Helen can take no more and Rob lies in a pool of blood.

Radio Times: Rob asserts his viewpoint, and Helen reacts.

Characters: Helen, Henry, Kirsty, Rob

• Kirsty calls on Helen bearing an apple pie from Fallon. Henry is playfully shooed upstairs to bed by his mother. Kirsty notices the dinner table, set for a special meal. After a few moments, Helen tells her shocked friend that she’s leaving, with Henry, after supper. She just needs some time to herself; she’s sure Rob will understand. An open-mouthed Kirsty can’t believe her ears; surely they must just leave, now? Rob’s voice is heard, “Darling, I’m home.” Helen bundles her visitor outside, to hide.
• Rob notices the pie and the questions start. No, she hasn’t been out. It was a gift from Peggy. Helen looks forward to a pleasant meal together, it’s tuna bake. He puts on some music and heads upstairs for a shower, leaving instructions for her to make home-made custard and not serve the usual shop bought muck. Once he’s gone, Helen rescues Kirsty and makes hurried arrangements for her to pick them up if she calls. Kirsty is frightened but Helen assures her that everything will be OK. Helen bundles her out just as Rob’s roar floods the house. Why was there a half-packed case on their bed? He’s incandescent but Helen manages to calm him by explaining that it was an emergency bag for hospital.
• Helen is urged to clear her plate. As she doesn’t, Rob helps himself. He has nothing but praise for the meal, but she wonders why, as he had previously said that he hated tuna bake. He denies ever having said it but understands that she becomes easily confused since she became pregnant. She replies that it had started long before then. He demands an explanation but she remains quiet. When he insists that she must finish at least half of her meal, she reacts passionately. He is so … controlling. She has changed so much for him, her clothes, her hair, she doesn’t even go out. He laughs. She begs him not to. Her relationship with Henry has changed. Did Rob make his bath too hot that time? How could you even think that darling? She replies that it was quite easy really: she had spoken to Jess.
• They had met in Felpersham. He accused them of comparing notes. Helen had wanted to know the full story regarding Ethan. She tells a rapidly darkening Rob that his ex-wife had said that getting away from him was the best thing she had ever done. Rob explodes, dashing his meal to the floor. Spitting bile, he attempts to demolish his wife’s very essence. She, like Jess, is feeble-minded, over sensitive and clingy. A harpy. Desperate for love and to be needed but having to be satisfied with a stranger’s sperm. She needed him to take her in hand and boy, did she want it. A single parent disaster zone, a frigid spinster, needing to be completed by a real man. He asks if he makes her feel special, she must be honest! Yes, she admits, Rob makes her feel special. He calms down and apologises for being frank. He wipes her tears saying that she is so lucky to have him to care for her. He points out that the music playing was the same as the night they made his son. Every night should be like that, when she completely belonged to him. Henry calls down from his room. Rob insists on going to put him back in bed.
• While he’s away, she tries to call Kirsty using her “emergency” phone but Rob appears before the call is connected. He’s furious that the phone was provided by “that manipulative, man-hating dyke”. Tom was better off without her! Kirsty returns her call, but Helen is obliged to say that she had phoned accidentally and that they were still eating. Having hung up, and with Rob’s commands to take the pie out of the oven ringing in her ears, she finds the strength to tell the truth, that she and Henry were leaving and that once through the door he would never see them again. He menacingly promises that wherever she goes, he will always be with her. Shouting that he would end up as a sad, pathetic little man, she tries to push past him and he hits her. He grabs a knife from a drawer, and puts it in her hand, daring her to do what Greg did, as it is the only way he will ever let her go. Henry appears wanting the shouting to stop. He refuses to go to bed, Rob growls at him and starts to bundle him off. Helen shrieks at him to let him go. There’s a tussle and Rob gasps. He urges her to put the knife down and lunges at her again. After another struggle he collapses, this time remaining still. The sound of Helen dropping the steel knife on the stone floor echoes round the room.
• With Henry plaintively asking about his father, Helen puts him in front of the TV to watch a cartoon, saying that daddy is asleep and they shouldn’t wake him. Helen moves out of the room and phones Kirsty. She is sobbing and thoroughly bewildered and confused being barely able to speak. She manages to tell Kirsty that she didn’t know what to do and that Rob made her do it. She had to stop him. Kirsty didn’t understand fully, but Helen just had to explain, to make her understand. “He’s dead … I killed him”.