Rey pulled herself up out of a groggy sleep hand over hand, struggling against a tiredness so leaden it felt like a physical weight. She couldn't remember going to bed, let alone falling asleep, and the hardness of the mattress against her back was more uncomfortable than usual. She attempted to turn over, then realised with a sudden sharp snap into wakefulness that she couldn't.

Her eyes popped open and she tried to move her head, finding that she was strapped to a table, restraints across her chest and arms and more securing her ankles. She thrashed against the metal, thought better of it and called her lightsaber, but it didn't come.

She scanned the room quickly. There was no equipment she could lift and drag towards her, no people to be compelled into helping, simply a blank grey room with a very large window on one side.

Making herself relax, she reached out and tried to sense anyone else in the vicinity who might possess a connection to the Force. There weren't many, and she was disappointed to find that Ben wasn't in range either, whatever her range might be, although there was a presence that felt a little bit like him close at hand.

'Leia.'

'Has anyone ever told you that you shout?'

Rey felt a soft pull inside her, but now was not the time. 'Ben mentioned it occasionally.'

There was a lull in her brain before the answer came back, slow and guarded. 'And, how is he?'

Rey considered that. 'Furious, I should think. Where am I?'

'Somewhere safe,' Leia replied, without being more specific. 'I'll send someone in to let you out.'

'Oh. Why am I tied up if I'm on a Resistance base?'

Leia's response was careful. 'You were taken from the Supreme Leader's quarters. We intercepted the communication to say you'd defected. Finn was convinced it wasn't true, but we thought you'd find a way to escape or contact us, and the longer you stayed out of touch the more it looked like you'd turned to the dark side. Have you?'

'Of course not. You'd be able to tell if I had, wouldn't you?'

'Maybe. But have you been working for the First Order? Some of our intelligence suggests you're on the military council.'

'I've met them once,' she offered, not knowing to what extent Leia's powers might be able to penetrate her thoughts.

She couldn't exactly lie to the Resistance, who were her friends, but then she couldn't exactly tell Leia the truth either – especially not Leia, who had lost more than anyone.

'What is it you can't tell me the truth about?' The older woman sounded suspicious.

Rey could already sense that this was not going to have a happy ending. Ben would undoubtedly come looking for her, except that it would be Kylo Ren leading the search, and he was going to be not just furious, but something beyond furious that involved smashing up an entire star system when he realised she was back with the Resistance again. She should be grateful to be free. Apart from obviously being tied to a table, no one here was going to stop her going where she wanted or doing what she wanted. She was free to hide in any hole she chose before Ben pried her out of it.

But her mind felt hollow without him.

If she stayed here she would never touch him, except in anger, would never see him, except across a battlefield. That instant, powerful connection between them would blow away like smoke in the wind.

Leia had waited long enough for an answer. 'Report to me for debriefing,' she snapped.

A door that Rey couldn't twist her head enough to see hissed open and Finn's familiar tread entered the room.

'Let's get this off you,' he tutted, releasing the bonds enough that she could sit up and hug him. But he drew away too quickly. 'How've you been? Everything alright? Good. Sorry about all this, General's orders, you know how it is. She wants to see you right away.'

'I know.' Rey tried to catch his eye, struggled with it. 'Finn – is everything alright?'

'Same old, same old. Let's get you to her, shall we?'

She rubbed at her legs, hoping that what she was reading in his reaction, really wasn't there. 'Where am I? And what happened? The last thing I remember is opening my front door.'

'We've had someone on the Destroyer trying to get a message through to you for weeks, but you were too closely guarded. Then your regular cleaner left and our spy got in to your room and left you a message, so you'd be ready. Anyway, he said he called at the door, you had no idea who he was, and started arguing so he stunned you and put you in the cleaning trolley. You were wheeled down to maintenance, loaded into a garbage scow and we picked you up from there.'

'The message said, 'tonight', didn't it? I thought it was from Ben.'

Finn's face twisted at that and he put his hands on her arms, speaking quickly. 'Rey, you've been here for three days. It wasn't me who got you out of the garbage, it was a stranger you didn't know, and you kept going on about how you were the Supreme Leader and then you threw him across the room. Leia had you sedated while we tried to work out if you're still on our side or not. I know you are, I believe you, but almost everyone else thinks you're working for them.'

He'd stopped outside a battered door, set into the middle of a dingy corridor.

'Go in and talk to her. I'll see you on the other side.'

Rey turned the handle and entered, not nervous, but ever so slightly ashamed. Inside were two low chairs, all bare wood and splinters, and on one sat a motherly woman whose eyes were hard and sharp and gave no quarter.

