Lindsay, feeling equally shattered by her ex-lover’s revelations, could find nothing to say. At last, Cordelia looked up. “I can’t face going to prison, Lindsay. You know what it would do to me. I’d kill myself before I’d spend years in prison.”

Lindsay knew it was no bluff. Cordelia’s hatred of confined spaces had been a familiar consideration for Lindsay in their relationship. Hotel rooms had to be spacious, and Cordelia had once flatly refused to even enter a cabin they’d booked for a long ferry crossing. Being locked in a cell would be her idea of hell, and even though part of Lindsay was convinced she deserved to suffer, another part of her still felt too much for Cordelia to condemn her to that. She swallowed hard and said, “Do you see me calling the police?”

“I need to get away. To get out of the country,” she said desperately. “Give me your car. No one will be looking for that. I’ll get a boat somewhere, I can disappear like you did.”

Lindsay shook her head. “I can’t do that. If I let you take my car, that makes me an accessory. And I don’t fancy the idea of prison any more than you do.”

“Please, Lindsay,” Cordelia pleaded. “You’re the only person I can trust. We loved each other for a long time. Please don’t turn your back on me now!”

Lindsay was buffeted by a series of contradictory emotions. The love she still felt for Cordelia battled with her new knowledge of what she was capable of. Her anger and sorrow at what had been done to Jackie and Alison was no longer any match for the pity she felt for what Cordelia had done to herself in the pursuit of reputation. Eventually she opened her handbag and took out her driving license.

“Here you are,” she said, tossing it over to Cordelia. “No one will be looking for you yet. Go and hire a car and get out. And if you do get caught, tell them you stole it from my bag.”

Cordelia got to her feet and moved toward Lindsay as if to embrace her. “Don’t you dare touch me,” Lindsay snapped. “Just go.”

Cordelia halted abruptly as if Lindsay had slapped her. From her pocket, she pulled the keys to her Mercedes coupé, and the car’s registration documents. “It’s parked round the corner. I’ve filled in the change of ownership section. I backdated it to last week. It’s about time you had a decent car.”

“I don’t want your bloody car,” Lindsay said. “What do you take me for? You think I can be bought and sold, just like that?”