Four years later…

Sligo, Ireland, 1966

Hanna and Dorian lived as man and wife. In his mind, in any case, that was how things were. Even though it was still their ‘little secret’.

Hanna kept the house and cooked the meals. There was no question of their inviting anyone over. They might see that the stepfather and stepdaughter now shared a bed. Hanna’s academic performance started to drop. The nuns were puzzled by it. She was a clever girl and had such sterling support from her stepfather. He, indeed, was such an educated man – and so liberal – rearing another man’s child when he could so easily have sent her to board in their convent after her mother died. A saint. Two years ago, when Hanna decided to leave school at sixteen, Dr Black had told the Mother Superior that, although he was disappointed, he felt confident that, before too long, she would make a good wife. He was sure that he would find a nice, respectable man to take her on.

‘She’s so pretty,’ the nuns reassured him.

‘If you say so, Sister,’ he quipped back. ‘I can’t say I have ever seen it myself!’

‘We’ll get married soon,’ he said to her one night, after he had made love to her. That’s what he called it. Making love. Occasionally it was rough but as time went on, and Hanna became more compliant to his needs, the punishments stopped. When they were in bed together, Dorian tried to be tender. She could see by the longing in his face that he was trying to love her in the way he touched and kissed her. But no matter how tender he was, it always felt wrong. It certainly never felt like love.

Nonetheless, within the four walls of his large house, they lived like most married couples. The house was big and Hanna enjoyed making it beautiful. She polished the decorative tiles in the hallway to a glossy shine and kept the large basement kitchen, with its flagstones and large old-fashioned range, spotlessly clean. Dorian bought her French cookbooks and she taught herself a few cordon bleu dishes. He praised Hanna when she made an effort for him in the kitchen and she found that she liked to please him. Sometimes, when Dorian was sitting back with a contented smile after a meal she could believe that they were, after all, a family of sorts. Stepfather and stepdaughter enjoying each other’s company. Reading side by side with an open fire, him teaching her how to play chess… if only it weren’t for the other thing. For the love.

Dorian loved her. That was the problem.

‘I love you.’ He kept saying it. He said it every time he did ‘it’ to her.

She knew he expected her to say it back. So she would mumble, ‘I love you.’

‘Look me in the eyes and say my name,’ he would beg, whining like a child. At those times, Hanna could almost believe she was in charge, but that was, as she learned from experience, a dangerous assumption to make.

So instead she looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘I love you, Dorian.’ Most of the time he smiled – a pathetic half-hearted hopeful look – and seemed satisfied that she was being sincere.

But when he didn’t believe her, he got angry and punished her. Afterwards he would be sorry and insist it was only because he loved her so much. It was her astonishing beauty and the power that she exuded over him with her womanly guile that sent him into these terrible fits of rage. He just wanted to be loved. So Hanna would persuade him that she loved him back. Even though it turned her stomach, she kissed him over and over again and called him her ‘only love’ and touched him and told him that she wanted him. They were the worst times, when she had to pretend to love him. To love ‘it’. She could not just lie back and fall into the trance of emotional dispossession that made his lovemaking tolerable. But, Dorian would be ecstatic with delight. The show of love would appease him, and he would give her mind, if not her body, some peace for a while.

After one of these month-long lulls, fell the third anniversary of Margaret’s death.

Hanna had been polishing the silverware in the kitchen and the domestic act reminded her of her mother. She began to cry, thinking about how Margaret used to polish the cutlery to a shine in the week leading up to Christmas every year. She would cover the drawing room table with newspaper and made a great show of bringing Hanna in to help her with this refined task, while their housekeeper washed floors and did the high dusting that her mother so disliked. Dorian had acted the great benefactor to her and her mother, but before him, when it was their father instead, he too had hired housekeepers. Even if it was only for that one special day each year. Yet, now, Hanna was living the life of a common skivvy. Quite suddenly, she found the wave of grief for her mother give way to an annoyance that Dorian expected her to wash floors and peel potatoes when he could easily afford a housekeeper.

Hanna never dwelt on the personal situation between her and Dorian. What happened between them was torture enough without thinking about it too. She shut it out of her mind. Of course, she had dreamt of escape once, but had long since realised it was hopeless. Dorian was always there in the surgery, watching. She was trapped and normally she accepted that she just had to make the best of it. However, on this particular morning, in the name of her mother, as she thought about all the work she did in this man’s house, Hanna’s irritation grew into a petulant anger. So when Dorian came into the kitchen, instead of finding the hot lunch he was expecting, he found her surly and pouting.

Dorian was in such a good mood he believed nothing could upset him that morning. He had decided to take Hanna away for her eighteenth birthday. In time, he planned to move them both to Dublin, where they could marry and nobody would know about their unfortunate past. But, for now he had booked them two nights at the Shelbourne hotel. He would take her shopping on Grafton Street, book her a hair appointment and take her into Brown Thomas to buy her underwear and other pretty things. Anything she wanted. What a pleasure it would be, for them both, to swan around openly. For him to show off his beautiful young ‘wife’ to the world without fear of being judged or misunderstood by nosy old biddies. In the evening, he would take her to the opera. It was all very well making love to a beautiful young woman, but sometimes, lovemaking just wasn’t enough. Dorian needed Hanna to converse in a more interesting way. She was beautiful, he thought, but limited intellectually. After all, she had not performed as well in school as she might have done.

‘I have a surprise for you,’ he said, sneaking up behind her, putting his hands around her waist and gathering her into him.

She pulled away. ‘I’m not in the mood, Dorian.’

Then, unable to stop herself, she turned to him. ‘It’s my mother’s anniversary today – have you no shame?’

His elevated mood shockingly struck down by Hanna’s insubordinate attitude and insensitive cruelty was too much for him.

Dorian struck her and sent her staggering backwards towards the range.

He looked down to unbuckle himself and, while he did, Hanna was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming, unstoppable rage. Without thinking, she picked up a cast iron pan from the stove and ran, swinging the pan at him, screaming. It hit the side of his shoulder. Dorian cried out in pain as a bone cracked, fell to his knees and wailed.

‘You’ve broken my arm.’

Hanna didn’t hear him. She couldn’t stop now. She knew that. There was no going back. She lifted the pan and slammed it into the right side of his face. Another crack sounded as his nose collapsed into his cheek. Dorian fell to the ground, grabbing a handful of her mother’s silverware as he went.

Hanna felt sick at the sight of his collapsed body on the floor.

‘Hanna?’ he moaned.

So weak, so pathetic. Pleading. An urgent regret overcame her. What had she done? She should reach down and pick him up. Call an ambulance. Make him better. Make this go away. Make it not have happened.

She stood there and watched him try to lift his arms up to her. His face covered in blood, his broken nose bent to one side. Had she done that to him? What sort of a person was she?

But as sure as Hanna knew he was in terrible pain, she also knew that when he recovered, he would be furious. He would kill her. When he recovered.

If he recovered.

Hanna lifted the pan one more time. She shut her eyes and, with tears streaming out of their corners, made herself remember the night her mother died. The first time he had come into her room. Her lungs filled slowly, breathing in every time he had touched her in vile wretchedness. Finally she breathed out with a roar, swinging the heavy pan like a low tennis racket as hard as she could over the left side of his head. There was a mighty crack, then silence.

It was over.