‘Hideous: the tears, the choked voice, the insinuation that she was as much of a victim as those poor people who died.’ Caroline imitates Kate’s voice, ‘“Oh poor me, sucked in by a handsome, charismatic, self-help guru. He exploited my vulnerability and love for him. He made me lie to the guests and pretend I was his assistant.”’ She shakes her head. ‘She’s quite the actress, that’s for sure, but the media were all over it. “Wade’s third victim” and all that shit.’

‘Why would they do that?’ Fran turns to look at her. ‘Pretend they weren’t together?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. I imagine it’s that whole boyband thing – more women go along to a gig if they think the hot guy they fancy is single. Most of Tom’s social media followers are women. Any inane shit he tweets is immediately retweeted, praised or turned into a meme. They lap it up! Not that he writes them. I’ve heard from several sources that Kate does that. You know she tried to set herself up as a self-help guru after he started his sentence?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘She took over the SoulShrink Twitter account – put her own name in the tagline and everything – even got herself a few TV and radio interviews. But whenever she talked about herself, and how Tom wasn’t the only one who’d suffered from somatic symptom disorder, the interviewers would swiftly turn the chat back to him. No one was interested in her. It was all Tom Wade, a charlatan or a misunderstood guru? But there was no wound licking for Kate. She set up a tour across dozens of towns and cities. It was billed as The Truth About Kate Wade but there couldn’t have been more than fourteen people in her London talk – most of them journalists – and seven in Oxford. She cancelled the rest of the gigs.’

Fran perches on the edge of the bed. She’d been so sure that Tom was the dangerous one, with his tears, his woe-is-me story, and his inability to put a coherent sentence together when asked about Jenna. She’d dismissed Kate as his loyal but uptight wife with her strained, fixed smile and robotic Stepford Wife manner. But, if what Caroline was saying was true, then maybe Kate had been pulling the strings all along. It certainly explained why she’d tried to drown them both. Unlike Phoenix, Renata and Damian, who’d looked horrified as Fran floundered on the floor of the dinghy, Kate showed no emotion at all. Her face was a blank. At the time, Fran had assumed that it was shock – she was hacking like a forty a day smoker and Caroline was floating down the river – but it wasn’t. Kate’s empty expression was the cool stare of a sociopath who’d just tried to kill two people and failed.