Alex hadn’t seen Sian Foster since her son’s sentencing two years earlier. Communication between the two had been tense: Sian blamed Alex for Nathan’s arrest, and her anger had been directed at her in the aftermath of his sentencing. Alex seemed to make a hobby of attracting people’s anger. Youssef Hassan had watched her with contempt as she’d searched his oldest son’s room, furious with the knowledge that he had little choice but to tell his wife about his lie. Yet in Sian’s case, Alex didn’t blame the woman for her animosity. Had Alex had any control over the situation, Nathan would have been back at home with his family by now, where he belonged. Once he’d been charged, she had had no involvement in the case. What happened next was in the hands of the judge.

It wasn’t the first time a legal professional had made a poor decision. Nathan had been used as an example. People couldn’t take the law into their own hands, and his twelve-year sentence was a clear deterrent to others.

On Wednesday evening, Alex headed over to the hospital in Llantrisant. The decision to visit Sian hadn’t taken long to come to. The car accident that could easily have been so much worse still preyed on her mind. If Sian Foster still had contact with her ex, there was a slim chance she might know whether he’d had any involvement in cutting Alex’s brake line. Sian knew better than anyone just what Christian was capable of.

She asked at the hospital’s main reception desk which ward Sian was in before heading upstairs. Finding the right corridor, she pushed open a set of doors and scanned the area for a member of staff. Finding no one, she walked the length of the corridor, slowing at each room to look through the windows.

Turning a corner, she stopped when she saw a teenage girl outside one of the rooms. She was sitting on a plastic chair to the side of a closed door, a pair of earphones shoved into her ears, its wire disappearing into her pocket, attached to the mobile phone hidden there. She looked up as Alex approached. Casting a glance at the window, Alex saw Sian Foster lying in the bed, her eyes open and staring listlessly at the ceiling.

She wouldn’t have recognised the girl had she seen her elsewhere, but Alex realised now that this was Keeley, Sian and Christian’s daughter. Nathan’s sister.

‘Keeley.’

The girl pulled the left headphone from her ear and looked at Alex questioningly. She didn’t remember her. Alex hadn’t expected her to: Keeley had only been young when her brother had been sentenced, and being a minor meant she had been kept sheltered from much of what had gone on. She had changed so much in the two years that had passed, no longer a little girl.

‘I know your mum,’ Alex said by way of explanation.

Keeley nodded. ‘You can go in. I’ve just come out here to cool down – it’s boiling in there.’

Alex went into the room. Keeley was right: the air was sticky and uncomfortable. Despite that, Sian kept herself hidden beneath a hospital blanket, concealing her injuries.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, her hostility tangible.

Keeley might have forgotten her, but Sian never would. She still blamed Alex, even now.

‘Did Christian do this to you?’

Sian turned her face away and looked to the window. Her nose was blocked and her breathing laboured; every time she exhaled through her mouth, a chesty wheezing filled the otherwise silent room. She was only in her thirties, yet she looked and sounded much older.

‘You don’t have to let him get away with this,’ Alex said. ‘He’s not supposed to go anywhere near you, he knows that. One word from you and we can put him back inside.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘The hospital has a duty to inform the police.’

Sian shook her head. ‘I told them last night I don’t want it to go any further. So who really told you?’

Ignoring the question, Alex went to the other side of the bed and sat on the chair there. Sian turned away and faced the ceiling, closing her eyes as though able to somehow block Alex from her mind. Alex wondered if this was how she spent most of her life, hiding from problems in the hope that one day they might just disappear.

‘Don’t let him do this. What happens when he meets someone else? There will be a next time – there always is with men like Christian.’

The feeling she’d had when she had pressed her foot flat to the brake of her car and found it useless returned to her then: that feeling of fear and helplessness that she had felt before, in different circumstances. She never wanted to feel it again, but if she had to, she didn’t want it to be at the hands of a person like Christian Coleman. She studied the pattern of bruises that mottled Sian’s skin. She had pitied the woman once, but now she felt an overriding frustration that cancelled out any sympathy she might have had for her. For whatever reason, Sian seemed intent on protecting her ex-husband. But why? She owed him no favours, and she had nothing to lose if Christian was to return to prison.

Realising her words were lost on Sian, Alex stood. She glanced to the doorway. Keeley was still outside in the corridor, her head bowed as she listened to the music playing from her phone.

‘What about Keeley?’ she said in a last attempt to change Sian’s mind. ‘She’ll be a woman before you know it. What if he does something to hurt her? If you say nothing now, what are you teaching her?’

The irony of her own words wasn’t lost on Alex. She thought of Dan, and of Dan’s two daughters. She knew she should have thought of them sooner, before she had allowed Dan into her home. She should have thought of them before she went ahead and kissed him. It had been pathetic and desperate.

What the hell had she been thinking?

Sian’s eyes remained closed. ‘Just go.’

Alex stood up and walked round the bed. She stopped for a moment and glanced at the file that was hanging from the end of the metal frame. At the top was written Sian’s full name, scrawled in biro by one of the nurses.

Sian Kathleen Foster.