When Benjamin got home, he disappeared straight into his study, then came out and tramped around upstairs for a couple of minutes. Each creak of the floorboard filled Dominique with the urge to call him to her. They should set aside anger and denial, and talk; see if they really had anything left to save, see if Benjamin was even interested in trying. But she rolled her neck and vowed to keep a stoic silence until she stopped vacillating about her own feelings.

When Benjamin reappeared, he followed her lead, not saying a word. He made Dominique a cup of her favourite fruit tea. No mention was made of the argument. By either party. Dominique sipped the scalding lemon and ginger drink, lost in thought.

---

After a frankly torturous half hour with Dominique, where she hadn’t even bothered thanking him for the cup of tea he’d made, Benjamin retreated to his study. He had hoped he would find the courage to speak with her but, of course, he hadn’t. He’d hoped she might have something further to say to him. He even would have welcomed another row. At least it would have shown she cared. But she hid in silence he had no courage to break.

What was he going to do without Dom?

She believed she knew everything. She had told him she was taking the children. If she was angry about Kendra, she’d be furious about the money. He really ought to tell her, but his courage was curled up and hiding alongside his shrivelled manhood.

Benjamin was filled with remorse for the impotent rage he had felt, blaming Dom for his shortcomings. How could he even for a second have thought that if she had been a better wife he wouldn’t have looked elsewhere? She had always been patient and kind and honest. She had stayed true to him and put up with his temper, his endless hours at work, the fact he only paid her attention when it suited him.

Shame flooded him.

The truth was, he hadn’t dared to tell her what a failure he was because he had never felt worthy of her. He had thought it from the first time he had ever properly spoken to her: that night when they got separated from their mates and his sister. He hadn’t been able to believe he had managed to miss for so many years how amazing she was, but he had promised himself he would never take that for granted again.

But, like the complete idiot he was, he had done exactly that.

She was as faultless as a diamond, in his eyes. Unlike him. Over the years he had hidden his failings, first behind a veneer of confidence, then behind fancy watches and clothes, material things he hoped would detract from the man rotting behind them. The smaller his self-esteem shrank, the more impressive his window dressing had become. It had to be, to fool the world – and himself.

Even taking a mistress had been to shore up his sagging façade. He had needed to feel young and virile again. But he didn’t love Kendra and never had; all he had done was use her for four years.

Now he risked losing Dominique and his children over his affair. What an idiot he was. Dom had been fooled for a while by him, but now she was starting to see him for what he really was. At last, his mask had slipped.

The children had never been taken in, though. Children lack guile, and seem able to strip it from others. Like animals can sense fear in someone, an infant can spot a liar. From the moment Ruby had been born, Benjamin had felt a rush of inadequacy and terror that he blamed her for, when it was really all his fault.

She would be better off with her mother, free from him. They all would.

Look what he had done to his poor eldest daughter. He had skint himself sending her to that school and expected her to grovel with gratitude. Growing up, he had learned the hard way that it was who you know not what you know that can often get you far in this life, and he wanted things to come easy to his children. He wanted Ruby to achieve without struggling. But he had never bothered telling her that, had simply expected her to realise, and fall in with his plans. He had utterly failed to take into account his own child might have hopes and fears of her own, or struggle to achieve everything he had mapped out for her.

He thought of his own father, and how he himself had railed against the plans his dad had for him, and how he constantly felt a failure as a result. It had been he who pushed Benjamin into accountancy. His dad had bullied him his whole life, told Benjamin that he wouldn’t amount to anything, even hit him sometimes in the name of ‘toughening him up’ – ‘boxing lessons’ he had called them, telling his son to be more like Muhammad Ali.

He realised with horror that he was treating Ruby the same way. He had put impossible expectations on her, and told her to ‘toughen up’ when she tried to tell him she was struggling. The blows hadn’t been physical, but it made them no less hurtful.

His selfishness took his breath away. For Ruby’s entire life he had demanded everything be done his way, never bothering to think what she might want. Benjamin had always told himself that he knew better than them what they needed. They were ungrateful for not recognising all he had done for his children, he had thought. No more. Now he needed to put them first. It was a revelation to him. The thought left him feeling giddy and light-headed.

Finally, he knew exactly what he must do.

He would kill himself, sacrificing his life so that he could stop dragging his family down with him. The shame and money troubles would end with his death – he was worth far more dead than alive.

He wished he could tell Dominique that she was the love of his life. He longed to go back in time and never mess up. If only he could somehow win her and the children back. He really did want to be Ruby and Amber’s best friend; to get to know them, and let them get to know a better him, rather than the self-absorbed, shallow idiot he had become.

But it was all too late now.

The only gift he could give his family was freedom.