Terry, not gone, was in high spirits. He spent the morning chasing Jasmine around the flat, Simone worrying how she would turn shrieks and giggles into stay-home-sickness. But with a stroke of luck, minutes before they were supposed to leave for the pub, during one last frenzied, hysterical dash beneath the kitchen table, Jasmine cracked her head against it, and amid all the crying, Simone carried her to the bathroom for a plaster, and when she returned, informed Terry that Jasmine had been sick. “I don’t think she needs the hospital,” she told him. “But we better stay put and watch it for a bit. You go on, don’t let us stop you. We’ll join you at the pub.”

“You sure?” he asked, an arm around her waist, a hand beneath Jasmine’s chin, but she kissed him on the cheek, and nodded.

In the end it was easy. He hadn’t suspected a thing.

Grabbing the bag from beneath the bed, and adding to it a few extra things of Dominic’s that she hasn’t been able to pack before, Simone picks up Jasmine and bustles her to the door. The pub is only a few roads away and Terry should be there for at least a couple of hours, but he could always have a change of heart, or, in his new spirit of ‘trying harder’, he might come back as a surprise, to help. Nevertheless, Simone finds herself pausing at the door, turning back to the room she is leaving, looking one last time. Move. Move, her mind tells her as she looks. Now. Now. Now. But it has always been more difficult to act than to think of acting.

No, she is going. She has decided. Besides, Polly is waiting, it is no longer her choice.

Just a note though, one last thing…

Tel,

We’ve gone. You know why. Don’t follow. Stay away or I’ll call the police. When we’re settled, you can see Jas. Not me and not Dom. Somebody will be in touch to arrange it. Don’t do anything stupid. Look after yourself.

Simone

She writes a kiss after her name, and then scribbles it out. Did she ever love him? Fear and need had a way of muddling emotion. She can’t tell what she thinks anymore, only that whatever she once felt has vanished – in the tautness of cord around her wrists, and fingers around her throat, and thuds to her son’s head. Now all she knows is that she has to get herself and the children away. And that she wants Terry to know she has made this choice, this decision to leave him, that he hasn’t stamped her out completely. Simone arranges the note so that it is clearly visible on the kitchen table, picks Jasmine back up, checks once more out of the window, and then hurries down the stairs.

Polly is waiting for her at the school as planned. Walking down the street towards her, Simone’s sense of liberation is almost tangible. The rain has stopped and she feels as though she is flying. She practically skips as she pushes the buggy, loaded with both Jasmine and their heavy bag. It doesn’t matter that she is leaving the pretty streets of Primrose Hill. Past the old estate she goes, past houses growing increasingly shabby, past the liquor shop, past the Asda and the Poundland and the job centre. None of it matters. Poverty is never what trapped her. And now, they are nearly free. She can’t wait to tell Dominic, to see the relief on his face, to watch that heavy, too-adult darkness dissipate from it. To start things fresh.