Free The Cellar by Minette Walters

ugly piccaninny to accompany him? Did he have no shame?
    The shame is yours, Ebuka said. It’s you who sees me as a cripple and you who stole this child. I’ve asked you many times to mend your ignorance but you’d rather eat bonbons than put your mind to learning. It makes you as unattractive to me as I am to you.
    Her demons have taken you over, Yetunde cried.
    The demons are in your head where they’ve always been, woman. You hold to them because they give you an excuse for cruelty.
    Yetunde quivered from head to toe, so intense was her emotion. You never denied them before.
    Only through weakness. You’re easier to live with when you get your own way. If demons exist, they’re in you … not in this unfortunate girl.
    She’s poisoned you against me.
    Not so, Ebuka growled. My feelings for you haven’t changed since the day we married.
    Then why do you look at me with such hatred?
    Because I’m done with pretence. There was never any love between us. We were ill matched from the start and joy has been absent from my life ever since. You taught my sons to be as greedy and lazy as you, and now one is gone and the other epileptic. What is left for me to have pride in?
    Muna watched in puzzlement as Yetunde rocked to and fro in grief at this statement. Her distress seemed genuine yet Muna could see no reason for it. Had she not expressed similar sentiments herself when she said she’d never wanted Ebuka for a husband? And had she not criticised Olubayo constantly for being feeble-minded?
    Yetunde’s distress turned to anger again. You’ll not divorce me, she snapped. I’ll see this girl dead before I let her steal you from me.
    Ebuka gave a contemptuous shake of his head before wheeling himself to where she’d dropped the anorak on the floor. Muna saw Yetunde clench her fists as he leaned forward to pick it up, and she called a shout of warning. But she was too late. Yetunde took a step forward and slammed both hands on the back of her husband’s neck, using her weight to topple him from his seat and send the chair spinning backwards.
    Muna had pictured moments like this a hundred times in her imagination. She had rehearsed every action she might have to take, in whichever room she was in, when the day came for her to defend herself. It was sweet chance that it was happening here in the hall since this was her preferred place. She turned the handle of the cellar door and pushed it open before slipping round the wall behind the woman’s back.
    Yetunde had forgotten Muna, so intent was she on damaging Ebuka. When she wasn’t kicking his head, she was stamping on his arms as he tried to drag himself away from her feet. She laughed and laughed, and Muna was sure her wits had gone. Her great bulk seemed to tremble with delight each time a whimper of pain came from her husband’s mouth.
    Muna reached the mahogany sideboard which stood outside the sitting-room door and retrieved the hammer that she’d hidden behind a large portrait photograph of Yetunde. Had she been taller and stronger she would have practised in her mind how to bring the weapon down on Yetunde’s skull, but she was too frail to do anything so gratifying and had long since decided that her purpose would be better served by causing Yetunde to fall.
    She knew her life would be forfeit unless Yetunde was too badly injured to retaliate so her dreams of these fights were bloody and violent. They played across her sleeping mind like the movies she saw on television. She had a particular fondness for the scenes where she drove a chisel again and again into Yetunde’s breast or dropped to her knees to slam the doorstop repeatedly on to the hand wielding the rod until she knew from the pulpy squelch of the flesh that it could never be used again.
    Yet she hadn’t imagined that attacking Yetunde would be so easy. The demented woman was blind to everything but Ebuka and a look of bewilderment entered her eyes as the solid head of the hammer smashed into