Every Time We Say Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page B

bit woozy. I expected him to be upset at what he’d done, to rush over to help me.’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘But he simply stepped over me saying he’d got work to do. When I came down to the kitchen the next morning, there were scraps of paper all over the table covered with totally illegible writing. That’s when I realized that his behaviour was probably down to drugs rather than drink.’
    Johnny shook his head. ‘Did he apologize?’
    ‘He never even mentioned it. And when I showed him the pieces of paper, he said he’d just been messing about but I could see he was rattled. I begged him to go and see our doctor and he said he would if it would shut me up. Then I knew he must be scared too and that perhaps we’d reached a turning point.’
    ‘Let me guess: he didn’t go to the doctor.’
    Marianne sighed. ‘No, he went all right but he came home saying everything was fine. I didn’t believe it so I called the doctor and told her about his strange behaviour. He hadn’t told her he was taking any tablets but she’d suspected as much. She said we needed to find out what he was taking, that he could be putting his health at risk.’ She paused, remembering the following few days where she’d turned into a private investigator, rummaging through drawers and files, even pulling out the bed and checking under the mattress. ‘I searched the house from top to bottom but I couldn’t find anything,’ she told Johnny, ‘so I figured he must be keeping them in the car or his briefcase; I was pretty sure he wouldn’t risk keeping them in the office.’
    ‘Indeed.’
    ‘So, one night after I was sure he was asleep I ransacked the car. I found three different sorts of pills and another two in his briefcase.’
    ‘Shit.’
    ‘There were no labels on the bottles and the pills were unmarked so I took one of each and brought them down to the doctor. She sent them off to a lab. It turned out he was on sleeping tablets, amphetamines and Valium.’
    ‘Amphetamines? But I thought he had a problem sleeping? Why was he taking a stimulant?’
    ‘I know; it didn’t make much sense to me either but as he was taking so many things to make him sleep, I guessed he needed them to get him through a day’s work.’
    Johnny shook his head. ‘Poor bastard. I hate what he did to you, Marianne, but it sounds like he was in a bad way.’
    ‘He was.’
    ‘Was he hurting you right up until the end? Did it get worse?’ His eyes widened. ‘He didn’t—’
    ‘Didn’t what?’ Marianne frowned, and then realized he was wondering if Dominic had raped her. ‘Oh, no, nothing like that!’
    ‘Good,’ Johnny said, looking relieved.
    ‘And no, it didn’t continue until the end, although he continued to get worse. He wouldn’t get help though and I was afraid that he would start on the kids so I decided to throw him out.’
    ‘But you didn’t go through with it, did you?’
    ‘No, Dot begged me not to.’
    ‘Did she know what was going on?’
    ‘She knew he was taking pills but she knew nothing about his violence. I’d had enough by then so I told her everything.’
    ‘That can’t have been easy to hear.’
    Marianne wiped her eyes. ‘Trust me, it wasn’t easy to tell. Dot worshipped Dominic. It was one thing to hear he was a drug addict but to hear he beat up his wife too . . . Anyway, that’s when she offered to move in; she said that she’d be the buffer between us and that if he ever harmed the children she would call the guards herself. So,’ Marianne shrugged, ‘I agreed and it worked.’
    ‘I’m so sorry, Marianne.’ Johnny gave her hand an awkward squeeze. ‘I had no idea that any of this was going on. I can’t believe Helen didn’t tell me—’
    ‘Don’t you dare go home and give out to her,’ Marianne warned him. ‘I swore her and Jo to secrecy.’
    He held his hands up. ‘Okay, I won’t say a word.’
    ‘Now do you understand why I don’t believe we’ll get the life assurance money?’ It