I let my breath out, and, on jelly legs, opened the door. A square of light, a uniformed man in shadow. Like stepping from the darkness of the wings on to a stage.

‘Thank God,’ I said. ‘Oh, thank you, God. Carson, look, we’re OK, we’re OK, baby.’

‘Can you tell us what happened?’ said another officer, a woman. I felt her eyes on me. She was withholding judgement. She knew that how things looked were not always how they were, and she would later testify in court that my statements seemed rehearsed.

‘I came home,’ I said, the first time of many that I would speak those words. ‘I came home and they were dead.’

Rachel – two days later

Rachel – two days later

‘So we’ve decided to drop the case against you. There’s evidence that implicates Alex Devine and, well – the CPS don’t think they can prosecute.’ DS Hegarty squared off some papers, nudging them against the same old chipped table in Coldwater station.

I sat in the interview room, very quiet and still. This time I’d remembered to bring a cardigan against the chill of the place. There was no sign of Margaret Hope – she must have been furious I had, as she’d put it, got away with it yet again. I had made a formal complaint about her behaviour in the Barrow station, and I got the impression the police were trying to be as nice to me as possible now.

‘So Alex did it – are you sure?’

‘We had him on our radar at the start – he and Anna weren’t getting on, and he stood to lose his family home in a divorce. Plus he has some history of violence. But he had an alibi, then the evidence against you . . .’ He trailed off, sheepish.

‘So he tried to frame me? You really think that?’

‘It looks that way. We found he’d viewed a documentary online about your . . . case, and might have identified you from that. So when he killed her you probably seemed the perfect scapegoat.’

‘But I didn’t do it.’

He smiled. ‘We believe you now, Rachel. You’re free to go.’

The most beautiful words in the English language. The same words the judge had spoken to me all those years ago, when I walked from an American court. But I hadn’t really been free, had I? Fear is a prison of its own. And back home I had been too afraid to tell anyone I was Casey Adams. Perhaps if I had, none of this would have happened in the first place. I stood up, scraping back the plastic chair. ‘Thank you.’ He had always been kind to me, even when I must have looked like a cold-blooded killer. That meant a lot.