We thought of moving away, but what would have been the point? The situation would have stayed the same wherever we went. And we liked our village. We both worked in the area – I had found a job at the medical centre in the next town, resuming the nursing job I’d had before Hannah came along, and I loved it there, situated far away enough for no one to know me, or Hannah. Besides, we’d had to leave our home, fleeing my childhood village once before. I couldn’t face doing it again.

There were many, many nights that Doug and I spent driving around the nearest towns looking for her. Toby wrapped in his duvet, sleeping in the back. They were dark and desperate times; I was convinced we’d eventually find her left for dead in the street. I was permanently terrified for her, I lost almost two stone, the knot of fear that seemed constantly to lie in the pit of my stomach preventing me from eating. But though those months were unbearable, she always stopped short of going too far, staying just enough out of trouble to ensure that the police and social services never followed through with their many threats to remove her from our care. She was smart enough to know that, if that happened, the freedom her hold over us afforded her would be curtailed. And besides, she had bigger fish to fry, as we were soon to find out.

It was an ordinary morning, not long after she’d turned sixteen. Toby, who was ten by then, was getting ready to walk to school. I was dressed in my nurse’s uniform in preparation for another shift and Doug was clearing the breakfast things away. I didn’t even look up when she came into the room, though I was surprised she was out of bed. She had finished school without a GCSE to her name and, having flatly refused to re-sit them, spent her days at home, rarely surfacing before noon as she slept off the night before. I remember I glanced at Doug, and my first hint that something was wrong was the expression of astonishment on his face. It was then that I turned and looked at my daughter.

Of all the awful things she had shocked us with over the past couple of years, nothing could have prepared me for how she looked that morning. Because it was an entirely different girl who stood before me now. Her usual rat’s nest hair was clean and neatly brushed. And though I had assumed she’d long ago thrown out all the nice clothes I’d bought her, today she was dressed in a pretty coral jumper and a plain, knee-length denim skirt. Her make-up was subtle, the black nail varnish removed, as was the nose ring and multiple ear studs she’d taken to wearing lately.