Until Death by Ali Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

whoever came to hand so you could wash dishes and serve?’
    ‘I loved him so much. I have tried and tried to make this marriage work—’
    ‘You think that a few years down the line you can walk away? Abandon the man who saved you, who pulled you from the gutter and placed you up here? Who gave you everything you wanted? Look at yourself, girl, if you’re in a cage, it’s a golden cage.’
    Kelly tried to keep calm. ‘You know him better than anyone, Medea. You know in the long run this is the only solution. At the moment he flatly refuses to consider a separation. Please help him to see sense.’
    ‘You need to find your sense of duty.’
    That was it. What Kelly had given up to do her duty! She didn’t see her mother or old friends, couldn’t visit her home town. She had faced down injustice and it had cost her nearly everything … Kelly could control herself no longer. ‘You shove duty down my throat so hard you make me want to puke. He’s a brute and you know it. You can cover your ears and shut your eyes but I know you hear it and you see it, what he does to me!’
    Medea was unmoved. ‘My husband was a very religious man. A union was sacrosanct to him. A marriage would be lifelong, whatever hardships were thrown up along the way. What he believed, we believe. Union, family honour, stability, they are more important than the whims of a girl from nowhere.’
    Kelly had a memory of the arguments she used to have with her own mother about Michael, about how he wasn’t good enough for her, that he was a wrong’un. Her mother was keen to stop her daughter repeating her mistakes. She hadn’t seen Mum in years; the aftermath of the trial made it difficult, her fear for Florence meaning she had been scared to go back home. And now she was broken and she didn’t know how to get back in touch. ‘I may be no one from nowhere, I may have had no money but I know what’s right and what’s wrong. You’ve raised a psychotic brute and you’ve blinded yourself to it.’
    ‘How dare you talk about my son like that!’ Medea threw the cloth down on the side.
    ‘Let the children grow up in a happier home. As a mother, make him let me go. I beg you.’
    ‘You’ll be on your knees begging a long time. Only God can free you from this marriage.’
    ‘Please, Medea, help me!’
    ‘I was married for forty-five years, Kelly. Long years. I nursed my husband through the cancer at the end. I emptied those bowls of blood, stood by him as he moaned in pain. I did it. I endured. I took pride in my service to my marriage. I put the lives of others before myself. There is a glory in the selfless life …’
    Kelly couldn’t take any more. She slammed her hands over her ears and let out an incoherent wail in the kitchen, the frustration and the horror of the many potential years to come bubbling from deep inside her.
    ‘Do that, if it makes you feel better. Take your pills. But he will never let you go.’ And Medea turned and began the never-ending and ineffectual wiping away of the stains.

7
     
    ‘C an we play planes?’ shouted Yannis, jumping up and down and pleading. Florence joined in, their faces staring up at her. Kelly smiled. Medea had gone home, and the bitter aftertaste of their argument was washed from her mouth by her children. They were just back from school, the time of day she liked the most, particularly on the days Medea didn’t come fussing into their lives, and before Christos got home. After the commotion so early in the day and after the customs officers had left, Christos had gone to work and she had spent a long time wondering where to hide the passports in a way that couldn’t be seen by the relentless green light in the corner of every room. She had decided in the end simply to leave them where they were, in her back pocket.
    ‘Come on then.’ They bundled into the kids’ bedroom and Kelly lay down on the floor, her legs stretching up towards the ceiling. She grabbed Yannis’s hands and put