And why wouldn’t he? After all, he understood Edward better than she ever had. Tom had seen him for what he really was while she was still blinded by love. He had even tried to warn her before he left for France. But she wouldn’t listen. Anna felt ashamed of the way she had rejected his advice.

But Tom had remained her steadfast protector. Reading his letters, Anna had felt the warmth of his affection, his genuine friendship, coming through each scrawled line, each page of tissue-thin blue paper. He was the only one who had ever truly cared enough about her to tell her the truth. And he still cared now, even after she had shunned him. She felt warmed by his friendship, like the flowers in Victoria Park, tentatively emerging from the winter cold to show their faces to the sun.

You’ve still got friends, you know. You might not think it, but you have.

All this time she had had a friend. Knowing that gave her the strength to face Edward. To do what she had to do.

Her husband sneered, ‘You really think he cares about you? He’s only out for what he can get.’

‘Like you, you mean?’

Fire flared in Edward’s eyes. ‘Don’t you dare compare me with him. I’m nothing like Tom Franklin!’

‘No, you’re right,’ Anna said calmly. ‘You’re not half the man he is.’

For a moment she thought she had gone too far, but she no longer cared. The days had gone when she would tread carefully, living in fear of upsetting him. He could do what he liked to her, but she would never fear him again.

She could see him now, fighting for control of his temper, his mocking smile reasserting itself.

‘Maybe you should have married him, then,’ he said.

‘Maybe I should.’

He laughed. ‘Your father would never have allowed it. You, marrying the messenger boy!’

‘Why not? He let me marry the apprentice.’

Her barb hit home. Edward flinched. ‘I was different.’

‘You were both nothing!’ Anna threw back at him. She could feel her own anger unfurling inside her, rising to match his. ‘What makes you think you were so special? You were just another orphanage kid until my father took you in and gave you a start.’

‘You know nothing about me!’

He was furious, his fists balling at his sides, his lips turning white. Anna cautiously circled the room, putting the bed between them.

‘You think I’m not special?’ he raged. ‘You didn’t see the kind of hell I was brought up in. Thrown away by my own mother, chucked into the workhouse when I was just a baby. You don’t survive that without having something about you. Christ, even your precious bloody Tom had some kind of family! I had no one. I watched the other kids sink into nothing around me, dying because no one cared. I had to learn to fend for myself just to survive.’ He looked her up and down with contempt. ‘But you’ll never understand that, will you? You and your sister, with your charmed lives and your loving parents. You think you’ve had it hard these past few years? You don’t know the meaning of the word. Try being a kid of six years old, going to bed hungry, too frightened to go to sleep in case you get another beating.’