In the days after bringing her daughter home from the hospital, the weather had turned stormy, whipping up the sea into a roiling cauldron of crashing waves. Wind and rain had lashed at the windows and only the very hardy had braved the elements to go for a walk along the beach. Now, on this calmest of days, the sweep of curving seashore was garlanded with ribbons of seaweed and pieces of driftwood.

Willow had joked with Martha that maybe the bad weather was a sign that she should call her baby Storm, but they’d both agreed that actually there was nothing about her that was the least bit stormy. She was such a quietly contented baby and wonderfully easy to settle after a feed. When she did cry, it was never for long.

At the hospital the nurses had encouraged Willow to touch her baby as much as possible, and to talk to her. Initially she had been terrified of holding such a fragile little thing, but very quickly any fear she felt was eclipsed by a strong need to hold her precious baby, and to tell her that she was going to be the most loved child in all the world. Sometimes those blue-grey eyes would stare back at her with such an intensity, Willow’s heart would swell so much it felt as though it was pressing against her rib cage. That was the power of love, she thought as she pictured her beautiful little daughter sleeping next door in Willow’s old bedroom, her face a sublime picture of angelic serenity.

Her mind lingered over the mental image of her sleeping baby and a thought came to her.

Serenity, she repeated inside her head.

She said it again, this time out loud.

Serenity.

Serenity Miller.

A happy smile crept over Willow’s face. Finally, and with only a few days to go before she had to register her daughter’s birth, she had come up with a name for her, a name that was perfect in every way. It made her want to rush next door and run upstairs to wake her daughter and give her the good news.

But putting her happy excitement on hold, she had something important to do.

Back downstairs, she took out her mobile from her coat pocket. It was the mobile she hadn’t been able to find the morning after Rick had been so violent with her. It had been found, along with her laptop cable, by his work colleagues when they’d been clearing out his office desk. He must have deliberately taken the phone and cable with him that morning when he’d gone to work, hoping that it would prevent her from contacting her mother and sister. That he could have been so calculating still hurt Willow, but she refused to dwell on just how far he might have gone in controlling her, or how badly he might have ended up hurting her. If she did let her thoughts wander in that direction, it never did her any good. For her baby’s sake – for Serenity’s sake – she had to lock that part of Rick’s personality away and never let it affect her relationship with her daughter.