After listening to Connie's slightly uneven breathing, clearly impaired by the cracked ribs, Ric left her to sleep and went downstairs. Only now that he could think freely, did his own reaction to seeing her so broken, finally hit home. He knew that he hadn't heard the full story, in fact he doubted that he'd even heard half of it, but it was as clear as day what had happened to her. How could a man, a man who supposedly loved his wife, beat and rape her just to put her in her place? Walking into the lounge, Ric stopped still and stared at what lay before him. Connie obviously hadn't been in here since she'd roused herself that morning, as nothing had been done in an attempt to tidy up. Ric stared down at the broken glass next to the coffee table. Was that blood, or red wine staining the carpet? He wasn't sure. There were also several blood spatters on the sofa, presumably where this horrific spate of events had begun. Thinking that he may as well make him self useful, Ric cleaned up as much as possible, also deciding to relight the open fire that had gone out during the night. He thought that Connie might appreciate the welcome warmth when she eventually woke up. Then, knowing that unless Michael reappeared he would be staying here for at least tonight, Ric picked up the cordless phone and called Zubin.
"It's me. Can you talk?" Ric asked when Zubin answered the phone. Excusing himself from the company of his one-day to be mother-in-law, Zubin went into the kitchen. "Where are you?" He asked. "Connie's," Ric replied quietly. "Zubin, Michael's beaten her up, pretty extensively." "Oh, you're joking!" Zubin said in complete shock. "I wish I was," Ric said dryly. "I knew something was wrong when I spoke to her earlier, but I had no idea it was this. Quite where Michael's slithered off to is anyone's guess. She really ought to be in hospital, but you know Connie." "Yes, probably makes a worse patient than you did," Zubin said philosophically. "How much did she tell you?" "Not a lot," Ric said regretfully. "But she's said enough to make me think that wasn't all he did to her." "Ric," Zubin warned ominously. "If this is going where I think it's going, you need to be extremely careful." "Yes, I know," Ric said with a heavy heart. "But all she seems capable of thinking at the moment, is that it's her fault." "Unfortunately, that's really quite normal with something like this," Zubin said regretfully. "So, unless Michael turns up, I'll be staying here tonight. Connie's asleep at the moment, or I wouldn't be talking to you. She'd have a fit if she thought anyone else knew about this." "Yeah, especially me," Zubin said a little ruefully. "Ric, I might not like or agree with Connie's politics, but no one deserves something like that."
A couple of hours later when Connie drifted back into the land of the living, it took her a while to remember everything that had happened to her. So, Ric had patched her up. Fervently praying that he was still here, that he hadn't left her without telling her, she struggled out of bed, and pulled on a thick, over large dressing gown. It entirely hid what curves she had, and at the moment, that was precisely how she wanted it. Everything hurt as she walked slowly down the stairs, all her muscles having stiffened up again after her bath. As she crossed the hall, she heard the rustle of a newspaper, meaning that Ric was obviously still here. Pushing open the lounge door, she saw that he'd cleared up the glass, and as much of the spilled wine as possible. He had also re-laid and relit the fire, and was now sitting in one of the armchairs reading the paper. He looked up as she approached, her ravaged face striking him anew. "What are you reading?" She asked in that deeper, just having woken up voice. "Something I shouldn't be," He said ruefully, trying to fold up the newspaper. Leaning over his shoulder, Connie caught sight of the list of runners that were scheduled for that afternoon at Kempton Park. Removing the newspaper from his hands, she calmly removed the racing pages, folded them in two, and shoved them into the fire. As she stood and meditatively watched the paper begin to burn, she refolded what was left and handed it back to him. "Thank you," Ric said gratefully, liking her matter-of-fact way of dealing with the situation. "Oh, that's all right," She replied, her thoughts having clearly been far away. "How are you feeling?" "Sore," She said succinctly. "But I don't have anything worth taking in the house." "Would you like a cup of tea?" He asked, wanting to be able to do something for her. "I'm not sure that it would stay down," Connie said ruefully. Her eyes strayed to the sofa, and then away again, with Ric realising that there was the last place she probably wanted to sit. Reaching for her left hand, he pulled her towards him, drawing her gently down onto his knee. "That better?" He asked as she leaned gratefully against him. "Much," She replied, thinking that it must have been years since she'd sat this way with anyone.