From time to time, she’d heard customers tapping on the shop door downstairs but had ignored them. She was too busy preparing herself.

Just putting on lipstick transformed her and made her feel more powerful. Now, when she looked in the mirror, she could almost see the old Anna staring back at her.

But that didn’t stop her from jumping nearly out of her skin when she heard the sound of the back door opening just before noon.

Anna steeled herself as she listened to him calling out her name, the sound of his footsteps up the hall going into the shop.

‘Anna?’ His voice was louder now, a rough edge to it. She clasped her hands together to stop them trembling as she heard him coming up the stairs.

He threw open the bedroom door. She was sitting before the dressing-table mirror, pinning up her hair. She saw his quick frown behind her reflection.

‘There you are. Why’s the shop closed?’

‘It’s your shop. You tell me.’

His brows lifted. Then he looked her up and down, his mouth twisting.

‘You’re very dolled up, I see. I hope it ain’t on my account?’

‘I wouldn’t waste my time.’

‘Someone’s in a mood today,’ Edward commented. But he was rattled, she could tell. And no wonder. He must have got used to coming home to a cringing, submissive wretch over the past few months.

Anna turned away from him and finished doing her hair in the mirror. There was no fear in her eyes anymore, she noticed. Only stone-cold resolve.

She wondered if Edward had noticed it too.

‘Aren’t you going to ask what I’ve been doing with myself all day?’ she said.

‘I’m not particularly interested.’

‘I’ll tell you anyway, shall I? I’ve been reading.’

‘And why do you think I care what—’ As Anna stood up and stepped to one side, Edward’s gaze fell on the box sitting on the dressing table.

His face tightened and for a moment Anna tensed too, wondering what he might do. He was capable of anything, she realised that now.

His fiery gaze rose to meet hers. ‘Where did you get that? You have no right to go through my things.’

‘And you had no right to keep Tom’s letters from me,’ Anna shot back.

Edward pulled himself upright, towering over her. ‘I told you I didn’t want you writing to him.’

‘But they were my letters.’ No wonder he had run to meet the postman every morning. It all made sense to her now. ‘You let me think he hadn’t written to me. You made me think he didn’t care.’

But Tom did care. Anna had spent all morning reading the letters he had sent to her since her marriage, letters Edward had carefully intercepted.

Every week he had written to her, even after she had told him not to. He had somehow read between the lines of her last message, put two and two together and realised what was happening to her, even before she knew herself.