Everything I had been keeping back, meditating out of my palms for the past few months, it was all gathering again in my head and my chest like storm clouds. It was all coming at me – too much, too much. But I needed it. I had minutes until Paco had moved those books and that bookcase out of the way and found the panel and pressed it only to discover the secret room only had guns in it – no money.

And that was if Tenoch had left any. Maybe he had taken everything.

All of those kids were going to die, one by one when he came out of that room. I needed Rhiannon. I needed the Rhiannon I had been in Florence when Ty had been kidnapped. I needed the Rhiannon I had been when I was suffocating the paedophile, Derek Scudd. The Rhiannon who had kept Julia all those months in the back bedroom and sliced off her fingers one by one. The Rhiannon who had watched her grandfather die in agony.

Because they had hurt children.

It was my only chance – Rhiannon had to do the unthinkable. And I lay on the floor as flat as I could and reached out with my foot to hook it around the nearest armchair leg. And with some difficulty, pulled it towards me, close enough so I could grab the cushion. I aimed it up at the wall behind me.

Again. And again. And again.

I kept missing, at first by a lot. But I did it again, and again, until it touched it, a glancing caress but enough to make it wobble from its hook. I tossed the cushion up again and dislodged it so it dangled precariously above my head like a guillotine. And several attempts later, the remaining machete wobbled violently on its hook and clattered down to the hardwood floor.

I looked to the door – I could hear Saúl and Mátilda crying in the cupboard. David’s face still unmoving on the floor, metres away from me. A trickle of his blood snaked along the grouting in the floor tiles.

‘Está bien, bebés. Está bien,’ I kept saying. It’s all right babies, I’m going to save you. Te voy a salvar.’

Three more children would die if I didn’t do it. Three more children would die when I could have saved them.

And as small as I was at Priory Gardens, was as big as I became now. I flooded my head with rage, with the stark awfulness of the situation, and the urgency of getting to Paco before he could get to them. I was their only chance. And I took that machete and I raised it high above my head, lining it up with my wrist. And I swung it out wide.

And I thought of Priory Gardens.

And I thought of Ivy.

And I heard Mátilda scream. And I heard Saúl scream in the cupboard.