She wondered if she should call someone to be here, just in case. But who? She’d never had many friends and she’d lost contact with the few she did have after she started dating Stephen. She was far too ashamed to call her work colleagues for this. And it wasn’t as if she could call Rachel or Tully. She was on her own. Like her mother had been, in the end. It was thinking of her mother that finally got Heather into a standing position. She wasn’t going to be a battered wife, like her mother. She was going to ensure a different fate for herself.

She threw her bag over her shoulder and walked out of the bedroom, down the hall and stairs, and into the living room. Stephen was sitting at the breakfast bar with his back to her.

‘I’m leaving you, Stephen,’ she said.

He turned to face her.

‘Oh my God. What . . . what happened to your face?’

He had a black eye. He also appeared to have a deep scratch under the eye that was bruised.

He blinked slowly. Suddenly her fear of him hurting her seemed ridiculous. In fact, seeing Stephen now, it felt laughable that she’d even had that fear in the first place.

‘Stephen?’

He took off his glasses. That’s when she noticed they weren’t his usual glasses but a spare pair he kept in the bedside table. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m just not sure if you’re joking or not.’

Suddenly Heather wasn’t sure either.

‘You don’t remember what happened last night?’

‘Yes,’ she said, though she was starting to doubt herself. ‘You were upset with me for drinking at the party. We had an argument. I tried to leave, and you grabbed my hair and . . .’

She trailed off, trying to remember. She knew she’d gone down. After that she didn’t remember anything.

Stephen was still looking at her, confused, as if her face were a maths problem he was trying to solve.

‘I don’t know,’ she said finally.

‘Do you want to sit down?’

‘No. Just tell me.’

Stephen nodded. ‘Well, as you say, we came home and we argued. Evidently I got too close to you. I apologise for that. I didn’t realise you were feeling so hemmed in until you shouted for me to move and then punched me.’

‘I punched you?’

Stephen smiled thinly. ‘Knocked the glasses clean off my face. I think that was what caused the scratch.’ He pointed to the mark under his eye. ‘Then you took off. I was going to let you go; you were very upset. Then you slipped. You went down hard and hit your head. I sat with you for a couple of hours down here, in case you were concussed. Eventually I took you upstairs and put you to bed.’

Heather tried to line up this version with her own memory.

‘What did you think happened?’ Stephen asked.

Heather had no idea anymore. ‘I don’t know! I know that we argued, and then I was on the ground. I assumed . . .’ She trailed off.