The dredger had unearthed a body. A skeleton, actually. First one, then – to the men’s horror – another. And two rusted shotguns. All wrapped in a crumbling tarpaulin, weighted down. Shauna thought that this should never have happened; Ciaran and Rowan Cleaver should have lain there forever in their watery grave.

She was acting funny. Seemed very upset.

Wouldn’t anyone be upset, seeing a sight like that? Of course they would.

‘I’d better go home,’ Shauna had said to Chloe when she had pulled herself together. But by then of course the harm was done. They had seen her acting weird, on her knees, saying no, no, no, it shouldn’t happen, it shouldn’t be this way.

‘But won’t the police want us as witnesses?’ Chloe said.

Shauna ignored that. She drove home in a daze and sat in the half-dark in her kitchen as night closed in, wondering where the kids were, what they were up to. She made herself a strong cup of coffee and lit a cigarette and noticed that her hands were still trembling. She glanced down. Her tapestry-covered high-heeled shoes, her favourites, were caked in mud and grass clippings, ruined. She kicked them off, uncaring. Her feet were mud-covered too. No matter.

Ah, what the hell. The whole thing was over anyway. Josh was dead. The kids didn’t even seem to like her and they wouldn’t do a damned thing for her. And now the bodies had been discovered. How long would it be before the police pieced it together? She’d been acting weird, the men were right. They wouldn’t forget that and neither would that gobby, snobby cow Chloe.

Chloe would tell them that the woman they were talking about was Shauna Flynn who’d once owned the property next door that backed on to the river where the bodies were found.

Should have taken them downstream somewhere, thought Shauna. But then – that night – she and Josh had been desperate, in a panic, thinking that it would be good enough, that no one would ever find them.

But they had.

Shit.

She put the big Magnum, the same one she had used to kill the Cleaver brothers, on the kitchen counter and looked at it. She’d been going to finish Claire Milo and her daughter, and then Jeb – but really, what was the point? She didn’t seem to have any control over anything any more. Everything she did turned out a bloody disaster. And Josh was gone. Claire had been right, what she said: Shauna had won the battle, for sure. But in the end, Claire had won the war.

Slowly, Shauna drained her coffee and stubbed out the remains of her cigarette. Looked around her beautiful, expensive and empty home. You had a good view of the driveway from where she was sitting. Saw everyone coming and going, right down to the gate on the road. She liked that.