In a flash Ellis had fetched it and with the kettle now filled and plugged in, Martha turned around and joined Naomi and Willow at the table. Geraldine reappeared and once again Willow was the focus of everybody’s attention.

‘I’m sorry for causing such a fuss,’ she said, plucking a tissue from the box.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Geraldine, banging the cake tin down on the table with about as much delicacy as a pile-driver. ‘You turn up here in tears looking like you’ve been in a fight, a fuss is the last thing I would call it. I just hope you’re not going to claim you walked into a door.’

‘Geraldine!’ remonstrated Naomi. ‘For goodness sake, show some sensitivity, will you?’

‘Don’t look at me like that, Naomi. Not when it’s obvious that this is history repeating itself.’

There was a highly charged pause as Naomi exhaled deeply and took in the enormity of her friend’s words.

‘What do you mean, history repeating itself?’ demanded Martha.

‘Not now, Geraldine,’ Naomi warned her in a stern voice. Ellis caught her eye and she knew what he would be thinking: that Geraldine was right, and the awful thing was, she knew it too. She knew what had happened to her daughter with every fibre of her body, which was vibrating with a seething anger she had never before experienced. She had to make her darling Willow tell her the truth, and make her understand that no excuses could be made for Rick and what he’d done. Naomi had made that mistake with Colin and nothing on earth would allow her to let her daughter to do the same. No man was ever going to knock her daughters about and get away with it. Never!

‘Would you rather I made myself scarce?’ asked Geraldine.

Naomi was about to say that perhaps that would be best when Willow said, ‘No, don’t go, please stay.’

With the kettle now boiling, Naomi asked Ellis to do the honours. ‘There’s a box of decaffeinated in the cupboard,’ she said gratefully to him as he nodded and set about the task.

Then gently taking her daughter’s hands in hers, and swallowing back the anger she felt at the sight of her horribly battered face, Naomi said, ‘Did Rick do this to you? You mustn’t be embarrassed or ashamed to tell the truth if he did.’

Willow’s bruised and swollen lips trembled, and tears sprang to her eyes. ‘It wasn’t his fault … not really … I annoyed and upset him last night because I came home late.’

‘No, Willow,’ Naomi said softly, her throat constricted with the injustice of it. ‘Whatever you said or did, that did not give Rick the right to hurt you.’

Her expression as fierce as Naomi had ever seen it, Martha pulled out a chair and sat opposite her sister. ‘How many times has he done this to you?’

Willow raised her tearful gaze from the tissue she had screwed up into a tight ball and looked at Martha. ‘This was the first time, but he’s been very angry with me before. I just always seem to annoy him, and it makes him lose his temper.’