I pull the car to a halt a few doors further down the street. The street-lights are dim but I can see there is a car parked across the end of our drive. Ian would go insane if he saw it, even if he didn’t want to go out. It is just the sort of thing that makes him angry.

He’s not there. I know it. I can feel it.

For a moment I wonder if I should try to get into the house. Maybe if I did, I would remember what happened. But I don’t have my keys. Thea will have put them with the rest of my belongings – wherever they might be. I am going to have to sit here, hoping with all my heart to see a glimmer of light somewhere in the house that will tell me someone is there – that Ian is home. That he is alive.

I can’t leave until I know for sure. I’m scared that Thea and Garrick will suddenly appear at my car window, their faces pressed against the glass, but not as scared as I am of my house standing empty, deserted, its sole occupant lying in a morgue somewhere. So I leave the engine running with the heater on to keep warm.

Despite everything I start to feel sleepy. Perhaps it is the drugs, or maybe it’s the adrenaline draining from my system, but I feel myself begin to drift.

I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but when I wake up and look at the clock I can see that it is two in the morning. I must have been asleep for about four hours. The house is still in darkness, and I tell myself that Ian may have come home while I was sleeping and gone to bed, even though I don’t believe it.

The car parked outside the house hasn’t moved, and I realise for the first time that our car isn’t on the drive. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but Ian never puts it in the garage.

Maybe he has simply gone away for a day or two. But I know I’m clutching at straws.

I stare blankly at the house, and then a light comes on inside the car that’s blocking the drive. There is someone in there.

For one dreadful moment I think it must be Thea or Garrick. Maybe they have come after me. Maybe they are waiting to see if I come home. But I know that doesn’t make sense. They couldn’t have got here before me, and the car was here when I arrived.

So why is someone sitting outside my house in a car in the early hours of the morning?

I shiver, even though the heater is still running. There’s something very wrong.