Joseph sipped his coffee and stared at her over the top of his polystyrene cup.

‘Stephen Cox was known to most as a successful Greenborough Town footballer. We knew him as an aggressive little thug, skilled with his feet certainly, but also pretty skilled with his fists.’

‘I don’t like where this is going,’ murmured Joseph.

‘Cox got a signing for a big-league team, and the money started to roll in. Get the picture? Sponsorship deals, fast cars, all that was missing was the pretty girl on his arm, and funnily enough, Stevie Boy never seemed to keep his girlfriends for long. Until he met Emily.’ Nikki stared into her coffee. ‘I have no idea what happened when they met, but something did, some weird attraction of opposites, maybe. She was totally infatuated with him, and he saw something in her, something he could control, something he could own.’

‘You knew her, before she met this Stephen Cox?’

‘Oh, I knew her. She was three years older than Hannah, but the Drennan’s lived in the same village as we did. The girls played together as children. Emily was the most sweet-natured kid I’ve ever met. Hannah was always the feisty one, the one who questioned every damned thing you asked her to do, but Emily would just smile and nod and get on with it.’

‘Did she marry Cox?’

Nikki waited for a moment before replying, and watched through the glass door panel as two nurses hurried into the ITU. ‘No, they never married. I don’t think that was ever in his game plan. He convinced her to move in with him, then he began the long, slow process of destroying her.’ Nikki stared impassively at the door to the Intensive Care Unit. ‘I hadn’t seen her for almost a year, then one evening I was just going off duty when a call came in, someone had heard crying coming from a derelict building near the docks. Everyone on the incoming shift was committed, there’d been a major RTC, so I volunteered for the shout.’

‘Emily?’

This was not easy. Nikki had only twice spoken about what she found, once for her statement, and once, over a very large Scotch, to Rick Bainbridge. She had refused counselling, and had never allowed anyone to broach the subject again, including her family. Which, a long way down the line, she knew to have been a big mistake. And now, here she was preparing to bare her soul to a stranger. But was he a stranger? She looked at Joseph thoughtfully, and wondered how this had come about. She’d decided from the moment that the Super had told her about him that they would not get on. She had wanted to hate him for intruding into her domain. Part of her couldn’t wait to find an excuse to send him scurrying back to Fenchester. But now …