‘No,’ Willow managed to say. ‘It was very brave of him.’

Giving her a long hard look, the doctor said, ‘May I ask how you came by the bruises to your face?’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said self-consciously.

The intensity of the man’s gaze increased. ‘Would you like to talk to someone about it? We have people here in the hospital you could chat to quite informally.’

‘No,’ she said firmly.

Frowning, the doctor then said he would leave her to have some time on her own with Rick. ‘Talk to him as normally as you can,’ he said before going. ‘Hopefully your voice will help bring him back to us.’

‘Is he unconscious?’

‘Yes. He sustained a severe head injury when he was knocked to the ground. But there’s every chance he can hear what’s going on around him.’

Alone, Willow took a cautious step nearer to the bed, irrationally scared that she might wake Rick and that he’d be furious with her for not coming to see him sooner.

Looking down at him, she tried to make sense of what had happened, based on the information she’d been given. Had he found her note and engagement ring and been so angry – or so upset – that he’d rushed outside to his car to drive down to Tilsham to see her? If that was true, then it was her fault that he was lying here with life-threatening injuries. What if he died? What if she had to live with that on her conscience?

The steady rise and fall of his breathing was being maintained by a ventilator via a tube inserted into his mouth. Several large dressings had been applied to his neck and chest, and at various strategic points on his upper body, pads had been placed from which wires led to various monitoring devices. He was also attached to an intravenous drip.

Her own chest tightening as though she too needed help to breathe in the stifling warmth, and her legs shaky with the shock of seeing Rick like this, she thought that only a few hours ago she had been determined to tell him it was over between them. She had planned to stand up to him and say that he was nothing but an abusive bully, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a monster even.

But that couldn’t be who he really was, she thought, taking in his helpless body. Not when he’d tried to do the right thing by helping an elderly woman who was being mugged. There had to be good in him to have done that, surely?

Just as her father, she supposed, hadn’t been entirely bad.

Talk to him as normally as you can, the doctor had said. But what was normal now? What could she possibly say to Rick?

Did you deliberately mark me out as a willing victim, as Martha believes, somebody whom you could manipulate for your own sick pleasure?

Did you deliberately get me pregnant?

Did you ever really love me?