The cycle continued for what felt to Grace like forever. She remained silent, hoping that he would get fed up and praying that Jake didn’t wake up and leave the safety of his bedroom. She had told him so many times that if he ever heard Daddy home when he was in bed, that he was never to come out of his room unless she got him.

Grace’s continued silence and apparent poor attempt at housework only seemed to anger Nathan more, until he got up and pulled her to him.

‘How am I supposed to get it up for you, Grace? You disgust me!’

He managed to though, without any problem at all, after he tore her clothes from her body. He left shortly afterwards, to her utter relief. She curled up in a ball on the floor and just lay there, whimpering like some wounded animal.

Grace had no idea how long she lay there. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could live like this. If she didn’t have Jake, she would just close her eyes and never wake up again. But she could never leave Jake without a mother, and in the hands of the monster that was his father.

Grace hadn’t heard the door open or the footsteps coming towards her. She only heard the soft voice. ‘Grace?’

Looking up, she saw the face of Nathan’s best friend, Ben McKinley.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

All she could do was shake her head and scrabble to cover her almost naked form. What the hell was he doing here?

The next thing she knew, she was being wrapped in her fluffy bathrobe and carried to the sofa.

‘What happened?’ he asked again. ‘Who did this?’

She looked at him. Was he serious? It must have been something in her face that gave her away.

‘No. Not Nathan?’ he shook his head. ‘But … I don’t …’

Ben lifted her face to look at him and she nodded. Then it all came out. Tumbling out of her mouth as though once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. Ben sat and listened to it all. The look of disbelief on his face soon replaced by anger, and then something else. Something Grace hadn’t seen in a long time – concern.

It was light when Ben left the following morning. Grace and he talked for hours, mostly about Nathan, but about Jake too. How she tried her best to protect him. How, fortunately, that child could sleep through an avalanche. Ben told her she should ring the police and get that bastard put where he belonged, but she couldn’t do that. She was too scared. Instead, she made him promise he wouldn’t tell Nathan what he knew. When he offered to beat the crap out of Nathan instead, she begged him not to. He would only make her pay for daring to tell anyone what a monster he truly was.