She is bolting for the door when he strikes her. It seems to happen in one fluid motion, as if her sudden turn towards the door triggers his reach for the neck of the bottle. She has her back to him when his arm swings through the air – he both feels and hears the smack of thickened glass as it makes contact with her skull. The breath is knocked from her in a single gurgling cry. Instantly she goes down.

A terrible calm descends on the room. Anton stands, the bottle still grasped in his hand, breath heaving in and out of his lungs as he stares down on her. She has fallen awkwardly, one leg half curled under the other, her arms pinned beneath her torso. Her head lies against the door, and he notices now that her hair is darkened and wet from her shower. She lies completely still.

It was the thought of Mark that did it. The unbearable prospect of his son discovering the tawdry nature of his deceit through those letters, the certainty of this information being distorted into some kind of motive for Charlotte’s death and Mark actually believing it. ‘Everyone has a tipping point,’ Nigel had said to him once, explaining his own dark journey into the abyss. And now Anton has found his.

In the silence that follows her fall, he realizes what he has done. He half expects her to move slowly, push herself up into a sitting position, rubbing her head. But her body lies inert. He is still panting but, cautiously now, he approaches her. He says her name, breaking the silence, but it hangs there unanswered. Warily, he goes closer, leaning down, his heart racing. Her eyes are closed and her hair has fallen over her face. He can smell the citrus tang of her shampoo. Instinctively, he puts his hand out to draw the hair back and recoils when he feels something sticky. His fingers come away glistening with blood. It seeps from a wound he cannot see, and he leans down again and listens carefully. At first, he can only hear the pounding of his own pulse in his ears, but then it comes: a liquid breath, low and shallow. He peers into her face but it’s completely still, her eyes shut fast. He remembers then the look on her face when he’d told her she could not leave, the flash of terror as she understood what he meant by that, the dark finality of his firm intent.