It was terrible fear that had kept her awake throughout the night. And the shock of the dead creature. And guilt. If anything happened to Cassie because of all this, it would be her fault. Why the hell hadn’t she told Laura and Cassie to go to the police or the British Embassy the moment she’d received that very first call? And informed the judge, to hell with the consequences?

But she knew the answer. She had been too scared then and she was too scared now. She knew she should say something to Cassie’s parents, but she was too scared of losing Laura. She felt so utterly helpless and hated that feeling. Hated the knowledge there was nothing she could do until the jury retired, when she would have to use every ounce of ingenuity she had to somehow sway them.

And how was she going to do that when she knew, in her heart, in her soul, that Terence Gready deserved to be behind bars until he was too old to ever again, as the prosecuting counsel had said, resume his evil trade?

She thought back to the nightmare, five years ago, that had seemed as if it would never end. She had tried to put it out of her mind, but at this stage in the trial those thoughts came flooding back. The week in hospital with two busted ribs, a lacerated liver, a broken ankle, a broken finger, a torn wrist and whiplash. Laura in the next bed with a dislocated collarbone, bruised spleen, broken arm and also severe whiplash.

Arranging the death certificates of her husband and son. Attending their funerals in a wheelchair. Endless meetings with lawyers. The inquest in Northampton being adjourned by the Coroner only a few minutes after it had started because the police were bringing charges against the van driver. Months of physiotherapy. Then sitting in the public gallery of Northampton Crown Court, listening to the evidence given against the plumber who had killed her husband and son, and very nearly herself and Laura, too. He’d tried to lie his way out of the fact that he had been texting his girlfriend whilst driving down the M1 motorway and hadn’t noticed their camper van at a tailback for a contraflow system. His defence was that the brakes on his van had failed – something later disproved by the police Collision Investigation Unit.

She had hated that man with every fibre of her body. Just as she hated Terence Gready – and his sinister, creepy accomplice who tormented her over the phone.

Her husband and son dead. Will would have been twenty now if he’d lived. So much he might have gone on to achieve.

The plumber got an eighteen-month suspended sentence, an £800 fine and a five-year driving ban. And she got a life sentence. The sense of injustice had never left her. And now it was on the verge of happening again.