Grace couldn’t help but feel for her. She was desperate for the attention of a man who didn’t seem to pay her much at all; a man who didn’t deserve her. She wanted to tell Kayleigh that she should be grateful for small mercies and that she should run for the hills while she still could. But of course, she didn’t. It would only cause trouble for both of them. And she doubted Kayleigh would listen to her anyway. She had that look Grace knew all too well; she was completely besotted with him, blind to his many flaws and content with the snatched moments when he made her feel like the only woman in the world.

‘How am I supposed to live like this? I thought the baby would make him change, force him to spend more time with me. To love me again, but it didn’t.’

‘The baby?’ Grace exclaimed, about to take her drink away.

‘Don’t worry, he made me get rid of it.’ Kayleigh was sobbing then. ‘He was furious with me, said I’d trapped him and I had to choose – it was either him or the baby. I just wanted to make him love me again. So, I got rid of it,’ she wailed.

Suddenly, Nathan’s recent coldness towards his girlfriend and his complete lack of attention to her all made sense now. He didn’t like to be pushed into corners, to be manipulated or put in situations which were not of his own making. So, poor Kayleigh was being punished for trying to do just that. God, he was such a heartless bastard. How many lives did he need to destroy before he’d think about the consequences of his disgusting behaviour? How many women had he forced into having an abortion? How many women had he terrified into keeping his dirty little secrets?

Grace blinked back the tears as she remembered the two babies she’d lost. She thought about them often. They would be fourteen and twelve years old by now. Would they have been boys or girls? Would they have looked like her? Three children milling about the place instead of just one. She’d always wanted a big family, but Nathan had taken that from her, just as he’d taken everything. Then there was poor Eddie, who’d had to grow up never knowing his father. Nathan had forced his mother, Sandra, to lie to her son for all those years. How could Nathan know he had another son out there and not feel anything for him?

It was Kayleigh’s loud sobbing that brought Grace back to the matter at hand. ‘Why don’t you come through the back with me, love, and we can have a drink there?’ she said to her soothingly, aware that the younger woman was starting to draw attention to herself and Nathan would not like that one bit.