The nurse's words kept echoing long after she left the room.
Unpaid. Discharge. No more subsidies.
Amelia stood at the foot of the bed, fingers clenched around the shopping bags. The fruit, the honey, the soft cotton pajamas—all the small comforts she had chosen for her mother now looked ridiculous, like decorations on a house already scheduled to be torn down.
On the pillow, her mother gave her a worried look. “Amelia? Don't scare yourself," she said gently. “If they said there's a problem, Mr. Turner will fix it. He promised, didn't he?"
He promised.
In the ward, with the bite block still imprinting her teeth and the smell of antiseptic in her lungs, he had stood above her bed and told her that if she confessed to lying about Sophie, he would clear all of her mother's debts. The res