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, just listening to the crackling of the logs in the fire. Connie felt safe, warm and secure, three things she certainly hadn't felt in this room last night. He had his right arm round her, with his left hand resting on the arm of the chair, comforting her but not trying to invade her space. Her head leaned into the corner of the chair, and she thought she could have stayed here forever. When she asked, "Why were you thinking of gambling again?" It seemed to rouse him from his introspection. "It deeply upsets, and angers me that this has been done to you," He told her quietly. "And those are the types of feelings that usually make me do it." She took his left hand in hers, softly running her thumb over the knuckles. "When was the last time you thought about it?" "Before I left for Ghana," He told her, immensely touched that she was so matter-of-factly prepared to confront his addiction. "Did you gamble when you found out about Jess and Zubin?" "I thought about it," He admitted ruefully. "And if pay day had come a few days early, I probably would have done. So, instead of losing a lot of money that I didn't have, I gave him the biggest bruise I think I've ever given anyone in my life, and no, that's not something I'm especially proud of." "When was the last time you did gamble?" "The time I went to Paris with Donna and one of my patients," Ric replied stonily, remembering just what had been going on under his nose at that time. "That was over a year ago," Connie said almost proudly. "I know," Ric said with a slight smile. "Something I wouldn't previously have thought possible." "Why did you, on that occasion?" Ric didn't question himself as to why he was telling her these things, because it simply felt natural to do so. "Zubin, for all his faults, helped me more than anyone when I finally decided to quit the gambling, and when he left for Paris, I think I realised that the one real support I'd had, was gone. When I eventually caught up with him in Paris, I told him what I'd done, and he barely seemed to take any notice of it. I know why now, because Jess was in the hotel with him, and he was terrified of me seeing her there."
Connie was quiet for a while, not entirely knowing what to say. He was still hurting considerably over what Zubin had done, even though he was clearly trying to build some bridges by staying with them. "We're not supposed to be talking about me," Ric said into the silence. "It's far more preferable, believe me," Connie told him bleakly, knowing that he wasn't going to drop it any time soon. Ric wasn't sure how to proceed with his next point. He wanted to ask her about what had really happened, but he was absolutely certain that she wouldn't want to talk about it, and that anything resembling a probing question might frighten her off altogether. "You're very thoughtful," She eventually observed. "Has Michael ever done this to you before?" He asked, thinking this question as good as any. "Do you seriously think I'd still be here if he had?" Connie replied a little disgustedly. "So why now?" Ric persisted. "Why suddenly now?" "I haven't done all that much to keep him sweet over the last few months," Connie said a little evasively. "I haven't slept with him anywhere near as much as usual." "That is not an excuse for doing something like this," Ric protested vehemently. "Oh, and just how would you feel," Connie demanded bitterly. "If, every time you slept with your wife, you knew she didn't enjoy it, because she really couldn't be bothered to make you believe otherwise?" "I would accept it and deal with it," Ric told her succinctly. "Connie, it happens to all of us at some point or another. I would probably see it as a sign that I needed to do better. You might almost call it a challenge." "But don't you see," Connie tried to explain. "That's the point. Michael loathes having to work at anything, even sex. He is so used to everything automatically happening in the way he desires it to, that he can't accept it when it doesn't. The word no means very little to Michael, it's simply an inconvenience to be avoided where at all possible. Whenever I really can't sleep with him, he usually makes a point of being away from home, so that he can pick up someone else." "That seems a little uncharitable," Ric said disgustedly. "Not really," Connie said wearily. "It's just his way of getting what he wants, when he wants it. He got so wound up yesterday, because I was taunting him about you, possibly one of the stupidest things I've ever done, but there you are." After a few moment's silence, as he watched the thoughts flitting to and fro behind her eyes, she asked, "Do you think I behave like a whore?" "That isn't a word I would personally accord to anyone," Ric said carefully, wondering where this had come from. "Not even someone with Chrissie's slightly dubious morals. Why?" "Michael said that was how I sounded, when I was talking about you, which in hindsight I probably did. His incredibly talented little whore, was something he used to call me quite often, before I became one, that is." Ric felt his skin crawl at her own reference to herself in this way, loathing her almost blasé use of the word, as though it described her perfectly. "I wish you wouldn't refer to yourself like that," He told her quietly. "Ric, before I came out to see you in Ghana, that is precisely what I was. I used sex to get me the power I wanted, you know I did." "So what changed?" He asked her. "I did," She replied quietly, her gaze now centred in on him. "You showed me a side of me that I'd forgotten existed. You reminded me what it was like to be appreciated for simply being me, not for what I could give you. You've got no idea just how much I had forgotten what that was like." Ric stared back at her, not having known that he'd had such a marked effect on her.
