James had been cleared of all wrongdoing, the evidence showing that he’d been manipulated by Fiona to think he was doing Sara a favour by taking her away for the weekend, when in fact his role had been delivery boy, serving her up like a delicacy for others to feast on, without him knowing anything about it. Fiona liked it that way. She liked to be the puppet master, pulling the strings and watching everyone dance along to her tune. A tune that only she could hear. James had suspected he was being played by Fiona, but had simply thought he was getting Sara out of the way so Fiona could spend time with Matt.

The accusation of theft against Sara had been dropped after she had called Julia and been open and honest about the situation. Julia – who’d quickly stepped into the role of chairperson at the community centre – had assured the police that no money had been stolen. Yes, there had been an admin error, but it had been put right straight away and no harm had been done. The accusation was just Fiona being malicious, she’d said. James had backed her up and had also reiterated his job offer to Sara, but she had declined. Her debt to him was well and truly paid, and she wanted to put a bit of distance between them so she could start to forget what had happened.

With the whole terrible experience at an end, Sara vowed to make sure nobody could ever manipulate her like that again. She understood the value of information and had made it her mission to find out as much as she could about Fiona. Maurice had been very forthcoming.

It seemed Fiona had a chequered past. When Maurice had met her, she was homeless, having just been declared bankrupt and evicted from her property, narrowly escaping a conviction for fraud. With his help, she’d reinvented herself and become queen bee in the small Yorkshire world she inhabited.

Now that she’d been charged, she was not allowed to contact Sara or her family, but if she ever became a threat to them in the future, Sara would ensure the secrets of her past were spread far and wide.

But she knew that Fiona wasn’t the real worry. The person she really needed to protect herself and her family from was Matt.

She couldn’t forget the way he’d lied to protect himself, nor the physical violence he had shown to her and Hailey and the verbal abuse he’d inflicted on Ezra. Not to mention his disregard for all the women who would suffer, often unknowingly, because of the website he’d designed, the business venture he’d entered into.