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‘Is that what it is?’ Vanessa smiled at her and then, so deliberately that Eleanor could scarcely believe she was doing it, she ripped the poster into four and dropped the pieces on to the floor, apologising with insolent insincerity, ‘Oh, sorry, Tom. I’ve torn it.’
Before Eleanor could say a word, she was turning her back on them and closing the bedroom door.
‘I hate you,’ she heard Tom crying shrilly. ‘And when we move house and I have my own room I’m never, ever going to let you in it…’
‘Move house?’ Vanessa shot out of the bedroom, slamming the door back against the wall, and stared at Eleanor, her expression so bitterly hostile that for a moment Eleanor was too shocked to speak.
‘Who’s moving house?’
‘We are,’ Eleanor told her as calmly as she could, inwardly helplessly aware that this was neither the time nor the place to explain to Vanessa what they were planning.
She knew immediately that she was right. The look of fury and fear on Vanessa’s face made her wince and, at the same time, it also made her ache for the vulnerability she had witnessed in her eyes, but before she could say a word Vanessa had disappeared back into the bedroom, returning with the rest of Tom’s prized football posters which were always removed from the wall for her visit and stored in the wardrobe.
‘Here,’ she told Tom savagely, handing him the rolled-up posters. ‘Seeing as you’re going to have your own room, you won’t need to contaminate mine any more with this junk, will you?’
But as Tom reached out to take them from her, instead of relinquishing them, she held on to them, deliberately twisting and screwing them up, a smile of such unkind, almost malevolent satisfaction in her eyes as she heard Tom’s anguished protest that for the first time in her life Eleanor experienced a direct and very urgent desire to retaliate in kind and to subject her to the same kind of cruel demonstration of superior power the girl was showing to her son.
Anger swept through her, fiercely protective maternal anger, and a more subtle but just as overwhelming female recognition of the challenge Vanessa was throwing out, not at Tom, but at her.
Her patience already strained long past breaking point, Eleanor reacted instinctively to it, reaching out to grab hold of Vanessa by her wrist, her own shock at what she was doing mingling with Vanessa’s as her stepdaughter froze, surprise, confusion and then bitter resentment blazing in her eyes as she pulled back against Eleanor’s hold.
‘What do you think you’re doing? Give Tom his posters at once.’
Eleanor could hear the fury trembling in her voice; it made her whole body shake.
‘You can’t make me,’ Vanessa defied her. ‘You can’t tell me what to do. This isn’t even your house. It’s Dad’s…’
The shock of hearing the venom in her voice instantly sprang Eleanor from the trap of her own anger. Shakily she released Vanessa, stepping slowly back from her, watching as Vanessa rubbed her wrist.
‘I hate you,’ Vanessa hurled at her. ‘I hate all of you and I wish Dad had never married you.’
Ignoring the pain her words were causing her, Eleanor gritted her teeth and said quietly, ‘Please give Tom his posters back, Vanessa.’
She watched as the girl turned away from her and towards Tom.
‘You want them… you really want them?’ she taunted him. ‘Well, here you are—you can have them.’
With a savage motion she ripped the posters in half, laughing as Tom howled in outraged anguish, throwing the ruined things at Tom’s feet before turning back to Eleanor and demanding insolently, ‘Happy now? That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’
She couldn’t let her get away with it, Eleanor recognised. If she did… if she did, she would have even more of a problem with her than she already had.
Taking a deep breath, she took a step towards her. Behind her, Tom was crying noisily, protesting about what Vanessa had done. There was a sound in the hallway, but Eleanor ignored it, concentrating instead on what she was going to say to Vanessa.
As she moved towards her, Vane
ssa’s expression suddenly changed, the gloating, triumphant look obliterated by the shrinking, almost cowering look of fear which took its place.
‘No! No, don’t. I didn’t mean to do it… Please don’t hit me.’
Hit her? Eleanor stopped, her body suddenly ice-cold. Surely Vanessa hadn’t really thought…
‘Eleanor, for God’s sake, what the hell’s going on? You can hear the noise in the street.’
Marcus… Thankfully Eleanor turned to greet her husband, but Vanessa beat her to it, darting past Eleanor to fling herself into her father’s arms, sobbing half hysterically, ‘Daddy, Daddy… don’t let her hit me.’
Vanessa had obviously inherited her mother’s love of acting, Eleanor reflected tiredly as she met the look Marcus was giving her.
Later she would explain the whole situation to him; later when they were alone, not here, allowing herself to be manipulated by Vanessa into defending herself.
