‘It has to be him,’ Adrian said, blowing the air from his cheeks, trying to calm himself.

‘And we’ll get him, we will. But we can’t go about this half-cocked. If we want to nail that shitbag then we have to do it by the book.’

Adrian admired Imogen’s optimism, but he knew from experience that domestic abuse was so much more complicated than that. He saw his mother get hurt time and again, almost as many times as she defended his father’s behaviour to Adrian. Even when people tried to help, she would push them away.

He wasn’t angry at Imogen, though. How could she understand? How could anyone who hadn’t been in that situation? It was hard to explain that it was possible to love someone who hurt you. That it was fear that kept you in line, not just the fear of what they might do to you when you were there, but also an amplified fear of what they would do to you if you tried to leave. And then there were the things they told you: that you would never make it without them, that you were nothing and that you deserved everything you were getting. How could you make someone who hadn’t lived through it understand?

Chapter Thirty

The smell of chips saturated in vinegar was less appealing after you had finished eating them. Imogen and Adrian had parked among some other cars on a hill behind the Corrigan house, the remnants of their takeaway tossed onto the back seat of the car.

The back of the house was different to the front. It was almost completely windows and you could see everything inside. Fortunately, their position was fairly obscured by greenery. It felt like they were watching a TV show, a big glass box with little people moving around inside. Angela Corrigan sat on a chair in the lounge reading a book. She didn’t look relaxed or even engaged – it looked like a pretence, but then why would anyone keep it up when they were alone in a room? Reece Corrigan was upstairs in an office on the phone. He seemed angry, certainly not the personable man they had met earlier that day, but then they already knew that was a facade.

‘You wouldn’t like to live in a house like that, then?’ Adrian asked again, drinking the last of his can of Coke before stuffing it into a carrier bag full of rubbish.