My eyes widened as I stared at the weapon that the woman I now knew was Donna Cook held in her hand. I couldn’t get through security with a bunch of keys, but she’d managed to smuggle a gun in. She was going up in my estimation every day.

‘Donna, put it down,’ Marshall said with authority, well spoken and assured. ‘Please. Do it. You know this isn’t the way to go about things. You think this will bring you peace? Help you to sleep at night? Stop the nightmares? It won’t. It definitely won’t.’

Donna Cook stared at him, never blinking, never moving. Could she hear him, or was she too far away in her own world of revenge for that?

Marshall decided to try another angle, deciding to let his London accent out too as part of the act. ‘I was just a kid, Donna. I’m a different person now. You, better than anyone, know how I was brought up–the fighting and brutality…what chance did I have? If only I had known any experience of love, I would never have touched your little boy. Your angel. I was a victim too, Donna.’

At those words, Donna Cook walked up to the dock. In accordance with normal procedure, the door at the bottom of the stairs was locked. Heading back down the route by which he had come would simply mean Marshall was a cornered rat, but I’m sure he must have considered it.

‘Your chances? Your chances? What chance did Matthew have?’ she asked, waving the gun in his face. ‘When you took him, you should have murdered me too. You weren’t as clever as they all said, after all.’ Donna Cook’s eyes were wide with hate. ‘Do you know–at first I tried to join him, but no one would let me. No one would let me die.’ She waved her free hand around the court. ‘Then I decided, so be it, that I’d wait for you. Maybe that’s what I was being kept alive for.’