She might have expected to feel better after breaking her vow of silence, to feel the relief of a great weight lifted from her shoulders, but she hadn’t. If anything, she felt worse, even more weighed down with the burden of now carrying everyone else’s shock and anger.

As the murmur of voices in the hall grew louder and Ellis reappeared in the kitchen doorway, Willow saw that it wasn’t Rick with him, but a short-haired woman in a black leather jacket with a red scarf tied around her neck. A few paces behind her was a gangly uniformed policeman. The woman flashed what appeared to be some sort of official ID and introduced herself as Detective Constable Fowler, adding that she was part of a major crime investigation team.

It was when she asked Willow and Martha which one of them was Rick Falconer’s fiancée – a Miss Willow Miller – and then suggested that perhaps they might all like to sit down, that a feeling of dread swept over Willow.

Whatever storm she had feared was about to break, it wasn’t this and even now, after Mum and Ellis had driven her to London, and she was being shown through to the ICU at the hospital where Rick had been admitted the previous night, she couldn’t believe what had happened to him.

According to what witnesses had told the police and paramedics when they’d arrived on the scene, Rick had been about to get into his car which was parked outside his flat when he’d seen an elderly woman on the other side of the road being mugged by two youths in hoodies. Without a thought for his own safety, so the witnesses said, he’d gone to the woman’s assistance and then one of the attackers had knocked him to the ground and the other had stabbed him several times. He’d lost a lot of blood before the ambulance arrived and had undergone emergency surgery when brought in, Willow was told.

It had taken the investigating police officers last night and all of this morning to track her down. Using Rick’s mobile phone records, and going to his place of work, they had discovered that he had given Willow as his next of kin with the HR department, but only after they had found out where she worked and they’d approached AoK had they then found a way to contact her. Willow still had Mum listed as her next of kin; it had never crossed her mind to change it to Rick. That simple oversight on her part said so much about their relationship and she suspected it would prick at her conscience for a long time to come.

The doctor who had greeted her explained with cool efficiency, but not unkindly – perhaps taking into consideration that she was obviously pregnant – that Rick’s condition was critical. He had been stabbed in the chest and the neck. Now as Willow stood at the end of the bed Rick lay in, she felt an enormous shift in her emotions. Her eyes blurring with tears, she listened to the beeping of the equipment to which Rick was attached and to the doctor as he described Rick as a hero for going to a stranger’s aid the way he had. ‘He acted selflessly and with such courage,’ the doctor said. ‘There are not many who would do what he did.’