And what about Charles? Had he washed his hands of Leah, abandoning his child when he abandoned her mother? Grace could not believe that he could be so callous, but he wouldn’t be the first man to walk away and never return. When her own father had left the women he’d consorted with, it had seemed to be without a backward glance. And maybe Charles had no idea that Melissa was dead. He took no notice of the ‘trivia’ that appeared on the local news, and how else would the news reach him? Neither did he appear to have gone back to Whitley Bay since his reappearance full-time at the Hall. In fact, he had been so irritatingly under her feet that she had suggested that he might want to take up golf to get him out of the way. Well, if Charles had run from his responsibilities in Whitley Bay, Grace’s conscience would not let her do the same. Melissa was dead and poor Leah was Grace’s stepdaughter of a sort, although this thought stabbed so hard at her heart that she had to take a deep breath and hold on to it until the pain subsided.

Shakily she crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a large whisky, which she swallowed down neat. The heat burned her throat and she grimaced as the alcohol hit her stomach. Looking out for Leah would have to be down to her. If she confronted Charles with her understanding of the situation then the sorry truth would come out, and her years of keeping his secret and protecting their children would all have been for nothing. But she could no longer ignore what she knew to be true.

Grace had pieced it all together years ago. To start with, there had been what she had supposed to be an affair when she had caught Charles going into the house in Whitley Bay, but Grace had only truly understood the full enormity of what her husband had done on her third visit to Melissa’s house. It had been the photograph, so proudly displayed on the mantelpiece, that had given him away. Grace had known that Ray and Melissa were married. Melissa had told her that when they first met, but the man in the picture that Melissa had shown her with such delight was definitely Charles. There had been no mistaking him.

Since that moment Grace had known the truth. Her husband was married to someone else. He was a bigamist.