Page 48 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
Sticks and stones may break my bonesbut words will never harm me.Steven’s words had lost their power to paralyse Mattie.
‘Believe me, emptying a bowl of batter over your head has proved to be very therapeutic,’ Mattie said with a bright smile.
‘You’re not normal.’ Steven gave a snarl of pure rage. Mattie took a step back and trod hard on Tom’s foot, which he responded to with a muffled ‘Ooof!’
‘Really, Mattie, we’ve already spoken about this.’ It was Tom’s most annoyed voice, the one she’d only ever heard once, when Nina was trying to persuade him to pose for the shop’s Instagram with just one of Posy’s beloved tote bags to hide his modesty. ‘Why isn’t he leaving?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said a little desperately. She’d thought the batter would be enough to send Steven fleeing, but he was still there, dripping all over the carpet of the hallway. It was comforting, though, to have Tom right behind her, supporting her with what felt like a wall of solid muscle.
‘Going to get your new boyfriend to fight your battles for you? Does he know what a pathetic waste of space you are? God, Mathilde, everyone knows you were nothing before you met me and now you’re nothing again.’ It wasn’t anything Steven hadn’t said before but Mattie knew her worth now. She wasn’t nothing. She was something. She was somebody.
Before Mattie could defend herself, Tom leaned over her shoulder: ‘Actually, I’m not Mattie’s boyfriend, and actually, she’s not nothing, as you so unimaginatively put it. She’s a strong, intelligent woman who certainly doesn’t need me or anyone else to rescue her, but I cannot stand to listen to you gaslighting her for another second. So go on, shove off!’
Tom stepped around Mattie so he could take a hold of Steven’s arm and begin to walk him down the stairs.
‘Get your hands off me!’ Steven bellowed, struggling to free himself. Tom held firm.
‘Or we could just call the police and have you arrested for public affray, verbal assault …’
‘Verbal assault isn’t even a thing, and shethrewcake batterover me!’
‘It’s a public disorder offence and Mattie accidentally slipping and chucking batter over you would never stand up in a court of law,’ Tom said. ‘I should know because I have a law degree. Now start moving before I make you.’
‘You deserve each other,’ Steven muttered. ‘And I’ve never gaslighted her.’ He paused to navigate the first step. ‘What is gaslighting?’
‘It’s from a play,Gas Light, later made into a very good film starring Ingrid Bergman, but I digress. InGas Light, a husband tries to convince his wife that she’s imagining things and going insane. In this particular instance, she thinks the gas lights are flickering and he says they’re not, when in reality, he’s been sneaking into an upstairs flat and turning on the gas lights there, which causes the gas lights in their flat to dim. Come on, sunshine, pick your feet up!’
‘Yeah, let’s keep it moving,’ Mattie said, poking Steven between his shoulder blades with the wooden spoon that she was still clutching in her batter-splattered hand.
‘In common parlance, gaslighting is the completely despicable and coercive tactic used by men, who don’t even deserve to be called men, to control their partners. They’ll convince them that they’re suffering from all sorts of personality defects when in reality, they’ve been goaded into displaying these sorts of behaviours.’
‘Oh my God!’ Mattie gasped. ‘That’s exactly what you did! I never even knew that it was a thing, that there was a name for it. I thought that I had all these things wrong with me. You made me think I was lucky to have you put up with me.’
He’d had Mattie doubting herself so much that if Steven had said that it was day when it was very clearly night, she’d have gone along with it.
Of course, Steven wasn’t going down without a fight. ‘I never gaslighted you. Let’s not forget that youwerelucky to have me, it wasn’t like you had any other friends … Ow! That hurt!’
Mattie continued to viciously jab the wooden spoon into Steven’s back, as Tom walked him down the last two steps. ‘You’re the reason why I didn’t have any friends at L’Institut, you turned everyone in our class against me with all your stories about how impossible I was …’
‘Textbook gaslighting,’ Tom said with a sniff. ‘And I bet he’d tell you that any other friends that you had weren’t really your friends and that only he really loved you.’
‘How do youknowthis?’
‘Because it’s classic emotional abuse,’ Tom said and he sounded genuinely angry now. ‘To isolate someone, convince them that they’re worthless and that the only person who really loves them is their abuser. It’s the worst kind of toxic, controlling behaviour.’
‘I’m not an abuser,’ Steven said as Tom frogmarched him through the empty shop. ‘I never laid a finger on you.’
Mattie flexed the fingers that Steven had had in a crushing grasp only minutes before. He’d never hit her. But there had been so many instances when he’d taken her hand forcefully enough to hurt, had pinched her hard enough to leave a bruise when they were out with friends because she’d done something, said something, to displease him.
‘Thank you,’ she said and she wasn’t speaking to Tom, though she owed him a debt of gratitude that she’d still be working off when she was ninety. She was talking to Steven as he stood, arms hanging limply at his sides, as Tom unlocked the shop door. ‘Thank you for breaking my heart and stealing my recipe book and all the other terrible things that you did to me, because if you hadn’t, then I might never have found the courage to leave you.’
‘Actually, Mathilde, I think you’ll find that I left you,’ Steven snapped, but Tom pushed him through the now-open door. ‘And believe me, I have no intentions of coming back this time.’
‘Oh good. Can I have that in writing, please?’ Mattie snapped as she followed Tom and Steven, Tom’s hand wedged into the other man’s armpit, out of the shop and across the yard. It was freezing outside, frost already glistening on the cobblestones, but even though Mattie only had a thin jumper on, she didn’t feel the cold at all. Not when she was boiling with righteous fury. ‘I feel sorry for the poor girl that you’re seeing now. You should come with a government health warning.’
‘She’s ten times the woman that you were,’ Steven growled.
They were at the electronic gate now, which opened on the shop side with just the press of a button. Mattie hit it and Tom gave Steven a gigantic shove through the gap.
