“Come get your worthless daughter and take her back,” my mother-in-law shouted my father as I lay broken at the bottom of the stairs after my husband shoved me down. “Your family will answer for it if she has even a scratch,” was the sole warning Dad offered her. They had no notion who my father really was, so they made fun of him.

“Look, Mammy!

Grandpa found Barnaby!She cheered, holding up her stuffed puppy.

I recognised the stuffed dog at once.

It was the very toy she had taken to her grandparents’ house months before.

“Where did Grandpa find Barnaby?”” I said gently.

“He was tucked away in the basket in the hall under the stairs,” said Maya.

My blood turned cold for the second time that nite.

“In the basket below the stairs?“I said it again.