Every night it was the same. Stepping carefully around him, like the floor was covered in sharp shards of glass. And no matter how hard she tried, something invariably tipped him over.

Tonight Annabelle vowed it would be different.

Every last surface in the house was shining. The counter tops were immaculate. The floor – you could eat your dinner off it, and she had, once, with his shoe resting on the back of her neck.

There had to be a way out of this hellhole. Going to a hostel might be an option. But he would find her. And she had to keep her practice going. She had to keep the twins.

Her life had always been boring with Cian, and she no longer remembered why she had married him. At one time she had plugged the gap with affairs, but her disastrous liaison with Tom Rickard had been the final straw for Cian. Something had snapped inside him when he found out. The man she thought she’d been married to for twenty years had altered within weeks into a raging control freak.

It was all her doing, he’d said. She was the one who’d slept in other men’s beds, the one who’d let other men shag her. She was the one who’d deceived her husband with a myriad of lies. She was the worthless one. Wasn’t she? So she deserved every slap and humiliation he threw at her. Didn’t she?

No she did not, she told herself. Annabelle O’Shea was not going to be trampled into worthlessness. She had to do something.

She undressed her burned wrist, tended it with ointment and wrapped a clean bandage over the seeping wound. It should be healing by now, but it wasn’t. She limped over to the stove and, like a robot, stirred the stew.

The twins were in their rooms, finishing their homework. There was no sound from Cian’s study. Come to think of it, she had not heard anything from him since she arrived home from work. She glanced at the clock. He usually visited the kitchen around now, to check on her and call her names.

But this evening there was silence.

She ceased stirring and listened intently. The hum of Bronagh singing along to a tune. The stomp of Pearse’s foot on the floor. Not a sound from Cian’s study.

Opening the back door, she peered through the rain at the raised door of the garage. His car wasn’t there. She never asked where he went or what he did, because she didn’t care. It gave her a few hours of uninterrupted peace. But to go out this early? The clock indicated that it was 19.05.

Slipping off her boots, she climbed the stairs in her Calvin Klein socks. Holding her breath outside his study, she waited. Listened. Nothing. She eased out a breath as her fingers clutched the handle. And then she noticed the coded keypad attached to the door. When had he put that there?

What was Cian involved in that warranted keeping his own family out of his study? She tried the handle anyway. No give. With a sigh of resignation, she was turning to go back down the stairs when she heard, above the cacophony of the storm, the sound of a car screeching up the drive, rounding the gable of the house and entering the garage.

She ran down the stairs and flew into the kitchen, and was stirring the stew when he walked in. Not a word. Not a glance. She didn’t raise her head until she sensed the icy chill as he walked up behind her, eased his arm around her waist and dragged her body to his in a rough embrace. A damp smell of staleness rose from his clothes as his fingers began to probe.

Her long neck, which she had once loved him to caress, froze with the touch of his cold lips on her most sensual spot. And then the pinch, where no one could see. Biting her lip, she willed the scream to lock itself down. To stay silent until she was free to acknowledge the pain.

His hand circled her body and delved under the waistband of her jeans, toying with the lace of her knickers, his fingers exploring. She breathed out, hoping he wouldn’t mistake it for consent. He didn’t. With a final pinch, and without having uttered a word, he extricated himself and hit her behind the knees. She buckled but didn’t fall. He left her with her hand still holding the spoon above the saucepan. Straining her ears, she heard him enter his study and shut the door. Slowly she sank to the floor.

Wiping away her tears, a resolution formed in the depths of her soul.

This could not go on.

Twins or no twins, Cian had to go. If he didn’t, she would. Eventually.

But first she would find out what was so precious to her husband that he kept it locked away in his study.