Page 25

1998

The blood test has come back from the doctor’s. Not that Kaya needed to see it. She wishes she hadn’t even taken it. The way the old man looked at her when she came in. Like he knew it wasn’t her husband’s, because Miika wasn’t there. Like the doctor was in on her dirty little secret.

She wishes she didn’t exist. If she didn’t exist, the baby wouldn’t. That’s how Kaya feels right now.

She’s lying in bed. The mark on her cheek is red raw. Miika hadn’t said anything to her. She’d just asked him if his dinner was okay and he slapped her across the face. He hadn’t even been drinking.

She knows the slap was not because he was unhappy with his dinner. They both know what the slap was for.

Kaya’s worried it’s only the beginning.

She remembers the first time he really lost it. He punched her so hard in the face, her nose broke and she was knocked out for hours.

If he punched her like that in the stomach, what damage would that do?

How long will it be before looking at her growing belly tips him over the edge?

Kaya has checked her savings. She has money hidden around the house in places she knows Miika will never look– in the pantry, in among her now useless time-of-the-month pads, in the cabinet where she keeps the polish and cloths she uses to wipe down his mother’s damned ornaments. Those stupid ornaments. They’d inherited them with the house, a house Kaya didn’t even want to live in.

She has enough to get down to Helsinki and spend a couple of nights in a hotel. If she could find somewhere quickly, and cheaply, she could manage, but if her search goes on. . . how long before her money runs out?

She can’t bring herself to go to her parents. They’ve never liked Miika, she knows they’ll be happy. But they’ll start asking questions about the baby. And Kaya knows she can’t pretend to her mother that the child is Miika’s. Which would mean admitting what she’d done.

Her parents might not approve of her choice of husband but what Kaya has done will disgust them.

Kaya can hear him moving around downstairs. He’s coming up.

She curls into a ball, as tight as possible, trying to make herself small, trying to protect the child in her stomach.

The bedroom door opens.

She hears him come in, hears his breathing.

Her heart is galloping. She should have gone. She should have left by now.

It’s too late.

‘Sorry,’ Miika says.

Kaya is so shocked, she doesn’t move.

‘It won’t happen again.’

He leaves.

Kaya lies there, her heart slowing.

What was that?