"Oh, hell," I said, as Justin pulled in the van at the corner before the flat. His head shifted to look at me. "Christmas presents for Mirac," I explained. "When I left the house earlier that's what I told Kyle I was doing, and now I'll be returning home with nothing and it's," I checked the time on the dashboard, "eight o'clock, so all the shops are shut, and I can't..."

"Can't what, Maya?" He'd swivelled in his seat to face me, big dark eyes searching mine. Much as I might try to block him from my mind, anxiety is a hard thing to hide. It's an enormous ball of muck that lurks behind the eyes, colouring them and the way your mouth, hands and whole body move and react.

"Tell him," Justin said, "there was a protest in the city centre and when the protestors saw you, they ran at you and you had to hide, and it's taken until now to get away from them."

I fiddled in my seat. "That's too easy to check up on."

And Kyle would. He'd either switch on the TV or go online, where there would be no mention of any protests, only coverage of an incident in the city's north where a stolen Vampire Security van with two, possibly three, occupants bust through safety checks.

"What about the truth? Doesn't he want what you do? Safety and security for people in Dunrovia?"

When Justin put it like that, the answer ought to be yes. Kyle had signed up for the Argist Academy early on because he disliked the rules around vampire regulation and wanted his sister to survive. But my relationship with Justin seemed to have coloured his views on everything. Instinct warned me he wouldn't like the truth at all.

Justin's hand covered mine. "Are you frightened of him?" he asked. "Has he threatened you?"

"No," I spat the word out too fast for it to be convincing. Justin didn't let go of my hand. He said nothing, but he didn't need to as his thoughts transmitted loud and clear—if he lays a hand on one hair on your head, I'll rip him from limb to limb.

I opened the van door. "For some reason, you and Gregor have decided I can't look after myself, and I promise you, I did a great job of taking care of number one long before you, Gregor, and even Kyle came along. Night, Justin."

He called after me as I headed back to the flat, the saunter in my step belying false confidence. As I paused at the door to extract my keys and wave goodbye, my feet glued themselves to the ground, battling a magnetic force that urged me to run right back to the van.

Upstairs, I took deep breaths that did nothing to slow the thumpity-thump of my heartbeat and opened the front door to silence. Mirac would be in bed, but there was no sign of Kyle and the Christmas tree he'd decorated earlier was bare. The tinsel on it no longer strewed the branches and the coffee table had been pushed back against the sofa, so that the rug...

Ah.

Kyle had used the tinsel to spell out 'whore' in gold and silver lines and curves on the rug. He came into the room from the door that led through to the bedrooms.

"What's this about?" I asked, as he faced me. Most times, Kyle's anger took the hot and quick variety, but tonight's version was more like icy fury. His mouth jammed shut in a contemptuous narrow line and disgust in his eyes. That lock of hair that always fell forward onto his forehead, softening his profile did so, and he pushed it back—olive skinned forehead set in corrugated lines.

"No Christmas presents for Mirac then," he said, taking in the lack of bags. "Like you were ever going to do that, you lying bitch."

Another all-too crucial reason for not telling Kyle the truth had struck me as I'd taken the lift to our flat. After Jonno dumped those chemicals he'd nicked on me, I visited Dunrovia's Ministry of Justice's website and typed 'punishments for handling stolen goods' into the search engine.

The reply came back—up to 15 years in prison depending on the value. Further research revealed that prosecutors viewed 'handling stolen goods' broadly, i.e. people had landed in jail even for having knowledge of those goods. Mirac needed at least one of his parents to know nothing so that one of would be around to look after him. By the time I got out, he'd be half-way through secondary school.

Kyle edged forward until we stood only centimetres apart, and I battled the instinct once again to move backwards. He seized my arm. "Where you with HIM?" The words came out in a hiss. Spittle hit my face.

"Let go of me," I hissed back, determined not to wake Mirac with a screaming match, "you arsehole."

