I’m really sorry I couldn’t tell you anything definite about Hux-B, but I just don’t have it. I just know it came from him. Tbh, I knew it the minute I saw your daughter, Claudia, outside the house. I’d seen her before while I was making a delivery. I don’t think she ever saw me, but I remember her and how scared of him she seemed. I thought he was a POS then, I don’t want to offend you by spelling out what I think of him now. I hope with everything in me that the cops find the trail that leads to him, but I know it won’t be an easy one. It’s not likely anyone’s going to take my word for anything, and BJ won’t rat him out, so I can’t say what happens next. (Do you really think, by the way, that they’ll be able to pull BJ in for something else without it being linked to me? Sorry if that sounds selfish, but survival instinct and all that.)

This is going to sound weird now, but when I think back on today and the way you handled the whole thing, it just keeps blowing me away. You’re something else, you really are.

I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting to hear from me again, and I guess Dan won’t be coming anymore, so time for me to get on with the other stuff I’ve got going on with my lawyer, the sentencing, and everything.

Thank you again for coming to meet me and for reading my letters. I’m sorrier than I know how to put into words and I hope . . . Not sure what I hope really . . . Good stuff for you, obvs, for me too, if that’s all right.

Please tell Claudia and Jasmine (hope you don’t mind me using their names) that I’m grateful to them for coming too, and I’m sorry for what they’ve had to go through. I wish I knew how to get Jasmine a new violin, but I’ve got no money and being stuck in here isn’t going to put me in the way of any. It wouldn’t mean much coming from me anyway, I get that.

You people so didn’t deserve anyone like me coming into your lives, or that psycho Huxley-Browne. I hope no one like us ever crosses your paths again.

Chapter Forty-Four

“They’re here,” Marcy declared, as a car turned into their drive and stopped in front of the gates.

Claudia pushed the release button while watching her mother with a worried expression. “Are you OK?” she asked. “You’re looking quite pale today.”

“I’m fine,” Marcy assured her. “Please don’t fuss.”