She pointed to the opposite char and although the room was otherwise empty, Rey could tell there were many people watching what was going on inside.

Leia said, 'Nice cloak.'

Rey looked down at the dress sadly. There was a large scorch mark on the left-hand side, the front was shredded in three places, and the white fabric bore liberal spatters of food and other waste that she didn't want to think too much about. The whole thing stank of fish. 'Not anymore.'

The older woman reached over and pinched the material between finger and thumb. 'Expensive. Handmade. Not the clothing of a prisoner.'

'I haven't been able to leave,' she replied, a touch defensively.

'Have you tried?' Leia nodded, and one wall of the room lit up with a grainy picture, taken with poor quality equipment in the dark, from a long way away. Despite all that, it was still possible to identify the woman in black, standing on the ramp of a shuttle, peering inside for up to a minute and then turning and running away. The fact that she was carrying a lightsaber towards the end also helped.

Rey shifted in her chair.

'You see my problem,' Leia continued, in a warm and gentle tone although her eyes were as hard as durasteel. 'You're living in the Supreme Leader's quarters, wearing extremely low-cut dresses that everyone can see straight through and there are no signs of injury or violence on you. You're given an opportunity to leave and you don't. There's only one question I think matters – is it consensual or is it forced?'

'You think he might be forcing me to stay?'

'I think he might be forcing you to do a lot of things.'

She recoiled. 'You really think he's a monster, don't you?'

'He killed his father. Don't you think he's a monster?'

'It's not my place to forgive that.'

'But you're happy to ignore it?'

'No, I.' This was the crux of the problem. It was all very well to sit in an office and spout cosy philosophy about how everyone has a dark side, and quite another to forgive the actions of a murderer. Ben had done some terrible things, most of which Rey probably didn't even know about, and she had feelings for him anyway. It was probably the dark side in her that meant she could empathise with a monster, but then again, maybe empathy was something of the light.

'I think he can change,' she continued.

Leia leaned forward, put her chin on her fist. 'Why?'

Rey didn't much want to admit the truth to his mother, but she appeared to know it already.

'For love. You think he will change for love. Women have been making that mistake for aeons. You think, that because he loves you, he's going to be different.' She sat back. 'I thought that too. I thought, if I can just give him one more hug, he won't be like this anymore. If I can buy him this present, if I sing him this song, if I can make his nightmares go away, he'll love me so much that he'll change. It never happened. It won't happen for you either. Nobody changes for love, they only change for themselves, not for anyone else.'

Rey straightened her back. 'He has a different account of his childhood. There aren't many hugs in it.'

'Defending him now? You really are smitten, aren't you? I suppose he told you all that bleating rubbish about how we were neglectful parents? Did he also tell you that by the time he was five he would throw me across the room every time he had a tantrum? And this was a boy who had a lot of tantrums. We tried everything to teach him to control himself – discipline, exercise, counselling, and the credits I spent on anger management lessons. Nothing helped.

On his seventh birthday he hit me so hard he broke my arm, and his father finally agreed to let Luke train him. He wasn't safe with us, we couldn't help him. It was for his own good.'

'I don't think he sees it like that.'

Leia sighed. 'Come back and talk to me when you've had children. It's a constant stagger from one mistake to the next, nothing you do is ever good enough.'

'Most parents don't end up with sons like yours.'

'Most parent's sons can't lift X-wings with their minds.'

'True.'

'Look,' Leia rubbed her face with both hands. 'I know how this goes. When I was younger, no one could tell me anything either, I had to learn it for myself. It comes down to this – right now you have a choice. The Resistance or the First Order – the light side or the dark. Which are you going to choose?'

Rey considered that for all of a split second. 'Neither. I choose his side.'

The older woman shook her head. 'Then you're free to go. But he'll break your heart. He broke mine.'

Rey leaned forward, put a hand out. 'Thank you. I need to get back before he starts smashing things. Did you manage to find out how they were tracking you?'

Leia inclined her head. 'Tracking me?'

'Tracking you. I sent you a message using the Force when you were on Crait to tell you that the First Order had a way of tracking you, but no one else in the Resistance, and that you needed to be careful. Did you work out what it was?'

'I didn't get any message.'

The impact of it was so hard, and so sudden that Rey felt like she'd been punched. She shot upright, searching the far corners of the room for her unseen assailant, fingers itching for her lightsaber.

Leia rose from the other chair, touched her shoulder. 'I felt it too. He's here.'

PS The Car Crash Bride and The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer are available now on Amazon.

PPS Motherhood is like this.