I barely slept that night, in the dingy surroundings of the flat, hoping and dreading to hear from Alex, but there was nothing. Did he wonder where I was? Did he care about me at all? Did he know I’d been arrested again – or that I’d been digging and knew he had lied about not seeing Anna before she was murdered? Could I even trust Don Samson’s recollection of events? I passed a fitful night. The saggy and lumpy bed reminded me of all the comforts I’d learned to take for granted since leaving prison. In my cottage I had an expensive mattress, a bedside lamp, heating I could control. Hot showers daily, baths. I could eat what I wanted, and not at 4 a.m., when the prison officers decided it was time for breakfast. I couldn’t give it all up, not again. I had to keep going.

I woke at three, after a few hours spent dozing, then looked at my phone, bathing my tired face in white light, and found another email from Jochem.

Hello, Rachel. I thought you would like to know I have traced the IP address of someone who was googling you, the day before the story broke in the papers, and also googling ‘how to sell a story to a newspaper’. It is the IP of Happy Paws Animal Shelter.

I read his message several times to be sure I understood. Whoever had sold me out to the press worked at the shelter.

There was more, too. Although you did not ask for this, I was also curious to know what happened to the infant, Carson Safran, after the death of his family.

That was a kind way to put it, the death. Not ‘after their brutal murders, which you were convicted of’. I scrolled on, suddenly breathless. I hadn’t thought to ask him to find Carson. Perhaps because I was afraid to even think of him out there in the world, lost to me for ever.

The child was taken in by his aunt, Ruth Safran, and moved to Texas. However, he only stayed with her there for six years. I believe there was some kind of Family Services intervention.

Wow. Had Ruth been judged unfit to care for Carson? I mean, I could have told them that, but I was still surprised. I wondered what she’d done to him, that cold-hearted woman, a little boy who’d lost his entire family. He would have needed rocking to sleep, and games and cuddles, all the things I could have done for him, if only I’d been allowed to keep him. But that was stupid. Even if I hadn’t been convicted of the murders, they’d never have let him stay with his foreign teenage nanny. He’d have gone to Ruth no matter what.