwheel!

Jess turns to face Tony, who looms above her. He wipes at the blood that seeps from under his hair where a heavy box cracked his head in the dining room. ‘Tone. No. We can all be together in the new place. It’s for us. All of us. Real family home.’

‘Liar!’ Tony swings. A sickening meaty thud booms through the living room and Jess is back down flat, her mouth split apart. The scar reopened.

Tony’s face is contorted by animal rage as he raises a fist above his stricken, cowering ex-wife, so huddled into herself and dazed. But he pauses and his next blow is not delivered. He looks up instead, and his anger immediately drains into a surprise that transforms just as quickly into disbelief. ‘The fuck?’