‘Guy,’ she said. ‘Why did you take the kids? Why did you arrange the ransom?’

He had been looking at the champagne; she had the idea he was about to suggest drinking it again, but he whipped around to look at her.

His eyes were narrow, his lips thin and white, pressed together in what looked like fury.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What did you say?’

She had no idea why he was reacting like this, what it was that had tipped him into this fury.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It was nothing.’

‘Did you ask why I arranged the ransom?’ he said. ‘Is that what you asked?’

His face was white, his eyes bulging in their sockets.

‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Doesn’t matter?’ He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘You are such a bitch, Annabelle,’ he said. ‘Such a bitch. Well, I’m going to train you, you bitch. Like the dog you are. I should have done this years ago.’

He jumped across the room and grabbed her damaged arm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Please. Don’t.’ Then she screamed as he lifted her elbow and twisted it. She felt the bones in her shoulder grind together and it was agony, eye-watering agony, and then he stopped and her arm flopped by her side.

‘The whole thing was about the ransom,’ he muttered, deflated. ‘And you pretend not to know why. How else could you have done it? You could never have left him for me. I tried, before the wedding. I offered you an out, but he had you trapped—’

‘That was you?’ she said. ‘You sent those emails?’

‘Yes. And it taught me that you were stuck, which only got worse when he made you have children. So you had to leave them as well, which you made clear to me in your last book was what you wanted to do.’

‘Why not just kidnap me?’ she said.

‘Because that would have been against your will! I had to give you the choice. You could have said no. You could have left the kids with me.’ He held up his hand. ‘It was perfect, right? It looked like you had no choice, because what mother would abandon her children like that? But I knew you didn’t care about abandoning them, so for you it was a choice. And you made it. You chose me. That was the final proof I needed.’

There was so much wrong with this, she didn’t know where to start. She hadn’t known it was Guy, so she couldn’t have chosen him. She had not been asking for his help. And she had never had any choice, because she did love her children, more than anything. She was not the mum he thought she was. She was the mum who would not have abandoned her children under any circumstances.

And that was the reason she was here. No other.