"I ought to admire your tactics," He said ruefully into the resulting silence. "I'm not sure whether you're aware of it, but you keep managing to manoeuvre me away from what happened to you yesterday." "I wasn't consciously trying," She said with a smile. "But I suppose it comes of years of practice." "What really brought everything to a head?" "He wanted to sleep with me, to prove that he was a better lover than you. I told him that he wasn't, which I don't suppose went down well, and said that I wouldn't even consider sleeping with him until he sobered up. There's no bigger turn off, than somebody pleading with me to sleep with them, I hate it." She stopped, clearly not wanting to continue. Ric just waited, knowing that she had to be allowed to do this in her own time. "He hit me, because I told him that he used to be a real man. I think that was his way of proving he was. I asked him if he thought that made him a real man, and his response was to tell me that he thought I used to like it rough." "Which you do, if I remember rightly," Ric put in, clearly remembering her last night in Ghana, when she had needed that hard and furious action to achieve her emotional release. "There is a great deal of difference," Connie said acidly. "Between liking a bit of rough sex very occasionally, to being beaten black and blue." "I know there is," Ric said calmly, not rising to her inference that he was agreeing with Michael. "I'm sorry," She said, the wind having gone out of her sails. "I know," He told her gently, brushing a strand of hair back from her face.
"I, erm, I tried to get away from him, but a mixture of anger, alcohol and sexual arousal, creates an enormous amount of strength." Her face was turned away from him now, and he could feel her entire body tensing up against him. "When I realised what he intended to do," She continued a little hesitantly. "I did the stupidest thing I possibly could have done, I called his bluff, told him he wouldn't dare." Inwardly, Ric winced, knowing that this was the precise thing to have persuaded someone like Michael Beauchamp to do just that. Connie found that she couldn't say it, she simply couldn't put into words what Michael had actually done to her. "If only I'd slept with him," She said bitterly into the silence. "If only I'd given in just this once, he would never have done something like that to me." "And trying to turn the clock back, and apportioning yourself even the slightest amount of blame, isn't going to help," Ric told her firmly. "This, is, not, your, fault, Connie, and you will not persuade me otherwise." "Ric, over the last few months, I have made him feel a complete failure, not something he's ever been used to." "And that is absolutely no excuse," He said vehemently. "Connie, that's not something a real man does to his wife, to anyone." Then, after a moment's thought, he asked, "How much did that hurt you?" Knowing that she hadn't mentioned it when they'd been cataloguing her injuries earlier. "It's nothing that won't heal and that I can't live with," She said dismissively. "And what's really odd, is that I don't even remember it. The last thing I do remember is him squeezing the bloody life out of me, because I was fighting so much." She traced the marks on her neck with a finger. "I think I must have lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen. The next thing I knew, it was hours later, everything hurt and Michael had gone. You could say I'm better off than some. I bet Diane would have given anything to not be able to remember what Dominic Fryer did to her." She was talking about her lack of memory almost nonchalantly, but Ric could see that something was niggling away in the back of her mind, getting closer and closer to the surface. "At one point," She continued. "I think I thought I was going to die. I think part of me wishes I had." Her utterance of this assertion seemed to shock her, as though she really hadn't meant for it to slip out. "Why?" Ric asked her, resisting the urge to hold her even closer to him, as though to protect her from further thoughts of this nature. "Because then I wouldn't have to know that he'd done this to me," She replied miserably, the long suppressed tears finally rising to her eyes. "I know some of the things I do are pretty reprehensible," She added gloomily, desperately trying to keep her voice under control. "But I didn't know I was worth quite so little." These brittle words cut Ric to the core, slicing through his heart with a piercing agony for her that temporarily made him speechless. Realising that she wouldn't be able to hold onto her control for much longer, Connie tried to get up from his lap, struggling to free herself from the comforting haven of his arms. Understanding her plight but unwilling to let her suffer alone, Ric drew her closer, turning her face back towards him, holding her to him as her body shook with silent tears. He could feel that desperate desire within her not to lose control, and not to let anyone else see her do it, not even him. "I'm sorry," She said eventually, raising her cheek from where it rested against his shoulder. "Connie, you don't need to be sorry," He told her, feeling a little off course himself. "I just feel so stupid," She said bitterly, reaching for the box of tissues on the coffee table beside them. "Connie, I don't care how many times I have to say it, but I will keep on telling you that it wasn't your fault, for as long as it takes. You are finding it easier to blame yourself, because it is far easier to punish oneself than it is to punish someone else. But in this case, you are wrong to keep on doing that. If it's the last thing I do, I will persuade you to start believing in yourself again."