On the street, Simone was loading Jasmine into a buggy and arranging a bag on the handles. It was a large bag, a suitcase almost, bulging at the sides and unbalancing the pram so that Simone had to hold it down to stop it from tipping. There was another bag slung across her body. And another stuffed under the pram. Everything she did was rushed and she kept dropping things, glancing twitchily up and down the street. She was leaving! Veronica realised this slowly but with glee. Simone was running, this was it.

Veronica’s first instinct was to cheer, to crane her head out of the top floor window and shout after Simone: congratulations, congratulations, you did it – the same praise she had offered the rain. But her second thought, abruptly, was Dominic. He wasn’t there. Reasoning in the next moment that he must of course be at school – where she herself should be too – Veronica dashed down the stairs with the intention of grabbing a quick lunch at home before heading back. Stirring soup, the next logical series of thoughts began to surface: did Terry know that Simone had left? How would he react? What would this mean for her and George? Would they have less chance of getting Terry moved on if it was only him living there, or more? What kind of noise would there be when he found Simone gone?

Veronica didn’t have to wait long to have this last question answered. Out of the front window, she saw Terry waltzing with his usual arrogance up the steps to his front door, and less than sixty seconds later, there was an almighty roar. Then the sound of something smashing, and something else that could have been wood or may have been flesh thudding against the wall, and then a series of what sounded like chairs being kicked over, and then Terry bounding back onto the street where he span around like a crazed animal, this way and that, into the road and back again, until finally, a visible defeat washed over him and he took a step back towards his open door. A foot before it, he stopped, and suddenly turned his gaze slightly to his left, straight into Veronica’s window. Veronica was sitting a few metres back in the kitchen by then, but she was clearly looking at him. Watching.

Look away a voice inside whispered. Look away. But she could not, and as soon as their eyes locked, the words Terry had shouted at George echoed around her head, as they had done now so many times before: I’ll have you begging! I’ll have you on your knees and broken!

Look away, the voice of the past year told her again.

And the teacher in Kent.

And the man in Oman.

Veronica put down the spoon and stared straight at him.

“What are you fucking looking at?” Terry snarled from the street.

She wasn’t prepared for the volume of the slap as his palm hit reinforced glass.