‘Come on,’ her sister had pleaded. ‘He’ll start belting you too if we’re not quick.’

Sara had dug her heels in, staring back over her shoulder towards the little terraced house they’d moved into only a few months before. ‘We can’t leave Mum,’ she’d whimpered, but Hailey’s hand pulled harder and she wasn’t strong enough to resist.

‘We’ve got to go and get help. Come on,’ Hailey had urged, leading her to the end house of the row, where she’d started banging on the door, all the time glancing back the way they had come, frightened they’d been followed.

Luckily, Mrs Greenwood had been in that night. It had all worked out, after a fashion, although it had been weeks before their mother was out of hospital, and months before Sara saw her again.

She shook the thoughts away, concentrated on the road ahead of her.

Hailey might be able to talk to him, she thought as she drove. The two of them seemed to be getting on better these days. It hadn’t always been the case, but Matt appeared to have become more palatable to Hailey once he’d lost his job and she’d seen the vulnerable side to him. Hailey liked vulnerable. She hated cocky men, alpha males, and Matt generally fitted in that category. She’d told Sara a few times over the years that she thought he was too dominant, but Sara hadn’t wanted to listen. She knew marriage was a compromise, knew Matt had a soft side and his need to be in control came from childhood insecurities, but she couldn’t explain it all to Hailey. It was Matt’s business and it had taken long enough for him to talk to Sara, his wife, about it, so she wasn’t going to gossip to her sister.

Compromise was not a word Hailey was very familiar with in her own relationships with men. She was not going to be dominated by anyone and was probably oversensitive to any signs of control. It was the reason why her marriage had fallen apart after nine years, and why she’d been on her own ever since. Given their past, it wasn’t surprising.

Being four years older than Sara, Hailey could remember more about their chaotic home life, her mother’s ragtag boyfriends and their associates. Rare conversations about their childhood – usually after they’d drunk too much wine and Hailey had dropped her guard – had also revealed a dark side to one of her foster placements. A man with wandering hands. Hailey hadn’t gone into detail, and Sara could only guess at what might have happened. They certainly avoided the subject these days; now their mother was dead, it was like that part of their past had died with her.