She made herself look at it. Becca tonight – had she really done that to atone or had at least part of it been for herself, to make herself feel better after the batterings from Samir and Maggie? Defiance: she did have value, she was worth something?

Overhead Lennie turned, sighed. I think you’re worth loving. Robin felt sweat on her top lip and shivered: last night she’d been Valerie, hadn’t she, the needy mother looking to a child for reassurance, support in navigating the world. Maybe Luke was right. Maybe Lennie would be Becca in a few years’ time, fleeing her.

The thought was devastating. Her fear when Lennie had disappeared to London; she’d known beyond doubt that without her, if something happened to her, nothing would ever be right again.

Samir, Gid, Maggie. Corinna.

The drawbridge, chains clanking, leaving her stranded. On her own.

It was her fault. Maybe not Samir but the others. Even Freshwater. How could you be so high-handed?

And Corinna. Dead but withdrawing even before that, pulling away.

Was it her fault, Corinna’s death? If she’d felt able to talk to Robin, get through to her, would she still be alive? Could she, Robin, have stopped it?

Or was the connection more direct even than that? She lay without moving, without breathing, as she made herself recognize it – own it: she’d been the only other person who knew what Josh had done and she’d let him go. She’d let him go.

Why bother with a judicial system at all, judges and juries, due process?

She’d made the call. She’d let a man’s death go unexamined – he was a rapist, he’d attacked them, he’d prejudiced his right to justice, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he?

And she had allowed Josh never to be held to account. She’d protected him. She’d allowed him to kill that man and walk away.

What she’d also done, she saw, was tell Corinna that it was all right to protect him, too. At seventeen, when she was young and scared, yes – and maybe she could forgive herself for that – but then for years and years afterwards. When she was police, a detective. A homicide detective.

She’d let him go. A real killer.

Chapter Twenty-four

The landline woke her then Christine’s voice across the landing as she picked up their bedroom extension. ‘Hiya, love.’ Luke, Robin thought, rising slowly to the surface, but then her mother said, ‘Let her go?’

She lay still as the new reality broke over her again.

‘Mum? Are you down there?’

‘Morning, lovely.’ She tried to sound normal.

‘You were back really late – is something going on?’