Alex was splashing nearby, and then I felt his strong hands on my head, pushing me under the water. I fought to the surface again, only to hear his voice spewing bile, the same voice that had once spoken to me with such tenderness.

‘You bitch! You murdering bitch! You’re not getting out of this one!’

And then he pushed me down, harder this time, and I couldn’t get any footing, the water was too deep, and I saw how it would look. I would drown here and they would find Alex with my scissors in his neck, my fingerprints all over them, and the story would write itself. Casey Adams was a killer. She had always been a killer. She had lured Alex Devine to the dog shelter and tried to murder him, as she’d murdered his wife, as she’d murdered that family, the poor little girl. She got away with it once, but justice caught up with her in the end. She drowned herself out of guilt.

Alex would get away with murder for the second time.

The lights of the town shone through the black water. I was under it. Over, gasping for air. Under again. Alex’s hands pressed me down, his blood dripping into the water. My lungs bursting. Just give up, said a voice in my head. You’ve fought so hard, but it wasn’t enough in the end.

Images flashed through me. Carson, his sweet baby laugh as I tickled him. Madison, spinning and spinning in her pink dress. Abby, coming downstairs with her hair piled up. David’s tired face in the morning. Jenna, lighting a fag in her leopard-print coat. Jeremy, who’d only ever tried to love me. Rhonda, her head held high as they took her to her death. Brandy, leaping up to greet me. I had fought so hard for my life that day in Los Angeles, only to lose it to the state, regain it by some miracle, and now here I was again. I would die not in a lethal injection chamber, or shot or strangled or stabbed by David as I fought to save the baby, but here in this freezing black water. I sank down. Everything went black.

Then I was on the lake shore, gasping and choking out water, frozen to the bone. Air. It filled my lungs. Blinking the water out of my eyes, I saw Alex’s body stretched out nearby. There was blood on his head, a rock beside him. I could see his staring eyes by the light of the moon. He was dead. I rolled over on to my back and saw a figure standing over me.

It was a teenager. Not Tom, but the other one, Callum. The boy whose CV I had been looking at when Alex arrived. He was breathing hard, wiping a hand over his face. He was soaked to the skin.