She watched Ezra, his tongue poking out as he worked away, and knew she wouldn’t change a thing; even if it was a bit chaotic and hard work, it was worth every minute. Matt and the kids were the centre of her world, and keeping them all happy was her job, her reason for being. After the shambles of her own upbringing, it was the focus of every decision she made, and she was determined that her children would have the stability she’d craved when she was growing up.

I’m never going to turn into my mother, she promised herself. However hard things get, we’ll make it work.

Her childhood memories were something she refused to visit voluntarily. Instead they wormed their way into her brain at night, waking her in the form of nightmares, chilling her heart. She and her sister had a tacit agreement to never discuss it. It was the past; they’d got through it and it was best forgotten. That was the theory. But how did you forget being taken into care from the age of six?

The first time, it was eight months before she was allowed to go back and live with her mum again and was reunited with Hailey. After that, it was a cycle that was repeated with a dreadful regularity until she was eighteen and was spat out of the care system.

Life changed when she went to university, funded from a bursary for underprivileged children. A label she’d felt was tattooed on her forehead, making her a silent teenager, a wisp of a girl who slid in and out of rooms unnoticed, just keeping herself to herself and studying with a grim determination to make a better life.

She shuddered, shaking the thoughts from her mind, letting them fall away as she gazed around the beautiful room they had created, the wonderful home she and Matt had worked hard to afford. She had everything she’d ever wished for and never expected to achieve. Don’t ever take it for granted, she cautioned herself, aware that her tiredness had made her snappy recently. Her gaze settled on the studio portrait that hung on the dining-room wall. My family. Her heart swelled with love as her eyes moved from face to face. They were all that mattered, and she knew she’d do anything, anything at all, to keep them happy.

Chapter Two

Three weeks later

‘I’ll be late tonight,’ Matt said, as he grabbed his bag and took his car keys from the hook next to the back door. He was a snappy dresser when it came to work, one of those men who actually looked good in a suit, his brown hair kept short at the sides, combed back on top, his face clean-shaven, bucking the facial-hair trend.

‘What? Again?’ Sara couldn’t hide her desperation. ‘I’m supposed to be going to see that tribute band tonight with Hailey.’