‘As we began to wait for the clocks to strike midnight, I knew, just knew with an absolute certainty, that I couldn’t allow him to live one minute longer than necessary,’ Katherine said simply. ‘It wasn’t something I’d ever thought of before – taking revenge, I mean. Like I told you, I’ve tried and tried not to think about Amy Jean and that car crash at all – that fatal night when everything changed. And that included trying to forget everything to do with it, including her father and that man. But at that moment, with the old year counting down, and seeing him laughing and cosying up to Millie Vander … it was as if something just came over me. I can’t really describe it. It was like a blanket, only it wasn’t warm and comforting, but rather the opposite. Cold and lifeless. A compulsion, a certainty, a … oh, it’s no use, I can’t explain it in words. Without planning it, without even almost knowing it, I just knew I had to stop that man from living one day longer in a world where Amy Jean no longer existed. I felt so calm it was almost inhuman. It was as if a … a … fatal chill had crept into my blood. It was all-consuming and overpowering, and I didn’t even try and fight it.’

Remembering that moment must have been more than she could take, because Katherine reached desperately for her glass and drained it again. Then she slumped back into her chair.

‘So what did you do?’ Trudy asked, her voice little more than a whisper now.

‘Hmmm? Do?’ Katherine looked at her vaguely, then smiled wryly. ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything, really, except think. How could I kill him? I had no weapon, and even if I got a knife from the kitchen or something and launched myself at him, all the others would stop me. His car was outside, and I’d have loved to see him die the same way my Amy Jean died, all alone at night in his car, but I’d no idea how to go about sabotaging it. The only things I had on me were in my handbag.’

As she spoke, her eyes went to that very item, lying on the floor beside her chair, large and voluminous and bulging with items. Trudy remembered how full of stuff it had been on their first visit.