His grip tightened as he thrust his face near enough for me to smell beer. The three empty bottles on the coffee table told their own story. "Answer me!"

Kyle would never hit me. The statement I'd made to Gregor that time at the Academy and Justin only minutes ago. And yet at this moment in time, if I said 'yes', might that other hand whip back and slap my face? I focussed on the fingers around my arm, desperate to find the bit of his head that would switch off control of his movements. Nothing doing.

He shook my arm hard enough to make my teeth rattle. "Well, were you with him? Were you? Don't bother lying. I saw him drop you off just now."

Bye-bye icy fury, hello all too familiar fiery rage. Kyle had stood on the tinsel he'd used to spell out 'whore', the letters unravelling as fast as our marriage. Blast my stupidity. I should have asked Justin to drop me off a street away.

"I bumped into him and he offered me a lift home. He was at the..."

Warehouse? If I said that, I would need to explain what Gregor and I had been doing.

"At the what?" Kyle pounced, fingers digging into my arm.

"You've given Deeta lifts home on the motorbike before," I countered, flailing around for a suitable defence, "and I haven't objected!"

Deeta was an Argist Academy recruit who trailed around after Kyle with her tongue hanging out. Or so it seemed to me. Whenever she caught sight of me, her shoulder sloped in disappointment—gutted I hadn't died in my sleep overnight, allowing her to sidle up to the grieving widower and offer her condolences.

"Not the same," he snarled.

I tried to jerk my arm away from him, and his other hand came out of nowhere, palm flat open. Instinct took over. I drew my leg back, kneed him in the balls, and ducked out of his grasp as he let out a groan and dropped to the floor, falling onto his side.

Mirac started to cry. I stepped over Kyle. In his bedroom, he'd kicked his blankets off, and his hands flailed up and down.

"Shush, baby!" I scooped him up and pressed him against my shoulder, his little body hot and damp against my neck. The nappy under my hands had that all-too familiar squishiness to it, and I took him into the bathroom to change him, locking the door behind me.

"Sorry I didn't get you any Christmas presents, Mirac," I said. Freed from his dirty nappy and cleaned, he shook the plastic red and black rattle at me, giggling as I blew raspberries on his stomach. I knew nothing about child development, but hopefully Mirac was still too young to register the arguments and end up needing years of therapy to make up for them.

I helped myself to water out of the tap. At a push, Mirac and I could stay here all night if I heaped a pile of towels on the floor and breastfed him when he got hungry.

What a mess. Mirac balanced on my hip, I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to find the traces of old Maya. Who was I? The keeper of secrets, lawbreaker and the woman who knew in her heart that Amelie's rumoured bet that Kyle and I would not reach our first-year wedding anniversary would come true sooner than even Amelie might have guessed.

Kyle knocked on the door as I was fastening the clean nappy around Mirac's hips. "Can I come in?"

"Go away."

"Please, Maya."

Mirac's eyes met mine. Sometimes, like now, it seemed as if he was trying to tell me things and couldn't work out why I didn't understand him.

"Do you want me to hear what your daddy has to say?" I whispered, and he smiled, the upturn to his mouth identical to the way Kyle and Cheryl did it, which made me tear up. If only... if only what? How was that sentence supposed to end?

"Alright then." I unlocked the door and shifted over to let Kyle in. He wore that downcast expression I recognised so well—the one that signified the flare-up was over and remorse had set in. After a year of shit like this, I didn't know how much longer I could stand it, although the physical threat was a new, and most unwelcome, development. When he stepped past me, I couldn't help the instinctive flinch. He spotted it too.

Mirac laughed as I rubbed cream into his tummy, the sound lightening up the tension in the room.

Kyle took a seat on the toilet and rested his forearms on his thighs. He said nothing; I didn't encourage him. What was there to say?

"I'm...I'm sorry. Feel free to put a picture of me on a wall and throw darts at it forever more. I would never hit you. Not in a million years. I don't do that."

"Yeah? You raised your hand to me."

