‘To control her. To make her entirely his possession.’

‘Wouldn’t she realise what’s going on?’

‘Apparently the process is like slowly boiling a frog alive in a pan of water; the victim doesn’t notice the gradual changes going on in their life.’

Ellis cringed. After checking his mirrors, he pulled out to overtake a minibus of schoolchildren, and said, ‘Has your sister given you any indication that she feels uneasy about Rick and her relationship with him?’

‘She doesn’t love him, that much I know.’

‘Really?’

‘She admitted it when she was talking to me while I was stuck in the lift at work. Her actual words were that she wanted to love him, which means she doesn’t. I’m convinced she’s dug herself an almighty hole and thinks there’s no way out of it.’

‘I hate to say it, Martha, but everything you’ve put forward amounts to nothing but supposition.’

‘But you know it’s true, don’t you? And I tell you what else I suspect might be true.’

‘Go on,’ said Ellis.

‘When we first knew that Willow was pregnant, Tom wondered if Willow might have deliberately got herself pregnant to trap Rick, him being her first boyfriend who ticked all the right boxes in that he was financially secure, had his own home, could afford to give her nice things, etcetera. I disagreed with Tom on that, and still do, for the simple reason my sister isn’t the mercenary type, it’s just not her style.’

‘I don’t think it is either.’

‘Anyway, I tried looking at it another way. What if Rick trapped Willow by deliberately getting her pregnant? When you look at it that way round, it all fits. On the face of it she is the classic ditzy people-pleaser and would be an ideal victim for being manipulated.’

‘For what reason though?’

‘Power. It’s always about power and being in control, to cover up some underlying inadequacy.’

It was on the tip of Ellis’s tongue to say that she could be describing her own father, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Instead he tried to decide if even half of what Martha had said about Rick could be true. And if it was, what could any of them do?

Chapter Fifty-One

Willow had spent most of the morning hunting for her mobile as well as the charging cable for her laptop, the battery of which was dead. In the end, she gave up looking and packed a small suitcase. Then she wrote a note for Rick, which she left propped up on the worktop by the coffee machine. Along with the diamond ring he’d given her.

Now, looking out of the train window as it swept through the countryside that was gilded with autumnal shades of gold and russet in the October sunshine, she wondered about the note she had written. It had taken her several attempts to get it right, or as right as it could ever be. She just hoped that once he’d calmed down, Rick would see things the way she did, that it had been a mistake between them. They were oil and water, sliding around each other, but never truly becoming one.