Roberta

      By the time I knew I was going to be released, I’d been swabbed, fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal. I’d explained everything to a solicitor, then again to yet another policewoman who kept telling me that she knew how difficult this was for me.

      Actually, she didn’t have the faintest clue. Everything about Scott had been complicated: meeting in Italy when he was on a gap year and I was an art student, the ensuing courtship that survived to- and fro-ing from Australia to England, our differences in culture, manners and upbringing.

      Not to mention everyone else’s opinions on the subject.

      I’d tried to be that obedient girl, destined for a future with a City boy. But I was no match for Scott’s persistence. He’d torn through my staid world, bringing spontaneity and irreverence. Springing out on me in the university library, straight off the plane from Australia. Spraying ‘I love you’ in shaving foam on the Mini my dad bought me for my twenty-first. Asking me to marry him in Sydney’s Waverley Cemetery, overlooking the sea.

      This softly-spoken DC Smithfield probably thought I was a spoilt housewife, clinging on to a wealthy husband so I could shop for shoes every day. I didn’t have the energy to explain that we’d toiled away together, building up Scott’s property business, renovation by renovation.

      By the time I signed the caution, accepting my guilt, I was punch-drunk, too exhausted to care about anything as long as I could lie down soon on a bed that wasn’t in a cell.

      DC Smithfield told me that they’d have to finish processing me outside the custody suite because they were dealing with some ‘violent detainees’ in there. I wasn’t about to start splitting hairs over my preferred exit location. She led me into the normal part of the police station, where I’d once come to report the lawnmower being stolen from our shed.

      And to my delight, Octavia was sitting there. My whole soul lifted as though I’d been staggering along with a box of encyclopaedias and had just found a table to rest it on.

      She rushed over. ‘What the hell’s going on? Are you okay?’

      I threw my arms round her, breathing in a trace of White Musk, the perfume oil she’d been wearing since we were about thirteen. I’d be able to pick her out blindfolded. Octavia was quick to prise me off her. She preferred the Swiss Army knife approach to drama.

      She stepped back to look at me, taking in the boiler suit. ‘Jesus. Didn’t know you’d be dressed as Frosty the Snowman. Did you get the T-shirt I brought in?’

      I shook my head. The detective constable looked apologetic. ‘I’ll check what happened there. Anyway, you can get changed back into your own clothes now.’

      ‘Have they finished with you already?’ Octavia asked. ‘I thought I might be here all night.’

      ‘They did me first while they were waiting for the others to sober up.’

      DC Smithfield gestured for me to wait while she found the paperwork.

      I sat with Octavia, relief flooding through me. She leant into my ear and whispered, ‘Tell me you didn’t kill him.’

      I glanced towards the desk and kept my voice low. ‘God, no, nothing like that. It’s all resolved now. I just need to collect my belongings. Things got slightly out of hand. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other.’

      ‘So what did happen?’ Octavia said.

      ‘Same old, same old.’ A sudden weariness engulfed me. I was tired of talking about what had happened, of thinking about it.

      Octavia was shaking her head. ‘Hardly same old. You’ve never been arrested before.’

      ‘Same old, but one step further. Scott was furious because I’d let Alicia wear an off-the-shoulder T-shirt to go to the cinema. It wasn’t a sexy thing, just an ordinary T-shirt. He thought it was too tarty.’

      ‘So?’

      My stomach clenched as I remembered Scott shouting in my face, his Sydneysider accent becoming more pronounced.

      ‘The Australian side of the business isn’t going well and he’s been a fight waiting to happen recently. I carried on cooking dinner, refusing to get dragged in. He wouldn’t let it drop, kept on and on, right at me, how I’m so self-obsessed I can’t see that my daughter is turning into a little floozy, and I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t disappear back to Australia with her, the usual stuff. I tried to push him away but he was standing there, holding me back with one arm and laughing.’ I paused to stop the sob leaking out into my voice. ‘Then he said it was probably a good job that we hadn’t had any more kids as I was such a hopeless mother and I just lost control.’

      A look of disgust flashed over Octavia’s face. ‘Vicious bastard.’ She squeezed my hand. She was one of the few people who understood how much my two miscarriages still hurt, over a decade later.

      ‘I picked up the frying pan and cracked it into the side of his head. The edge caught his forehead and it poured with blood. You know me, I was lucky not to faint. I shouldn’t have done it. Though if I’d known he was going to send me here, I’d have cracked it a bit harder.’

      Octavia flickered out a smile at that. ‘Whoo-bloody-hoo. Poor little Scott got a bit of a bang on the head, bless his little cottons. Presumably he didn’t bleed to death and stain the limestone?’ As the words left Octavia’s mouth, I saw her lips twitch. I started to giggle too, a spirally sort of laughter that made a good alternative to crying.

      Octavia grew serious again. ‘So how did you end up here?’

      ‘He phoned the police. Said I’d assaulted him. So Watermill Drive had the glorious spectacle of blue lights flashing outside our house and me being escorted away in handcuffs. No doubt the Surrey grapevine is quivering as we speak.’

      ‘He called the cops on you? Did they not look at the fact that he’s about fifteen stone with arms like hams and you are, what? About eight stone? Bloody hell. I suppose they don’t count all the times he’s locked you out or sworn in your face? Talk about a piss-up in a brewery. No such thing as common sense in British policing, then.’

      Octavia’s shoulders went back. For one horrible moment, I thought she was going to march off and start grabbing a few ties over the reception desk. I was poised, ready to grip her arm. Luckily, they were busy dealing with a drunk who was complaining that his bike had been stolen and collapsing into hysterics every time he tried to spell his name.

      I attempted to answer her. ‘Scott’s behaviour has never been serious enough to report. And I shouldn’t have hit him.’

      ‘He bloody deserved it. Anyway, it doesn’t take a brain box to work out that he could probably stand up for himself. What was it? A scratch? I’ve got a plaster in my bag. Perhaps I’ll pop over there and put some ice on his little head while I’m at it. Maybe he’ll piss off back to Sydney and do us all a favour.’

      ‘Don’t. His mother arrives tomorrow for Christmas.’ I looked at the floor.

      Octavia stared. ‘Tomorrow? Make her stay in a hotel. You can’t go home as if nothing has happened after this.’

      ‘I have to. It’s Christmas and I am not ruining