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“No. Thank you,” she tacked on. Her legs felt like they were filled with lead as she crossed the plush office and eased herself into one of the arm chairs. Not a sofa. Nowhere that he could sit close. It had taken her the whole morning to prepare herself for seeing him again. She wasn’t sure she could feel his touch and not fall to pieces. The resolve she’d made, to put Ellie first, was hard and unbreakable. At least it was, until she saw Hendrix.
Then, it became a wall of glass, and he a hammer that could easily smash through it.
He retrieved a water bottle from the fridge and handed it to her. He noticed the way she kept her fingers at the very bottom of the glass, to avoid accidentally brushing his hand.
His temper flared but he restrained it. He took up the seat opposite her.
“My colleague met with your husband this morning.”
She knitted her brows together. “Your colleague?”
“Yes.” There was no way William didn’t know who Hendrix was. He didn’t need to see him yet. Not until Hendrix was ready. “It was smarter this way.”
“Why?” She asked, her breath catching in her throat. “You’re my lawyer.”
“Yes. And if he saw that you had me, personally, representing you, he’d go and hire ten more attorneys to outgun us. Better to lull him into a false sense of security while we’re getting a feel for how he’s going to play this.” It was true. Perhaps it hadn’t been his main reason for missing the preliminary conversation, but it did make good sense.
“Okay.” Her fingers were working furiously in her lap, and he ached to reach over and take her hands in his. “And?” She prompted, her eyes focussing on a point over his shoulder. “What did he say?”
Hendrix spoke slowly, so that she could properly absorb what he was saying. “Your husband wants to petition you for divorce, on the grounds of abandonment.”
“Abandonment?” She shot up out of the chair, and rubbed a hand over her temple. “Abandonment? What does that mean?”
His smile was lopsided. “That you abandoned him, essentially, without any hint of wishing to return.”
“Oh, God.” She looped a finger over her necklace and slid the pendant from one side to the other. Her eyes were filled with fear as they shifted to his face.
“He also claims you’ve flat out refused him access to his daughter. He feels you’re an unfit mother, on the basis that your finances are stretched and you leave Ellie with a woman who has a criminal history.”
“Oh my God!” She was shaking unstoppably. “That sounds dreadful! Georgia only has a criminal record because she spray painted a train when she was little more than a kid. It’s nothing. She’s a great person. You’ve met her. I would never leave Ellie with someone whom I didn’t trust.”
“I know,” his voice was thick with compassion. “I’m only telling you where William is trying to take things.”
“Hendrix,” her fear was a tangible weight in the room. “None of this is true. My finances are only stretched because he withdrew all my money.”
Hendrix nodded. “He also alleges that in the line of your work, you frequently have strangers in your living environment, any of whom could present a threat to Ellie.”
Her eyes were enormous, her mouth dropped open. “How dare he!” She sucked in a deep breath and paced from one side of the room to the other. Until that moment she had still held a tiny thread of hope that her husband would find the will to be a good, decent human being. That he would see the best thing for all of them was to let her go without a fuss.
But William was not a decent human being, and he would never let her go. Not because he loved her, but because he didn’t like to lose. She was a possession to him, as much as his precious Van Gogh and Faberge Egg.
When Chloe spoke, it was as though a different person altogether had flown into her body. “You asked me if my husband was abusive, the other day.” Her eyes had a faraway look, and she seemed almost like a robot. Her words were without passion. Her face without expression.
Hendrix was enthralled. He leaned forward in his seat, studying her while she spoke.
“He hit me three times.” She couldn’t look at him as she spoke. “The first, he was drunk. We’d been at a party, and I’d danced with a friend of his. Actually, it was the father of his friend. He got it into his head that I was flirting, and he slapped me when we got home.” Still her tone was ice-cold. “He apologised the next morning, and I still thought I loved him. So I accepted it at face value.”
Bile flushed Hendrix’s system and adrenalin spiked sharply through his body. He wondered where William was at that point in time. He wanted to bash his head to a bloody pulp. “Go on,” he urged gently, as though they were talking about the build up of midtown traffic earlier that day.
Only the way her fingers were clinging together betrayed that she was finding this discussion difficult. “The second time was when my mother died.” Her eyes were bleak. “I’d flown to England, for the funeral. He hadn’t been able to come because he was in the midst of some big contract negotiation.” She furrowed her brow, trying to recall the details. “Something about a golf club he was buying and the staff he was obliged to keep under the terms of the purchase agreement.”
Hendrix nodded, his breath clutched in his chest while he waited for her to continue.
“I arrived back late at night. His meeting hadn’t gone well. The golf club was insisting he retain ninety percent of their employees for a minimum of twelve months.” Under different circumstances, the details she recalled would have made him smile. But he was far, far from amused. “I was showering. You know what it’s like. I just wanted to get the aeroplanes and grief off my skin and out of my hair.” Her eyes met his, but she wasn’t seeing him. She was dipping back in time, into her history. “He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me out of the water. He slammed me against the tiled wall and put a hand against my neck.” She lifted her own hand there now, rubbing the flesh as if to remind herself that she was fine now. Hendrix must have betrayed a hint of his fury because she sought to reassure him. “I was fine. It was over very quickly. I had a sprain in my wrist, that was all.”
r /> “Did you see a doctor?”
“Yes.” Her eyes darkened. “I told them I’d hurt it playing tennis.”
