She lifted one hand and touched it to the side of her head, rubbed her fingers across the patch of shaved skin.

The day he’d proposed, she’d thought his speech showed her how much he cared:

I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to treat you the way you’ve always deserved to be treated. No one else could ever love you as much as I love you.

But now she reconsidered those words in a new light.

No one else could ever love you.

Was it romantic? Or was it cruel?

She’d believed he was showing her she deserved better. Maybe he was actually warning her that she’d never find anyone else. And she’d bought into it.

It wasn’t that she wanted to lie there and dismantle her marriage, piece by piece, it was that she wanted to understand. And she wanted to know if she’d somehow missed the signs. She was his wife. Should she have somehow realised what he was capable of? She thought about the cracks that had already begun to form in their relationship. The way he’d started out so adventurous in the bedroom, but then their sex-life had petered out. Was it because the only way he could be attracted to her was to pretend? To play games? And when she didn’t want to play along anymore, had he completely lost interest in her?

Or was the explanation even more sickening? Because if she thought about it . . . it was possible the timing of his assault on Callie lined up with the beginning of things changing in their marriage. As though something monstrous inside him had been awakened and there was no turning back. So the terrifying question was this: if there had never been an accident, if Tony was still alive today and the truth had remained hidden, would this have only been the very beginning?

She fixed her eyes on the tree again. The gently swaying branches. It was all too much.

*

When she heard footsteps, she didn’t turn to look. She was used to nurses coming in and out of her room all through the day and night. Tapping on buttons, scribbling notes, taking her blood pressure or changing the bag on her drip, disappearing. But then she heard the sound of a chair being pulled up to the bed. She tore her eyes away from the tree and saw the doctor she’d got to know over the past few days sitting down to face her. His expression was grim. She wasn’t sure if she could handle any more bad news.