Odds-on, Rick would do exactly the same. He would lay whatever blame he could on Willow. But whatever excuse or reason he gave in the hope it would exonerate him would be a waste of his breath. There was nothing he could say or do that would make any of them think well of him. He was, if it didn’t sound too much of an exaggeration, a dead man walking as far as this family was concerned. Though how things would work out when Willow gave birth was anybody’s guess. As the child’s father he would have rights, and that was what worried Ellis most.

Chapter Fifty-Six

The combination of yesterday’s revelations and the baby inside her lying at an awkward angle, seemingly pummelling her ribs with both feet, had resulted in a restless night’s sleep for Martha. When she checked to see what time it was and she saw it was almost seven o’clock, it was with a sense of relief that she dispensed with the futility of trying to sleep.

Myriad emotions had spun her thoughts into a tangled and sticky web for most of the night, wrapping her in guilt. She had treated her sister far from fairly over the years, but if she had known the horror of what Willow had gone through, she would have acted very differently. Less exasperation and a lot more compassion. And she would have made sure that vile monster who had raped her would have paid for what he’d done. The injustice of what had happened to Willow made her angrier than she could articulate.

On top of all that was what Mum had revealed about Dad. Martha’s first reaction had been to call her mother a liar, to deny every word of what she said. But there had been such a calmness to Mum’s confession that Martha knew she had to accept that, as shocking as it was, Mum was telling the truth. There was also Willow’s corroboration to factor in, that she had actually witnessed the violence, as well as Auntie Geraldine’s suspicions. It was, she was forced to acknowledge, an open-and-shut case.

But just as Mum must have made excuses for Dad, so too did Martha want to invent some plausible and acceptable reason for his behaviour. But the truth was, in her condemnation of Rick for what he’d done to Willow, she had to condemn her father too. She could not make any allowances for him. Which left her feeling betrayed, as though she had loved and admired a fraud of a man, and consequently, everything she had built her life on was crumbling beneath her feet. None of it was real. She had been conned.

Tom had been predictably shocked by what she told him about Willow on the phone last night, but when she tried to tell him about her father her voice had cracked, and she’d begun to cry. She knew that if she alarmed Tom too much, he would grab his car keys and drive down to be with her, so she pulled herself together and forced the words out.