‘There’s enough self-blame going on right now,’ Ellis said firmly, ‘so please don’t start reproaching yourself.’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘Your name hasn’t come up in anything Willow has said, but I would say that it was obvious to us all that the two of you took an instant liking to each other, which means Rick would have seen it too. It seems to me like he didn’t need much of an excuse to show his true colours.’

‘But I probably didn’t help matters, did I?’

‘Maybe you did. Maybe this needed to happen sooner rather than later.’

‘Do you think she’d be okay if I contacted her?’

‘I don’t see why not. Before today you wouldn’t have asked me that question, would you? She’s no different to the person she was when you last spoke.’

Was that an overly simplistic thing of him to say? Ellis pondered a few minutes later when he’d wished Lucas good luck with his talk and rung off.

Was there now a danger they would treat Willow differently, that she would now forever be cast in the role of victim? He hoped not. Otherwise she would never be able to move on and put this behind her.

But as Naomi had said, being raped and then terminating the unwanted pregnancy had shaped her from then on. It perhaps explained why she found it so hard to commit to anything, possibly believing she didn’t deserve anything good and lasting in her life.

How could the poor girl ever unpick all that? And what would she feel every time she looked at the baby and was reminded of Rick?

Worse still, what if Rick convinced her that he could change, that for the sake of his child he would do it? Knowing Willow with her naturally kind heart, she would probably give him a second chance. Just as Naomi had with Colin.

All evening they had been on tenterhooks wondering whether, after going home and discovering the note Willow had left him, Rick would show up at Anchor House. But there had been neither sight nor sound from him.

Ellis had been ninety-nine per cent sure that Rick would try calling, that he would be confident enough in his ability to persuade them that everything Willow had told them had been a lie. Of course he hadn’t hit her! How could anyone think he had when he loved her so much? He might even say that yes, they had argued, but she had fallen over and for some unaccountable reason had come up with a terrible story to make him look bad. Pregnancy, he might say, had made her behave irrationally, which he had done his best to cover up to save her any embarrassment. They already knew that he was a credible liar, so why wouldn’t he try to convince them that black was white and white was black? He was smooth enough to think he could get away with it.

This and a hell of a lot more had passed through Ellis’s mind when it came to second-guessing Rick’s reaction to Willow being here with them. It reminded him of somebody he had once worked with who had made a series of catastrophic errors of judgement over a client’s portfolio. When Ellis had challenged him, he had refused to acknowledge any fault on his part, but had justified his position even more tenaciously, all the while digging himself a deeper and deeper hole by insisting he was right. The only thing he’d been concerned about was managing his image, rather than resolving the problem he had created, or accepting he was responsible for it.