Funny word, ‘tether’. It made her think of a greying piece of rope used to tie up a farm animal to prevent it from wandering off unchecked. Which was appropriate, really, when that was exactly how her marriage to Mark Roberts had been. All under his control; her the nervous sheep who knew her place, him the master who kept her there. Oh, he’d been charming at first, of course. They always are, said the fierce-but-kind female QC who had defended her in court. When they want to be, that is.

Mark had seemed like the perfect man when she met him: charismatic and funny, handsome too, with his muscular physique and unusual grey eyes. He was a local councillor for the town and hugely popular in the area, after seeing off plans for a bypass that would have cut straight through school playing fields and woodland. Back then she’d been a size twelve, confident and happy, always laughing about something or other. ‘What a lovely couple,’ their friends had said. ‘You two are made for each other!’ And that was what she had thought too, right up until a fortnight before they got married, when Mark knocked her flying across the room.

It was the oldest story in the book. Tale as old as time, as her Disney-obsessed niece Chloe liked to sing. Because he was so desperately sorry, he had said, as she lay there winded on the floor, her head throbbing where it had smacked against the wall on the way down. Their eyes had met in a terrible moment of silence: herself stunned, Mark aghast, the room seemingly holding its breath. It would never happen again, he had assured her, gathering her into his arms. Please, would she forgive him? Could she give him another chance?

They were due to get married in two weeks and everything had been booked, arranged, paid for. A beautiful ivory dress hung in her mum’s wardrobe, their friend Rhona was planning a meringue extravaganza for the cake, there were two boarding passes for their honeymoon flight to Sardinia already printed and in a safe place with an envelope of euros and the passports. And he was a local hero, a good person – everyone said so!

Of course none of these lines of argument validated staying with a man who had hit you, but they certainly weighed on her mind while Mark was prostrating himself before her with contrition. Whatever, she must have been an idiot because she had said yes, she would forgive him. Yes, she still wanted to marry him; and yes, she would give him another chance.

But then it happened again. And again. And within the space of a year he’d quite run out of chances, and they had both stopped being quite so shocked about his sudden violent tendencies. By then she had begun comfort-eating her way into a corner and didn’t know how to get out.