Then Grace fell pregnant and it was game over. He’d never wanted kids. That was until she’d told him they were going to have one anyway. If there was anyone he would have chosen to have a baby with, it was her. She was everything a mum should be: warm, caring, and fortunately for him, forgiving. She was an amazing mum, he could never deny that. She had given their son the best home a child could ask for. Not like his own slut of a mother who had never given him any of those things. She’d left him to fend for himself most of the time and was more interested in the various men that drifted in and out of her life than she ever was in Nathan. He was never a priority, never first choice. He always felt like he was in the way. Her greatest regret – that’s what she always told him anyway.

Social services took him away from her when he was eight and she didn’t even try and stop them. Nathan told everyone, even Grace, that she’d died. The truth was, he had absolutely no idea where she was. She probably was dead anyway, her body ruined by years of alcohol and drug abuse.

Nathan never knew his father and, apparently, he didn’t even know his son existed. His mother would never tell Nathan who he was, and claimed she didn’t know, but he never believed her. He always fantasized that his dad would find out about him one day and would rescue him from his miserable life. But of course, his father never came, and Nathan learned that the only person who could rescue him was himself. Only he could pull himself out of the stench and the ugliness he was born into. Shake off the dirt and the shame that were the shackles of his childhood and become something better.

What was it about Grace? He’d always been able to have any woman he wanted. Why could she get to him the way no one else ever could? He used to ask himself those questions all the time. But now he knew. It was the way she made him feel. The way she looked at him like he was the most incredible person in the world. She saw through his suit of armour to the monster beneath and she’d still loved him. She made him feel safe. She was home.