"No, I didn't, I wasn't going to..."

"Slap me across the face? Sure felt like it to me."

Had it been a trick of the light? Sharon had slapped me a few times years ago. It's such a quick motion you don't see it coming. But there wasn't just the slap. His fingers had dug so deeply into my arm, I would wake up with a circle of small bruises there tomorrow. And I'd had more than enough of the rage. Tonight, maybe it was justified, but if one person feels she can't confide in her partner all the time, what did that say about a relationship?

He hung his head. "Sorry. It will never happen again."

What, the threat or him losing his temper? If promises were pennies, as Sharon used to say, I'd have pounds a plenty.

I pulled out the Argist Academy branded onesie she'd bought Mirac from the changing bag. He hated having clothing put on him, thrusting out his arms and legs in protest. Kyle did this job much better than I did but sod him. I wasn't going to ask.

Mirac, one arm in the onesie, one out, wriggled away as I tried to persuade him to put his legs in it too. If Kyle scared me that much, shouldn't I be too cowed to answer back...? Wow, marriage. No-one warned you the complications came in thick and fast. Not for everyone, the inner voice piped up. Only for people who marry someone who isn't their first choice...

"My... my temper gets a bit out of control sometimes. I'm trying to work on it," Kyle said, voice dripping sincerity. "If you hold Mirac up and jiggle him a bit, it's easier to get him dressed. D'you want me to do it?"

I gave up. Kyle got onto the floor opposite me, grimacing as he lowered himself to the floor. When I handed over Mirac, the gurgles intensified. Daddy's boy, for sure. No-one looking at the scene now would ever think Kyle a man capable of raising a hand to a woman—the soft voice as he coaxed Mirac into his clothes, the tender touch to tiny limbs and the eyes that shone as he regarded his son.

What now? Back in the living room, Mirac by this point wide awake, my stomach growled in hunger. I'd offered to bring back pizza and hadn't done that either and as per usual all we had in the cupboards and fridge was a stale loaf, cheese three days past its use-by date and tomato ketchup.

The basics of pizza, though. I assembled slices on the grill pan, spreading them with the ketchup and topping them with the cheese after I'd cut the mould spots off it. Kyle bounced Mirac on his knee, singing some nonsensical song to him, bumpity, bumpity, bumpity bump. Bumpity, bumpity, bumpity-bump.

He wandered into the kitchen. "Mirac's in bed. Once we've eaten this, I'll run you a bath. Let's do what we did the other night."

His voice dripped to a whisper, where he suggested what we did, calling in 'punishment' for me having been a naughty girl. Oh no, no, no, no, no... Kyle did this alpha male thing from time to time, and sometimes I found it a turn-on, even when, like now, the words he recited sounded like he was reading the script from a terrible porn film.

Tomato ketchup, cheese and the pine and wood smoke hum of Kyle's aftershave competed for dominance in the space. I yearned for Vamp Towers, that grotty old tower block with its state licensed vampires who only gave off a neutral scent that didn't thrust itself down your nose and press into every pore of your skin.

My eyes watered again, tears dripping onto the toast. I couldn't do this anymore—pretend domesticity, when I lied to him all the time and we shouted at each other more than we did anything else. When I'd first got together with Kyle, I mistook it for passion. Didn't every young couple fight and then make up in bed, where the old slang name for sex 'slap and tickle' was often used literally...?

"Um, I'm dead tired. D'you mind if I say no?"

He shook his head. But there was no mistaking that split-second look this time—fury as quickly replaced by a bland smile. "Sure."

We ate the toast leaning against the cupboards in the kitchen—the crunches far too loud. My hunger had disappeared, and I gave up after one slice. But the carbs had resolved something for me.

I couldn't stay with Kyle.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - thanks for reading! Next update, Tuesday 20th July, 2021. Have a lovely weekend, y'all. Hope your part of the world is slowly getting over Covid, and that everyone you know and love is healthy.