LITMIR.BIZ

      Bedford Town, 1996

      CHAPTER ONE

      SOMETIMES, SHE COULD make herself believe that the bad things had never happened. And then there were the other times, when she could feel his breath against her face and his hands around her neck, squeezing, choking the life out of her. She could see the loathing in his eyes as the darkness enveloped her.

      It was Alice – her dearest friend – who had saved her from the dark. Because of that fine, brave woman, her own life had been spared, albeit at a terrible cost.

      Through the years that followed, the horror of that night had never left her. She remained ever-vigilant. The darkness kept her prisoner, and the daylight was her enemy. And on the rare occasions when she must go out during the daytime, with every step she was looking over her shoulder, anxious to get back and lock herself inside the house alone with her fears.

      It was a lonely, forsaken existence. Her treasured collection of records and tapes, and the music she heard on the TV and radio, were her only consolation.

      For Madeleine Delaney, once known as ‘The Songbird’, music was her life.

      The beauty of nature also gave her immense pleasure. Come the dawn she would hear the birds welcome a new day, and when the sun lit the skies, she would sit at her open window and feel the gentle breeze on her face – until a passing stranger glanced up from the road outside and frightened her away. In her isolation, Maddy had come to love the seasons like never before. Winter had its own special beauty, with snow-covered trees and laden boughs that hung their heads as though in shame. Her heart sang with the first appearance of the tiny robin redbreast that hopped about her front yard and peeped up at her with bright beady eyes. Below her window, the children threw snowballs in the street, laughing and screeching, wrapped in coats and scarves, oblivious to the driving chill of a winter’s day.

      Lighter of heart, she would sit and watch and imagine she was down there with them, a child again, with not a care in the world.

      Inevitably, the same old question would burn its way into her brain: How did you end up alone and unwanted like this, trapped in a self-imposed prison in a rundown house here in the town of Bedford, so very far from your roots?

      The answer was simple: she had fallen in love with the wrong man, and from the moment she met him, her

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