Bell winced. ‘God, Hanna, I’m sorry, that’s awful.’

Hanna looked back at her with a hopeless shrug. ‘Awful for me, but worse for him. He’s not a bad man, he’s a sad one. He’s been through so much and suffered so unfairly. It feels like the ultimate betrayal for him to endure all that, only to come through it and find we’d left him behind.’

Bell nodded sympathetically. ‘I can see that, but there’s no villain in this. You are not a bad person, Hanna. You made the best choices you could, in incredibly difficult circumstances. You’re all in an impossible situation. You, Max and him.’

Hanna looked back at her gratefully. ‘You know, I travelled up to that clinic every single month for those seven years. I’d tell him about how Linus was doing at school, and I would read his school reports. I’d tell him about how tall he was getting and how lucky we’d got finding you. And in all that time, there was never once a sign that he heard any of it. Nothing. Not a finger twitch or a flutter of an eyelid.’ A sob escaped her suddenly. ‘I tried to do my best by him, but now . . . now I think it would have been better if he hadn’t woken up!’

‘Oh Hanna, you don’t mean that,’ Bell hushed.

‘I do, Bell, I do. He won’t accept our marriage is over. Even after I told him the truth, he kept saying things could get back to how they used to be now that he’s back. Like Max and the girls don’t even exist! He said he had based his entire recovery on getting back to being the man he was before, for our sakes, and he won’t give up on us now, even if I have.’

‘Well, that’s . . . just the shock talking. It’s a blow for him, clearly, if you have been his main motivation to recover; but he’ll come to terms with the new reality, painful though it may be. You did the right thing telling him. He had to know sooner or later.’

‘You don’t understand. He’s angry and hurt, so now he’s lashing out.’ Hanna looked back at her, eyes red-rimmed and watery, and Bell suddenly knew this wasn’t the first time she had cried today, or even in the past hour. ‘When he finally realized I was serious about staying with Max, he turned on me. He’s saying he wants joint custody.’

‘Of Linus?’ Now it was Bell’s turn to be shocked.

‘Yes.’ The word came out as a sob.

‘But he . . . he can’t! He’s been in a coma for seven years. Even if he knew his son – which he doesn’t – how would he be fit to look after him?’

Hanna fixed her with a steady stare, and something in her eyes made Bell feel a tremor of alarm. ‘Because his family are powerful, Bell, and incredibly wealthy. Even in the coma, he had the best care money could buy – all the best surgeons, experimental treatments, pioneering drugs. And from the moment he woke up, they threw another fortune at his rehabilitation – he spent eight weeks at that specialist clinic in Switzerland basically being . . . rebuilt.’ She stared bleakly into space. ‘He’s normal now – he can walk, talk, run, lift, carry, you name it, there are no physical impediments to block his claim . . . And there isn’t a judge in the land that would deny him access, or even dare to try.’ She sank further back into the chair, as though there was safety in the cushions.