Hannah meets Philip Turner when she is only fourteen. He is twenty-one. Philip is very much attracted to the young girl with the blonde hair and shapely figure, and Hannah quickly becomes infatuated with him.
Hannah believes Philip is in love with her, and so, when he promises to look after her, and give her the future she deserves, she has no reason not to believe him.
They marry when Hannah is sixteen and pregnant with their first child.
Hannah soon realises that Philip has deceived her, and that he is not the man she believed him to be. She finds herself trapped inside a marriage, where she is regularly beaten and abused.
Seven and a half years later, Hannah realises things will never get any better, and that she needs to escape, in an attempt to save herself, her children, and her sanity.
But there is the real danger that, if she leaves, Philip might carry out his threat: to hunt her down and kill her, if she were to ever leave him.