But there was no rippling. No flame. It was sex with no climax. In out, in out, in out – then just out and I left it dripping on the cool sand. He got his, I didn’t get mine. The disappointment was crushing. I lay beside his body for the longest time, nauseated. Agitated. I started digging.

‘What you doing?’ said a little voice.

‘What?’ I flicked around. A small girl had appeared, around five years old, in a pink-and-blue striped swimming costume, carrying a little yellow bucket and spade, scraping curls out of her face with a sandy hand.

‘Are you digging a hole?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I help?’

‘No. Where are your parents?’

‘Mum’s down there. My dad’s playing football with my brother.’

‘Go to your mum.’ Conan’s brown leather wallet slid from his pocket.

The girl dropped her bucket and some twigs fell out. I had her full attention. ‘Did you bury him?’ Conan’s foot was sticking out of the sand.

‘Yeah.’ I pushed a wall of sand over him to cover the foot and flicked some more over a dribble of blood which had seeped out from under him.

‘Are you cold?’

‘No.’

‘Bye,’ she said picking up her bucket and the sticks and coming towards me, leaning over to see Conan’s face, but I got in the way to spare her from the full sight. She disappeared back where she’d come from, the breeze catching the slightest hint of coconut from her full head of curls.

I didn’t know why she’d asked me if I was cold but I realised then I was shaking. It must have been shock. I’d felt the hate but I’d also the guilt, immediately, when she’d appeared. I kept seeing Ivy’s face on hers. Ivy seeing what I’d done to her dad. My Ivy. My baby. This was what I’d wanted to save her from.

What the fuck had happened to me inside a week? I should have been jubilant – I’d rid the world of another predator. But where was the rush? Where was the orgasm I’d had after killing Sandra Huggins and had strode out of that farm shop feeling like the whole world was a marble in my fist?

It was not there anymore.

I’d reached the end. I couldn’t go forward or back. I had this overwhelming feeling of futility. I was a nothing. A spent force. A dead head.

Keston Hoyle’s words as he’d pointed at my belly screamed into view.

That’s your future in there. That’s the one good thing you have. You’ll realise that when she’s born.

This was no life. And whatever it was, I didn’t want to live it anymore.